I dealt mainly in the weapons portion of my motorcycle club’s business, but as a member of one of the most notorious MC’s in Florida, one tended to get involved in and see the harsh reality of the drug side of the business too.

The addicts: I despised them. They were weak, pathetic fucks who’d let something like a piece of crack or meth control their lives and steal their minds. They’d steal from their family, kill, cheat, and sell their souls to the devil to chase the temporary glory the drug would give them.

I’d never understood an addict’s mentality. Didn’t understand how they let something so insignificant run their lives and lead them to make decisions they never would have otherwise. I didn’t understand how they could do just about anything for another taste, another hit, another high. I didn’t understand what they got out of it, other than a feeling they loved so much they were willing to do anything to feel it again.

It had been two weeks since Megan disappeared, walked the fuck right out of my life without so much as uttering a goodbye. I hated her for what she’d done to me. I hated her for making me feel things for her, with her, and about her.

She’d intoxicated my system and filled me with needs I’d never had before. She made me want her in ways I’d never even fantasized about. For fuck’s sake, I had gotten a checkup so I could fuck her without a condom.

I damn sure didn’t tell her that she was the only woman I’d ever fucked in my adult life without a condom. She likely would have assumed otherwise, but when the need had risen inside me, so strongly to have her without anything between us, I needed to satisfy it. Just like I needed to find her, to satisfy my need to see her, hold her, and fuck her brains out for leaving me.

I had to have her even when my father warned me not to touch her. She ignited my body, stimulated my mind, and delved into my spirit. If it were a sin to lust after someone as badly as I yearned for Megan, then I’d shake the devil’s hand right before walking my ass through his fiery gates.

The worst part was she’d made me understand exactly how hardcore addicts felt when they craved their drug of choice. Megan had no idea she’d become a fucking drug to me, a fix I’d gotten used to taking whenever my need had become too great.

Fuck, most times, I couldn’t even wait until the need for her overcame me. She’d had me so wide open that I fucked her every moment I could. She was the kind of drug I didn’t have to chase because she was so giving and willing and ready whenever I wanted a hit.

Now that I didn’t have her, I couldn’t think or sleep or fucking eat a damn thing. Instead of having nightmares about all the poor fuckers I’d killed, sweat-drenching dreams about the many ways I’d taken her all over my house haunted me. Dreams that left my dick hard enough to cut through metal. Dreams that had me calling out for her when I knew she wouldn’t answer. Dreams that left my body feeling cold and empty, devoid of the sparks she’d ignited in me.

I often found myself staring off into space when people talked to me, her image filling my mind instead of me focusing on what was being said. Nausea overtook me on the third day without her, my body going through withdrawals like nothing I’d ever experienced.

When I was able to sort through the haze she’d left me in and focus, a fucking big-ass red flag I’d neglected to notice, finally occurred to me. I had no idea where Megan had gone until she was gone. Her name, Megan Jones, was common, so there was no way I could weed her out of hundreds of thousands of others. It would’ve taken too long.

When I really put some effort into my thinking, I realized she’d never mentioned what state she was from. She’d shown up over a month ago in a rental car according to my father, but when it was time for her to leave, she’d mentioned going to the airport.

I couldn’t believe I’d been fucking the woman for weeks, shared some of my deepest secrets with her, and killed three men with her, but I didn’t really know her. For fuck’s sake, she’d helped me bury bodies, had cleaned the crime scene in my kitchen, and I’d never bothered to ask her where she was from.

Most women would have been offended, hurt or angry, but not Megan. No, she was different. She’d briefly mentioned having a hard life growing up in foster care, but she’d never bothered to tell me in detail how she’d become so hardened. She’d appeared to be soft and innocent on the outside, but she harbored the same kind of darkness I carried around inside me. She harbored a seething angry darkness that allowed her to endure horrific scenes and violent situations that would have had hardened criminals cowering in a corner.

Megan was like me, twisted up in the head enough that she could look a man in the eye and pull the fucking trigger. She’d inserted herself into our MC, agreed to work for us to pay off a debt she had claimed her sister owed us for drugs. Who in their right mind would do something so insane? I’d asked her that question many times and never really got a straight answer from her.

A few days after Megan left me, I started questioning my MC about her, gathering any information she might have shared with them. All I’d found was more questions. No one, including my father, the president of our MC, knew who Megan truly was.

My cousin, Jake, had informed that he didn’t remember her sister, the one she was supposedly working the debt off for. My father, Shark, claimed he had checked her background, and I believed him. Despite his backwoods ways, he would never have let Megan anywhere near our inner circle if the story she’d fed him hadn’t checked out. He insisted that he’d confirmed with a medical professional that her sister was in the Jefferson Rehabilitation Facility in Alabama, based on information Megan had provided him. How he’d gotten a medical facility to divulge patient information was a trick that I was going to have to learn from him one day. Although I knew they weren’t allowed to reveal patient information, I’d tried it anyway. They wouldn’t tell me shit, even when I pretended to be a detective and fed them a fake badge number.

