Heart of a Rebel: Rebel Aces MC Part 1 Read online

  Rebel Hearts MC

  Part One

  K.D. Latronico

  Copyright © by K.D. Latronico, 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address: authorkdlatronico.gmail.com

  FIRST EDITION

  This book is a work of fiction. Some of the places named in the book are actual places located in Port Townsend and the state of Washington. The names, characters, brands, and situations are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and owners of various products and locations referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  DISCLAIMER: This book is for mature audiences age 18+ due to violent situations, language, and sexual content.

  Editing: Melissa Rivera at Rogue Readers, LLC

  Cover design/Formatting: Sarah Paige at OPIUM HOUSE Creatives

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  TABLE OF 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

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  This book is dedicated to all of my incredible family, friends, and everyone that supported me through this entire process.

  And to my ride or die Sweetbutts - Mom, Judy, and Jen.

  I couldn’t have done this without you guys.

  PROLOGUE

  LEAH – 2007

  YELLING WAS WHAT WOKE ME UP.

  Loud noises were par for the course in our little home. Being part of a Mexican-Italian household, you never knew if someone was fighting or just talking. My mother was notorious for that. We knew to listen closely when she was on the phone with our father; it was a little game my sister and I played: fighting or talking. It was a good indicator of what mood our parents would be in that night.

  This time, the game wasn't necessary.

  My mother wasn't yelling, she was shrieking. I couldn't even tell if words were coming out of her mouth as I woke up, abruptly, my heart hammering in my chest. The first instinct was to scramble from my bed and run out, but something stopped me. I quickly realized there were other voices coming from inside our house. Male voices, shouting, large feet stomping around coming from the front of the house. I stayed frozen, half in my bed and half out, trying to make out what was happening.

  "Leah?"

  The raspy, trembling voice was coming from the other bed where my twin sister was now sitting up, clutching the blankets to her chest.

  "Lana--" A loud crash sounded from the living room, followed by more screaming and shouting. Lana gasped and began to scramble to the floor, but I quickly dove out of my bed to grab her. "Shhh!" I whispered frantically.

  "But -- Mom! Something's wrong!"

  My heart was pounding, but something calm came over me. As the oldest, I had always taken the role of the mother hen of my siblings. Despite being only six and a half minutes older than my identical twin, I was the natural leader. I took control of situations where something went wrong.

  Something was very wrong, and my siblings needed me.

  Just as I opened my mouth to tell her what to do, a gunshot rang out through the house.

  Lana screamed. Well, she started to scream, but on instinct my hand slammed into her mouth, clamping over it. Her wide brown eyes were filled with panic as she struggled against me, but I held onto her tightly.

  "Stop!" I hissed, realizing that my voice was shaking once the word was out. "We need to get out of here."

  Her terrified gaze shot to mine. "Eddie." The words were muffled, but I knew what she meant. I was thinking the same thing. Our baby brother was in his room across the hall and was bound to have woken up already - if not before, definitely after the gunshot.

  "I'll get him. You need to get out. Go to the Gibson's, get inside, and call for help."

  Lana's hand grabbed my wrist in one swift movement, yanking my hand off of her mouth. "I'm not leaving you!"

  "You need to!"

  "No!" Lana sprang up, forcefully pulling me with her before shoving me towards the window. "You go. I'll get Eddie."

  Before I even had a chance to protest my stubborn, hardheaded sister was scrambling towards the door. There was nothing I could do, she had a mind of her own. My only option now was to get out and try to get some help.

  Our shared bedroom was on the second floor, but since we were sixteen-year-olds that weren't shy to sneaking out at night, there was a roll-up ladder in our dresser drawer, hidden inside of a hollowed book and buried underneath our socks. Normally we would use it to leave after our parents were asleep, sneaking off to a friend's house, party, or a forbidden date well after curfew. It was an aid in breaking the rules.

  Today, it may just be saving our lives.

  After opening the window as quickly but quietly as possible, I rolled the rope ladder down and latched the hooks onto the windowsill. Scrambling over the edge, I made the climb far quicker than I ever had before. Ignoring the fact that I was just in an oversized t-shirt and a pair of underwear, I jumped before I reached the bottom and landed barefoot in the grass.

  I took off running.

  The house next door was where our landlords lived. The Gibson's, a couple around my parents' age, owned the house and land that we lived on. Mary and her husband Crow were good people. I had known them since I was a kid, and what always stood out about them wasn't the fact that the man was named Crow and drove a motorcycle, but the fact that they were kind, friendly, and helped us out whenever we needed it - and sometimes when we didn't. They didn't look at us like pathetic poor kids like some others did. We were just another family to them. Mary would babysit us whenever she could, and always had the best snacks. We loved going over to their house, which was easy with it being only a few feet from our front door.

