Free Dirty Ties by Pam Godwin Page B

daredevil, rivaling the likes of Evel Knievel.
    My hands fisted at my sides. That night, she was murdered in our hotel room while I hid beneath the bed. That night, my thirteen-year-old dreams morphed from racing in the World Championship Grand Prix to filling Hell with the gutted targets of my revenge.
    In matters of revenge, looking for distractions often signifies a change of heart.
    Benny didn’t know revenge. It didn’t claw at her underbelly and wake her in a feverish sweat at night. But she knew me , and she subscribed to justice and family. I was her family as much as she was mine.
    We’d worked side-by-side in this garage since we graduated from MIT eight years earlier. Her, developing and expanding on my ideas. Me, following my mother’s leads and…revenging.
    My first kill was the assassin who’d sliced my mother’s throat. Took me five years to hunt him down and thirty seconds to open his neck the way he’d butchered hers.
    I placed my hand against the incinerator door and let the heat soak into my palm. Eight more bodies had joined his fiery grave. I killed killers, rapists, career criminals, all of them named in my mother’s diary. All of them tied to Trenchant Media. And I wasn’t done.
    But we needed money. We always needed money. Especially the way my sole employee raped my wallet.
    A grin tugged at my mouth. Benny was worth every dime. To fund my endeavors and her salary, she’d designed the underground racing network and the untraceable technology that protected its secret society of gamblers, thus giving Evader a profitable platform.
    Of course, no one knew who launched and maintained the network, but because the winner always advanced to the next race and I’d never lost, Evader had become the racing icon.
    If I lost? Well, besides evading death at the hands of pissed-off gamblers, I’d lose my income stream, my high-paid employee, and the resources needed to finish what I’d started.
    My attention flicked back to the newspaper clipping. I wasn’t looking for a distraction, and I sure as hell hadn’t had a change of heart. Revenge wasn’t an emotion. It was my inheritance, the acting force that lived in my blood and sustained my balance. It was my equilibrium.
    Revenge.
    I raced to finance it.
    I evaded to protect it.
    I killed to attain it.
    I planned everything.
    Once Trent Anderson announced his replacement as CEO of Trenchant Media, I would be there, donned in a suit, staring into his eyes, and smiling as I accepted the offer.
    Then I would gut him, all of them, from the inside out.

Six long days passed, my waking hours spent in the office, spurts of sleep coming only when I forced it. But finally, I shed the miserable heels and the creep of Trent’s fingers, if only for a fleeting night.
    I weaved the Ducati through convoys of bikers, my skin heating beneath the tight mold of my custom leathers. Hundreds had gathered around the finish line, the sputter of exhaust pipes resonating with the wild pumping of my blood.
    A potluck of young men with crew cuts and athletic physiques reclined on enduros, sportbikes, busas, and zooks in a colorful array of fairings and racing leathers. These were the guys who longed to race but would probably never find the balls to throw down against a competitor like Evader.
    On the other side of the street, tattooed, bearded brutes and their voluptuous women straddled choppers and cruisers. As I passed, their fuck-off vibes and explicit banter strained the chilly air and crawled down my spine.
    The distant sirens, the flash of knives and guns tucked in waistbands, and the general paranoia innate to an assembly of criminals created an atmosphere that pulsed with danger. An ambiance where the country’s worst crime rate met its soul mate.
    Flasks in hands, engines growling, cigarettes drooping from lips, and fingers groping exposed cleavage, this was how the roughnecks partied. A far leap from the social graces and black tie affairs I’d spent a lifetime