Page 1 of Merry Merry Biker
Prologue
TOMMY (Ricochet) O’SHEA
The alley smelt of piss and rotten food. Filth, debris, and refuse filled it. Completely at odds with the bright lights and trendy bars just a street away. I’d only be adding to the squalor before the night was out. Plus, trash always seemed to end up with more trash. I’d chosen the perfect night for doing what I intended to do. My captive had long since stopped pleading with me. He knew it was pointless. His pleas fell on deaf ears. He didn’t deserve forgiveness. Not for what he’d done to me.
It was a pitch-black night, with no moon to brighten the sky, clouds heavy in the sky. And it was cold. So damn cold that our breaths were blowing white with every exhale. ‘Not that he’d be breathing for much longer,’ I thought as I slid my knife along his throat, blood spraying in an arc across the dirty alley wall and ground. Dropping the dead weight of him at my feet, I waited as he bled out his last breath, a quiet echo in the darkness.
He was the last one. It had taken me years, but I’d found them all. Every last one. Every person who I’d thought was a friend and found family. The ones that had burned me and nearly killed me for nothing more than money.
Not that as an assassin I had many friends, but we’d worked together on enough jobs both as a group or sometimes in teams of two or three that there had been some trust built among us. At least there had been on my part. I guess I’d been wrong. Whereas I had a moral compass and code, they didn’t. Because money talked and they’d been offered enough to finish me off. I’d not seen it coming, and they’d nearly succeeded. It was unlucky for them I’d lived with violence for most of my life, that and they didn’t take into account that I was an O’Shea, and it took a lot to kill us.
With the last piece of my past lying dead at my feet, I knew it was time. It was now safe for me to go home to what little family I had left. Not yet, but I’d go to them soon.
Turning, I walked away, only stopping long enough at a local homeless encampment to drop off an item of clothing before moving on to the next one and doing the same until I came to the empty warehouse where I’d stashed my bag of spare clothing and my bike.
Changing out of the last bit of clothing, I bundled them up and dressed in my leathers and boots. Swinging my leg over the seat of my bike, I settled back, enjoying the feel of power thrumming beneath me. Slowly pulling out of the warehouse, I rode off into the night, only stopping long enough to toss the rest of my clothes off a bridge and into the Thames for it to do what it wanted with them.
I was a free man for the first time in a long time. And I was going to enjoy everything about it. It wasn’t long and I was riding out of London on the M25 just as the sky started to lighten. As I sped down the motorway, the sun rising at my back, I decided that I’d spend some time riding around the country before I went home.
Maybe this year I’d make it home in time for Christmas. I’d kept a check on my family from afar and from what I’d found out, it looked like my cousins were starting to settle down. It would be good to be amongst family again. Not right now but eventually.
With that thought, I accelerated around a slow-moving truck and took off down the motorway, wanting to enjoy the relative peace and the added benefit of there being not much traffic at this time of the morning for as long as I could.
CHAPTER 1
TOMMY
The freedom of being on my bike was one that never got old. I’d been riding since I’d been old enough to have a licence. I’d left home as soon as I could at eighteen and never looked back. At the time there was only my uncle, aunt, and cousins to look back on and they’d understood my leaving.
My father had been nothing but a drunk who took pleasure in leaving bruises on those weaker than him and a mother that had long since checked out after years of taking abuse, no matter how often help had been offered.
‘Fuck me,’I thought, that was twenty-seven years ago. Jesus, I was getting old. My bones and joints ached all the time and when I woke up in the morning, I felt every one of my forty-five years. Living the life of an assassin hadn’t been kind to my body.
Slowing my bike down to the thirty miles per hour speed limit as I entered a village that I’d not been through for years. As it had been a few years since I driven through here, I immediately noticed all the changes. Feannag Village had been run by the Crow MC for what must be close to sixty years. By the signage on some of the business shop fronts, it looked like they now owned most of the businesses along the high street. It was good to see they were a good family. Rhett, my oldest cousin, had marriedone of their daughters years ago, but from the information that I’d found out recently, he’d divorced her when he went inside. I hoped that it hadn’t caused a rift between our families. My guess was he wanted her to move on and live her life. It’s what I would have done.
The one set of traffic lights at the centre of the village turned red as I approached, forcing me to come to a stop. Setting my foot down to the ground to stabilise my bike, I looked around me with interest. The street and all the shops along it were decorated for Christmas. Festive lights in all windows, including a brightly lit Christmas tree in the corner of the café, reminding me that Christmas was just a few days away. It made me wonder how my family was going to take me being back in their lives and not lying six feet under somewhere in the world like they’d been led to believe.
A slight flutter in my peripheral vision caught my eye and my attention was drawn to a window down the way. The beginnings of a smile twitched across my face as I watched a tiny sprite. Well, she seemed tiny from this distance, and she reminded me of a sprite. She bounced around dancing and singing in what looked to be a beauty parlour and hairdressers, the signage on the front showing it was owned by the Crows.
Even my cold dead heart couldn't help but be warmed by the sight of the sprite with bright red hair tied back in green ribbon dressed as one of Santa's helpers in an elf costume as she bounced around, stopping every now and again to sing into the broom that she was pushing around the floor.
My lips twitched again into a semblance of a smile, unfamiliar muscles pulling at my cheeks as I watched her, as I enjoyed the unexpected show she was putting on for anyone who cared to watch. I wondered what it must be like to be so happy andcarefree. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever felt that happy and carefree. I hoped that she never lost that feeling.
An unfamiliar tug in my chest took me by surprise. Making me wonder at the feeling that was tightening my chest in such a way, I contemplated it and brushed it off just as the traffic lights turned green again.
I accelerated and pulled away from the traffic light and drove past the happy sprite still cheerfully dancing around with the broom. Leaving her behind me had me wondering if the tightness I felt was sadness that I didn’t know how to feel happiness anymore. It had been so long since I’d felt that particular emotion. Shaking off the slightly melancholy feeling, I rode out of the village once again on my way, but at least this time, I had a destination in mind.
I’d been travelling around the country and then through Europe for months before swinging back around to the UK and coming back to the village of my birth. I’d wanted to ensure that it was safe after completing my last job to visit what little family I had left.
Not that they were expecting me. In fact, I think my turning up may come as a bit of a shock as a rumour had been spread of my death about three years ago. I hadn't seen any reason to dispute the rumour as it worked in my favour in my current job of cleaning up those that had betrayed me. It was much easier being an assassin when people thought you were dead. But I did feel bad about not letting Uncle Colm know.
It would have hit him hard thinking me dead and buried, especially as Rhett had not long been sentenced when the news had circulated.
With no traffic on the road, I opened up my bike and flew along, making good time. I was about five minutes away from my Uncle Colm’s turn off when it happened.
A deer jumped out into the road from the surrounding forests, taking me by surprise. I jacked my bike to the right as hard as I could in an effort to miss hitting it and while I missed the deer, my back wheel skidded on a patch of ice. My bike and I hit the tarmac at speed, my bike going one way and me another.
‘Oh fuck, this is going to hurt,’ I thought as I skidded down the road. Curling up, I protected my head as much as I could, but it still hit the road pretty hard and even with my helmet protecting me, the blow was hard enough to knock me out. As everything went dark, my last thought was,‘Typical, I managed to survive a bomb blast on the other side of the world, being buried in rubble only to be taken out by a deer five minutes from home.’