Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 132031 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132031 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Chapter 8
Another same night mandatory church meeting.
What the fuck? Why couldn’t these closed-door secret sessions happen at a decent hour of the day? How about a coffee and donuts before the day starts meeting?
He liked donuts. A sugar rush could get the blood flowing pretty good.
Yeah, a good morning church meeting.
Dev fought the yawn wanting to be free. If he dared let it go, a string more would follow, not stopping until he dropped his ass into bed.
A nice warm bed seemed damn enticing.
His old man should have just adjourned the original meeting for this evening—instead of suspending it for a two-hour break—after being told that sorry motherfucker, Smoke, had finally kicked the bucket.
A rickety old bucket that had been on borrowed time for years.
What did kicking a bucket even mean?
What a dumb saying.
Dev had somehow managed to talk himself behind the wheel of Keyes’s brand-new fancy pickup truck and was pulling them back into the parking lot of the Disciples clubhouse.
They’d eaten a good meal together at a familiar diner with cream colored plastic plates. Then sat hunched over the table, working on the design for Keyes’s massive new back ink.
Dev had kept a careful eye on his buddy. He hadn’t spotted a single sign that he wasn’t dealing well with the loss of his dick of a dad.
His previous suspicions about Keyes came roaring back.
Being so well-adjusted and balanced during such an awful time had to mean his buddy was hiding something major. Dev wasn’t a fool. He’d spent his entire life beside Keyes. His friend would have never picked an expensive truck like this for himself. Keyes could barely spend a dollar unless it was absolutely necessary, meaning Dev had been forced to lay two extra dollars on the table to increase Keyes’s one dollar cheap-ass tip to the waitress tonight.
One good thing about Smoke being in Dev’s life was that Smoke as a parental figure had taught Dev everything he needed to know about parenting. So long as every situation became WWSD—What would Smoke do?—then Dev methodically did the exact opposite.
Smoke was also Dev’s club brother once he’d earned his patch, teaching him it was okay to hate his siblings. That joke cracked him up but only for a second. His brow dropped when he replayed how his father had singled Keyes out to tell him the great news about Smoke. The side of Dev that always stood up in protection of his friend leapt forward. Smoke wasn’t the only Disciple to hurt Keyes over the years. The rest of the club had turned their backs to the rampant abuse, making them culpable as far as Dev was concerned.
The shoddy hierarchy between him and his old man was beginning to blur into a haze of fuck you. Father, brother, leader of a club Dev was positioned to take over one day. Factor in distrust, abuse, and lack of respect between him and his old man. And that was before his old man had put his hands on Dev tonight, manhandling him as he reared forward to stand with Keyes.
Shit was always so complicated.
None of this was working for Dev like it once had.
He’d be smart to take a page from Keyes’s new playbook.
Then burn that bitch, use the ashes to create a potion, and spray that shit over his body every single day.
Although, being considered number two in the organization had some benefits. At dinner, he’d fired off a group text message to all of Smoke’s newly recruited club prospects, putting them on blast for multiple violations to the Disciples charter. Those losers were on the road out of the club. Dev didn’t like Keyes being disrespected and Smoke had poisoned those useless prospects to his son.
The way Keyes smiled when he had showed him the group message he had crafted made Dev promise himself no more bullshit ever again.
“Church meetin’s happenin’ more frequently?” Keyes asked, sitting in the passenger seat.
“Apparently,” Dev said, swinging wide to park the truck in an empty space. “I’m not sure I’ve been included. I feel like flexin’ some muscle to fuck shit up. Find out why.” Dev put the truck in park and pushed the button to cut the engine. “But if they were meetin’ over Smoke, who gives a fuck. I should have killed that bastard myself. I actually can’t believe I didn’t.”
The heavy rain from earlier in the evening had resulted in a biting cold front pushing through Dallas.
Dev glanced over, drawing Keyes’s attention. “You good?”
His buddy took a minute to consider the question. Keyes stared at Dev then looked away, out the front windshield for so long he wasn’t sure his friend planned to respond.
“Honest answer. Been excluded for a long time. Don’t see that changin’ with my old man dead. I’ve wised up from all this. They forced me to get a taste of the world without the club. It’s not that bad out there.”