The price of peace the d.., p.1
The Price of Peace (The Dutchmen MC Book 3), page 1
ALSO BY ML NYSTROM
DRAGON RUNNERS MC
Mute
Stud
Blue
Table
Brick
MACATEER BROTHERS
Run With It
Ready For It
Hold It Close
Risk It All
Give It To Me
THE DUTCHMEN MC
The Price of Redemption
The Price of Forgiveness
The Price of Peace
The Price of Atonement
THE PRICE OF PEACE
THE DUTCHMEN MC BOOK THREE
ML NYSTROM
HOT TREE PUBLISHING
The Price of Peace © 2022 by ML Nystrom
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any written, electronic, recorded, or photocopied format without the express permission from the author or publisher as allowed under the terms and conditions with which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution, circulation or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.
The Price of Peace is a work of fiction. All names, characters, events and places found therein are either from the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to persons alive or dead, actual events, locations, or organizations is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.
For information, contact the publisher, Hot Tree Publishing.
www.hottreepublishing.com
Editing: Hot Tree Editing
Cover Designer: BookSmith Design
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-922679-29-1
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-922679-30-7
CONTENTS
Author Note
Prologue
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
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Epilogue
Also by ML Nystrom
Acknowledgments
About the Author
About the Publisher
BLURB
I didn’t choose this life. It was chosen for me a long time ago. Meet a darker breed of bikers in bestselling author ML Nystrom’s gritty The Dutchmen MC series.
Sold at sixteen to a man three times her age, Carrie’s life has been a series of betrayals and brutalities. Beaten and starved, she fights to keep any shred of dignity she has left until she can find a way to escape the life she never chose.
Angel appears as her salvation, but her hopes are destroyed as his lies and duplicities are exposed.
What price does she have to pay to finally find her peace?
AUTHOR NOTE
This gritty romance is aimed at a 17+ audience and contains some themes and scenes some readers may find triggering.
PROLOGUE
Someone was pulling at her shoulder, rolling her onto her back, and she woke, clawing her way through a thick black swamp. Her head swam sickeningly, and the foul taste in her mouth made her want to vomit. Consciousness floated just out of her grasp, and confusion filled her brain. Where was she? The bed she was in wasn’t hers. Its sour smell filled her nostrils, and she wrinkled her nose. I need to get up, she told herself, but when she tried, her arms and legs wouldn’t obey her. She willed them to move, but nothing happened. The hands at her shoulders pushed her onto the mattress, and she fell limply back.
A sharp pain shot through her as one nipple was sucked into a mouth. It hurt, and she groaned in protest. She tried to push away whoever was on top of her, but her body was not under her control. Her arms flopped all but useless against the lumpy mattress. It didn’t last long. The mouth popped off one small breast and attacked the other. She groaned again and tried to open her eyes, but the effort was just too much. The mouth left her for a short, relieving moment. Her legs were pulled apart, and something hard probed between them. She winced at the pressure and tried to flinch away when she heard the snick of a cap popping off.
Kentucky Jelly, she thought. Why? She didn’t know, but she heard those words clearly in her brain, even though she didn’t recognize what they meant.
Something cold and slimy was smeared between her legs. She figured out the hard thing that had been pushing into her was a man’s penis. It came back, found its mark, and slid inside her.
The slime did its job, but it still hurt. A lot.
Stay still and he’ll be done sooner. Where did that thought come from? She wanted to push him away, and managed to get her arms up, but had no strength. They fell to her sides again as the man continued moving.
He grunted as he thrust in and out of her sluggish body, and she cracked open her eyes a bit. Grizzly was on top of her, the president of the Tiger Clan MC, and a man old enough to be her father. Maybe even her grandfather. She’d met him before when her mother had brought her to the biker house a few times when she was a little girl. He made her sit on his lap.
She was not on his lap now. Long greasy black-and-gray straggles of hair that had escaped from his ponytail now hung around his closed eyes. That and his scraggly gray goatee framed her view. His skin showed the loose wrinkles of age, and even though he was a strong man, he was still an old man. His mouth opened, and putrid morning breath puffed into her face. She turned her head away as he kept pounding away at her.
He was having sex with her. Grizzly was having sex with her!
Last night, her mom picked her up from their trailer. She said they were going out for dinner at a local burger joint. This was special, as her mother seldom took her anywhere. The burgers were juicy and the salty fries crispy. She smiled at her mom through the entire meal, enjoying the rare attention.
