Lessons In Corruption (The Fallen Men Series Book 1) Read online

  It was his wealth that gave me pause. I had no real money of my own unless I counted the few thousand dollars my grandfather put into a small trust for me. I didn’t know if it would be enough to start a new life. I didn’t even know if I was savvy enough or strong enough to strike out on my own, not after an entire life of obedience to my father, and then my husband.

  I didn’t know, but as I lay there cradled in the dark night, I decided that I didn’t care about the certainty. That, in fact, it was part of the thrill.

  I rolled over to look at William lying beside me, his face slack and peaceful in slumber. Reverently, I traced his thick eyebrows, the slightly jagged edge of his hairline down to the winged ear that I liked to kiss. I peeled the covers away from his body carefully so that I could run my eyes over the entirety of my husband for the last time.

  The finality settled in me like a bright thing, something light that made the heaviness in my bones fizzle and pop into nothingness.

  “William,” I whispered, pressing a thumb to the corner of his lips. “Wake up. I have to tell you something.”

  Three months later.

  Everyone was talking about it.

  They’d let one of them in.

  And not just one of them but the spawn of the devil himself.

  Zeus Garro, infamous President of The Fallen MC, the most notorious motorcycle gang in the country, had somehow enrolled his son in the best private school in the province, not to mention halfway through the school year.

  Entrance Bay Academy’s halls were humming with the news but the teacher’s lounge at lunch break that day was practically echoing with it.

  “Can you believe it?” Willow Ashby stage whispered to her best friend and colleague in the music department, Tammy Piper. “They’re letting the son of a freaking gang member into the school. How can any of us expect to be safe now?”

  I rolled my eyes but pretended to keep reading my heavily annotated copy of Paradise Lost. Ostensibly, I was reviewing it in preparation for my lecture in my sixth period advanced English twelve class but I’d read the epic poem at least twenty-two times, knew the heaviest hitting lines by heart and had prepared my lesson plan to the most minute detail three months ago when my life blew apart and I had nothing to do but read.

  Still, pretending to be diligent was better than being drawn into teacher gossip about the new kid. Even after a full semester of teaching, I was surprised by how much teacher culture mirrored teenage culture in the hallowed halls of EBA. When I’d been happily married, my life had revolved around William, so I hadn’t noticed as much but now that I was single, the dramatic pull was nearly inexorable.

  “What if he brings a gun to school?” Tammy asked.

  “It’ll be drugs,” Willow said. “Just you wait. Before we know it, the academy will just be a front for drug running.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Pillow,” Rainbow Lee, a fellow teacher, said as she came into the lounge and walked past the two gossips. “If everyone judged books by their covers, there is no way you would be allowed to teach people. You look like a slutty Malibu Barbie.”

  I hid my snort behind my hand as Rainbow continued over to where I usually sat and curled up on the banquette by the bookcases. She winked as she sat down on the couch across from me, ignoring the sputtering noises Willow made as she tried to think of a comeback.

  “You really shouldn’t call her Pillow,” I chided her with a friendly smile, even though Rainbow had made overtures at friendship with me before and I had gently rebuffed her.

  William didn’t like to socialize unless it was necessary to do so at one of his firm’s functions, so I’d stopped making friends a long time ago.

  I was a new woman though, I had time for friends, especially ones as sassy as Rainbow Lee.

  She shrugged her bony shoulders. “Those fake boobs are enormous. She clearly wants attention drawn to them so I don’t see the problem.”

  A rough throat clearing over my shoulder caught my attention, pulling my gaze from Rainbow to a fairly attractive brunet man with a beautifully groomed beard and thick-rimmed black glasses. He wore a brightly colored plaid shirt beneath his tweed blazer with a matching kerchief tucked in his front pocket. I recognized him from the halls but I’d never spoken to him before. He reminded me of a younger William; obsessed with his looks and his own charms.

  My lips pursed before I could help it.

