Snake an mc romance, p.1
Snake: An MC Romance, page 1
Copyright © 2023 by K.L. SAVAGE
All rights reserved. Except as permitted by U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, establishments, or organizations, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously to give a sense of authenticity. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. SNAKE is intended for 18+ older, and for mature audiences only.
CONTENTS
Prologue
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
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Epilogue
Epilogue
Also by K.L. SAVAGE
SNAKE
She was the woman I loved, and I betrayed her.
I have secrets and enemies even my brothers the Ruthless Kings don’t know about. When my systems go down and I can’t fix the problem I wonder. When she knocks on my door I have to ask, has my past finally come to collect?
One moment, she was the only friend I had in this world. The next, we were completely and irrevocably shattered to pieces. And it was all my fault.
She taught me everything I know. Now she’s here. Is she here to help me or ruin me?
The threats are still coming. The club is in danger and I don’t know how to stop it. I thought we’d be running the world together one day and now I just hope we can make it one more day.
Can I fix what I broke between us? Or will one final secret be the end of us?
PROLOGUE
The familiar hum of my computers soothes me. They always have. I’m surrounded by the soft glow of monitors and the rhythmic whirring of processors. It’s my sanctuary. The place where I feel most at home. Between me and these computers, I can accomplish anything. There’s no stone we can’t unturn. I love the feeling of usefulness they evoke. I’m not strong like Bones or Hex. I don’t have the leadership of Pocus or Seer. In this room, though, I am king. No one can take it away.
Lately, my mind keeps drifting back to the girl who taught me everything. Long before the brotherhood, when I was a scared little kid with no family and no real love in life, there was Francesca. She spent hours teaching me her extensive knowledge of computers. We’d sneak into the computer lab at the group home every night for a private lesson.
She was magnificent to watch. When we were ten, she could handle a computer like no one I’d ever met. She was constantly fixing outages and crises in the home. I found out later she caused some of those problems so she wouldn’t get kicked out. Once she vouched for my skills, we were indispensable. Sure, we’d never get adopted, but at least we wouldn’t get split up. We wouldn’t end up in worse situations than we were already in
Francesca was more than my closest friend. She was my partner, my confidante. We were a dynamic duo, eventually running computer scams and raking in the cash. We were the masters of deception, using our skills to outsmart the unsuspecting. Together, we were unstoppable. Because of her, I was strong.
Then everything went wrong. After nearly a decade of friendship and running our schemes together… Well, it’s not worth thinking about that now. After fifteen years, I can think of her without bitter regret. Things went to shit so quickly for us. I thought we’d be running the world together one day. In one fell swoop, we were strangers.
I remember the thrill of our schemes, the rush of adrenaline as we made our plans and chose our targets. We were a force to be reckoned with. We were a pair of hustlers who reveled in the chaos we created. Francesca’s brilliance and beauty only added to our mystique. People underestimated us. They never suspected the quiet tech guy and the stunning woman by his side pulled the strings.
We were living on the edge, dancing with danger. Our scams brought us wealth and power, but they also brought enemies. We were always one step ahead, but in the end the price we paid was our friendship. Our bond fractured under the weight of our ambitions and the darkness of our choices.
Now, as I sit here in the solitude of my office, I wonder what might have been. What if things had turned out differently? If she hadn’t suggested we try to take down the most dangerous man in the country.
Well, that’s ancient history now. It doesn’t do to dwell on the past. He’s safely locked away in jail where he can’t get to us. She’s safe on some remote corner of the planet, probably conning men out of money. She always had a knack for the long game. If I’m a king in this room, she was a goddess out there. Her skills and wit were unmatched by anyone I’ve ever met.
Francesca’s face appears in my mind, her sleek straight hair and intimidatingly beautiful features. I remember the way her eyes sparkled with mischief as we hatched our plans. She was a genius. She was a technological savant with an almost supernatural ability to communicate with the devices I manipulated. Of course, now I wonder if those powers actually were supernatural. I know so much more now than I did then. She probably did have a gift.
I wish I’d asked her more questions. I wish I’d been a better friend to her. Of all the shitty things I’ve done in my life, betraying her was the worst. So, I bury myself further in my work. I try not to think about her at all. It’s the same process I’ve followed for the last fifteen years and it’s served me well.
Time has a way of erasing memories, dulling the pain of past betrayals. The wounds we inflicted upon each other have faded. What remains is a bittersweet nostalgia for the thrill of our illicit endeavors. I try to push those thoughts aside, to focus on the present and the duty I owe to the Ruthless Kings.
