Knuckles' Wreckage

Knuckles’ WreckageWheel Mongers MCBook 4 By: Jean Marie Copyright © 2023 Jean Marie All rights reserved The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. Chapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12Chapter 13Chapter 14Chapter 15Chapter 16Chapter 17Chapter 18Chapter 19Chapter 20Chapter 21More Books From The Wheel Mongers MC Romance SeriesOther Series From Jean MarieAbout Jean Marie Chapter 1 I sat and listened to my mom’s continuation of the same, endless speech about what a dangerous world it is out there for the daughter of the Road Rage Motorcycle Club president. One who had been assassinated, that is. There was no love lost between my dad and me. As a father, he had one gear: control. One might think that because he was a biker, he would take a loose, hippie kind of approach to raising children. But he was just the opposite. I haven’t said this out loud to my mother, of course, because it would be adding salt to her open wounds. It’s not like he was a white-collar executive of a corporation or a strict religious preacher. He was a biker. My father’s real name was John Reilly, but everyone had known him as Jackknife. He and his club resorted to violence when they deemed it necessary. He shielded that part of motorcycle club life from me for the most part, but he did end up being killed in a gun shootout. In the end, I saw it all. I knew motorcycle club life for what it was. Dressed up thug life. My dad was definitely a decent man when it came to me, at least, but he lived a life that teetered on wildness. People named Jackknife usually have some shade attached to them. But the fact that he was an officer in a controversial motorcycle club meant nothing when it came to his parenting style. He might as well have been the police chief or an un-benevolent dictator. I could never breathe, and I was angry and anxious all the time. And so was my mother. Though she would never admit that now. Oh, I know she missed him like crazy. They were high school sweethearts. I look at pictures of them from back then, and I get it. He was her knight in shining armor, except the shining part was a highly chromed Harley Davidson. My dad was good to her for the most part, but he had this thing that men were the protectors of women and did so by keeping them on a short leash. In his mind, protecting us was controlling us. His grasp was so tight. The look on her face when he told her she couldn’t do something, or she had to do something, burned in my brain. But the way she told it now, there was never a bad day in their marriage. It’s like she just forgot all the intense dominance he demanded over our lives. Count me out if that was love. Make no mistake, I can’t stand the ways of motorcycle club life, but I do hate that my dad is gone. For all his faults, he was still my dad. There was controversy about the shooting that killed him. Who shot first? Who went there with bad intentions? Possible evidence tampering. If the police were corrupt. The trial was a crazy roller coaster of a ride. If you ask me, I think my dad didn’t go there with the best intentions. Probably another way to assert his dominance and throw his weight around. Even so, I know he was not perfect, but I don’t think he should have been killed. It breaks my heart that he met with such a horrible end. And while I don’t get along much better with my mom than I did my dad, I’m doing my best to respect her in this time of grief. She is my mom, after all. But I am getting to my wit's end with the rants about my obligations to a club I want nothing to do with. It’s not my club. Even now, while she was going on and on, my mind was already out of the house, somewhere in a neutral world with my friends. And she always ended each round of lectures with the same sentence: “That man got away with murder,” she declared. The man she is referring to is Joker, the president of the Wheel Mongers, rivals to my father’s club. As much as my parents tried to protect me from the darker side of their community, I heard the stories, mostly legends, about both clubs, my father’s Road Rage Motorcycle Club, and their sworn enemies, the Wheel Mongers. Each side thought their organizations were ethical clubs, while the other gave bikers a bad name, but both were nothing more than gangs on bikes, in my opinion. They pretended to be about brotherhood, family, and community. But they were glorified gangsters that were their own judges, juries, and executioners. That was what took my father out. Yeah, I tried to be there for my mother, whose lectures were really just emotional venting, but I was suffocating. “Mom,” I said in a dutiful, caring tone. “It’s Friday night. You know my friends. We aren’t going to do anything wild and crazy. We just want to hang out.” “You can’t,” she squawked. “Not without an escort.” “I am an adult,” I tried to make light of it. “And this is not Victorian England. I’m just going to be a couple miles from the house.” My gentle request was yet another trigger for her. “You are the daughter of a Road Rage President!” she