  “Hello,” he said with a gracious smile, as if his attention was something I should be grateful for.

  My hackles rose but a lifetime of manners and etiquette prompted me to say, “Hello,” instead of ignoring him like I wanted to.

  He waited a beat for me to elaborate and when I didn’t, his grin widened. “You’re the new IB English and History teacher, Cressida Irons.”

  “I am, but I’ve been here for six months now. You’re a bit tardy with your introduction,” I pointed out helpfully.

  He laughed and I got the feeling that he thought we were flirting.

  “Mitch Warren,” he introduced himself anyway, sitting down on the edge of the little coffee table in front of me. “IB Biology and freshman science. It’s nice to have some fresh blood infused into this place.”

  I didn’t really know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.

  I shouldn’t have worried because he was undeterred. “You should come out with us tonight. The staff always gets a drink at McClellan’s on Wednesdays to make hump day a little easier. I could give you a ride if you need one?”

  He was being sweet and considerate. It wasn’t his fault that I was more than shy, a little scared and definitely hopeless. So, I smiled back at him, a small smile because I’d forgotten how to give a genuine one.

  “I have a car but a drink sounds lovely. What time should I be there?”

  He blinked at me for a moment before rolling back his shoulders and beaming at me. I had to admit, he had a very pretty smile.

  “Six o’clock too early? We try not to stay out too long with school and all.”

  “Makes sense. I’ll see you then.” I smiled before pointedly turning back to my book.

  He waited a moment, his eyes hot against my face, before he moved away. I sighed a quiet breath of relief.

  “I know, he’s hot but a serious pain in the ass,” Rainbow warned me even though her eyes were dancing with amusement.

  I closed my book again to smile at her. “I’m just trying to be more social. Trust me, I’m not looking for a new romance.”

  “Hey, sprite,” Rainbow called to someone over my shoulder.

  I looked up to see a diminutive woman with short, spiky black hair and delicate features flop down in the chair next to me as if she weighed a ton, when she couldn’t have been more than a hundred pounds soaking wet.

  Tayline Brooks frowned. “Don’t call me that, it makes me feel silly.”

  “Maybe next time don’t flounce into the room then,” Rainbow shot back.

  Tayline stuck her tongue out and I laughed at them.

  She rolled her huge, brown eyes as her head lolled against the backrest and she continued talking as if we were mid-conversation. “Rainbow’s always been a bit of a name caller. She grew up with a home-stay family that clearly didn’t teach her any manners.”

  “I have manners. I just prefer truth to bullshit,” she retorted.

  “That’s the better option,” I agreed.

  They both looked at me with mild surprise and then, startlingly, evaluation.

  “Heard you got divorced,” Rainbow said. “Does that mean you finally found a spine?”

  “Rainbow!” Tayline protested.

  “What? She just said she prefers honesty.”

  “That was more cruel than honest.”

  “I don’t mind, really,” I interrupted, and I meant it. I was done with being mild mannered and subservient, with observing everything but never giving my input. I stared hard into Rainbow’s dark eyes and said, “I found a spine.”

  “Cool. I noticed the sad ey
es.” She gestured to my outfit, a sleek black turtleneck dress. “This new you is better.”

  “Agreed.”

  Tayline had gnawed on her full bottom lip as she watched our exchange, but now she leaned forward with an earnestness that warmed my heart. “Seriously though, you’re okay?”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat unsuccessfully. “I’m getting there.”

  “You moved here, right? From Vancouver.”

  I nodded. “I bought the old cabin on Back Bay Road.”

  Tayline screwed her nose up adorably but Rainbow snorted.

  “Yeah, it needs a little work,” I admitted.

  “You’ll need a thousand hands and scads of money to make the place habitable.”

  I peered at Rainbow shyly. “I don’t have many hands or scads of money.”

  “Your husband wasn’t rich?”

  “He is.”

  They stared at me, drawing their own conclusions.

  “Asshole,” Rainbow swore, shaking her head.

