Free Dead Men Motorcycle Club by Angelica Siren Page B

realized I was more than just another pretty face. Of course, in that garage, I was pretty much the only pretty face.
    "Glad to hear it," Donnovan said, taking the keys from me. He turned back to Cash, whose face predictably went back to stone the second he turned. I had to smile when I saw that, happy with how well I knew my man. "I'll call you next week. Until then, just keep your eyes open and let me know, alright?"
    "Will do," Cash told him, offering his hand for a shake.
    After a quick wave into the business office to Karen, Donnovan drove his luxury car off the lot and out of our lives for the moment. Cash and I stood in the lot, watching him go.
    "So, you gonna tell me what that was all about?" I asked him playfully.
    "He wants us to make Taylor squirm. Says he wants the mayor to decide that San Viero's not worth the effort so he can buy it up," he said. Just as Karen had predicted. I swear , that woman could give Sherlock Holmes a run for his money, some days.
    "And, you're going to do business with him?"
    "Yeah," he said, "He makes a convincing argument. At first I was worried about dealing with another rich asshole, but if it's not him it's Taylor. We may as well back the richer one and make a bit of profit off of it."
    I couldn't fault his reasoning there. Donnovan seemed friendly enough, and from my limited dealings with Taylor, he was every bit the prickly old man who didn't think very highly of leather-clad bikers - or the women they loved. I also knew that a man like Donnovan wouldn't give up a project like San Viero just because a local bike gang had refused him. If Cash had said no, he would have gone down the road to the Trenchers or one of the other gangs and maybe tried to force the Dead Men out before putting his plans into motion. Better to get on the winning side early.
    The intricacies of the MC life were opening to me more, every day. When I'd arrived in San Viero, I thought it was mostly about riding around, looking cool and drinking with your friends. That was all a part of the life, of course, but it was a business too. Every minute of every day, Cash and his boys were fighting for the scrap of freedom they'd secured for themselves. Sometimes that meant literal fighting with those who would take this place from them if given half a chance. Sometimes it meant getting into bed with a man like Donnovan who could steal their piece of the world with the stroke of a pen.
    Maybe it was just a loose rationalization, but the lengths that Cash and the Dead Men went to in order to defend their home seemed completely reasonable to me now. That day when I'd seen Cash struggling into the clubhouse, bleeding from a gunshot wound , my first reaction was horror. All of Karen's stories about the violence that followed the Dead Men through the world were true, and all of my dad's warnings about the life of a biker seemed to be very real. There was another side of the story that Dad never told me though. He never told me about what men like Cash were fighting for. Out here, people were still willing to stand up and declare that they weren't going to live life according to someone else's rules. It was a dangerous declaration to make, but it wasn't about mindless rebellion. It wasn't about rejecting society's values, either. There was no negativity to it at all. What Cash and the others were doing was standing up tall and saying that they would make life what they wanted it to be and that nobody could tell them otherwise. Maybe that same spirit was in my blood thanks to Dad, but my trip out west seemed to carry that sentiment when I examined myself more closely. I wanted to forge my own destiny, and now I was surrounded by my new family who wanted the same thing.
    I took Cash's hand and turned us back towards the clubhouse. The business with Donnovan was just beginning, but things like this tended to happen slowly. For now, we had each other and the life we were building together. Since our first sweaty morning together