Twisted Minds

  Twisted Minds

  Keta Kendric

  Jessica Watkins Presents

  Contents

  Copyright

  Synopsis

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  The End

  Copyright © 2017 by Keta Kendric

  Published by Jessica Watkins Presents

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Without limiting the right under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form by means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  SYNOPSIS

  Megan

  How in the hell did I end up here on a heavily-wooded road in the middle of a racist county, all alone with nothing but my twisted mind for protection? After convincing the August Knights Motorcycle Club to allow me to work off a debt my sister owed them, I found myself in the middle of madness and mayhem. I should’ve known that this was what life inside this dangerous club would be like, right?

  Aaron

  How the hell did I end up here? I was face to face and chest to chest with the one woman I was forbidden to touch. Strange, sexy, inexplicitly delicious, and just downright twisted events started to unfold when I met Megan. I can’t figure her out, but there is one thing she can’t hide—her attraction to me. When Megan wiggles her way into my life, I discover that her quiet, good-girl persona is a cloak she uses to hide the twisted mind she harbors. A mind just as bent as mine.

  WARNING:

  This book contains strong violence and sexual content and is intended for adults. If you are easily offended or squeamish about harsh or demeaning language, murder, and violence, this may not be the book for you.

  Introduction

  I must have been born under a haze of gun smoke, surrounded by a slew of dead bodies during a deadly shootout. Born August Aaron Knox V, into a life of madness and murder, I couldn’t nor have I ever tried to outrun the trouble I had inherited or the mayhem that was embedded in my DNA. I had embraced this life I was given, lived in it and even found easier, faster ways to cause and get out of trouble.

  As a member of the August Knights Motorcycle Club, I’d become the club’s enforcer years ago due to my brute nature and unapologetic attitude. I’d never known what it was like to live a normal, worry-free life. I reckon it was a pretty boring-ass existence.

  Instinctively, I ducked as a bullet whizzed past my head and yanked me out of my thoughts. Its pounding impact struck the concrete cinder block behind me, causing chunks to fly up and pepper the skin on the back of my neck. I brushed pieces of the concrete out of my shoulder-length hair.

  Actively engaged in a gunfight, I was more irritated at being shot at than I feared being shot. The vein in my forehead swelled as my anger grew more intense. The New York gang had sadly underestimated the amount of danger they would face when dealing with me and the people I conducted business with.

  I’d been a well-behaved guest of the city for nearly a week, waiting for the shipment of guns from my supplier. We had planned these exchanges beforehand to ensure a smooth transition. We had several covert locations across five states that we pick at random to keep this type of unwanted attention at bay. This location, which we will no longer be able to use, had somehow been leaked to a local New York gang.

  “Max, cut the fucking lights,” I barked through gritted teeth to one of my crewmen. Apparently, the gang of about eight had assumed they could steal a shipment of guns worth more than two million dollars. What they hadn’t counted on was that we would be ready for them or the fact that my supplier would protect the product from start to drop.

  Not only did my supplier have armed men to deliver the shipments to me, the men had remained with me to ensure my protection and would stay until I released them. Plus, I always brought at least a three-man crew of my own and we stayed packed with the kind of heat that could make it rain fire and pour blood.

  Within seconds, Max made the lights in the underground parking structure we’d used for the past two years, go black. My men knew if I called for a blackout, we were going full-on black ops with night gear. Many of my associates, business partners, and I were ex-military, so this New York gang was so far in over their heads that they were better off putting a bullet in their own brains.

  Once the lights were out, the shuffling and screeching of tennis shoes were easily distinguished inside the echo-inducing garage. The whisper of nervous commands versus the dead silence of my crew told of our vast differences. The silencers we had on our pistols spoke volumes about our criminal professionalism versus theirs.

  It had taken minutes, and we had killed five of the gang members. There were three left. Make that two. I’d just splattered one’s brains all over his buddy’s clean white T-shirt. Who in the fuck wears a white T-shirt at night during an attempted robbery?

  The act of putting a bullet in someone and watching their worthless body cling to the last remnants of life calmed my anger considerably.

  “We need to keep one alive,” I said to my group in a low, easy voice. “Make that alive enough for him to get the message back to his crew.”

  “Got it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Yep.”

  I heard all three responses clearly through my earpiece. My men spread throughout the garage, acknowledging my words.

  I had better shit to do than this, like getting these guns to the people who were waiting for them. This immature gang was slowing up my progress and losing their lives because they were too damn dumb and impatient to execute a well-thought-out plan.

  Minutes later, I stood over the last surviving gang member just as Max turned the lights back on. The sound of lights flipping on echoed throughout the sub-basement level of the huge structure. Big, terrified, gray eyes stared up at me as blood oozed from a knife wound in the man’s shoulder and from the gunshot to his shattered kneecap. The pain of his injuries caused him to grit his teeth in agony. The darkness behind my blue-eyed gaze was cast down on the injured man.

