Page 38 of Twisted Hearts

21Aaron

A deep sighleft me as I watched my father fail to control his anger. He’d been ripping into me for minutes as I sat and watched him. I’d expected he’d be upset, so I didn’t disturb his outburst.

“Have you lost your fucking mind? You mean to tell me that bitch is at your house right fucking now? This can’t happen. You can’t carry on a fucking relationship or whatever the fuck you think you’re having with her. One, she’s black in case you’ve forgotten that. Two, she played all of us like fucking fiddles.”

My father’s evil-eye glare was almost comical, but I hid my amusement under a serious glare of my own. His heightened voice danced all over the boardroom. The roar of drunken bikers outside the door in the clubhouse swept in through the cracks and reminded me that there was a world outside those doors that could kill me for the few sentences I’d spoken to my father about Megan.

“Need I remind you for the hundredth time, we are a white MC that don’t deal with blacks unless it’s business? And even that’s iffy. How do you think this shit is going to play out? The president’s son running around claiming a black woman?”

My sharp gaze met my father’s across the club table, but I remained silent, allowing him to get his ranting and raving out of his system. The vein in his forehead protruded as he cursed. His roaring voice was loud enough to peel wood from the table, but I hardly heard a damn thing he was saying.

My mind was made up. Therefore, no amount of cursing or yelling on my father’s part was going to sway my decision about Megan. The muffled voices outside the club made more sense than my father’s red-faced, raging words did. The fact that I wasn’t saying anything in response to his jaw-jacking seemed to ease the tension he’d filled the room with.

At least I’d waited until the rest of the MC’s chairmen had exited the room before I had approached my father about my situation. All my father knew was that Megan had made a fool out of all of us. He didn’t know the full story, and I wasn’t going to tell it to him because he wasn’t going to care either way. So, I sat and watched him fail to comprehend my ability to forgive Megan.

Forgiveness wasn’t a part of my father’s genetic makeup. Hell, it wasn’t a part of mine either, but when it came to Megan, nothing I did before, no rules or guidelines, not even her mental state was enough for me to walk away from her.

Therefore, there was no way I intended to listen to my father and get rid of her as he kept insisting. Even if she didn’t have a horrible past, I was not altogether sure I would have hurt her anyway.

I’d finally accepted what I’d been fighting. I not only cared about Megan, I loved her. I’d never understood the whole concept of love. To me, it had always been about being a man and taking charge of your emotions. Only a fool would let something as intangible as a four-letter word rule their lives. I’d learned a life lesson in a short amount of time, and like most lessons in my life, I’d chosen to learn it the hard way.

Love was something you’d never understand unless you felt it, experienced it, or were possessed by it. It wasn’t something you could shake off. It wasn’t something you could fight or control. It wasn’t something you could decide on because it decided on you. Once it had a hold of you, you became a slave to its power and you either embraced it or you’d end up spending your life running from it.

Initially, I’d ignored it. Then, I tried to fight it. I even spent some time trying to destroy it. It wasn’t until I embraced it that I found enough peace in it to move forward with my life. Sitting in front of my father was proof that there was nothing I wouldn’t do for Megan.

When I’d ignored him enough, I met my father’s irritated gaze with one of my own. He sat there acting like I was the crazy one when he’d slept with Megan too. He would have slept with her again if she would have agreed to it and I’d allowed it. He was the biggest judgmental hypocrite I’d met. Many in the MC had allowed my father to sample their women just to stay on his good side or to get him to agree to some illegal shit. Many of the men traded women for sport regardless of the reasoning.

“Shark, you know me,” I finally spoke. When I called my father Shark, he knew I’d stepped over the son title and embraced the title of MC chairman.

“You know I would not have hesitated to put a bullet in that girl’s brain if I didn’t have a good reason not to. I—”

“You’ve got a good reason all right. She put that pussy on you and got you whipped.” Shark’s frown deepened. “But, you’re going to have to shake that shit off, man the fuck up, kill her, and find you a good wholesome white girl to play house with.”

