Rise to Power (Motorcycle Club Romance) (Dead Men Motorcycle Club) Read online

  Rise to Power is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Angelica Siren

  All rights reserved.

  kazziekat

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue

  About The Author

  CHAPTER 1

  SOMEHOW, WE WERE ALWAYS riding in the back. I’m not sure how long it had been that way, but I couldn’t remember a time when it wasn’t true. Had Marty always just been a follower? Why hadn’t I seen that from the start? When I started hanging out with the Dead Men Motorcycle Club, I imagined that I’d be able to attach myself to a true alpha. These are bikers and, the way I saw it, it wouldn’t be hard to find a man who marched to his own beat and fought for me whenever necessary. Things didn’t work out quite the way I had planned.

  I was riding on the back of Marty’s bike with the other six members of the Northern California chapter of the Dead Men ahead of us. Things were often deadly serious among the Dead Men, but not that day. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon and we were headed for a barbecue. When life and death are on the line, sometimes you just have to throw back a few beers. I was glad for a bit of relaxation. It was finally giving me a chance to reevaluate my position in the club.

  To say that Marty was the low man on the totem pole wouldn’t be much of a stretch. He’d been riding with the Dead Men for more than three years, but somehow he just never moved beyond the status afforded to new recruits. Maybe it was his lack of motivation or maybe there really was some kind of conspiracy against him. Whatever the case may be, I was suffering for his lack of drive. The Dead Men respect the women who stand by them, but that doesn’t mean we cast votes around the table. When your boyfriend isn’t getting any respect, this isn’t the sort of place where you can earn it on your own.

  We pulled off the road into a large field where a handful of trestle tables and grills were already set up. Summer is a damn fine time to live along the coast, and today was no exception. The barbecue was a farewell to some of the visiting dignitaries of the organization. The first chapter of the Dead Men was based out of San Viero, down south. Their president and his old lady were taking something of a tour of the other clubs that bore the name. To be honest, I was getting a bit tired of catering to them. They walked around the clubhouse like a king and queen inspecting their domain. That’s not what it’s supposed to be about.

  The president, Cash, seemed nice enough. I suppose I was a bit jealous, actually. Here was a man who clearly knew how to stand up and take what he deserved. His old lady stood by him, just like I did for Marty, only she got a piece of the action in exchange. Ripper was telling me that she’s the best mechanic in Southern Cali. I’m not sure if I believe it, but either way it was clear that she had it all figured out.

  The leader of our Northern Cali branch was a sack of shit named Jarhead. He liked to pretend that he got the nickname because he was a marine, but it was a poorly kept secret that he’d never been in the armed forces at all. He got the name because his parents named him Jared and he thought sounding tough would suit him better. I hated the guy and everything he was doing to my life. On the surface, he seemed to really care about the club. When it came to giving Marty a shot though, he always had an excuse. That’s what I’d been told, anyway. I was quickly coming to realize that Marty might be the one with the excuses.

  For better or worse, I was stuck with Marty. I had to find a way to make that into a good thing. I’m a free woman and I can go where I want, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to give up on years of my life to walk away from the Dead Men. At least, not until it’s really the end of the line. Until I reached that point, I had to keep trying. If I had to hold Marty up myself, I’d turn him into the man I always wanted to be with.

  The barbecue quickly turned into a split group. The Dead Men gravitated towards the grills, always ready to discuss machines – be they transportation or outdoor cooking. That left the other girls and I to sit around one of the tables talking our own kind of shop. In the MC, gossip isn’t a dirty word. It’s just the way information spreads and you either have to accept it or get run over by it. That day it was myself, Misty, Gina and Emma. Misty was the youngest. She’d started hanging out with the MC only a few weeks prior to that day. She seemed to have her eyes set on Hector, but nothing had happened yet. Before long she’d decide just what she was doing there in the club – or someone would decide for her.

  Gina was older than me. She’d been riding along with the Dead Men for almost a decade. She and Ripper had been together for long enough that it was practically blasphemy to think of them apart. Even when she was sitting with us girls, I could see her glancing over at Ripper by the grill. It’s the kind of thing that either reaffirms your belief in true love or makes you throw up a little in your mouth.

  Finally there was Emma – the tourist. She and Cash had ridden in the morning before last. She rode her own bike, which just seemed odd to me. I’m a forward thinking woman. I know my place is even with my man, not behind him. Still, seeing another woman riding like that just seemed unnatural. Maybe I was becoming conditioned to the way bikers talk or maybe it was real insight. Either way, something about her made me nervous.

  All the same, she was a woman who had what I wanted. She got the respect she deserved – maybe more than she deserved. She got a piece of the action and she was valued by the club. I thought about what it would be like to ride between the clubs with Marty. As pleasant as the thought sounded at first, I knew it was a pipe dream. Marty could barely convince the other guys to toss him a beer. Becoming a leader was just not in the cards as I saw them. And that meant I had a nice long descent into obscurity to look forward to.

