Bad Boys of the Kingdom Read online

  Bad Boys of the Kingdom

  The Black Dive Series

  Book One

  By Rob Jones

  Bad Boys of the Kingdom

  Copyright © 2020 by Rob Jones.

  All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: May 2020

  Limitless Publishing, LLC

  Kailua, HI 96734

  www.limitlesspublishing.com

  Formatting: Book Pages By Design

  Cover Design: Deranged Doctor Design

  ISBN-13: 978-1-64034-881-3

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to the memory of my mother Jean King. Thank you for your unconditional love and for always dreaming with me.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter One

  Ethan

  “I’m not going to lie, I am a vista of hotness. My swag appeal is on point. Tonight I’m bringing sexy back, coolness back, and that X factor back. Those naïve boys in the crowd better hold on tight to their lovely ladies because I’m in a confiscating mood,” Ethan said, admiring his assets and physical gifts in the mirror in the backstage band room at The Black Dive in Madison, Tennessee. He had a body that was carved like an elite athlete. He posed like he was a bodybuilder, flexing his biceps and tightening his abs that were as hard as his band’s music. His face was charmed with chiseled features, his hair was midnight dark and curly, and his rich olive skin glowed as though the sun had blown it a kiss.

  He made a second scan of his attire that consisted of a black leather vest, black skin-tight leather pants, pierced nose and ears, and both arms aggressively sleeved with tattoos, and with another tattoo across his chest that said “Dirty Little Rocker” in a green gothic font. He put on his mirrored shades that caused him to exude a mysterious, raw, and electric coolness that was like no other. He knew he was the personification of rock and roll.

  Being a creature of habit, he’d developed a ritual that he’d extrapolated from his musical heroes. As far as he was concerned, if you emulated the best then you would be the best. The ritual included two cups of Earl Grey with lemon and honey and two hundred sit-ups and push-ups, which encouraged nervous energy to vacate his body. This was followed by vocal exercises of yelling at the top of his lungs the names of different animals. Then for fifteen minutes he became a recluse so that he could meditate and visualize every detail of the show, even the unexpected moments that could happen. Everything that he did on stage was premeditated. After the meditation session, he and the band bonded together with a prayer and shots of Jack Daniel’s.

  “Are we ready to unleash the beast, boys?” he asked Ligon, Owen, and Wes, who made up the rest of the band.

  “Let’s get it popping,” Owen responded.

  “Let’s rock-n-roll,” Ethan commanded.

  The modest but insatiable crowd erupted with a big cheer as the band Slither of Light ascended the well-lit, intermediate size stage at the small, seedy, underground rock bar. The band was armed with a predacious and savage intensity, as if they were assassins ready to attack and capture their helpless subjects. With an in-your-face cockiness and rock star swagger, they owned the stage and controlled the night. Ethan could taste that something special was cooking in the air, a life-altering aroma that filtered throughout the smoked-filled bar. He could sense the exuberance that had the crowd fully charged and pumped up, willing and ready to surrender to the tyranny of the verve of the band. The wall of sound that reverberated from the stage was infusing an electric energy throughout The Black Dive, pulsating and surging through the dancing bodies of the participants.

  While he looked intently at the moderate but faithful crowd in front of him, Ethan lifted up his fist slowly in the air and placed his left foot on the stage monitor. He shouted out to the crowd over the blaring instruments, “What’s up, my fellow rock-n- rollers? Are you lathered up and ready to let the bodies hit the floor?”

  The ardent, fiery audience responded with a loud roar to confirm their assent, and their appetite for wreckage and mayhem. He knew he had them right where he wanted them, feigning and hungering for something dangerous, something raw, something real, and he was about to give them a full load of it.

  He retaliated by screaming out, “Looks like we’re going to get into some trouble tonight! Who’s all down with that?”

  “We are!” the crowd responded in unison.

  “Well, let the chaos begin—let’s go!”

  The music cranked up to a feverous pitch, and the crowd exploded with an energetic, full-body contact of moshing, shoving, and pushing one another. Head banging, fist pumping, and dancing. This was what he lived for, worked for, longed for. This moment reminded him of the times when he was a teenager going to concerts and seeing how his favorite bands would kindle this rock-n-roll family tradition of moshing and dancing, which was just as important and powerful to a good rock show as holding up a lighted cell phone or a cigarette lighter during a power ballad.

  This connection that he’d developed with the crowd was like the beginning of a rock-n-roll romance, where each song was like a move on a date, a flirtatious and seductive device to woo, draw in, and captivate his love interest. The responses were affirmations that they were captivated, seduced, and wanted to go all in with the relationship. Once the crowd mounted to the level of ecstasy, they now belonged to him, and they would all have that forever. For him, there was nothing in this world that could compete with that instant gratification.

