Misguided (Fallen Aces MC Book 5) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  SNEAK PEEK

  BONUS FIRST CHAPTER

  ALSO BY MAX

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MISGUIDED

  Copyright © 2017 Max Henry

  Published by Max Henry

  All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Max Henry is in no way affiliated with any brands, songs, musicians, or artists mentioned in this book.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to the seller and purchase your own copy.

  Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Published: July 2017, by Max Henry [email protected]

  Edited by: Love n Books

  Cover Design: Sara Eirew

  Formatted by: Max Effect

  The first step toward getting somewhere, is to decide that you aren’t going to stay where you are.

  - Unknown

  ONE

  Dog

  “You’re a fucking embarrassment to my name,” my father yells across the dinner table, the glassware rattling with the force of his fists as he slams them down.

  My name.

  Sums it up perfectly, really. If you asked my father, the von Essen name belongs to him. I bet if the asshole could copyright it, he would.

  Me? It might be mine by birthright, but as he likes to remind me, I haven’t earned the perks that go with it yet.

  Not sure I ever will.

  “I told you I’m not interested in enlisting.”

  “So you turn up to the interview I set up, drunk?” He scoffs, leaning on one elbow dramatically. “The things I do for you …”

  Correction: the things he thinks he does for me. Rollan von Essen does nothing for anybody else, only things that’ll help him. Me enlisting was one of those.

  “Imagine the esteem that would come with my son being in the army.”

  He wants a general, something distinguished to add to the family tree. Only problem is, I’d actually have to give a fuck long enough to reach that status. Not going to happen.

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time, and considering,” I snap, “that I wanted to get my ass booted out the door as quick as I came in it, I’d say the plan was a success.”

  “Show some respect,” my older brother mutters as he slices delicately into his rare steak.

  I swing my gaze right to the pretentious asshole and then drift a little further to his waif of a wife who picks at her salad as though she’s not surrounded by a testosterone filled room of hate. He trained that one well.

  “Mind your fuckin’ business,” I snarl.

  “Your constant degradation of our name is my business,” he growls, slamming his fisted knife onto the tabletop.

  His wife doesn’t flinch.

  “Can you comprehend on any level how awkward it is when the first thing a shareholder says to me is, ‘I see that brother of yours got arrested again. Must make family dinners awkward, huh Derek?’” His nostrils flare, my father watching on with sick interest from the far end of the table. “What am I supposed to say to that, Koen? You tell me.”

  “Same thing I said before.” I give him a tight-lipped smirk. “Mind your fuckin’ business.”

  His face flushes red, his fists clenched so hard on the oak tabletop that his knuckles turn white.

  “Boys, please,” Dad roars, despite the fact we’re two grown men capable of holding our own. “Koen, I tolerated your pastime at the start because it seemed like a phase, a passing curiosity, but now …”

  “Now, what?” I challenge him, pissed he’s brought up my real family.

  “Now, it’s proving to be a bad habit you need cleansing of.”

  Oh, no he didn’t. “Fuck this,” I snarl, tossing my pretentious napkin down on the table. “I don’t even know why I came here today.”

  He’s got no right to tell me what’s right and wrong. No business to look down on my choices simply because they aren’t the same as his. Neither of them does.

  “You know why you’re here,” Derek says. “What today means.” His eyes are hard, his heart probably even more so.

  “Yeah,” I scoff as I push my seat out and stand. “I do. Question is, why the fuck did I decide to come here and celebrate it with you?”

  This time last year, I witnessed my father show weakness for the first and only time in his life. This time last year, I held my mother’s hand as her grip fell lax, waiting on her to pull the next breath, to fight to stay with her family.

  Yet she didn’t.

  She was tapped out and tired of life, and I knew it as well as my father and Derek did, that she welcomed death.

  Dad sighs at the far end of the long table, running a heavily adorned hand over his rapidly aging face. “Koen …”

  “No, Rollan. I’m done.” I shake my head, hands braced on the back of my seat. “Done with you tryin’ to direct my future, done with both of you lookin’ down on my choices, and done with you actin’ as though you wish I’d never been born.”

  He doesn’t deny it, instead choosing to sit stoic as I take my leave from the place I used to call home. It lost all semblance of family when Mom left us. Never will be home again.

  Derek chooses to ignore me by staring down at the table, yet his wife watches me go with a hint of jealousy; as though she wishes she could up and walk out like I am. I snort a pitied laugh at her dead eyes, at the shell of a woman she is. That is what being a real von Essen does to people—drains them of all distinctive traits until they’re compliant zombies.

