Cocky Biker: A Stand Alone MC Romance Novel (Cocker Brothers of Atlanta Book 2) by Faleena Hopkins Read Free Book Online Page B

knowing there’s nothing better for us to do while we wait.
    Scratch gives me a look and jerks his head away from the others. “Jett, come here.”
    We walk to get some privacy.
    “You got nothing out of the girl?”
    “Not anything we can use.”
    He smirks at my joke, but his eyes see more than I want them to. Why’d he have to remind me? For the last half hour I’d managed to forget about her.
    An unfamiliar beep goes off on my phone. I frown as I read an alert from my credit card company warning me about an unusually large charge in a new city…this one. We just got here yesterday, and now someone is… What the hell?
    “Motherfucker,” I whisper, stunned.
    “What?”
    “She stole my credit card! What the hell did she buy for almost six hundred dollars at a fuckin’ Bed Bath and Beyond?!”
    Scratch makes a hissing sound and cranes over to check out what it says on my outstretched phone. “What the hell…”
    “Fucking cunt stole my credit card!”
    He sighs like he sees something I don’t.
    “What, Scratch? What’s that face for?”
    “You never call women that.”
    “Well, I just did.”
    “She got to you.”
    “SHE DIDN’T FUCKIN’ GET TO ME.”
    I head for my hog.
    The other Ciphers look away quickly, except Fuse. He’s got a son from a woman who drives him crazy, Melodi. He gives me a look like he gets it. Before I have a chance to tell him to go to hell, he breaks eye contact and flips his ignition on, motor roaring to life.

Luna
    “ M ommy , why won’t you teach me Spanish?”
    My mother lowered her voice to a whisper as she always did when he was in the house. “Because I want you to do something with your life.”
    My five-year-old brain couldn’t understand how learning my mother’s native language would hinder that.
    “Why would learning Spanish stop me, Mommy?”
    Her eyes went sharp then with both anger and pain. She roughly grabbed my arm and whispered, “Luna! The people with power speak ENGLISH. Speaking only Spanish keeps us small. There are no jobs for girls of your skin color if you do not speak English! Do you want to be poor?! Being poor is evil, Luna. It makes bad people prey on you because you are vulnerable. You are meant for bigger things! Do you understand?”
    With tears in my eyes I nodded, but I was lying. I didn’t really understand.
    Not until I was older.
    My mother was taught English by my Grandmother, who died before I was conceived. Her father died, too, during a raid on the drug cartel’s home where he worked and lived. He was one of the bad guys. Her brother died that day, too. He was her age and trying to be like their father. He died being like him.
    Sofia, my mother, was very scared and alone when he found her. The men in her life had kept her sheltered, but he said he would show her great things, if she’d just trust him.
    He was powerful. Charismatic. Educated about life in ways she was not. He told my mother he saw potential in her and offered to smuggle her into America.
    He promised to take care of her and the baby who was on the way…me.
    But when she got here, she all too quickly discovered what kind of evil he was. And she was told there was no way out. She had no money. No friends. No support.
    And she had a baby to house and feed.
    He manipulated her mind, but he never killed her spirit.
    I was raised in a house of prostitution. I saw things a little girl never should, although the women tried to shield me as much as possible. I didn’t know why I was the only child there. Sometimes the women got pregnant but the babies always left. It was just the way things were.
    When I was ten years old, my mother’s body was dragged out past my door.
    At the sight of her bloody corpse, I screamed, “What happened to my mommy!? Where are you taking her?! Let her go! LET HER GO!!!”
    Her limp, naked legs made a horrible scratching sound on the jagged carpet, and I grabbed onto them so hard the sheet came off. One of his thugs covered her but I’d