Still, as her face once again floats behind my eyes, I’m reminded of how much I’d started to want her. How much I’d longed to be with her. It was only after we parted that I realized the awful truth. I was completely in love with her, but I never had the chance to tell her. She probably thought I hated her after what I did. She probably still hates me.
I wouldn’t have done it for any other reason than love. She needed to be protected. I had to be the one to keep her safe. If I’d had a chance to explain, maybe she would have understood. But that was never on the table.
I have to grapple with the fact that I probably never will know love. I screwed it up so royally, maybe I don’t deserve it. That’s my burden to bear. But I hope that somehow, some way, Francesca’s found true happiness. That’s all I ever wanted for her.
CHAPTER ONE
Bones brings in the mail and carelessly tosses it on the desk. Classic, careless Bones. A maid he is not, and he loves to remind me of it. None of the men have been happy since I assigned household duties, but they don’t have to live with my wife. One day, they’ll probably all understand what it’s like to have a woman relentlessly nag at you until you have no choice but to surrender.
“I didn’t marry you so I could spend all day, every day cleaning up after our son and your pack of ingrates,” Tory had told me during a particularly nasty fight. “When you took over as Prez, I thought that meant that I would be your first lady. That I would help you keep things running. I did not sign up to be the help!”
“Nobody thinks of you as the help,” I’d argued. It was apparently the exact wrong thing to say. Tory had listed off an entire diatribe of domestic duties she’d had to take care of over.
“Of all my friends, I’m clearly the stupid one,” she hissed, and I knew better than to respond. “Abigail, Juliana, Evanesce, Meredith, they all live somewhere else! They were smart enough to get away from this house and make a place of their own.”
“We have the apartment,” I pointed out, which led to a pot being thrown at my head.
Suffice it to say, the very next day I called church and announced the new chores everyone in the house had to take part in. Pocus had a field day with that one. Once Tory talked to Abigail about it and Abigail got on his ass, he didn’t think it was so funny anymore.
So now I’m sorting through the mail Bones has so ungraciously dropped in front of me. I sift through an endless pile of junk and garbage. Honestly, I don’t know why people send mail anymore. It all gets thrown out away. Even the postcards Hex and Juliana send from Brazil eventually end up in the trash. It’s nothing personal. I don’t like clutter.
The unmarked envelope with the threatening note inside is hardly any different. It’s the run-of-the-
The end is coming for you, Prez, is all it says in cut-out magazine letters.
Either this person is a serial killer or has entirely too much time on their hands. And what a vague, unoriginal message. The end of what? My life? My reign as the Prez? Honestly, I’d be more worried if I couldn’t literally see the future. Little by little, Tory’s been helping me regain my second sight. I haven’t seen anything horrible coming at me. The future seems calm, maybe even promising. Of course, that worries. Nothing is calm around here.
I crumple up the note and throw it away with the junk mail. It will sit at the bottom of a dumpster where it belongs. I don’t have time to be focused on veiled, anonymous threats when I have an entire organization to run. Honestly, doesn’t anyone ever think of that? Maybe I should add reading the mail to Bone’s assignment. I’m sure he’ll love that.
On to more important business, like finishing my son’s kindergarten application and checking in on the Cuatros Locos gang. I laugh at the stark contrast between the two tasks. I’m sure no other parent from Nicky’s kindergarten class is running a secret investigation into a gang. They probably have normal jobs like accounting or marketing. I’m sure when they finish work for the day, they’re not falling asleep thinking about what the next possible threat could be to their family.
The last few months have been too quiet for my liking. Apart from the occasional threatening letter like the one I discarded, no one’s tried to threaten us. No one’s created any obstacles for us whatsoever. A more naïve man would be grateful. I feel in my bones that this is the calm before the storm. Something is lurking around the corner. Something waits to ensure our destruction. There always is.
Top of my list is Diego Velez, the new leader of the Cuatro Locos. He’s relatively young for a gang leader, rising up through the ranks at thirty years old. Unlike his predecessor there’s not much can be found about him. He’s like a ghost who appeared on the scene one day. Given my experiences, I would be less shocked to find out that he is a ghost. Instead, he seems to be a flesh and blood man, a threat looming in the distance.