  Gina was grilling Misty about the single men in the club as usual, so I tried my best to engage Emma in a bit of discussion of our own. There was something about her that I had to get a handle on. What was it she had that I didn’t?

  “How’d you end up with Cash, anyhow?” I asked her. It was the sort of friendly question you ask a new acquaintance and I wasn’t worried about stepping over the line.

  “Oh, you know,” she said, “Just one of those things. I applied for a job at the garage – didn’t even know the club was running it at the time. Some of the other mechanics were coming down hard on me and Cash, well, he was my knight in shining armor.”

  “That’s sweet,” I said, barely covering the bitterness in my voice. Of course she’d say something like that. She was a romantic who thought that the good things in her life had just fallen into place. I knew the world didn’t work like that. When you wanted something you had to reach out and take it. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, you know?

  “How about you and… Marty?” she asked. The way she phrased it, it was clear she barely remembered his name. After three days with us, she barely knew who Marty was. It was like she was rubbing it in my face just how little influence he actually had.

  “Yeah, kind of the same thing as you,” I lied. Marty and I were nothing like Cash and Emma. They were rock stars touring the state and meeting their fans. Marty and I were the roadies cleaning up after they’d gone
. There’s supposed to be some kind of nobility in hard work, but I’ve never bought into that philosophy. Nobility is all about getting other people to do the heavy lifting for you, not about finding pleasure in being someone’s trained pet.

  “Must be nice being the boss’s old lady,” I told her.

  “It doesn’t suck,” she said. “But I’ve paid my dues.” I smiled and nodded the way you’re supposed to when someone says something like that. I heard there was some kind of trouble she got into a few months back, but I couldn’t imagine what “dues” she was talking about. She was safe in the garage while her man was out doing the dangerous work, after all. No, I thought to myself, she’s just a stuck up bitch who got lucky.

  Cash came over to retrieve Emma a few seconds later. The guys had gotten to talking about bike repair and he claimed he wanted an expert on the topic present. She gave me a smile and a shrug as she walked over to the grills with him. When her back turned, I was staring daggers at her. I couldn’t wait until the both of them were over the hill and heading back down south where they belonged.

  I sat along at the table, drinking my beer. I tried halfheartedly to overhear what Emma and the guys were talking about between wild laughs, but Misty and Gina’s shrieks and giggling was making it impossible. I decided to concentrate on my beer instead.

  I just had to find a way to reverse my fortunes. That meant reversing Marty’s fortunes. As long as he was the bottom rung on the ladder, I was never going to get what I deserved. There’s two ways to get real power in an MC. One is to strike out on your own and take it. The other is to attach yourself to a rising star. I was already attached to Marty, and as a woman my options for doing my own thing were limited. My only choice was to push him until he had the kind of influence I wanted him to have.

  I sat back and watched him standing behind Ripper, Rik and Hector. He was just milling about quietly. I guessed that half of them hadn’t even noticed him. He was more like wallpaper than a man sometimes. I had a lot of work ahead of me if I was going to transform him. I knew it was the only choice though. I could go home with my tail between my legs or I could turn Marty into a leader of men. I knew I was up to the task – I just had my doubts about him.

  CHAPTER 2

  CASH AND EMMA DEPARTED that evening, after a long series of goodbyes that I did my best to avoid. Jarhead and the others might be hugely impressed by Cash and what he’s been doing in San Viero, but that may as well be on another planet to me. I’ve never been one for celebrity worship, and that counts double for people who have never really done anything for me. I was glad to see their tail lights speeding off into the dark.

  With what amounts to our king and queen gone, it was time to get back to business. For Jarhead, that meant organizing the Dead Men into yet another run at the Mako club. They’d been pressuring the club’s territory for months, and the only tactic that seemed to be having any success was hit and run. The Dead Men – few as they were up here – would ride in, smash up one of the Mako shops, and beat feet back into the night. Jarhead thought he was really getting the better of Mako with that shit, but I knew otherwise. It felt successful because they always got away with it. That doesn’t mean what you were doing had the intended effect, though. The Mako club was stronger than ever and the Dead Men were earning less and less.

  I could have sat back and watched them crash and burn, but that’s just not the kind of person I am. I’m a doer. More than that, I think about the big picture. I know that pestering the Mako club is eventually going to lead to a full scale war – and that when it happens, the Dead Men would finally live up to their names. Mako had already taken over arms dealing across the north, and they were more than prepared for a confrontation. Someone had to come up with a better plan, and I knew it wouldn’t be Jarhead. He was drunk on his own power and convinced that he could do no wrong. The visit from Cash probably didn’t help matters. When the president goes soft, there’s a good chance that the rest of the club is a short distance away from toppling. I didn’t want to have to get out of the way of that disaster, so my only choice was to prevent it from happening in the first place.

