Twisted Steel: An MC Anthology: Second Edition by Elizabeth Knox (top 5 ebook reader txt) 📕

got back out to the street, I climbed into the driver’s seat of the blacked-out SUV sitting at the curb, Blue folding his large body into the back. We chose not to wear our colors or ride our motorcycles to these kinds of jobs. The less evidence we leave, the better.

Drew pulled himself into the passenger’s seat with a painful cringe, grabbing his knee tightly for a second before pulling the door shut.

I didn’t even bother to stop the smirk on my face, looking down at the injured limb. “She has quite the swing.”

We pulled away from the curb as Drew grumbled under his breath, glaring at me out of the corner of his eye. “Yeah, Missy has grown up a lot.”

Missy.

Okay, a name.

“Probably thanks to Jared and his bullshit,” he added, resting his arm out the window and clasping the top of the door tightly in his fist. “He pushed everyone around. Her. His parents. His sister. His friends. For someone with such a loud mouth, he doesn’t have a fucking lot to show for it.”

I kept my eyes focused on the road, narrowing them. “What do you mean?”

Drew snorted. “Missy was always the worker. Girl did anything and everything, sometimes worked two or three jobs, all while he was either sitting on his ass or cheating on her and making her feel like it was her fault.”

I could feel the heat swirling inside me.

A familiar burn.

“You know where she’s working now?”

Drew looked at me out the corner of his eye. I caught it, though it was just a flicker, and saw the curiosity in his gaze. “Yeah. Last I knew, she was stripping at The Rush across town.”

I knew exactly where I was going tonight.

4 MISSY

“Dammit.”

I flicked through the money again.

One bill after another, counting slowly in my head as I crouched behind the bar.

“I’m short,” I whispered, shaking my head and pinching my eyes closed. This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t be a hundred dollars short. I needed this money, and I needed it before tomorrow. “Goddammit,” I cursed, scrunching the cash in my hand as I rushed by the other bartenders and ducked past security into the staff-only area out the back.

The music dulled instantly as the thick door swung shut behind me, the echo of my heels clicking on the old wooden floors taking its place.

The hell was I going to do?

My shift was done.

And I was running out of time.

Every day we went without having an EpiPen around meant I was at risk of losing Kadey forever. She was only one when I almost watched her slip away. I’d given her egg for the first time, and the reaction was almost instant.

Anaphylactic shock.

Her throat closed up.

She started to go blue.

I never wanted to go through that again, but here I was, considering it because Kadey’s dad had let her eat something without checking the ingredients and her throat had got itchy. They used her pen as a precaution, which was fine—but could have been avoidable if he just paid more attention.

I stepped into the tiny dressing room at the end of the hall, my gaze pulled instantly to the far corner of the room where my four-year-old daughter had buried herself into her favorite beanbag, a fluffy pink blanket pulled up to her chin.

“She hasn’t moved an inch,” Gem whispered softly, my beautiful best friend of two years not even taking her eyes from the mirror. The corner of her mouth pulled up as she touched up her scarlet red lip. “Wow, the girl can snore, though.”

I slipped past her, bending over Kadey just to check her eyes were still closed before I allowed the tears I’d been fighting to drip down onto my cheeks.

My baby girl was a fighter.

I’d been working at this dirty, back-alley bar for years.

Late nights.

Long shifts.

And Kadey had put up with it all.

Thankfully, my elderly neighbor across the hall from our apartment had become like a grandmother to her, even watching her overnight two or three nights a week while I came here and flashed my tits for dollars. That being said, having someone watch her every night I needed to be here just wasn’t realistic, so she’d been sleeping here two nights a week for two years.

It was the only option.

We did what we had to do.

“I don’t have enough to get her pen,” I whispered, hoping Gem would hear the croaking admission and not ask me to repeat myself. I don’t know if I could, to be quite honest. My heart felt like it had dropped down into my boots, the weight of everything sitting on my shoulders feeling like it was pushing me through the floor.

Smothering me.

“Stop. Pull it together,” Gem ordered sternly, shoving her chair back and getting to her feet.

The bubble of hysterical laughter that burst from my lips startled my sleeping daughter, and I quickly covered my mouth, holding my breath until I watched her tiny body ease back into a deep sleep.

The hell was I going to do?

Gem strutted with all the confidence in the world to me, her hands gripping my face, and her thumbs swiping at the tears that I could no longer contain. “I don’t get paid until I finish my shift, and I have all of a dollar to my name after paying my school fees last week, but maybe some of the girls will be able to help.” Gem was working on getting a degree, and she was almost done. The things we were working for were different, but she was trying just as much to fight her way out of hell as I was.

Only she was surrounded by a different fire.

Stripping was never meant to be permanent, but the thing was, it gave us the money we needed, that we possibly wouldn’t get elsewhere. Were we rich? No. But we could pay our bills and feed our family, and usually, have a little bit extra which I’d use to take Kadey out on the