  In the midst of all of the moshing and shoving, Ethan witnessed an unexpected elbow from an enthusiastic dancer introducing itself to the pierced nose of a slender, petite Goth girl, who herself was aggressively shoving and dancing with her peers.

  As the blood began to ejaculate profusely from her nose, it veiled her face, dripping onto the black, sticky floor. She clasped her hands around her nose and let out a primal scream that could barely be heard over the loud music; no one seemed to notice or, for that matter, even care about her precarious condition.

  While the vortex of the mosh pit continued to gain momentum, Goth girl continued to get knocked all around in it. When she saw her own blood dripping in her hands and coloring her blac
k shirt, skirt, and black military style boots, she revealed a bloody smile and supplied a rebel yell, then resumed her combative shoving and pushing with a little more vigor.

  The band was on point, working as a single seamless unit, and Ethan couldn’t be more pleased. They were rocking on all cylinders, the guitar, heavy and crunchy, the tone of the bass, low and brooding, each kick on the drum punching right through the hearts of the people, and his vocals soared effortlessly, like the flight of a 747, taking the crowd on a journey to rock-n-roll ecstasy.

  “I love you guys, you are freaking awesome. I want to have your baby!” A well-inebriated redhead pointed at Ethan.

  Ethan pointed back at her and mouthed that he was going to dive in her arms. She put her hands up in the air, he mouthed, are you ready, she gave a nod, and he dove off the stage and landed in the arms of her and two other ladies. While Ligon was playing a guitar solo, Ethan introduced his lips to the redhead, then turned to the girl next to her and planted his mouth on hers. Back and forth he went between them. He was being grabbed and clawed by the roaring, overemotional crowd.

  He managed to scale back up on the stage, sweat mixed with blood on his neck from the mauling of the crowd. Owen shook his head at Ethan with a proud dirty grin on his face.

  Being on stage always felt like home to him, a place of refuge, a place where he truly belonged, his true north. It was where he could be his authentic self, to express who he was accurately. But at the end of the day it was all about the music for him, creating and writing songs. For Ethan it was not just performing or entertaining, it wasn’t the extreme affirmation of cheap applause from the crowd. It was all cool, the pomp and circumstance, the notoriety, the women, the verbal accolades…but they were all secondary appendages, addendums to his purpose, a purpose that he was pleased with, a purpose that he guarded and protected like America protected the freedom of its citizens with unrelenting diligence. Songwriting was his chief purpose. He was addicted to the creative process of writing songs, of stringing words together to envelop listeners in a story, to evoke in someone the emotions he conveyed in a song. He loved to wield the power to transport someone into another world, a world that he controlled and created. That was what lit the fire within him. That was what fed and nourished him.

  Other than his grandmother, music was what had raised him from his late teenage years, up to the dawn of manhood. Ethan ate, drank, and slept music. It ran deep and swiftly through his veins. Anyone and everyone who knew him understood that there was something wildly unique about him, something extra worldly. They could see that he was en route to become a bona fide rock star, and people treated him accordingly. Everyone from friends, teachers, co-workers and, of course, women spoiled and pampered him. They excused his self-centered, bad boy disposition to the point where he could do no wrong. He was the darling of the Nashville music scene and he knew it, and his behavior let everybody else know that he knew it. Even though he didn’t consider himself a spoiled, temperamental, womanizing bad boy, he knew that perception was reality, and many perceived him to be just that and he’d done very little to change that narrative.

  As far as he was concerned, he was just misunderstood. He didn’t go about trying to accumulate attention, the love of others, or women hurling themselves at him. These things were all there waiting on him like a butler. But even if the praise and glory didn’t come his way, he would always be a faithful lover to music. It was the most important thing in his life, and he was eternally indebted to it.

  In the middle of their set, Ethan noticed a distinguished and unfamiliar face a stone’s throw away from the familiar crazed crowd near the stage. The man looked quite chic and made of money. He had an air of importance about him, an importance that conveyed that he wasn’t there to interlace with the locals, but instead was there for a certain business purpose. The man took out his cell, pointed it toward the stage, and took pictures or maybe videoed their performance. Ethan couldn’t confirm which. Then the man placed the phone back into his front pants pocket and strolled out as he’d strolled in.

  After playing their last song with elation and momentum, the band exited off the stage into the green room where offensive and colorful language was written all over the dirty beige walls in black permanent marker, along with the names of all the bands that had ever played there.

  Against the defaced wall was an old black leather couch that had cigarette burns, vomit stains, and missing material that looked strategically and purposely placed. In front of the couch was a beat up, aged mahogany coffee table that had a glass ashtray on it with the faces of the members of the band Kiss positioned in the center of it.