After a quick trip to the bathroom, she met her mother, who was already in the car. The woman smiled showing gray teeth and handed her a milkshake. “Got you a little something extra. Drink it all down before it melts.”
She swallowed the cold chocolate sweetness as her mom drove away. The world became blurry during the drive, and keeping her eyes open had taken a huge effort. Her mom spoke to her, but whatever she said was incomprehensible, the words garbled and hard to hear. When the car stopped, her mom had to help her out, since her legs had turned to Jell-O. A man with a long gray ponytail had peered at her and touched her some, squeezing her breasts. Her mom called him Grizzly, and she recognized the name from her childhood. She didn't like him back then and didn't like him now. She tried to tell him to stop, but she couldn’t make her mouth work. He grinned and handed her mother a big wad of bills. Then he took her arm, and the world faded as she watched her mother turn and walk away.
The rest of last night was a blur.
She was naked and lying on her back. A lot of men surrounded her and looked at her body and talked.
“Nice fucking tits.”
“Don’t touch ’em, asshole. Grizzly will go apeshit someone messes with his private piece.”
“Paid for his own personal cunt.”
“He’ll get his money out of this one for sure.”
“Hey Grizzly, show us her pussy first.”
“Hand me the Kentucky Jelly. She’s gonna be real tight.”
She wanted to get up and run away, but she couldn’t move. It was like she was not quite in her own body and had no control over it. Someone pulled her legs apart.
Then pain. A man on top of her. He pushed, and she cried out. Coming awake briefly to see Grizzly’s clenched face over her. The men watching him cheered.
Bile rose up in her throat. She had to fight to keep from hurling on the man currently on top of her. The memories of the previous night were still hazy, but one thing was very clear.
Her mother had drugged and sold her to Grizzly of the Tiger Clan. He’d taken her virginity in front of the rest of the bikers, and they all watched. At the time, it seemed that it was happening to someone else. This morning, she knew it had happened to her.
Just stay real still and he’ll be done sooner. That was what her mother had whispered as she folded the cash and stuck it in her bra before she turned and walked out of her daughter’s life.
She drugged me. My mother drugged me and sold me to the Tiger Clan president. The level of that betrayal devastated her, and the pain in her mind rivaled the pain in her body. She couldn’t think about it now. Her innocence was gone, taken by the man who bought her, and she had no way of stopping him either last night or now. What choice did she have? She stayed still and endured.
Grizzly’s movements got faster and harder. He let out a “Gahh,” and she felt him come. He collapsed his weight on her, gasping for air. His sweat coated her skin, and he w as heavy enough that she couldn’t breathe. He pulled out of her and rolled to the side. She was able to draw in a breath and instantly regretted it when she inhaled the body stench and rank smells coming from the rumpled sheets. Her legs were still open, and her abused muscles protested loudly as she worked to close them.
Grizzly popped her hip with a stinging slap as he rose from the nasty bed. “Get up and get your ass moving. You got two years of school left, and I don’t want any fucking trouble from them about truancy or some shit.”
He pulled off the condom he had donned and tossed it in the overflowing small trash can. She watched his tattooed back as he went into his private bathroom. The bear skull with its blood-dripping teeth seemed to grin at her, mocking her present situation. The fan and the shower came on, and she was finally alone.
She rolled to her side, her body finally back in her control, and it let her know all the aches and pains from last night. She wanted to run screaming back to the trailer that she shared with her mother, but that wouldn’t do any good. The woman would either be long gone by now with the money in her pocket, or she’d just bring her daughter right back to the man she sold her to. Police? Maybe, but if the Tiger Clan’s reputation was accurate, the cops tended to steer clear of the bikers. She might go to one of her teachers at the high school, but she was sure none of them would help. The school functioned more or less on the premise of being a holding tank until the students turned eighteen. Most of the faculty were disinterested and disengaged, acting more like babysitters than teachers. In general, the people in this suburb of Minneapolis were scared shitless of the Tigers and wouldn’t make a stand against them. No one was about to raise a finger to help her.
She had no money. She had no place to go. She had no options.
She had just turned sixteen.
CHAPTER
ONE
SIX YEARS LATER
Carrie picked up an armful of empty liquor bottles and threw them into the big gray trash can she kept in the back corner of the main lobby. The music pounded through the lobby area of the old hotel. Parties, drinking, drugs, and fucking happened every night of the week, but on weekends, the place ramped up to a different degree.
