Kiss/Bang: Lost Devils MC - Book 1

  Kiss/Bang

  Lost Devils MC - Book 1

  Madison Faye

  Copyright © 2020 Madison Faye

  Cover: Coverlüv Book Design

  Photography: Stuart Reardon

  Model: Stuart Reardon

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  Contents

  Kiss/Bang

  KIss/Bang Playlist

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Epilogue

  Also by Madison Faye

  Mailing List

  About the Author

  Copyright Notice

  Kiss/Bang

  Lost devil. Ruthless savage. Broken beast.

  Years ago, I died. A black night and a hail of bullets stole the life I knew and the brothers I loved. But heaven spit me back out, and I wound up in hell.

  “Hell” in this case is the fighting pits of Jorge Del Campo, head of Mexico’s most brutal cartel family. In here, they call me Hush Hush. I don’t speak, I don’t dream of a life outside of these bars. I fight, and I kill, like the beast they say I am.

  Until an angel visits hell. She’s a rose in the desert. A bloom in the burnt, charred remains of a life ripped from me. A softness in a cruel world of pain and death. She’s Catalina Del Campo—Jorge’s daughter.

  Wanting her is forbidden. Touching her could mean death. Love is something I forgot I could feel, but loving her might just be my salvation.

  Years ago, I died. Heaven said no. But the devil? Well, in this hell, I am the devil. But last night, this devil saw an angel. And now?

  Heaven help them all…

  KIss/Bang Playlist

  Howlin’ for You - The Black Keys

  Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked - Cage The Elephant

  Pin It Down - Madison Cunningham

  2 Wicky - Hooverphonic

  Power Over Me - Dermot Kennedy

  River - Bishop Briggs

  Safari - J Balvin, Pharrell Williams, BIA, Sky

  Fire - Barns Courtney

  Wicked Ones - Dorothy

  Movement - Hozier

  God’s Gonna Cut You Down - Johnny Cash

  If You Ever Wanna Be In Love - James Bay

  Chapter One

  Hush

  Muscles burn—clenching, rippling. My rough hands, bruised, and calloused, feel nothing of the hardened, broken concrete floor. Knuckles scrape the grit, and my jaw grinds tight as I keep pushing. Up, down. Up, down.

  I grunt, the only real sound I make these days. Or for the last few years. After all, the dead don’t speak.

  I push again, my body moving like an oiled machine as I push up and then back down. My breath scatters concrete dust and grime on the blood-stained floor, but it’s all the routine. It’s my eternity now. In here, in this cage, surrounded by brick and metal bars, I’m a chained beast. In here, I’m a demon barely contained from the outside world. I stand, and sweat drips down my brow, burning my eyes, but I don’t give a shit. I look up through the thin bar at the top of my prison, where I can see one star shining, like a tease of a freedom I’ll never know.

  After all, I’m already dead, and right now, I’m in hell.

  Believe me, I deserve it.

  In my past life, the one that was taken from me in a hail of bullets and blood, I was not a good man. I was a savage, and an outlaw—a monster of a man. I ran with a crew of likeminded men back then, but they, like every aspect of that old life, are long gone and long dead.

  There are footsteps, and I go still. The darkness surrounds and cloaks me, and I slow my breathing, my ears attuned to the approaching footsteps. It’s Carlos. After years in his hell, I know them all by the sound of their footsteps or the way they fucking breathe. Carlos isn’t the worst, but he and I both know I’d tear his head off with my bare hands if these bars were to fail.

  There’s a pause, but I already know what’s coming. The little bitch thinks it’s funny when he does this. He thinks he wakes me, but I don’t sleep at all anymore. I wait, but I don’t have to wait long, because there it is. With a clang, he raps a policeman’s baton against the bars on my cell door. Of course, he and the rest of them would only pull this shit with me in a cage like this. I’m over seven feet and two-hundred-fifty pounds of muscles and savagery.

  “Hey, culero,” he cackles.

  I’m silent.

  “Hey! Puta!”

  I still say nothing in the darkness, and he bangs on the bars again, rattling my cage.

  Provoking me.

  Waking the demon beast lurking inside of me.

  “Hola, cabron!” He cackles again. “Hey, asshole!” His voice gets a little less humor in it when he switches to English.

  “Hey, you little bitch,” Carlos spits. “I’m talking to you. Wake up, asshole.”

  He wants me to react, but I won’t. They learned long ago what I’m capable of, and I know for all of his cocky bullshit, Carlos is standing behind the line someone’s been smart enough to spray-paint on the floor outside of my cell door. It’s the line where my arm can reach through the bars. Miguel, one of Carlos’s buddies, helped them discover that line with my hand around his neck about a year back. Though in here, I’ll be honest, time has no real meaning.

  Time doesn’t matter to the dead.

