Total pages in book: 150
Estimated words: 136791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)
The entire scene is honestly depressing. When we were kids, this place seemed so much fucking bigger, so much darker—like a goddamn fortress of evil waiting to snatch our souls. How much different would things have been had I seen what Kaleo really was back then? Would I have made the same choices?
Then – Age Fifteen
“You’re serious,” Titan says, eyeing me like he thinks I’m fucking with him. “You want to start a gang?”
“An MC,” I correct, throwing a garage towel at him, kneeling to tighten a wire on the bike we’re building for him from parts we’ve salvaged from all over Los Angeles.
I got mine a few months ago—spent half of what I’d saved from all the years I’ve spent doing yard work.
“Sounds the fucking same to me.”
I flip him off, which makes him smirk. “Think about it, man. Just a few months ago, January was almost kidnapped from the park. Curtis Kaleo and his crew are constantly coming around here, trying to start shit. Quan, Boots, and Mark don’t want to join his bullshit any more than you or I do. If the five of us start our own shit together, we can hold him off.”
Boots is in his early twenties, but he rides, too. Quan's been riding for a while now. And Mark's trying to scrape together the funds for a bike. There are a few others in the area who ride as well. They'll join up if they hear that we’re banding together to keep Kaleo and his fucking people out of here. It’s the best shot we have of protecting January.
I still lose sleep, thinking about what might have happened if Titan and I hadn’t been at the park that day to protect her.
“You know Kaleo is the one who sold him the drugs,” I murmur to Titan. “He never would have been in that park if it weren’t for him.”
Titan’s jaw pulses, hatred flashing in his eyes. “I should just kill his sorry ass.”
“Don’t talk like that, man. You aren’t like him.”
“Says who?” Something dark flashes in Titan’s gaze.
“Says me, asshole.” I nudge him with my foot. “He’s bottom of the barrel. You’re going places, even if I have to drag your stubborn ass the whole way.”
Titan’s quiet for a long moment. “Fuck,” he mutters. “It’s you he wants. Not me.”
I sigh because he’s not wrong. Kaleo’s been hounding me for the last year. I don’t know why he’s so persistent, but he can’t seem to take a hint. I don't want anything to do with him or the Grecian Guardians. They're a fucking joke.
“He’d quit if we were the competition.”
“An MC?” Titan cocks his head. “You really want to go down that road, brother?”
“No one said we have to run shit the way others do.” I shrug. “If it’s ours, we make our own rules. We decide what we accept and what we don’t.”
“I don’t want bullshit around January.”
“Agreed.” The last thing I want is a bunch of bullshit around his little sister. She’s the one I want to protect. With all five of us working together, we have a better shot of doing that than Titan and I do alone.
“Fuck it,” he says, shaking his head. “Let’s do it.”
My phone rings, pulling me back into the present.
"What's up, Sasquatch?" I ask Roman, no longer pissed at him about January. I stopped being mad days ago. At him, anyway.
"Tristan’s girl was discharged about an hour ago," he says, ignoring the nickname. It's fitting, though. He's about six-seven and built like a brick shithouse.
"Good. Any news on when he’ll get to take her back to Seattle?" I ask, grinning when the curtains over the front window in the clubhouse twitch. Kaleo knows I'm out here, and he's getting curious. Good. This won't take much longer.
"Not yet. Where are you? I need a favor."
"I'm out scaring the neighborhood children. What kind of favor?"
"The kind that involves pissing people off. Kaleo not cooperating with you?"
"Kaleo's too stupid to know how to spell cooperating," I snort as the man himself steps out. "Give me thirty minutes to finish up here, and I'll be there." I disconnect the phone, shoving it into my pocket as Kaleo heads toward me.
Kaleo hasn't changed much. He's older, harder, but he's still the same jackass who thought he could manipulate me into pledging my allegiance to him. His hair is still stringy and desperately in need of a wash. The scar on his face makes him appear permanently annoyed. His nose is crooked from where I broke it years ago, but it looks like he got his front tooth fixed. He's dressed in designer brands from head to toe, but he still looks like the piece of shit he is.
What's that saying? You can take the boy out of the gutter, but can't take the gutter out of the boy? He's still nothing but trash with money to burn.