Liar (Devil's Fighters MC Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

their faces would be so at odds with the tumult in her heart.
     
    They looked peaceful, but it felt to Alyssa like her own peace was lost forever.
     
    From then on, it was all downhill—or as downhill as it could be given the circumstances. She lost track of time, as she figured out all the details of the funeral with Mr. Shank and his associates. After all, she figured, it was impossible to even begin to comprehend mundane concepts such as time when planning your parents’ burial ceremony. Picking out the caskets was the hardest part, but it still wasn’t nearly as hard as actually seeing her parents’ bodies. As peaceful as they had appeared, that was still the worst, and Alyssa figured if she could survive that without having a nervous breakdown in front of near-strangers, she could survive anything.
     
    And she really did. She didn’t know how she did it, but the day went by and at the end of it she was still standing. The funeral would be the next day in the early afternoon, and Alyssa felt anything but ready—personally and spiritually. She had taken care of all concrete details, but she had no clue where to begin to prepare herself.
     
    She had politely declined Lynn’s offer to come stay with her for the evening. She may not know much about preparation for the funeral of one’s own parents, but she knew she had to do it alone.
     
    Presently, she sat at the kitchen’s table eating cheerios out of the most anonymous bowl she could find in the cabinets; she didn’t want any more reminders of what life in the house had been before…well, before .
     
    Could I be any more pathetic? she thought as she stared blankly into space.
     
    Then again, she figured, if she ever had to be pathetic in her life, this was probably the time. After all, she did have a perfectly valid excuse. Not for the first time in her life, Alyssa wished she had not been an only child. Having a sibling would have made this awful time of her life so much easier to bear. She wouldn’t have had to go through this crippling loss alone. She wouldn’t have had to deal with all the awful practical details by herself. She could have shared this burden.
     
    But there was no sibling, no one to bear the cross with, and wasting time wishing it were otherwise surely didn’t help matters.
     
    A knock at the door interrupted her gloomy reverie. With a sigh, Alyssa stood and stretched, surprised at the kinks she could suddenly feel in her neck and back. So that ’s where all the tension went.
     
    She took her time walking to the front door, all the while trying to decide whether she was really annoyed at Lynn’s intrusion. After all, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to go through this “night before” experience alone.
     
    But when she opened the door, it wasn’t Lynn who was standing there, waiting for her on the porch. It was someone she never wanted to see again.
     
    Alyssa felt her insides grow cold and her whole body tense up like it hadn’t done even throughout her recent ordeal. It was moments before she could finally find her voice.
     
    “What do you want?” she all but hissed through gritted teeth.
     
    The man seemed unfazed by her unmasked hostility. He offered her a nod in greeting and a sympathetic smile that never reached his dark eyes.
     
    Dark eyes, dark soul. Alyssa had read that somewhere, sometime, and she had never paid much attention to the words until now, when they bubbled unbidden to the surface of her mind. It was superstitious mumbo-jumbo, of course, but it fit this man and his nature perfectly.
     
    “I came to offer my condolences—also condolences on behalf of the club.”
     
    Alyssa’s jaw clenched so fiercely that she could almost hear her teeth screech. “I don’t need your condolences,” she said, her voice as steely as she could make it. “Or your club’s.”
     
    “What about Xavier Wheeler’s condolences?”
     
    Alyssa’s heart skipped a beat. She did not reply; she didn’t have