Free MOTORCYCLE CLUB ROMANCE: AMANDA’S DEMONS (PART ONE) (Biker MC Erotic Romance) by Katie Isles

Prologue
     
    It is a warm, summer’s morning. The birds are chirping in the trees, the American flag is fluttering gently on its pole, the schoolyard is filled with the fulsome throb of a hundred juniors enjoying life. In 1981, there was nothing to trouble the all-American picture of family wholesomeness. The Soviets may have invaded Afghanistan. Libya may have been bombing planes, but as far as this corner of small-town USA was concerned, the only people ‘Under Pressure’ were David Bowie and Queen.
    Juliette is not happy though. She does not feel the warmth in the air, but the cold, the ice-cold barbs of torment and abuse. In the corner of that schoolyard, it is forever winter. There, where Juliette goes every morning to cry and to nurse her bruises from the previous night’s drunken and drug fuelled beatings, the bullies seek her out.
    They are merciless, the children who crowd around her. Blocking out her light, pushing their faces up against her, taunting her, calling her loser and no-friends.
    “Names can never hurt you” they say in school.
    “Just ignore it” her teachers respond, to her once frequent, but now very seldom appeals for help.
    Today, Juliette is feeling the pressure more than other days. The usual crowd of fat, mean girls and boys are gathered around her, while the schoolyard supervisors take cigarettes and coffee and turn the other cheek. She is feeling pressure because she has a plan.
    She has a plan. And she has a gun.
    Today, while her Mom and some guy she doesn’t really even know are slumped on the floor of their dingy apartment, she has tiptoed over to the nightstand, opened the drawer and rummaged through the cigarettes and drugs paraphernalia to find the snub-nosed revolver. The Saturday Night Special that Mom keeps for protection, and for when she needs more drugs money.
    Juliette is packing heat, on this hot summer’s day, and the next person who calls her that is going to find out how much names can hurt you.
    “Worthless piece of shit!” calls out a snot-nosed boy, barely old enough to speak, let alone know such awful words.
    He leans in close to her face, ready to spit them at her once again. His friends lean in closer, wolves closing in for the kill.
    What was that? A loud bang.
    Fireworks? Automobile misfiring?
    Everyone looks around.
    Except snot-nose. The back of his head is now a puddle of red goo.
    His shocked friends scatter. For some it’s too late.
    Bang!
    Bang!
    Two more bodies lay twitching on the school yard floor, before the staff fully realized what was going on. By then though, it’s all too late. Juliette too is lying on the ground, bleeding from a single, self-inflicted gunshot through the stomach.
     
    *******************
     
    Everyone said it had been a miracle that she survived the shot. She was nursed slowly back to full health, before being locked away in a secure hospital. She was clearly deranged. No set of circumstances could have caused such a young girl to react so violently, could they? It couldn’t be the system at fault. She must be mentally ill.
    It took over 30 years of therapy, drugs and incarceration before Juliette was deemed fit to rejoin society. Of course, she couldn’t go back to her old town, with her old name. There were still many people who couldn’t forget her. Her crime had made international news. America has a long memory.
    It was decided that she would be relocated to a town far away from her terrible crimes. A town far away from anywhere. A desert backwater.
    As she had shown so much intelligence while locked away, favors were called in and strings pulled in order to find her a teaching post. She had no choice, and she was reminded, by all those who had made their careers from caring for and studying her, that she was lucky to be going at all. So much luckier than those poor children she had wiped out.
    She would be constantly monitored. She didn’t know when, or by whom, but they would be there. She could be sure of