Chapter 5
Aaron - Day 14
Our Motorcycle Club’sdangerous reputation and its history of violent crimes, arrests, and murders had earned us a certain level of respect that was required in our line of business. But, it had also left a spotlight shining on us; not only by the authorities, but it’d also cast rival eyes in our direction. Over the years, my father and I had discussed ideas and implemented plans that were designed to take the spotlight off us.
Hard work and planning had kept most of our activities hidden. It had taken some time, but my father and the rest of the MC had acknowledged that whispers about our reputation were just as effective as broadcasting it. Although my father had made attempts, I had remained the MC’s go-to guy for finding more conventional ways of doing business without calling too much attention to us.
After I’d returned from the military over three years ago, my father had allowed me to do most of the planning, although I’d earned money for the MC by running guns.
I’d just returned from a trip to New York and Mexico, where I’d met with one of the Mexican cartel shot callers who’d been in bed with my MC for over ten years. He was requesting to double the size of his usual weapons shipment. I handled the guns, my cousins handled the drugs, and my uncles handed the strip club, which included managing the women.
Based on the worn appearances of some of the strippers, we’d be wise to burn the strip club down with the women inside and start over from scratch, but that was not my call.
It was my suggestion that we implement more business-like practices that would at least make our MC appear legit and offset some of the expensive tastes and habits some of us had adopted. The bar, the car washes, and several coin laundries had been purchased over the years to clean our dirty money. The businesses also provided legitimate jobs to members whose criminal pasts prevented them from finding employment anywhere else.
I maintained a steady job as head of security for the local town of Copper Springs’ largest security firm, Fox-Butler. As a result, many of the men in the MC worked under me. We posed as full-time or part-time security officers, which served as cover jobs to help offset some of the outlandish lifestyles some of us were determined to have.
Sometimes, I wondered what life would be like outside my MC, but this was the life I’d been born into and the only one I knew. Besides, I’d participated in so many illegal and lawless activities that I believed I was too far gone to be anything other than a gunrunner and enforcer for my MC.
Outside my stint in the military, I’d never sought a way out of this life because I didn’t know any other way. It was an interesting parallel that the life I’d grown up in had prepared me for the military, and in return, the military had armed me with the knowledge and skills that made me a force to be reckoned with when I returned to my world.
However, just because I had embraced this life, it didn’t mean I liked it all the damn time. I was grumpy more often than cool, went from zero to asshole in a heartbeat, and spoke my mind--good, bad, or ugly. A few of the older MC members said I had a black heart, but my heart wasn’t black. It merely sat farther back in my chest than other peoples’ hearts did as far as I was concerned.
My father had started me cutting coke by the time I was seven and cooking meth by the time I was ten. My mother, who was thankfully dead, had put her fist in my face every chance she got. I’d witnessed so many murders; many of them at my own hands, that my mind had gone numb to the gruesome nature of it. I’d killed many. Some were in self-defense, some for crimes against my MC, and others to prove myself as Shark’s son.
The safe inside my secluded house in the woods contained more than two hundred thousand dollars, but the kicker was I didn’t know of shit I’d want to spend that kind of money on. Other than motorcycles and the occasional woman that caught my eyes, there wasn’t much else that piqued my interest.
After shoving the familiar doors of our clubhouse open, I heaved a quick breath before entering. I hated this fucking place and these fucking meetings we had. Why couldn’t I show up once a month, say my piece, and leave? My father had made me an MC chairman, so I was required to attend these damn meetings.
In my opinion, we were nothing but a bunch of ruthless rednecks that hated as easily as we breathed mainly because we couldn’t stand our own fucking reflections. Some of us were so hateful and deceitful that it seemed our mission in life was to make everyone around us miserable.
My fingers combed through my hair, and I gripped my scalp for a second as I entered the boardroom. A heavy duffle bag was clenched over my shoulder as I headed for my spot at the table. My boots beat up the floor as I made my approach. The large spoke-wheeled motorcycle and rider carved into the table caught my eyes, and I concentrated on it to keep myself grounded.
My younger brother, Ryan, had sketched the carving. Ryan was the artist in the family. He’d started designing and inking tattoos before he’d hit double digits and our dangerous lifestyle had snuffed out his life before he’d become a teen.
The men sitting around the table as I made my approach were already yelling across the space at each other, undoubtedly, about some shit that didn’t matter. Grudgingly, I lugged myself over to my chair next to my father who sat at the head of the table. The stench of cigarettes and the scent of leather met me as I took my seat.
All eyes landed on me when I heaved the big black duffle bag full of money and guns off my shoulder and handed it to my father. The bag contained more than three hundred thousand dollars and some guns the group had been asking for. I was like the criminal version of Santa Claus to this bunch of ungrateful assholes.
Years prior, during my four-year tour as a marine, I’d brokered a deal with the son of a German gun supplier I’d met. My MC ran guns much faster than our original Russian supplier had been able to get them to us, but the supplier refused to let us out of the on-going deal my father had brokered before I was set to take over gun operations.
Long story short, one of the first tasks I’d taken on after I’d completed my tour in the military was to kill our Russian supplier before we took on the new deal with our new supplier.
Now, our supplier sold us guns at a discounted rate, and we sold some to the Mexicans at a rate below market value that they’d agreed to. In turn, the Mexicans supplied us with quality cocaine, and we distributed it to several trusted distributors, including our gun supplier. These types of transactions happened several times a year, and occasionally, I’d get contacted for a few special orders.
For my trouble and coordination, I roughly profited a half a million or more a year, give or take a few hundred thousand.
My father handled the process of sharing the wealth with the MC’s other chairmen, the grumbling assholes I currently sat and stared at with disdain. Hopefully, the disdain reflected in my gaze was strong enough to blind each of those bastards in one eye. You only needed one good eye to do the half-ass jobs they did anyway.
Every guy at the table had a specific job, and my father thought of himself as a stickler for job performance, although goals were rarely met and tasks were never completed to standard in my opinion. It could have been the military coming out of me, but I believed in detail and order.
During the course of the meeting, my gaze was drawn from the issue we were addressing, and my grumbling mind stuttered because I swore I thought I saw a black woman…a good-looking one, walking towards me.
I closed my eyes and attempted to shake off the fatigue that continued to plague my body from my trip. I hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours and still had tasks I needed to complete before I headed home.
Shit! I must be tired as fuck.
When the woman walked around the table and started sitting dishes of food down in front of each chairman, my tired gaze followed her every move. No one was saying a goddamn thing to explain to me; one, how a black woman was roaming freely throughout our clubhouse and two, why the hell she was serving us food.