Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 79599 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79599 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
I went out of my way and took every opportunity to show Chop that my loyalties were with him. With the club. I pulled triggers on demand. Buried his problems deep in the woods without hesitation. Lived my life according to our code and no one else’s.
But it was never enough.
The more he pushed me on his idea that in order to take the gavel I needed to lose my friends, the less I wanted it. I started spending less and less nights at the compound and more nights in the makeshift apartment in King’s garage. We’d throw parties in his backyard for my brothers who embraced King and Prep, not just as my friends, but as friends of the club.
Preppy died at our clubhouse several months back because there was a traitor amongst my brothers.
A rat.
Chop was more concerned about the blood on the concrete than Preppy’s death or the traitor in his midst. And that’s when it hit me. The reason Chop was worried about my loyalties was because he had a reason to be worried.
When it came down to it. Life or death. A gun held on Chop and one held on my friends. I had to play God and choose whose life I would save, I would choose my friends, the only real family I’d ever had, over Chop.
I think he knew this long before I did.
When he refused to let me help King save his girl he made the choice easy for me. King or the cut.
It wasn’t even a decision that was hard to make. King had saved my life at a time when not a single Bastard came to my rescue, when Eli and his gang of pussy ass motherfuckers tied me down and tortured me.
Chop talked a big game about loyalty, but he’d never done a goddamn thing to earn it.
I felt naked without the soft leather of my cut against my skin. And not a good kind of naked. The shameful kind of naked.
I missed it.
I missed my club.
I missed my brothers.
I missed knowing my place in the world and knowing who I was because driving that truck back into the gates of my hell, I had no fucking idea.
All I knew was that I didn’t miss Chop.
I may have given that little girl my ring as a joke, but this wasn’t a joke anymore.
This was fucking war.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Bear
The day I met King was a bloody one.
I chipped two teeth and gained the scar that runs across my left elbow.
We’d gotten into a fight over—over I don’t even remember what. Whatever fourteen-year-old kids fight about. Well, fourteen-year-old kids who dealt dope, stole cars, stripped them for parts, and ran from the law.
We’d traded blow for blow until we were so bloodied and bruised neither of us could see past the slits of our swollen black eyes.
Preppy, some scrawny kid who came along with King, sat on top of a nearby hollowed out log and kept running his fingers along the front creases of his pants, sharpening them. He seemed totally unfazed by the mutual beating taking place just feet away.
In fact, he looked…bored.
“You cunts done yet?” Preppy called out with a sigh¸ letting his shoulders fall. “Ya’ll fight like bitches. When one of you taps out I bet it’s because you gotta go change your fucking tampon.” He shook his head and rolled his eyes.
King had weight on me, but I had speed on my side. For every time he trapped me underneath him, I was quick to maneuver out of his hold and land another blow to his rib cage.
This seemed to go on for hours.
We wailed on each other ferociously, mercilessly. Rolling around on the soft wet ground, I tried to spit the mud out as soon as it entered my mouth so I could catch my breath.
King straightened his arm and punched the heel of his hand against my face, sending my head sailing backward. A rippling pain shot down the bridge of my nose and vibrated against my cheekbones. Blood dripped from my nostrils into the seam of my lips, sending copper flavored warmth into my mouth.
It was the third time my nose had been broken.
A loud shriek tore through the air. King and I both whipped our heads around toward the direction of the sound to see Preppy, who was looking down at his crisp white shirt in absolute horror. His already pale face seemed to get even more pale. “What the fuck?” he screamed, jumping down from the log. He pulled one suspender down to his elbow, revealing the small spec of mud splattered directly above his chest pocket.
I barely registered that King and I had stopped fighting. His hands were still firmly around my neck, my knee was tightly pressed into his stomach. Preppy slowly looked up from the spot on his shirt and back to us. His cheeks reddened, his fists clenched at his sides. Before I could register what the fuck was wrong with the kid he’d launched himself into the air with a yell that could rival the fucking Braveheart call to arms, and landed himself right between King and me, knocking the wind out of my lungs, sending King falling backward into the mud. Preppy then proceeded to come at the both of us with all he had, but since the kid was built of elbows and knees…
It wasn’t much.
“You motherfuckers!” he screamed, his pubescent voice cracked over the vowels as he tried his damnedest to inflict pain on us for dirtying up his clothes.
King and I burst into laughter and after Preppy had given all the fight he had to give he collapsed onto his back and laughed with us. The three of us spent the rest of the day getting high on top of the water tower. That was the night Preppy drew the giant dick on the water tower.
I learned that day that Preppy had been responsible for all the dicks that had been spray painted on stop signs and light poles throughout the town. “I use special paint, too. Shit’s never gonna come off. When I’m long gone my beautiful big black cocks will still be everywhere in this shit town.”