  This place isn’t really Hell, of course, and I’m not actually dead. Just close to it, as this place is as close to Hell as you can find in the land of the living. This hell is an abandoned fort from the Mexican/American War, owned by a man Carlos and his buddies would call the devil. But I’ve met the devil, I know him well. And in this hell, it isn’t Jorge Del Campo.

  In here, the devil is me.

  Jorge is the head of the Del Campo cartel, which is without question one of the bloodiest, most ruthless drug cartels south of the US border. It doesn’t matter how I crossed him—the money owed, the debt that will never be paid. None of my old life matters anymore. What matters is the day-to-day of this hell. Sleep, maybe, wake, be angry. Eat, perhaps. Pace my cell, shadow box with my demons and ghosts. And then, it’s time to fight. That’s why I’m really here. I’m his beast.

  His chained dog.

  Jorge has four things he cares about in life: Money is one. Power is second. And the fights are third. In his desert compound out here at the edge of hell, he attracts all types to his brutal, no-holds-barred fights—fights to the death if need be. Guys like Carlos and his buddies come for the cheap seats, but it’s men like Jorge who fly in on private jets for the boxed seats furnished with full bars, cocaine, and girls. In the ring, death is a master, and in that ring, I am death.

  “Hey, asshole! Chupame la verga! Hey! Suck my dick!” Carlos coughs up phlegm, and I hear him spit it before I feel it hit the back of my arm. A low growl simmers in my chest, a
nd he cackles.

  “Rise and shine, bitch!” The baton clanks on the bars, and I smile.

  “El hefe wants you ready. Tonight, you’re the star, si? Tonight, you fight good.” He laughs. “Maybe the boss gives you a pillow if you play nice.”

  Nothing Carlos or his ilk says or do ever gets through to me. It never hurts me. But today, there’s more of a reason to ignore him. Today, there’s more of a wall between us. Because last night, something changed. Last night, hell blinked.

  There were four of them last night, and they were armed. The crowds jeering, the thrown beer cans and pesos—the smell of blood and sweat and dirt. But the stacked deck is an illusion—a show for the men who want to bet and drink. Four is no match for me, even armed with bats and knives. I’ve taken twice that before.

  The first went down too easy. He had tequila on his breath—liquid courage that only got his arm snapped in three places before his neck followed. The second went face-first through the plywood siding.

  Don’t feel bad for them. The men I fight are rapists, and murders, and child molesters. Most people who cross Jorge himself are killed or tortured and then killed. It’s only me that he keeps chained like a dog, and it’s because of the fights. The ones I fight against he buys from the local jails.

  The third got a hit in, but I had him pinned, one hand around his neck. And that’s when I saw her.

  A rose in the desert

  A bloom in the burnt, charred remains of a life ripped from me.

  A softness in a cruel world of pain and death.

  Raven hair, soft, full ruby lips, and the brightest, most piercing blue eyes on any girl in the world. Last night, I saw an angel, and this devil blinked.

  That blink is what got me the bat to the back of the head, too. I stumbled, and I fell, and the two left jumped up to take me out. I looked up, and that angel up in the glass boxed seats was gone. And it was that dream being ripped from me that that had me lurching to my feet with a low, savage growl. The two last attackers were snuffed out in seconds. No fanfare, no showy bullshit. Just two flicks of my wrists, and two harsh snaps of necks.

  So, no, Carlos hasn’t woken me. I haven’t slept, not with her in my head. For the first time in almost two years, I saw beauty in a place that snuffs beauty out like a match. And now, she’s all I want. Now, for the first time since the old me died, I want to live tomorrow. I want to take another breath.

  For her.

  “Hey, cabron!” Carlos mutters. He raps the bars again, and again, I grin in the darkness.

  Carlos is getting angry, and angry Carlos is sloppy Carlos.

  …Sloppy Carlos is standing past the line.

  I move in silence in the darkness, and he never sees me coming. My hand shoves through the bars, and he screams, but it’s cut off as my hand closes around his neck. I growl and yank him hard against the bars, and there’s a crunching sound of his nose breaking, and maybe some teeth. Then there’s the sound of more men yelling and running down the hall. Too many to know their footsteps, but I know them all at this point.

  Batons slam into me, a taser sends lighting through my arm. But I just grin, silent, squeezing. But finally, one of them jams a taser against my neck, and I lose my grip. I stagger, and when another taser hits my knee, I drop to the ground. They yank Carlos away, who’s coughing and choking through his partially crushed windpipe, and screaming in Spanish.

  One of the other guys swears and yanks a glock out of his belt. But suddenly, there’s a barked word in Spanish, and a dark-haired, mean looking fucker steps forward.

  “No,” he growls. Him I know too, and all too well. His name is Manuel, and he’s one of the lieutenants of this place.

  Manuel shakes his head and glances back at me before barking orders at his men. The rest of them leave, carrying Carlos with them, and Manuel turns back to me.