The hotel had been abandoned years ago as the area surrounding it filled with industrial buildings and warehouses. The Tiger Clan MC moved in and made it into their compound. The U-shaped building had two floors, with a makeshift courtyard in between. It used to have a pool, but someone had filled it in with dirt. The rooms on the left wing were for the club members, and the right wing contained the whorehouse. Carrie seldom went over there. There was a large metal Quonset hut out back that once housed the maintenance equipment and now served a different purpose. Carrie never set foot in it.
A random drunk man grabbed her ass and squeezed hard. The thong she wore did nothing to shield her. “Show me your room?” His liquor-filled breath was sour in her face. He wasn’t a member of the club but a customer.
“I’m owned and off-limits,” she stated in a monotone voice as she picked up another pile of debris. She pointed to the dog collar around her neck with the tag that read Grizzly.
The man’s bleary eyes barely registered the name as they wandered over her bare breasts. All club women, whether they were collared or worked in the right wing, had to be in thongs, heels, and nothing else while serving in the lobby. Heavy makeup and long teased-up hair were the expected uniform.
The man reached out and flipped the dangle hanging from her pierced left nipple. “Preddy,” he muttered.
Carrie cringed. As the President of the Tiger Clan MC’s private piece, she was excluded from servicing anyone but him. Grizzly often ordered her to blow his officers while he and the other members watched. Occasionally, he let someone fuck her as a reward for some big favor or job, but it was rare. Ratchet had complained more than once about Grizzly dangling her pussy in front of him, but never letting him use it. Mostly she was there simply to clean up after the Tiger Clan president, keep order in the main room, make sure there was food in the kitchen, and spread her legs for Grizzly when he got the urge.
The drunk reached for her breast, and she stepped back. “I’m not available. You need to go over to the right wing to get laid.”
The man stared at her owlishly as he weaved on his feet.
“Carrie! Get your ass over here!” The bellow came from across the room where Grizzly held court from the wingback chair he called his throne. She ignored the protests of the drunk man and walked as gracefully as possible to Grizzly’s side.
Four men surrounded him on stained, mismatched sofas and loveseats. Three of them—Ratchet, Spinner, and Blunt—were members. She’d never seen the other man before, and since he wore no colors, she guessed he was a hangaround looking to become a prospect.
She was right.
“Get us a bottle and pour us some shots. This is Angel. Don’t let the name fool you.” Grizzly grinned. “He’s anything but holy.” The man let out a barking laugh.
Carrie nodded and hurried to take care of Grizzly’s order.
“Fuckin’ Dutchmen out of Red Wing have a sweet deal going. I’m taking over that shit.”
She heard Grizzly’s declaration as she turned away from the group of bikers. Plenty had come from Grizzly’s mouth about the Dutchmen over the years, including his absolute hatred for their president, Iceman. Carrie had no idea why.
She returned to the men and expertly poured shots for them. While she did, Grizzly opened a small bag of white powder and tapped a pile onto a handheld mirror. Carrie’s teeth gritted together, but she kept her mouth shut. Best to act like furniture when Grizzly got high. The man was unpredictable when sober, and his volatile nature ratcheted up several degrees when he used.
He used a lot lately.
Grizzly tossed the shot back with a long “Gahhh,” and picked up the mirror. Four neat lines were laid out along with a hundred-dollar bill. He rolled it up and quickly snorted two of them, one in each nostril.
“Goddamn!” He leaned back, eyes red and watering. He sniffed several times and rubbed his red nose with his hand. “Fuck, that shit’s excellent.”
The other men took their shots and partook of the coke. At least she thought it was coke. Might be meth, might be crushed pills or something else. Drugs flowed freely through the club, and she stayed as far away from them as possible. It wasn’t hard. Grizzly kept his stable of women fed with drugs, but had not forced Carrie into partaking. He claimed it was too expensive to be given to a woman he already controlled. She was okay with that in some respects. The few times he made her smoke weed in front of the members, she’d gotten incredibly high, and it reminded her of the night Grizzly bought her.
On the other hand, it had made it easier that time to suck Ratchet’s cock while the club watched.
Carrie stood next to Grizzly, eyes down, bottle in hand, and stayed statue still. She kept her face schooled in a blank expression, not smiling or frowning. Just blank. She’d had years of training in hiding her thoughts and emotions.
Grizzly regarded the new guy, Angel, with bloodshot eyes and continued to sniff and snort. “How much you said you got?”
“’Bout five kilos, including the one I brought you. Not much, but there’s more coming. Small quantities are easier to hide than big ones. You wanna keep the fibbies out of your hair? That’s the best way.”