  I shrugged because she was right, but I wasn’t at the point where I felt comfortable talking badly about William.

  “We could help, if you needed more hands?” Tayline offered, her doll-like eyes wide with sincerity.

  “I’d like that,” I said.

  “Cool,” she said with a massive grin. “I’m so excited we can be friends now!”

  “Every other woman at Entrance High is engaged or married,” Rainbow explained, as if marriage was to be avoided at all costs.

  Given my experiences, I was inclined to agree with her.

  “Not Willow,” Tayline amended.

  “No, but she’s a bitch so we don’t hang out with her.”

  “And not Kathy.”

  “No, but she’s a certified hermit and, God love her, she’s ugly as sin so we don’t hang out with her either,” Rainbow explained.

  I blanched at her candor, which made both of them laugh.

  “Now that you live here, you should know now that nearly everyone in Entrance is freaking gorgeous,” Tayline said, leaning forward in her chair to stare at me with large, earnest eyes. “Like seriously, there just may be something in the water here.”

  “I think it’s that like draws like,” Rainbow commented.

  “For whatever reason, there are a shit ton of pretty people in this town and us, the smart and pretty ones, we’ve gotta stick together.”

  I had no experience with women like this, with girlfriends or even any friends at all. The only relationships that I had ever known were with my conservative parents, my husband or the shallow acquaintances I had with other housewives back in Vancouver. Even in high school, I hadn’t socialized much. I was too busy being groomed by my parents and William to be his future wife.

  Moving to Entrance was about more than finding my independence from them, it was about learning how to live. Having friends, even and maybe especially friends like Tayline and Rainbow, seemed only fitting.

  So, I smiled genuinely at them and said, “Seems like a good idea to me.”

  They both beamed back at me as the bell for sixth period rang out.

  “So, we’ll see you tonight at McClellan’s?”

  “Totally.”

  McClellan’s was cool. It was all wood, different colors and textures but totally beautiful, the big square bar most of all. It was packed with people, even on a Monday night, so it was filled with the sound of good humor and camaraderie. A happy place for happy people.

  It made me feel odd, taking a part in the scene when normally, I only read about them. It was difficult not to sit back, acting as silent narrator as my companions, Rainbow, Tayline and Warren, who went by his last name, among them, laughed and reminisced about past school years and made predictions about the future. They were including me, everyone seemed determined to do so, but it only made it harder for me to let loose.

  “I’ve got fifty smackaroos that the new MC kid sleeps with the entire grad class within the first six weeks,” Willow said over the rim of her fancy blue-sugared cosmo.

  “Willow! You shouldn’t bet on the students’ love lives,” Harry Reynard, our soft-spoken librarian, protested.

  She snorted. “Oh come on Harry, you have eyes. That boy is fine. Another few years, and I’d take him for a ride, if you know what I mean?”

  “I think everyone knows what you mean,” Tayline said. “But I have to agree, he is seriously gorgeous. I forgot how to conjugate the verb faire in class today, I was so stunned by his pretty face.”

  Everyone laughed so I took the moment to quietly tell Rainbow, “He was a no show in my class today.”

  “No way. Did you tell the Headmaster?”

  I shook my head, biting my lip. “I wondered if maybe he got confused with his schedule. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially with all this talk about him and his father. He probably feels unwelcome enough.”

  “You’re a softie, eh?”

  “Twenty bucks says that Tay hooks up with her biker again,” Warren said as he sneered down at pretty, little Tayline.

  She glowered at him but the blush riding high on her cheeks ruined it. “Fuck off.”

  “Hasn’t asked you to go steady yet then, eh?”

  Even I frowned because Warren was being nasty, searching for a soft spot to poke at. I didn’t know this ‘biker’ but it was obviously a sensitive subject.

  “Back off, Warren,” Rainbow hissed.

  “Seriously,” said Georgie, our receptionist and an adorable middle-aged woman with bouncy blonde curls.