  Unlike my father and brother, I don’t get a kick out of stripping people of their free will. Bullying others around simply because I was lucky enough to be born into a family that has lorded a fucking name over the lesser for decades, was never my game.

  That sick game of cat and mouse is their specialty.

  I might share the same physical features as my blood, but on the inside, where it counts, I’m nothing like them. And t
hat couldn’t make me any fucking happier.

  The cool night air bites at my collar as I step out the front doors of the house, and I shrug my cut a little higher on my shoulders, relishing it’s comforting weight as it hangs on my back. The Fallen Aces are my home now; best decision I ever made.

  My father? My brother? They’re dead to me.

  Them and their million-dollar empire of hollowness and misery.

  TWO

  Mel

  Crickets sing outside the walls of the barn, a gentle melody to lull us to sleep while we wait on our ride to turn up. Hay scratches at my back, poking its sharp ends through the thin sweatshirt I wear.

  I wasn’t prepared to run. Hell, I wasn’t prepared to take down a man with the gun Johnny left me, either.

  Yet needs were a must.

  “Quit your fidgetin’,” Hooch grumbles, his eyes still closed as he tries to catch twenty.

  I lean into my brother’s side a little more, shifting my hips around so the worst of the hay misses my lower back. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

  “Too much on my mind,” he rumbles, the vibration of his words tickling my arm where it rests across his chest.

  We haven’t always been this close and cuddly, but being thrown on the back of a bike and left to hide out without any idea if you’d ever see a familiar face again kind of has a snuggly effect on me.

  I’ve lost count of the days, unsure what month it even is anymore, yet Hooch tells me it’s a little over a year since I went into hiding. Apparently it’s safe to return now; the man who had a price on my head lost his own when his son, Sawyer, came to visit one last time.

  Families. They’ll fuck you up like that.

  “Is she okay, you think?” I jerk my chin towards where the girl Hooch brought with him lies on the other side of the barn.

  “Don’t know.”

  He hasn’t said much about her. Hell, she said more than he did on our rocky truck ride here to escape the feds that were bearing down on me. I don’t usually trust strangers, but this girl has a fire in her eyes that I like. She’s smart, headstrong, and unaware of either of those traits in herself.

  Plus, I trust Hooch. He wouldn’t have brought her if it weren’t necessary.

  “She seems unsure of herself,” I muse aloud. “Like she doesn’t believe she’s any good for anything.”

  “Hit the nail on the head, big sis.” Hooch shifts, pulling his smokes out of his cut.

  “Out of coke?” My brother only smokes this often when he’s short of blow. The habit’s one he’s had since he was an easily swayed teenager hanging around men who should have known better than to share drugs with a kid.

  “Afraid so.” He offers the pack my way, and I lift my hand.

  Yeah, I used to smoke. But I’m not wasting the progress I made being forced cold turkey after I went into hiding.

  “We’ve all missed you,” Hooch says before placing a kiss on the top of my head. “Everyone will be happy to see you when we get back home.”

  When we get back home. Thanks to my self-defense stunt, I still can’t show my face in Fort Worth until the details are sorted. Placing three bullets in the chest of a Federal agent tends to leave people looking for answers; ones that won’t make sense considering I’m supposed to be six-foot under.

  “You never told me how you did it,” I say, pulling out of Hooch’s hold to sit up and allow him room to smoke. “How did you make them believe I was dead?”

  “Nothing you need to know, princess.”

  “Don’t call me that.” I hate the reminder of my supposed “special” role in the club. I’m nothing special; my birth name doesn’t offer me any unique skills or use over that of the other members.

  It’s the main reason my old man and I had a falling out. Daddy never quite saw things the same way I did.

  “Precious, you’re royalty to these roughnecks. You gotta play your part, baby.”

  My part, which consisted of finding myself a fitting suitor that would ensure strong offspring to head up the table for generations to come. Our family has headed the Fallen Aces, Fort Worth since the start, and for some unknown reason, it’s assumed we always will.

  What makes us so special?

  “You gotta let that go,” Hooch mumbles around his cigarette. “You take away what those men and women believe in, and they’ll start lookin’ towards people less desirable to fill that role.”

  “Is that what you do?” I bite. “Act like a fuckin’ god for them because it’s what they want?”

  His eyes bore holes into mine, the anger evident despite the lack of light in the dark barn. “You know I don’t.”

  “So don’t tell me to act all high and mighty if you can’t stomach it either.”

  He sighs, pushing off the wall to rise and walk over to his gypsy girl. I slump in his spot watching as he approaches her slowly, treating her with caution. He’s not this way with many people, which shows how deeply he must care about her.