  Today, the lack of distance was a miracle. Through the dark, I ran as quickly as I could towards their back porch. Just before I reached my destination, another gunshot sounde
d from the house, muffled this time. A strangled gasp left my lips and I leaped up the few steps, flinging myself at the back door. Just as I started to pound frantically, the door was yanked open, and Crow stood, towering over me, the expression on his face angry -- or was it fear?

  "Get inside," he commanded before his gaze shifted quickly behind me. "Where are Lana and Eddie?"

  "Inside. Lana. She went." I was panting, and I realized then that panic was setting in. "Gunshots!"

  Grabbing my arm, Crow pulled me inside and stormed outside, but not before slamming the door shut. The last glimpse I had of him was his back, clad in sweatpants and a t-shirt, his long hair wild from sleep - and there was a gun in his hand.

  "Sweetheart, come here." Mary was much gentler as she took me into her arms, hugging me close to her body, which wasn't much larger than mine.

  "There were gunshots! I heard my mom. There were men's voices." My face was wet suddenly. I lifted a trembling hand to my face and realized I was crying. "My brother and sister!"

  "Shh, shh baby. It's okay. Crow’s going to get them. They'll be okay."

  As if she had the power to summon them, there was a series of frantic knocks on the back door, and Lana’s voice screaming for it to open. Mary hurried with me towards the door and pulled it open, and to my relief, there stood my siblings.

  Lana was clutching a sobbing Eddie to her side as she pulled him through the door. He was only eleven years old. Normally we tried to shield him from the rougher side of things that happened in the house, but none of us had counted on something like this happening.

  My mind started to turn blank. I didn't hear any of the words that were coming from of Mary or Lana. I didn't see as she shut the door and pulled us all into the living room, and I didn't even feel as the older woman pushed me to sit on the couch with Lana, our brother shoved in the middle of us.

  I didn't snap out of it until a pair of heavy footsteps came down the steps that led to the second floor of the house. My gaze was hazy, but I knew instantly who had joined us. Ward. Twenty years old, Mary and Crow's only son, and the usual object of my obsession.

  But tonight, all I could focus on was the look of panic on his face that mirrored my own.

  "What's going on?"

  His voice was deep and commanding, like his father's. His normally bright, almost sparkling eyes were dark, and if I were seeing it correctly, there was a deep fear there, a look that had mirrored his father’s earlier.

  Mary looked at her son and shook her head, glancing towards the three of us all huddled together on the couch.

  They must have spoken with just that look, because almost instantly Ward was on the move, heading towards the front door.

  "Simon! No! Your father is taking care of it."

  Ward spun around, his eyes flashing. "I'm not letting him do it alone! I have to go over there."

  I didn't even realize I was standing or speaking until the words were out of my mouth. "No! Ward, please!"

  He stopped short, staring down at me. There was a flash of something across his face I couldn't quite put my finger on.

  I spoke again. "They have guns."

  Ward blinked, stepping towards me. One hand brushed my hair away from my face in a gentle motion, but his face was still hard as stone. "So do I. I'll be okay."

  Bolting out the door, he left us all shouting after him as he disappeared into the night.

  CHAPTER 1

  LEAH

  TWELVE YEARS LATER

  "YOU’VE GOTTA BE FUCKING KIDDING ME!"

  Lana was cackling like a Bond villain as she did a victory dance at the end of the foosball table, which was really just a bunch of hip thrusts and her hands hitting her pelvis in a v-formation, indicating for DT to suck it.

  It being her very invisible but often referenced dick.

  "You cheated!" DT, short for Duct Tape, was tall, broad, and, as Lana frequently said, dumber than a box of rocks sometimes. Good looking, sure, but his look screamed 'meathead' far more than I was into. Plus, he was twenty-two and best friends with my brother.

  "Bitch I didn't cheat," Lana shot back with a roll of her eyes.

  "You keep hitting the table! It was moving!"

  Eddie, who was leaning against the back of the leather couch in the lounge snorted loudly, his wide arms crossed against his chest as he surveyed the scene. "Like she can really move the table against your big, rhino looking ass."

  That earned him laughter from the peanut gallery, and another 'suck it' from my sister. "Yeah, what he said. Don't be a baby back bitch, Ducky."

  My sister, ladies and gentlemen. The Queen of pissing guys off, one sentence at a time.

  From where I sat at the bar, perched on a stool with my back against the leather cushion bumper, this was a normal, everyday occurrence for us. This being my sister taunting the guys at the clubhouse, and the clubhouse being the home of the Rebel Aces MC.