My father claimed he had even called the police station to confirm the two detectives Megan had claimed to have spoken with about making them aware that she’d decided to meet with the August Knights of her own free will.

In the thirty days that Megan had been a cleaning lady, cook, and bartender for us, she had found ways to earn my MC’s respect. First, she’d shot a man who could have very well killed my Uncle Wade. And a few weeks later, she killed a man inside my kitchen who’d come to take my life.

The most shocking revelation of it all was that she was the epitome of what my MC was supposed to hate. We were known for being a racist MC. Even though, in my opinion, most of our views and attitudes were strategic tactics to strike fear into the hearts of rival MC’s, gangs, or anyone with the balls enough to test us. Granted, some of our members were racist assholes, but a good number of us lived with the perception because it provided an extra layer of danger to our reputation.

However, the idea of a black woman getting into our inner circle deep enough that we freely revealed our secrets to her was incredulous. A fucking miracle that wasn’t supposed to happen. To have possibly fallen in love with her wasn’t supposed to fucking happen either. My plan to ditch work to go in search of her was damn sure not supposed to fucking happen.

* * *

With my phone glued to my ear, I heaved a heavy sigh every time I was transferred from one office to the next, one detective’s desk to the other, until I apparently was transferred to someone that may be able to help me. I clamped my eyes shut and tuned out most of the detective’s monotone statement about not being able to confirm the information I’d asked about.

“Thank you, ma’am. Appreciate the time,” I said into my phone with no enthusiasm before ending the call.

I’d just gotten off the line with the criminal task force unit in Crock County, Florida. The one Megan claimed she’d gone to before engaging our MC. Neither of the numbers listed on the business cards she’d given my father worked anymore and the detectives named on the cards didn’t work for that precinct.

As a matter of fact, no one at the precinct knew who the hell the detectives were and had never even heard of a Megan Jones. The information had me wondering who the hell my father had spoken to when he confirmed Megan’s story.

I sat staring at my phone. Could Megan have masterminded her way into my MC? Now, a sick feeling in my gut was telling me that it was all a front. Megan was not who she’d claimed to be. Had she devised a plan that had allowed her to infiltrate my MC? If so, why?

Why would Megan do it? What possible reason could she have for wanting to get in bed with the likes of us? Did she even have a damn sister? It was funny that she’d not mentioned her sister unless I’d asked about her.

Had Megan pulled off the ultimate scheme? Was she some deep cover agent, willing to do anything to catch her criminal or gather information? Was she working for a rival MC?

She couldn’t have been a cop because she’d killed a man in cold blood right in front of me and hadn’t shown a hint of remorse. She’d also shot a man in front of my father and dozens of MC members.

Was Megan even her name? Who was this woman and why was it starting to feel like she’d manipulated my MC and me? She’d gotten so close. The idea of what she knew about us scared me, and I didn’t scare easily.

After I started asking questions about Megan, the rest of my MC started to become nervous about how easily they’d allowed her to manipulate them, so I backed off. I didn’t need to get them excited. They’d go off on a half-cocked witch hunt without knowing the full story.

However, I did feel the need to inform my father since he was the MC’s president. When I pulled him behind closed doors and told him about my speculations that I thought Megan had tricked us, he didn’t hesitate in ordering me to kill her.

Then, he proceeded in cursing for a straight hour. She’d become every combination of words that you could use with the word bitch after she’d been damned to the far reaches of hell. I sat and watched my father as he blew all his gaskets, and every screw that was holding them together. If there was one thing Shark couldn’t stand, it was being made a fool of. I cursed myself for saying anything to my father before I found out the full story behind my speculations.

Me? I was patient enough to figure out the truth. I’d dig until I found the answers or found Megan, whichever came first. The fact that none of us knew who she truly was or where she’d come from other than what she’d divulged to us, vexed me. It proved that I was just as possessed by the glamour she’d used on us as everyone else.

Where the hell had she gone? We didn’t even know where she’d come from. The only thing I believed at this point was that she truly was a writer. She’d written a full manuscript while she was with me, and the writing style matched that of her books that I’d downloaded and read.

Therefore, I believed my only way of tracking down Megan was by her books. I’d read three of them so far and the rough draft of the manuscript she’d written while with me. In the books that I’d read, I noticed that she left her social media contact information in the back for her readers to interact with her. Those contacts might be my only shot at tracking her down.