He’d fucking cut me off. My brows pinched so tight, I could literally feel them bumping each other. My menacing glare was no doubt alive with the heat of my anger. My body leaned forward, inching closer to my father on its own accord. I had a ton of respect for my father and very seldom back talked him. This wasn’t one of those times. My voice erupted from my mouth low, sure, and clear.

“I don’t give two fucks about what you think. I don’t give two fucks about what this MC will say. If it wasn’t for the illegal shit I do, the illegal deals that I broker in the name of this MC, there wouldn’t be a fucking MC. We’d be a bunch of poor redneck assholes with missing teeth and beer bellies, hating on black people because we can’t stand the fucking sight of our own damn faces. If it weren’t for Megan, I’d be dead, so you can tell the other chairmen whatever the fuck you want. If I don’t make the gun run in a month, none of you will have two copper cents to rub against each other.”

My father gasped and jerked his head back, stunned by my outburst. I stood, slamming my legs back on the sturdy, wheeled black chair so hard, I almost toppled it. I could hear the chair stumbling and rolling behind me until it banged into the wall.

I stomped off towards the exit. My tight grip nearly ripped the rusted knob off the door. The door swung open so hard, the wind gusted past my face, and the door slammed into the wall behind it. The loud crack of the door sounded over the music and chatter outside the room. The boom sent heads in the clubhouse turning in my direction. I was a big dude at six-feet-two, two hundred and ten pounds, so I was sure I looked like an angry giant about to barrel his way through the clubhouse.

“Son! Son! Do you think I’m going to stand by and let you ruin your life over some black bitch?”

My back stiffened at my father’s angry words, but I didn’t glance back at him. When I crossed the threshold out of the office and entered the club, Shane, my cousin and one of our chairmen, almost fell on top of Wade, my uncle, who was another of our chairmen.

They scattered out of my way like disturbed ants. Jake turned his back and pretended he was talking to some random person who wasn’t paying him any attention. They couldn’t properly hide the fact that they’d been listening at the door. Their snitching eyes and animated body postures gave them away.

If they’d overheard any of my discussion with my father, they likely knew that I’d claimed Megan. I couldn’t say that she was my old lady nor could I call her my property because she was more important to me than the titles we often assigned our women.

I had no intention of following the warped no-black rule my MC had half-heartedly scribed into our bylaws. If any of them threatened to throw the book at me, I fully intended to call out every rule that each one of those bastards were breaking. They didn’t care about me breaking the rules to get them money, so they sure as shit shouldn’t care about who I chose to spend my time with.

Since these leeches had likely overheard the news about Megan and me, it was going to spread like wildfire. I wasn’t worried, though. All I had to do was raise my voice and most of them would scatter like roaches.

Seventy or maybe even eighty percent of the money the club made came from the guns that I was running. If they chose to vote me out, they were stupider than I thought. My uncle, Charles, gambled most of the money from the strip clubs away, the bar barely broke even, and half of the MC, including some of the chairmen, got high in some form or fashion, so drug profits were marginal at best.

No one uttered a word to me as I headed towards the front door. Not the three that had been eavesdropping nor the other members and prospects scattered throughout the clubhouse, eyeballing me with their lips hanging open.

My face was frowned in such a hostile glare that they stepped back out of my path so as not to frustrate me further. I could sense them all staring a hole in my back as I approached the front door. With my hand against the frame of the door, I paused right before I shoved it open.

When I turned back, those fucking cowards turned around so quickly, you’d think I had a remote controlling them. A wicked smile spread across my mouth before I walked out of the door and headed to my truck.

I was headed home to Megan after having told my father and the rest of my MC, as far as I was concerned, to fuck off. They were going to be upset about me being with her, but they were too chicken to approach me and tell me so. All they were going to do was whisper behind my back and drive my father crazy trying to convince him to talk what they assumed might be some sense into me.

As much as I’d like to, I wasn’t going to flaunt Megan around them. She’d been through enough and although she didn’t realize it, she was punishing herself more than anyone else ever could.

Megan had intentionally placed herself in dangerous situations sometimes, knowing the result could end in her death. I was no head doctor, but I’d venture to say that she hadn’t forgiven herself for luring those girls to her foster father and watching helplessly as he’d raped and killed them.

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