  Tayline didn’t care for their protection. She bared her little teeth, leaning forward so that she was almost falling off her stool. “Careful now. I may just call up that biker and get him to remind you why we treat The Fallen with respect and more than a little bit of fear in Entrance.”

  “Oooh, I’m so scared,” Warren laughed and a couple of his buddies, the Biology and Gym teachers, laughed with him.

  Tayline leaned back on her stool, her face cast in the shadows of the low lit bar, and spoke softly, “You should be.”

  A shiver worked its way down my spine. I was easily spooked these days but even though I realized that, it did nothing to waylay my terror.

  I knew of The Fallen MC, obviously. Everyone in British Columbia, on the west coast of both Canada and the USA, in all of the United Kingdom, knew of The Fallen. They were the modern day warlords of those lands, the men who created their own rules and held ironclad rule over the rest of us. The police had tried for years to close them down but had given in to a tentative understanding when nothing, not since their inception in 1960, had brought them low. They were known and feared but they were not brutal the way some of the motorcycle clubs in Texas and the east were. The public shootings, pile-ups of dead bodies and poorly hidden marauding were a thing of the past. Their power was so absolute in BC that they ruled without contention.

  I knew all of this because I did my research before moving to Entrance and because my brother was into a lot of bad stuff but he had never, not once, been stupid enough to get involved with The Fallen.

  I found it hard to believe that pretty little Tayline was involved with an outlaw but I thought of the blond king from the parking lot so many months ago, his aura of menace and totalitarian-like control. He was the most attractive man I had ever laid eyes on, in no small part because of his unlawfulness.

  As if sensing my thoughts, Tay pushed her stool closer to mine as the conversation resumed around us.

  “You look interested, princess,” she said with a sly kind of smile. “Have you ever had a biker before? I have to say, you don’t look like the type but I don’t know you well enough to see what’s beneath the prettiness you’ve got going.”

  I stayed silent because what she said annoyed me but I didn’t have enough experience to offer a scathing retort.

  Tayline softened visibly, shedding the animosity that she’d shrouded herself in when Warren was attacking her. “I’m sorry. Cy is a touchy subject for me
. My best friend is a cop. My kind of, sorta boyfriend is a one percenter. You can see how it’s a source of contention.”

  “I can.” I hesitated. “Why do it then?”

  She stared off into the distance for a long moment. “A man without respect for the law is not a man without respect for anything. All that intensity, that devotion, is channeled towards other things, mostly their people; the brotherhood, family, their women. You can’t experience anything like it until you’ve had it.”

  I swallowed thickly, surprised by the shiver of want in my bones. “A difficult thing to give up then.”

  “Yes,” she agreed softly.

  We were quiet for a moment before she broke free of her contemplation to slam back the rest of her beer. She smacked her lips, wiped her wet mouth with the back of one hand and announced that the next round was on her.

  I watched her go to the bar, which was when I noticed the blond king leaning against the far end, one booted foot crossed over the other. He was watching me in a way that said he had been watching me for a while. His handsomeness hooked painfully in my gut, pulling me towards him inexorably. I coveted that beauty; it filled me with greed and possessiveness. My hands itched to walk the cliff-like drop of his steep cheekbones, to shove themselves into the thick, kinky mess of his golden hair.

  I watched his intense stare transform into a brilliant smile. My breath left me all at once but I didn’t care to get it back. I’d never breathe again if it meant seeing that man with that smile made especially for me.

  Come, he mouthed.

  I could almost hear his voice whispering the command in my ear, his hot breath against my neck. I shivered as I slid off the stool, making my way towards him without any conscious thought.

  “Cress?” Tay called after me.

  “Bathroom,” I mumbled.

  The blond king watched me cross to him for a moment before he turned around and sauntered out the backdoor.

  I followed him.

  The night air was cool and fragrant with sea salt and cedar, so fresh it made my lungs tingle. I took a moment to breathe deeply because I couldn’t help it.