Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 80188 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80188 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Sean was nothing but a distant memory.
Hell, not even Virgin used the name anymore.
There was one person in the world who didn't call me it.
My mother.
And while I did still see her here and there over the years, my bond had solidified. With my father. Virgin. The lifestyle.
By the time I was twelve, we were out of the cocaine MC and in a new MC. In a permanent way. Phil and Dwayne had prospected, then gone through the torment of being probates for a good two years. Virgin and I had dealt with a similar fate. We were made servants, doing the dirty work no one else wanted to do, fetching food and drinks, whatever was asked of us from the patched members.
This wasn't like the old MC that had watched us grow up, had taken an interest in us. Albeit only in passing, when it suited them. But there had been men around to teach us to play catch, to hit, to learn the names for the parts on bikes, to slip us sips of beer, to impart drunken, age-inappropriate wisdom onto us. We weren't just Phil and Dwayne's kids; we were the whole club's kids.
That wasn't true in the new MC. These enforcers that we had to learn to build bonds and trust with. If anything, we were inconveniences. Twelve-year-olds couldn't drive, buy beer, beat the shit out of grown men. We were useless except to clean the clubhouse. So we were just barely tolerated.
"Until?" Peyton prompted.
"Until we were sixteen."
By then, we had sprouted up to well over six feet, had enjoyed the muscular strength that came from working out alongside these grown men for years. We got our licenses. We became more useful.
Phil went away for a two-year stretch upstate. Dwayne was away more than he was around.
And it was around then that the president gave us the chance to prospect, a formality he insisted on even though we had been in the club for years, doing what prospects and probates did for years. We still had to go through the motions.
"What exactly did the MC enforce?" Peyton asked.
"A little bit of everything really. Someone welshed on a deal. Someone wants some other crew off their turf. We even ran private security at events if the pay was high enough."
"Is that where all these came from?" she asked, running her hand down my arm to trace over the top of my hand, stroking over the aged scars there.
"Most of 'em, yeah."
"And the others?"
My lips curved up at that. "Bar fights. Disagreements with brothers."
"Jealous ex-boyfriends?"
"To be jealous, they'd have to see me with their women. And since I never hung around for more than one night..."
"So, what happened?"
"With what, baby?" I asked, a bit distracted by the way her fucking hair was teasing over my chest.
"To the MC. Your dad? How did you end up here?"
"It's not a pretty story," I warned her, letting my hand slide down over her bare ass, then back up, sneaking under her shirt to move up her spine, not sure why I was finding her skin so damn fascinating. Never felt something so soft before. Maybe that was it.
"I think we have established that I am a fan of not-pretty stories."
"If that ain't the truth," I agreed with a smirk.
My old man had a heart attack around the time I was twenty-four. Dwayne, Virgin's dad, caught a bullet on a job a year or so after that.
We had stayed on in the MC, of course, it being the only home we knew.
Years passed.
Then there was the rally job.
That shit was really a bit of a blur. Virgin, me, and a couple of the other guys were left behind to hold down the fort, work some of the smaller jobs. Virgin and I had been happy about it actually. Nothing sounded less interesting than a goddamn biker meet up with thousands of stringy-haired, leather-clad old dudes who were all stinking up the air with their testosterone.
We heard nothing from our men.
In fact, the first we knew that shit went down was when the hospital called.
All of us hit the road.
Answers were hard to come by.
But most of our men were dead or locked up.
The MC fell apart.
"And that was the end of that."
Or so it seemed.
Peyton didn't need to know that part though. No one did. Not until we understood it ourselves anyway.
"How did you end up here? If your past was drugs and enforcing?"
"My past wasn't drugs. Cut that shit. Occasionally dealt that shit. But never touched that shit myself."
"You know what I meant." I did know what she meant. But for some reason, it was important to me that she know I hadn't been a user. "That was what you knew. How did you end up thinking gun running would work for you?"