After the violent gang attacks several years ago, before I took over as Prez, the gangs in this city formed a mutual respect for one another. We had to have each other’s backs when no one else would. Of course, I lost respect for many gangs when they recruited children as their drug mules. Those kids were being funneled into the gangs by a seriously deranged and supernaturally gifted cop. Still, I cut ties with many organizations at that point.
Our bonds have mended now that the kids have been safely released from gang life, but Diego Velez hates my guts more than any other gang leader in the city. Well, to be fair, he hates the entire MC, and I happen to be its current leader. He would hate Pocus if he were still in charge. But he sees me as the reason his gang is dwindling down to nothing. After all, I was the one who invited the police to help end the child trafficking.
If Diego hates me for that, I welcome it. I would rather be known as the man who rescues kids, not the one who exploits them. Still, I’d feel a lot less unsettled if there was something I could learn about Diego, some piece of information I could use against him if the situation demanded.
I walk into Snake’s office, his “Inner Sanctum” as he likes to call it. His back is to me. He types fast and furious across three different monitors. This is how I usually find Snake, completely blocked off from the rest of the world. If he could, he’d probably marry a computer. He doesn’t seem to have much use for people in general, only the bright screens of his monitors. Everyone has their thing, I guess.
“What’s up, Prez?” he asks, not turning to look at me.
This is one of his eerie skills. Then again, I’m one of the only people who ever comes in here. It was probably a good guess.
“Just checking in on your progress with Velez,” I tell him plainly.
Of all my men, Snake needs the least amount of hand-holding. He’s a man of few words who prefers that others communicate the same way. The less talking, the better. He’s a self-starter, an independent worker. He finds his comfort in this small room. His companionship is with these machines. He speaks a language I can never hope to understand.
“Still nothing, boss,” he says, his fingers moving furiously. “But don’t worry, I’ll find something. Nobody’s this clean.”
I nod and turn away before he asks an uncharacteristic question.
“You okay, boss?” he asks. “You seem more stressed than usual.”
I turn back around to find that he’s still not looking at me. His fingers haven’t stopped moving. His screens scroll with information. How he could notice any change in my demeanor is a mystery to me. But I am more stressed than usual. The calm stresses me. Give me a threat, give me a problem, give me something to occupy my brain and my hands.
The silence is unbearable. These last few months have been nothing but peace and quiet. I can’t stand it. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. The anticipation and anxiety are eating me up. What terrible monster will crop up and steal this peace? What threat will the MC face that I can’t handle? Pocus stepped down a few years ago because he was willing to risk his life to protect the club, even at the risk of his family. I keep wondering when that moment will arise for me.
With a forced smile, I deflect his question, pushing him away to shield him from the storm brewing within me.
“I appreciate your concern, Snake,” I reply, my voice strained. “But it’s not your job to notice. This burden is mine to bear.”
Silence settles between us, an unspoken understanding hanging in the air. I retreat to my office, my sanctuary. I can ponder my concerns on my own there, without Snake’s unsettling observational skills. Seriously, how can a man who basically lives in the virtual world be so attuned to my feelings?
Snake has always been a bit of a mystery. When he joined the MC fifteen years ago, we were all young and impressionable. We didn’t ask questions. We just did as we were told for the sake of brotherhood and the good of the Ruthless Kings. I was a young twenty-something who’d run away from my family and was too concerned with my visions of the future to give a low-level member like Snake any thought.
Now, I’m the leader. He’s one of my most indispensable men. Sure, brute force is important, but without Snake, our entire foundation would crumble. His ability to hack into any database and find information on any threat has helped us tremendously throughout the years. For years, it never occurred to me to ask him where he came from, what demons he was trying to outrun.
Now it’s much too late to ask. If Snake wanted that information known, he would have offered it freely. He’s done nothing to make me doubt his loyalty to this club. At the end of the day, that’s what matters most. Still, his uncanny gift of perception can be unsettling at times.
I force my mind to focus on other things, like this ridiculous application for my son’s school. There’s a line for parent occupation and income. I’ll obviously have to fudge some information there. My poor son can’t be known as the son of an infamous gang leader and a known witch. I want him to have a more normal childhood experience than the rest of us have. That makes my mind wander back to Snake, but I shake the thoughts out of my head.
All I need to know about Snake is that he’s my brother. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for the club. The rest is his business. His past is his burden to bear. So maybe he’ll continue to be a mystery like Diego Velez. But I can’t worry about that. He’ll eventually find me everything I need to know about Diego. Snake’s story will remain his to tell if and when he’s ready.