  “Tell your people the next time they interfere in the August Knights Motorcycle Club’s business, they will be paid a visit.”

  I snapped my fingers in front of the man’s face when his eyes tried to flutter closed. “Focus, motherfucker!” I yelled, making his head snap up.

  His gaze widened as he shook his head vigorously.

  “You remember the Crimson Hill Gang?” I asked him.

  The man shook his head, denying knowing the gang I had mentioned.

  “Exactly. Their gang disbanded because we killed twenty of those motherfuckers in one night. CHG no longer exists because they fucked with the wrong group.” I shook my pistol in front of the man’s wide-eyed gape. “A bit of advice. Always know who you’re fucking with before you fuck with them.” I stared at the man with cold, dead eyes for a half minute, just to fuck with him
. Then, I proceeded to fuck with him some more.

  “Based on that tattoo on your arm, you’re one of the Elm Street Kings. Your gang has been around for about seven years. Your main crew consists of about seventy members, minus the ones that have carelessly gotten themselves killed here tonight. You claim Elm Street, but most of you live in Mable Grove.”

  The man’s eyes had grown about as wide as saucers. He no longer cared about his pain. His dread-filled gaze remained on me, glaring as if I was a ghost and likely wondering how the hell I knew so much about his gang.

  I shook my head at him, but I didn’t vocalize my thoughts. That’s right, motherfucker, I do my homework, and you should have done yours. If the poor bastard had any good sense, he’d heed my words because I didn’t give a damn about killing him and every member of his gang.

  Chapter 1

  Megan - Day 1

  “You must be lost.”

  The rough voice boomed through my driver’s side window as I parked my white rental car. The voice came from a biker straight off a Hollywood set. His long black beard didn’t match his stringy brown hair. He stood well over six feet, wearing black jeans, a leather biker’s vest, and black boots. He leaned against his Harley with his ankles crossed, staring at me with curious amusement shining in his gaze.

  As I peered through my windshield, my gaze swept the area surrounding what I assumed was their motorcycle club. The clubhouse sat far back off a quiet highway nearly surrounded by woods. Initially, I’d driven past the building that resembled a double-wide mobile home at first glance.

  When I’d driven closer, I found that it was an old wooden homestead with peeling white paint that the bikers had turned into their clubhouse. “Club” was painted in big dripping black letters above the entrance door.

  The dirty and unsavory looking bikers milling about all possessed similarly tall, muscular statures, wore jeans, and black leather vests that showcased their MC’s logo on the back. The logo was a fully armored knight, riding a steel horse. Instead of a sword, he carried a machine gun with two additional guns strapped to his back.

  Inquisitive gazes zoomed in on me as I cut my engine and contemplated opening my door to approach the shabby white building. I was out of my element and freaked out by what I’d set my twisted mind to attempt with these bikers, but I didn’t have any other options.

  After rolling up my window and exiting my vehicle, I slinked past bikers who stopped what they were doing to gape at me. My purse strap was my unsteady anchor as I gripped it in my clenched fist.

  Two bikers, who had their heads under the hood of a big-wheel, blue pick-up truck, stopped studying the engine. Another one stopped shining the pipes on his big-boy motorcycle. Others, drinking beer and talking trash to each other paused their conversations. A group sitting under a tree around a picnic table stopped their drinking and loud talking, and their gazes locked on me.

  All bodies outside the clubhouse stopped whatever they were doing to gawk at me. Fingers started to point, and faces frowned as I ambled closer to the club’s entrance on shaky legs. Open-mouthed expressions, pinched brows, and evil stares followed me as I reached for the door. Surprised, I hadn’t expected to make it that far.

  The tremble in my body had grown so intense that I fought to keep down the sandwich I’d forced myself to eat earlier. Sweat drizzled down my back, and I was sure it was not the late June heat causing it. I was scared. No, fuck that. I was scared shitless, but my need to rectify a situation that loomed at my back was greater than my fears. Even as my heart threatened to punch the hell out of my ribs to break out of my chest, I was set to proceed with my plan.

  I entered the club and prayed with each shaky step I took. The floorboards creaked under each of my wobbly steps and sounded like rolling thunder despite the noise of the group inside. The door didn’t close behind me because the group I thought I’d left outside held it open as they peeked into the club after me.

  When I spotted the man I was searching for, I approached and called out to him. “Mr. Shark?” I asked in my normal, low, and passive voice.

  “Who the fuck is asking?” The biker’s bass-filled voice questioned before he turned to face me. Now, facing me, his penetrating blue-eyed gaze locked with my gaping brown eyes. Eyes laced with distaste and alarming hate swept down and back up my body.