  Every way I turned the problem over in my mind, I realized that we couldn’t fight our way out. The way things were going, confrontation was inevitable. But we were getting weaker and they were getting stronger, every day. Even if we brought the fight to them that very night, things didn’t look good. They had more guys and more guns every way you wanted to count them up. No, I thought, there’s got to be another way.

  I called Marty over to the table where I was sitting. Everyone was still energized by the royal visit – save for me. The time to start molding Marty was upon me. There’s no sense in waiting until the club is already ruined. Who wants to be president of an empty club?

  He came stepping over with that stupid swagger he was always aping. I’d told him half a dozen times that he looked ridiculous when he walked like that. He didn’t listen to me though. He never listened. This time was going to be different, though. I knew just what I had to say to convince him.

  “We need to talk,” I told him as he sat down across from me. His cheerful expression quickly faded into one of concern. He probably thought I wanted to discuss our relationship. That’s not me, though. I’ll talk out a problem when there’s a solution to be had and a significant reward to be gained. When it comes to guys though, it’s usually better to cut your losses. I wasn’t quite there with Marty, yet. With my new idea about the Dead Men, I wondered if maybe that time had passed entirely.

  “Yeah, alright, what’s up?” he said. I gave him a long look and realized that if I was going to turn this man into a leader – a real alpha – I was probably going to have to do more than just put him in the right place at the right time. He spent half of his time looking like someone ran over his puppy – and the other half of the time he looked like the puppy itself. That pathetic expression might have pulled me in from the start – I could never resist a pair of big brown eyes and an easy smile – but it was time for him to become a harder sort of man.

  “It’s about the club,” I told him straight out. “I don’t like what’s happening with the Mako guys.”

  “Jarhead says we’re just going to keeping hitting them,” he parroted. “They’ll break eventually.”

  “I don’t believe that and neither do you,” I told him flatly. I found it was much easier to just explain to Marty what he should be thinking. Waiting for him to come up with it on his own was a thankless and time-consuming job.

  “No,” I continued, “What we need is someone else to step up and make the hard choice that Jarhead can’t.”

  “Like who?” he asked, somehow still oblivious to what I was talking about.

  “Like you, dummy,” I said with a smile. The smile was genuine. The way I talk about Marty, it might sound like I don’t even care for the big lug. That’s just not true, though. I see the potential in him and I just want him to let it out for a ride.

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “Like, be the leader? Jarhead’s already doing that.”

  “Well,” I said, taking a long drag of my cigarette, “He’s doing a piss poor job of it. If we keep this up, the Mako are going to come around one day and wipe the Dead Men out of Northern California. Cash is gone and we have to do this ourselves.”

  Marty leaned in close, realizing the delicate nature of what we were talking about. He had that much sense, at least. Mutiny is the kind of thing that gets a bad reputation, but as far as I’m concerned, if the captain of a ship is fucking up then it’s the duty of the crew to take over. Jarhead was leading the Dead Men into rough waters again and again, and it was time for a fresh set of hands on the wheel. That doesn’t mean that discussing it openly was acceptable, though. I glanced around to make sure Misty and Gina weren’t in earshot, knowing that either of them would be more than happy to go blabbing to Jarhead about what they’d overheard. I spotted them chatting up Ripper on the far side of the lot and knew we were safe.


  “Listen,” I told him, “You’ve got what it takes to lead this club. You’re tough and you’re smart and with me behind you, you can do anything. I believe in you, Marty.”

  “Leyla,” he said, “I’m just not sure. I mean, it’s not like we vote for chapter presidents. How could I ever take over? I don’t want Jarhead to get hurt or anything.”

  “I don’t want him to get hurt either,” I lied again. “But he’s not a dictator for life. If the rest of the club sees that you’re the man with the plan, they’ll follow you.”

  “Okay, fine,” he said, “But what’s the plan? I’m still not hearing that part. The other guys barely give me the time of day. They’re not going to do what I say even if I do come up with a good idea.”

  “I’ve got the idea already,” I told him. “You’re going to do what Jarhead won’t – you’re going to talk to Mako and get them to make a deal.”

  “What kind of deal?” he asked, before interrupting any answer I might have given. “Anyway, I don’t have the authority to make a deal on behalf of the club.”

  “You’re not going to sign anything, Marty,” I told him firmly. “You’re going to present the deal to Mako and then when you tell the club they’ve agreed to it, they won’t have any choice but to agree to it. Jarhead might be an idiot, but the rest of them know as well as I do that we need another way out. Rik and Ripper and the others will fall in line – you’ll see.”

  Just then, Rik himself came stepping over towards our table. I clammed up instantly, but Marty seemed determined to spill the beans. I practically had to hold my hand over his mouth to get him to stop talking about our plan. Rik would be on our side soon enough, but until then we had to keep everything a secret.

  “Hey Rik,” I said cheerfully as he sat down across the table from Marty.

  “Hey, Leyla,” he said listlessly. “Some visit, huh?”