  I can’t help but feel jaded seeing him so freely choose whoever he wants to be by his side. I thought I had the one, the guy who lit my days up and made me live, but it wasn’t to be.

  The mentally unhinged son of a drug lord wasn’t Daddy’s first choice for me. And when the two of us refused to stop sneaking around behind his back, he packed Sawyer off to our northern brothers for safekeeping.

  Right before he tried to play matchmaker and force me into a relationship with the man he thought would be more suited for the daughter of the president.

  Not that it worked out. Having Sawyer, the only man who made me happy stolen away cemented the anger I felt towards my father, right until the bitter end.

  Anger I sometimes recognize when I look at Hooch, knowing he felt the same struggle to be free as me. How can he know what it’s like to be constrained, held back and forced into someone else’s preconceived ideal of what you should be, and then so freely apply that same pressure to me?

  Why can’t I be welcome to choose who I want, be who I want, and act how I want?

  Is the real me, the girl inside, really that bad?

  THREE

  Dog

  My yell echoes off the trees, disturbing the serene night beyond. A simple rest stop on the hills near my old home—my mother’s favorite spot. It’s beautiful, just like she was. Peaceful and calming, exactly like I remember her to be.

  Moonlight casts eerie shadows through the trees, the long spindly tendrils reaching for my boots where I stand on the gravel, flexing my fists, ruing what’s left.

  I read somewhere that a boy will always have a strong connection to his mother, often so over that of the masculine bond between a father and son.

  The ache in my hollow heart tells me the same.

  I miss her. I fucking miss her. And the worst part? I can’t tell anyone about this pain because then the questions would start, the judging, the rumors. As far as my brothers at the Aces know, I’m the son of a farm mechanic, a delinquent looking for a stable home life.

  Not even remotely true. My father’s no mechanic. The bastard wouldn’t know how to wield a socket wrench if the instructions were laid out before him. His hands are clean, unwrinkled and soft. He isn’t a real man. He’s a front, a fraud, and a callous asshole that only wants what’s best for him.

  He’s everything I don’t want to be.

  I draw in a deep breath, the air shuddering into my lungs as I breathe my way through the grief. I don’t cry, not often anyway, but fuck, at times like this it’s hard to keep that staunch front that’s become such a part of my life.

  I play the fool, joke around and make light of my promiscuous reputation. But deep down there’s a little boy still calling for his momma, not ready to let go of her yet.

  My phone breaks the still night; the shrill sound a cruel juxtaposition to the natural grace of the forest around me. I fish it out of my pocket, hitting the Accept button as I bring it to my ear.

  “Where about are you, brother?”

  Callum.
Our VP.

  “On my way back in.” I swallow the knot in my throat, steeling myself once more. “You need me for somethin’?”

  “King needs you. He’s got a midnight run he thinks you would be good for.”

  “Bit short notice, ain’t it?” We’ve been sitting on our hands for weeks; nothing more than a few ripples in the relative calm surface of the criminal underbelly to worry about. A run in the dead of night seems odd.

  “He only just got the call to action himself. Can you make it?”

  “Yeah. I’ll see you in twenty.” Lord knows I need the excuse to open the throttle a little wider and blow off some steam.

  I disconnect and pocket the phone, turning for my bike. As I kick my leg over, a deep sense of something profound hits me in the chest, weighing heavy and stealing my next breath. I sit there awhile, staring out through the break in the tree line as the ache eases, my chest rising a little easier as time goes by. I know the feeling; it was what I got the day I walked into the Fallen Aces compound behind Callum, ready to be introduced as a new hang-around.

  It’s the unease before the change—a new beginning.

  Some would say it’s suicide to cut my father and his financial support off, but truth is, I’ve lived the past four and a half years without needing a penny from his filthy empire. I sure as fuck don’t need it now, and even if I did, I’d rather crawl bloody and broken over crushed glass to beg for it from our enemies before I let him lord that kind of debt over me.

  A bird startles in the trees as I fire the bike to life and turn for home. At least, the only home that means anything to me since Mom died.

  ***

  King’s bike is already lined up in the yard by the time I pull in, a couple of prospects loading one of our spare rides into the back of the crash van under his supervision.

  “Hey, pres.” I tip my chin his way as I approach, pulling my smokes from the pocket of my cut.

  “Dog.” He jerks his head in response, arms folded tight across his chest. “You good?”

  I meet his concerned gaze and lie as I always do. “Yeah. Of course.” I finish the bullshit off with a chuckle and cheeky smile. “What’s the rush?”