Chapter 4

Harley

Benji and I grew up together, MC brats. Both schooled and confined within the walls of the Shadow Keepers MC. My home is just above the clubhouse my father is the president of. Benji’s dad, Roadie, is the VP and they both live downstairs in two of the club’s rooms. Benji is my best friend, we do everything together. Just not runs or anything club related.

The Shadow Keepers’ clubhouse was founded in Arizona by my father. He came back from the war a lost man and not only homeless but jobless. He stumbled upon a condemned home by a beach and slowly rebuilt it. Other lost souls joined him, and they began to get into pot running and before they knew it. They became the Shadow Keepers.

They’re a motherfucking legend around here. A club named Tail Chasers used to run this side of Arizona. They sold weak pot and some cheap guns. Eventually, Dad moved in on their territory and wiped them out with better weed, and eventually better stock in guns. Many have tried to take out the Shadow Keepers, and many have gone missing trying. Keep your competition six feet under, and you’ll always remain on top.

“Meet me on the roof after the meeting?” he asks with a low rugged tone. We always head to the roof, smoke a blunt and talk bullshit after club meetings. But tonight, my palm aches to hold a .45. My heart beats to the sound clicking mechanism of an automatic weapon. I’m programmed to wreak havoc and leave a path of blood in my wake. Nobody can stop that, not even the code of the club.

I’m becoming restless being sheltered in this fucking club.

“This is bullshit,” I grumble shaking my head. My eyes fall to my bed with the club colors printed on the bedding.

“The day a woman sits at the table, is the day the legacy of biker clubs around the world die. You know that,” Benji quotes my father, but his tone of voice lacks the belief in that sentence. I flick a brow up at him, his words insulting and out of line.

The very thought that I will never be in that room weighing heavy on my shoulders, I lash out the only way I know how.

Grabbing the red lamp on my night table, I throw it at him. He ducks, the lamp barely missing him, and he gives me a sideways glance as if I’m crazy. It’s ironic, as we both know I’m past crazy. There’s no cure for what I have. I’m the bitch with the leather jacket, matching boots, and joint hanging out of her mouth as I drive the fucking crazy train through the image portrayed for what a lady is to act like.

“It’s not healthy for you to be around violence,” he raises a brow, repeating what my therapist has told me.

“I get it. I’m a fucking nutcase,” I sneer, pointing to my head. There’s a darkness inside of me that weaves and vines through my limbs, and when my heart pounds to the rhythm of someone hurting, or I get a waft of spilled blood. That darkness blooms within me past unstoppable. Members of the club have told me I scare my own father, and that hurts. I refuse to believe I frighten him, I should make him proud. The DNA of what he stands for runs deep inside of my body, nothing will stop me until I am at that table.

Benji growls. “You know I hate it when you fucking call yourself that. You’re just… different, Harley, and your dad doesn’t want you around club shit. It brings the worst out of you,” he clarifies.

What does he want me to say? That ‘I’ll change?’ Be a good girl who likes to decorate and bake cookies? That I’ll look the other way of innocent blood shed as I step over the empty bullet casings serving beer to club members?

I won’t be that woman. Ever.

“I won’t give up my self-respect just to make people who think they love me, feel normal,” I growl in reply. His eyes widen with insult.

“And you think I’m one of those people that want you to change?”

My brows furrow inward with uncertainty. I didn’t think he used to be one of those people, but the way he quotes my dad so often anymore… I’m not so sure. I’m hoping he’s just telling himself I am better left up here so that one day he will believe it himself.

“You better get going, Dad will bust your face if he finds you in here again.” I look over my shoulder with a grave expression. Benji knows he’s not allowed in my room, if Dad heard him in here it’d be both of our asses.

Shaking his head, he walks out of the room, slamming my door behind him. My shoulders tense from the loud echo of the door.

Sometimes I cannot believe he agrees with the rest of the club, or should I say my fucking father. That’s something that makes me question him. He’s always pushing for more between us, yet when push comes to shove, he takes my father’s words as his bond.

“No woman will ever be patched in.” I hear my father’s voice echo through my brain. I have more balls then the crew my father has behind him.

My loyalty runs blood deep, and the fact I have a pussy is blinding anyone from seeing that. This club is who I am, it’s who I’ve always been.

I just need to prove myself I have what it takes to stand with the rest of them. Then they will all see a woman is just as worthy to sit at the club table as a man. Raising my hand, my fingers fumble with my bottom lip in thought.

I stall, my eyes widening with a brilliant idea.

That’s just it, I need to prove I’m strong. A chance to show them that I can be trusted to do what is needed to be my dad’s right hand. It’s 2018, times of change. Why can’t a woman sit at the table, ride a motorcycle, and be a patched-in member? Especially if she proves she has what it takes just as much as any other man at the table?

I jerk the door open, and quickly head down the stairs, determined to make my dad give me a job. The doors to the chapel are closed, meaning church is already in session. Church as in, this where they hold their meetings and daily business. I’d do anything to be at the table, to hear where they’re going, who they’re hurting, and what is to come at the hands of the Shadow Keepers. I want to see who falls to their knees at the mercy of my family, to see the fear seep from someone who crossed us. I can’t sit idle a moment longer, I need excitement. I need … to find my place in this world.

We’re all sinners here, yet I’m the only one everyone walks around like a sacred angel that might break at any moment. I’m no fucking angel.