  “You’re welcome,” he growls in heavily accented English. Manuel is Columbian—a veteran of a hundred other drug lords just as sadistic as Jorge.

  I just hold his eyes, silent. Like I always am.

  “Uh-uh,” he mutters, wagging a finger. “You gotta play nice, Hush Hush.”

  That’s what they call me here. Take a guess why.

  “I could have let him shoot you.”

  I blink, silent.

  “But el hefe, Señor Del Campo? No, he wants you tonight. A special fight, cabron.”

  He grins.

  “Might be your last.”

  I smile, and his lips curl.

  “You think that’s funny? No, Hush Hush, some fights even you don’t win.

  He winks at me.

  “Don’t worry, my moneys on you.”

  When I still say nothing, he frowns. “Still no talking?” He spits. “Ungrateful bitch. You think this scares me? No, this silent bullshit?” He leans close to the bars, grinning at me.

  “It doesn’t scare me one—”

  I bark, like a dog, loudly. Manuel screams and jumps about four feet back from the bars as I just smile wider. He swallows, visibly shaking and white.

  “Fuck you, Hush Hush,” he growls.

  I blow him a kiss.

  “Tonight, Hush Hush, maybe you meet the devil, no?” Manuel laughs as he turns and walks away from the bars, leaving me in my cell.

  But I just smile thinly. I don’t need to meet the devil, I live with him. I exist entwined with him.

  In this hell, I am the devil.

  But last night, this devil saw an angel, and now?

  Now, heaven help them all.

  Chapter Two

  Catalina

  “Vamanos, mija.”

  I blink, startled by Elena’s voice. I turn towards my aunt and smile as she rolls her eyes.

  “My God, Catalina,” she says with a sigh. “It’s good to be a dreamer, but you’re going to bump into something with your head in the clouds like that.”

  I roll my eyes right back.

  “Sorry, I didn’t sleep well last night.”

  She scowls. “Well, my idiot brother should not be bringing his daughter to those disgusting fights.”

  I swallow, and my nose wrinkles at the memory. Last night wasn’t the first fight my fathers brought me to, but last night was… different.

  Very, very different.

  “Ay, Dios mio,” Elena mutters, shaking her head. “Your mother, God rest her soul, would never have allowed it. I’ll grant men their filthy hobbies, but Christ…”

  She crosses herself.

  “No, those fights are no place for a girl.”

  I’m torn. On the one hand, I want to rail against this old-world idea that “a girl” can’t see something like a fight. But at the same time, she’s kind of right. My father’s fights aren’t boxing matches like on pay per view. They’re not pro wrestling. They’re brutal, bloody, savage spectacles. They’re more like the Roman gladiator fights in the Colosseum, which is actually not a stretch for an analogy. My father loves ancient Roman shit—Caesar, Nero, the Colosseum, all of it. I’m almost amazed he hasn’t brought in actual fucking lions yet.

  My dad isn’t a bad man, he just…

  I frown.

  He just does bad things. A lot of bad things. I look around at the sheer opulence of my bedroom, and as it always does when I’m visiting here, it gives me a weird mix of feelings.

  On the one hand, this life I’m afforded, and this room, and my spending account, and all of it… it’s amazing. My life is gilded, and beautiful, and something most people would envy. Then there’s the other side of the coin. It’s realizing that the gilded life is really a gilded cage. It’s never having had any real friends, just bodyguards. It’s never having had a boyfriend, because my father terrified the shit out of any boy would could possibly be brave enough to even talk to me, with who I am.

  Catalina Del Campo, cartel princess.

  If this were a movie or whatever, I’d have “no idea what my father really does.” But this isn’t a movie, and I’ve known what my father does since I was seven. I�
�ve seen the men who lived in the huge compound that was our home. Lots of rich people, especially in Mexico, and especial in this part of Mexico, have guards, and walls, and guns and all of that. Few have an army like my father’s.

  Seven is when I realized this wasn’t normal. Seven is also when I walked through the door someone had left unlocked to one of the large garages on our expansive property and saw the endless tables full of cash and white powder. My father isn’t a liar, for all of his faults. When I asked, he told me plainly what we did. I got older and told him that drugs were bad. He shrugged and told me about pharmaceutical companies selling Oxy through doctors.

  “They’re allowed to sell drugs. Why shouldn’t I? Because I’m not on the board of directors at a company that has the okay from the government to sell it?”

  It’s not a totally flawed argument, to be fair.

  That was our old life though, when my father still existed in society. Back then, my mother was just sick—really, really sick, but “just” sick. It was after she died that he became the man he is today.

  My mother died, and I was whisked off to boarding school for the world’s elite in my mother’s native France. I’ve heard the story a million times of my father, then a young up and coming “businessman” seeing my mother in a small movie role and deciding then and there that she would be his wife. A week later, he arranged to meet her in Los Angeles. A month after that, she was in Mexico with him, and not long after that, they were married. Nine months almost to the day after that, I was born.