CHAPTER ONE
Bear
Thirteen years old…
I went into my old man’s office to let him know that the shipment he’d been asking about for the last month was finally at the gate. The second I opened the door, I instantly regretted forgetting to knock. Chop was leaning back on the faded green chair in the corner of the room with his jeans down around his ankles, a beer in his hand. A redhead BBB named Millie, or Mallie, or Jennie, was on her knees between his legs, her head bobbing up and down on his dick. “Shit,” I muttered, remembering how much shit he gave me the last time I interrupted him with a chick. The black eye took two months to go away, and after that, he’d put me on gate duty for an entire fucking month.
Grabbing the door handle, I slowly retreated backwards, hoping he hadn’t noticed me.
I wasn’t that lucky.
“What the fuck have I told you, boy?” he bellowed. I froze. “You fucking stupid or something? You remember what happened last time you showed me disrespect? I tell you to fucking knock and you just walk in like you own the fucking place?” The girl lifted her mouth off his dick with an audible pop and I cringed. “Don’t fucking stop, bitch. Did I tell you that you could fucking stop?” Chop grabbed the back of her head and shoved her back down on his dick, holding her there.
“Sorry, Pop,” I said, a slip of the tongue and something else that was sure to set him off.
“Pop? Pop!” This time he yanked the girl’s head off his lap and threw her to the side, she landed on her hip and winced. He stood, tucking himself inside his jeans, zipping up as Jodi ran past us out the door. “What are you supposed to call me, son?” Chop spat, getting in my face. I could smell the beer on his breath.
“Prez,” I answered, looking to the floor as I’d been instructed.
“That’s right. Prez. The Daddy and Pop shit was for when you were a kid, and you ain’t no fucking kid no more,” he said. “Why do I want you to call me Prez?” he asked, poking me in the chest.
“Because you are the Prez,” I said, reciting the words he’d made me say ever since I’d officially turned prospect, and he’d decided that Pop was somehow a term of disrespect.
“That’s right, prospect. Me. I’m your fucking Prez. I’m not your dad, or your pop, or your fucking old man.” Chop grabbed me by my blank cut and tugged me down the hall and then down the stairs into the common room. A few of the brothers were sitting on stools at the bar. Most of the others were playing pool, their bets stacked up in high piles on the rim of the table, indicating the high stakes of the game.
Although it didn’t really matter how high the stakes were because the second Chop entered the room they put down their cues and turned their attention to us. He stood behind me and pushed me forward. I braced myself on one of the tables to keep from falling, sending a stack of bills scattering to the floor.
“Tell them. Tell your future brothers who I am, prospect,” Chop ordered, taunting me like he was waiting for me to snap. I was pissed but I wasn’t fucking stupid. All I had to do was bide my time as a prospect because once I was a patched member he’d have to show me some respect.
I hoped.
“He’s…” I started but faltered under the gaze of the brothers.
“I’m what, BOY!?” Chop leaned down and shouted in my ear. “And stand up fucking straight. I know whores who spend all day on their knees and on their backs who stand straighter than you.” He grabbed a fistful of my hair and tugged me upright.
“The Prez,” I said a little louder this time, wincing as he continued to pull on my hair like I was a fucking puppet and he was holding the strings.
“Who?” he barked like a drill sergeant.
“You are the Prez!” I screamed, hoping it would be good enough for him to let me go and for all of this to be over, which was all I wanted when Chop went off the deep end, which was more and more often.
“And who are you?”
“I’m nobody. I am a prospect.”
“What about the rest?” Chop prompted and my hands shook, my fear slowly turning to anger. I took a couple of deep breaths to try and suppress it. No good would come of me lashing out.
Just remember last time. Stay calm. A few more minutes. I told myself.
“Tell them what I have you tell me, you little twat. Tell them what you should already know, but seem to keep forgetting over and fucking over again when you show me disrespect.”
I glanced up at the men who all seemed to be amused, smiling and elbowing each other as if they were watching some sort of comedy show, all that is, except for one. A silver haired man in the back of the group stood straight faced, showing emotion that I could have easily have mistaken as sympathy if I thought a brother could have sympathy for a prospect.
I cleared my throat. “I am a prospect in the greatest MC in the state of Florida,” I said through my teeth. “The Beach Bastards. I am not a son. I do not have a father. I am a soldier in the army of the lawless, and I am nothing more.”
Chop grunted his approval, “Hopefully this will teach you a lesson you seem to have a hard fucking time learning. I do not need or want a son. What I need is a good fucking soldier.” He released my cut and pushed me to my knees. Kicking me in the tailbone with his boot, I fell flat onto the floor, my cheekbone smashing against the black-and-white checkered linoleum. “Man the fuck up and start showing me some fucking respect before I send you to the same place I sent your cunt of a mother.”
Chop stormed from the room, pausing to exchange a brief annoyed look with the silver haired man. The rest of the brothers resumed their drinking and their game like we were never there.
The silver haired man knelt down and extended out his hand, and I shot him a look that must have conveyed what I was thinking, which was ‘is this a trick?’ because he laughed, grabbed my hand and pulled me up off the floor. I put my hand over my face where my cheek throbbed, and judging from the new red stain on the white square I’d landed on, it was bleeding as well. “It get’s better.” He said, slapping me hard on the back.
“Does it?” I asked, and I genuinely wanted to know. Needed to know. I saw what the brothers had, and it was what I wanted. The parties. The girls. The bad-ass bikes.
A little fucking respect.
But at that moment I needed to know if what Chop was putting me through was really going to be worth it someday.
“Sure does, kid. I’m Joker,” he said, leading me over to the bar.
“Joker?” I asked. “You a comedian or something?”
“Nah, I just really like Batman movies, but Batman didn’t seem all that subtle a road name, so they started calling me Joker.” He laughed, taking a swig of his beer. “I always liked the villains better, anyway.” He signaled to the BBB behind the bar, and she handed him two bottles of beer. He slid one over to me.
“I ain’t seen you ’round here before,” I said, taking a swig. It was in no way my first beer. “I’m used to knowing most everyone who hangs around here.”
He shrugged. “Figured since our clubs are friendly for this second in time, and we got some business going, thought I’d come check things out,” he said, spinning around so I could see that his cut read Wolf Warriors instead of Beach Bastards.
“Your club treat your prospects like shit?” I asked, taking a seat on the stool I knew was already on the highest setting so I wouldn’t embarrass myself by having to adjust the seat. I may have been the spitting image of my old man, complete with blond hair and ridiculous freckles, but at thirteen I’d barley hit even half of his height.
“Fuck yeah we do,” he said with a laugh, taking a swig of his beer. He leaned in close and lowered his voice. “But we don’t treat our sons like shit. Family is everything, kid. You remember that. Family is the entire point of all this fucking bullshit,” Joker said, waving his beer bottle to everything around us.
Finishing my beer, I stood up and set it on the bar. “Well, Joker, you heard the Prez yourself. I’m not his son.” I turned to leave, my shift at the gate about to start when something Joker said made me pause and spin back around.
“When the gavel is yours, kid, you’ll change all this. It’s in your blood. You’ll make it right again. I know you will. I have faith in you.”
I crinkled my nose. “Who are you again?” I asked the stranger who seemed to know not only who I was, but what I was destined for.
“I’m just a biker looking out, kid.” He put a reassuring hand on my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. He looked at me thoughtfully and nodded his head like he was confirming something to himself before strolling out the door.
I never saw him again.