  Our second home, a place we had found solace in for over a decade. A home with an unconventional, often misunderstood family, the family that had taken us in when we lost our own.

  I had known about the Rebel Aces MC since we moved into our old house in Port Townsend. The first time I had seen their symbol was on the vest that Crow always wore. He was the man that my siblings and I owed everything to. He had always been a friend, a neighbor that helped us out when we needed him, but for over twelve years now he was a father figure, one we honestly never had. With him being the President from the time we first met him, my siblings and I had spent a lot of time around the club. I had found it intriguing, especially the aspect of family, a concept that had been foreign for many years.

  Crow had always been the big boss man around the clubhouse, a commanding but fair leader that earned the respect of every man that wore his club's patch. I had never seen any of the brothers talk back to or pick a fight with Crow - not just because he was almost a little scary, with his long, jet black hair and dark eyes that seemed to see all.

  Commotion in front of me snapped me out of my thoughts. DT and Moose were starting to play fight, with the latter having the former in a headlock.

  Which caused me to roll my eyes as I took a sip of my beer. My gaze caught with Quinn, the Sweetie that usually tended bar. She was one of the ones I actually liked. Typically, the girls that became club sweeties weren't exactly...good human beings? They were basically the groupies of the motorcycle world. They hung around the men, and more often than not actually lived in the clubhouse. They were taken care of, sometimes financially, given a home when they didn't have one, offering protection if they needed it in exchange for cleaning and cooking duties as well as servicing the men.

  Being around the club for as long as I had, tales from other MCs had come up more than once or twice. I knew that some of the more morally corrupt ones were pretty bad to their women. Which was funny, referring to other clubs as morally corrupt when I was more than well aware that the Aces took part in criminal activity. A lot of it I had seen firsthand. But I knew the kind of men that wore the Aces patch – they weren’t like the others.

  "Gonna be a wild night," Quinn said as she wiped down the bar, keeping herself busy while it was still fairly slow. She was a pretty girl, with shoulder-length light brown hair and a typically petite body, though she was fairly noticeably pregnant. The reason I liked Quinn was that she wasn't here to try and steal a man for her own and wasn't the type of girl to go after the men with old ladies like some of the others did. She had arrived here four months earlier, very newly pregnant, homeless, and running from something. No one really knew the details, but she honestly was here for help. She worked hard, didn't start drama, and was grateful for what the guys had given her.

  Quinn was good people, and I considered her a friend.

  "Seems like it. If those bozos are any indication."

  Quinn looked up at me and snorted. "Bozos, really? What year were you born, 1937?"

  I shrugged my ink covered shoulders and took another sip of my beer. Before I ha
d a chance to respond, the massive door to the meeting room opened and a deep voice cut through the chatter.

  "Church, thirty minutes. And try not to break shit."

  If I hadn't known who the voice belonged to, I probably would have figured it out just by the electric current that started buzzing just over my skin. Slowly I turned my head towards the door, and almost like I had willed it so, I caught the eyes that belonged to the deep, panty melting voice staring right at me.

  That. Man.

  Ward Gibson had a way to get under my skin by just being present in the room. Hell, he could be halfway across town and he could just worm his way into my thoughts and bam! Hot and bothered. Or annoyed. Or daydreaming about things I would be embarrassed to admit to anyone living and breathing.

  Six-foot-two, piercing blue eyes, and a body molded by hours in the gym (or maybe some sort of god that had the entire heterosexual female population in mind). That body was decorated almost completely in black and gray ink, intricate designs crafted by an incredibly gifted artist, only adding to the man's sex appeal. He had a classically handsome face; that's what I remembered from when we were teens and he still hadn't grown the beard he sported today. Back when his light brown hair was just a little shaggy until he had to buzz it off for the military. Now thick, dark facial hair covered the lower half of his face, and his hair was almost as long as mine. Curly, wild, and typically tied back with an elastic, which only enhanced how good looking he was.

  Too good looking. Damn him.

  I was staring, but I didn't bother hiding it. I just arched an eyebrow at him, tipping my beer bottle in his direction. Ward nodded towards me, and even behind the hair surrounding his mouth I could see a hint of a smile on his lips.

  "Jesus, can you two just fuck again already?"

  And cue my ever lady-like sister to ruin the moment.

  Turning my head to Lana, I rolled my eyes. Despite having been born identical, the two of us were pretty different. And certainly looked it now, after years of altering our appearances. Not on purpose, really. We had always liked being identical, and as young kids, it was fun to fool people that hadn't learned how to tell us apart. As we grew up, our personalities began to grow and evolve, and with that came our style.