  A few brown wooden arched back chairs and one oddly placed red chair were disarranged around the grungy, mucky room. Lying underneath these rock-and-roll artifacts was the most hideous and ridiculous polypropylene carpet known to all of mankind. The color was an embarrassing lipstick red; it was aggressively ripped and soiled.

  Cigarette smoke hovered over the room like a dense fog from all the smokers in the bands that played earlier. It would make you scratch your head and wonder why anyone would want to play here. What was so attractive and irresistible about this dive?

  “Man, we slayed and melted their faces off tonight. They had no idea what they were in for. They are still trying to catch their breath,” Ligon said with excitement as he wiped his brow.

  “Tonight was the best show that we have ever done. It was incredible how much control we had over them. Man, Ethan, you had the crowd eating out of your hands tonight. I couldn’t believe it when that hot girl came up on stage and just laid a big sloppy wet kiss on you. I barely could keep my composure.”

  “I know, right? She came up there and just went for it and the crowd went crazy with applause like it was an emotional scene in a romantic movie,” Ethan said. “But I think she was with her boyfriend because when she got off the stage, he looked at me like I just slapped his momma. He was not amused by her stunt at all.” Ethan checked himself out in a full-length mirror that was on the wall.

  “I saw them arguing after that, and when he was about to leave he grabbed her arm, thinking she was going with him, but she jerked away, then he knocked the beer out of her hand and stormed out.” Ethan laughed. “That’s the kind of effect I have on these rock chicks, as a matter of fact, on all these lovely ladies. It’s my dirty little rocker charm.”

  “Dude, get over yourself. You ain’t all that,” Wes protested.

  “Don’t throw shade my way just because you’re on lockdown with a wife and kid and shackled behind those drums. I know you wish that you could explore the stage and mingle with the honeys in the crowd, longing for them to call out your name. ‘Oh Wes, oh Wes, bang that snare drum like a gorilla. Bang it, bang it!” Ethan teased in a high-pitched voice. “We all have our worth in this band, my friend, and yours is to keep that beat rocking and us in the pocket, which is a very important job, by the way.”

  Wes stood there clutching his drumstick as his eyes darkened.

  “You are a first-class jerk with no courtesy for others. It’s all about you and your overinflated ego. I will be praying overtime for you. Idiot,” he murmured.

  “Please do, oh most holy Wes, the self-acclaimed apostle that you are. All of Heaven and earth knows how chummy you are with the big man upstairs, and that you have him on speed dial, so please favor me with one of your heart-moving, earth-shattering prayers.”

  Ligon and Owen tittered while Ethan was on his knees pleading with sarcasm dripping from his lips.

  “Great show tonight, guys!” Bella, the band’s manager walked in with a raging smile on her face. “You guys are getting better and better with each show, and the crowds are starting to get bigger as well. Your stage performances are tighter; the interaction with the crowd is superb.” She pushed her hair back from her face. “This band’s trajectory is skyrocketing. Now before you go back out there for the meet and greet, I have some troubling news to throw your way.”

&nb
sp; “You’re not going to stop managing us, are you?” Owen shouted out with concern.

  “No, nothing at all like that, Owen.”

  “You can’t pay us? You’re pregnant and Ethan’s the baby’s daddy, Metallica broke up, they cancelled Blackish?” Ligon joked while he cascaded her with questions.

  “Will you shut up and let me get to the matter at hand? This is really difficult for me.” The guys sat down on the leather couch, and Ligon lit up a cigarette.

  “Okay, guys, here it is.” Her voice broke as she lowered her head to the floor. There was an awkward silence that fell in the room.

  “Ahem. Your song, Bleeding Out, is getting so much love and requests on 102.9 The Buzz local hour show that they are going to put it in regular rotation starting Monday. Isn’t that great?”

  Twisted mouths and perplexed faces sat in silence in response to what she just told them.

  “So this is the bad news that you had to tell us?” Ethan voiced.

  “I was just kidding about the bad news, you prima donnas. This is freaking awesome news!” She pumped her fist in the air. “Your song is going to be playing alongside Shinedown, The Foo Fighters, and Sevendust. This is pretty big, boys. This will definitely elevate your brand. The future is bright.”

  “Oh man, this is really happening! All of our hard work, the blood, sweat, tears, and more blood has taken us one step closer to our purpose and our dream. Every practice, every song, every show, every sacrifice that we make are steps that will help us to ascend to the paragon of rock-n-roll. Trust me, brothers, there’s nothing left but the good times.” Ethan fist bumped everyone to communicate his enthusiasm.

  “Woohoo! It’s party time, boys!” Owen shouted out. “The night is young as a toddler and I’m ready to watch it grow up. Bella, go get us a bottle of Jack Daniel’s so that we can celebrate our awesome show and our future endeavors of becoming the biggest rock stars in the history of Nashville.”