  “My name is Megan Jones. I’m—”

  “Speak up!” he snapped.

  I jumped damn near out of my skin. The air around me grew thicker inside the dingy dive. The air-conditioning unit buzzed with life as voices quieted to a low hum. The whine of country music sounded from someplace in the background. It was just as hot inside this place as the ninety-two-degree Florida heat outside.

  This was just what I needed. When the piercing, blue-eyed menace I’d disturbed raised his voice and told me to speak up, all eyes jetted in our direction from every corner of the large dusty room. It wasn’t hard to decide that the eyes that probed me belonged to a group that was not used to seeing the likes of me.

  I cleared my throat and clamped my unsteady hands together. Murmurs and not-so-hushed voices sounded. The group was no longer talking about whose mufflers on their oversized trucks roared the loudest or how many times their motorcycle engines had been rebuilt. I was a much more interesting subject for them to talk about.

  “Who in the fuck is this black bitch?” a voice called out over the crowd of about twenty, scattered throughout the bar.

  “What in the fuck does she want?” another voice asked.

  “Does she not know where the fuck she’s at?”

  I did my best to ignore the questions being asked. An African-American woman walking into a known racist motorcycle club wasn’t something that occurred every day.

  “My name is Megan Jones,” I announced again to the biker I’d presumed was Shark. I craned my neck up to see his bearded face. “I’m here on behalf of my sister, Jennifer. She took drugs from your club on credit and didn’t pay you on time.” I paused to swallow enough fear to keep talking as the menacing glare of the mean biker locked on me and seared me down to my quaking bones. “Your men chased my sister down and promised to kill her if she didn’t pay what she owed them. I’m here to see if I can pay for her mistake.”

  The towering biker loomed. Middle-aged, he was bearded with a long scar over his left cheek. He didn’t say anything. He just stared, seemingly through me. His dark hair was cut low to his skull, which was unexpected since I’d lumped every biker into the long-dirty-oily-hair category. His deep-set, blue eyes bore flashes of the hard life he led.

  His arms were a canvas for various tattoos that likely continued under the leather vest and black T-shirt he’d paired with well-worn jeans and black boots. I’d learned through studying this organization that the president of the August Knights Motorcycle Club was named August Knox IV and was called Shark.

  He tilted his head and glanced around me, undoubtedly expecting more people to be with me.

  “Sir, I assure you I’m alone,” I confirmed. My words sounded as shaky as my body was. “I want to make things right with you so that your men won’t hurt my sister.”

  The tall biker glanced around without saying anything. He stood, staring at me, likely wondering if I was truly crazy enough to do what I was attempting to do. He took a step closer to me, and I inched back.

  “Are you one of them escaped crazies or something?” he asked as he tried to get a better look into my eyes. He probably thought I was high or drunk. Eyeing me suspiciously from head to toe, he leaned in close enough that his warm breath brushed my face.

  Other than shake my head to answer his question, I didn’t move any other part of my fear-frozen body.

  “No, sir. I’m not crazy. I came to see if I can pay my sister’s debt. I don’t have a lot of money, so I’m willing to pay you in installments if you’ll allow me.”

  I swallowed the brick-size lump in my throat and quickly sucked in a huge gust of air as the big biker strong-armed me. My tenni
s shoes squeaked against the dirty, brown linoleum floor as I struggled for balance. My shocked eyes bulged from their sockets as he backed me up and gripped my tense shoulders before he slammed me into the wall behind us. My anxious fingers dug into the particle board wall I had been harshly introduced to. Pain registered, but my true fight was to not pass out from fear. The country music in the background halted, tones hushed, feet stopped shuffling, and interested gazes zoomed in on Shark and me.

  “Who in the fuck are you?” he asked. His demanding gaze warned me not to fuck with him. “You better be lost or crazy because you have stumbled into the wrong club. Don’t you know this is a whites-only establishment? There ain’t no signs posted, but anybody around here who don’t live under a fucking rock knows that fact.”

  My voice cracked. I squeezed my eyes shut so tight that water oozed from between my lids as I fought against the pain of the tight grip Shark had on my shoulders. I balanced on the balls of my feet because he’d hiked me up the wall a couple of notches.

  “Sir, I’m who I say I am. I’m here to square my sister’s debt. She’s on drugs, and I’m usually left to clean up the messes she makes. I checked her into rehab and now I’m here to try to do right by you and your men on her behalf, so...”

  I was losing it. I’d promised myself I’d do this with bravery, but I was so damn scared, I was losing what little courage that remained to tears.

  I swallowed hard to find my voice to continue. “So, they won’t come after her again or try to kill her.”