Twisted Secrets

by Keta Kendric

  They didn’t know my cousin the way that I did. I’d seen him lure helpless victims in with charm and grace before he flipped the script and ripped them to bloody pieces.

  I took my time observing each man surrounding the table. They had gone against an enemy who outnumbered our MC and friends by the hundreds to avenge my death. My heart swelled with gratitude and motivated me to do everything in my power to help them get rid of DG6 once and for fucking all.

  Working on the plans for Operation Take Six and reconnecting with my old squad from the military as well as my gun-running team was the kind of therapy I’d needed. Time with Megan and her magic seemed to have cured me of the headaches I’d been suffering from my gunshot. Regina was adjusting, and seeing her smile was a far cry from the sadness she’d endured when we were stuck in that cellar.

  Ansel had set up his study like a damn gallery. Another long table sat against the wall and consisted of an arsenal of weapons.

  Clack! Clack!

  The sound of Max shifting the level of a pump-action shotgun broke the silence of us drooling over the display of weapons that had taken our attention. Although we’d discussed the mission repeatedly, we continued to hammer home the details.

  D and Dax were with Laura and Beverly in Texas, running side operation WTF. They were also planning the executions of their Texas targets for Operation OTS.

  Our crew here in California were set to take out Tomas, an original DG6 member, his two sons, Fernando and Alonso, and now Sorio. Marcus and Scott were in Mexico, tracking down the final two that made up the core power for DG6.

  We all had our targets in our sights, but if we didn’t stick to plan and take out the identified targets, the entire operation could blow up in our faces.

  Later that evening, I lay in the calmest peace I’d ever experienced. Megan was stretched out on top of me, butt-ass naked and sound asleep. Smiling, I bent my neck to kiss the top of her curls.

  Our team was a week away from Operation Take Six. The pride I felt towards my cousin was immeasurable. Ansel had summoned patience and planned a mission that could very well take down one of the most formidable gangs in our country’s history.

  Chapter Nine

  Ansel

  A week under the same roof with Grumpy Cat had me ready to lock his ass up in my playroom with five hookers. An amused smile teased my lips when my uncle’s gaze shot up to the ceiling in frustration. Although their voices didn’t carry through the thick walls of my house, the sounds of bumping and knocking made their way to our ears.

  “Would you still want to kill her if she had chosen you over him, Unc?” I knew my uncle was not going to answer me, but I’d always been the most annoying motherfucker in the family who talked about the things no one else wanted spoken of again. “Frankly, I think she would have killed you.” I snickered, continuing to taunt him. “Your heart can’t take that much action.”

  “Ansel, shut the fuck up. I’m trying to watch this game while praying the fucking ceiling won’t come crashing down on top of us.”

  The doctor eyed my uncle and me. She sat between us, but my spacious couch left about a foot too much space between me and her. The confusion on her beautiful face was apparent. She leaned in my direction and kept her voice low. “Am I the only one who thinks that this is…is…weird?”

  “Dr. Regina, there is so much I have to teach you. Like I mentioned before, it’s not uncommon for MC members, especially ours, to share women. Aaron, my Uncle, and I have slept with…” After I leaned forward, my gaze landed on my uncle who pretended to be ignoring me.

  “How many of the same women, Unc?”

  Shark waved his hand through the air, brushing away my question with a grunt. He knew he’d enjoyed that shit. My nonchalant behavior on the subject seemed to baffle Regina even more.

  “But, it’s just…” she uttered, searching for the right words.

  My hand cupped her thigh. I’d been dying to put my hands on her again, and she’d been lucky I had decided to exercise control where she was concerned. Everything about her was natural and pure, sexy and alluring. I wanted nothing more than to drag her sexy ass down to my playroom and fuck her into submission. It was difficult to keep my distance from Regina, but my sexual discipline was something I took pride in.

  I tapped my hand against her thick thigh, loving the way my hand bounced against her jean-covered flesh. I liked that solid sound it made. “I know, Doc. We take some getting used to.”

  She inclined her head although I sensed that our fucked-up ways of doing things bothered her. The poor woman didn’t know the half of it. She was clueless, and if things would work out the way I wanted them to, I couldn’t wait to introduce her to my world.

  “Excuse me,” I announced as I stood and headed towards my bar. After fixing myself a drink, which was something I didn’t do often, I slid the door open and stepped outside. I stopped at the edge of my pool.

  There were more stressing concerns for me to worry about, and Regina’s distracting presence was shattering my otherwise unshakable willpower. Damn it, I wanted to be good, but Regina was making it hard. Clueless, she had no idea the kind of urges she had surging through me.

  By the time I made it back into the living room, my uncle had slid his ass closer to Regina. For someone who claimed to be a racist, he sure as shit didn’t shy away from women of color. I’d never seen this side of him, but he’d let the cat out of the bag the moment he’d allowed Megan to live with our MC and work as their maid. I think a sister had blown his mind in a way that he’d never recovered from.

  However, he still had a charm about him that I hoped to have by the time I reached his age. He was at least a hundred and fifty years old, but he had the ability to cast spells over younger women. So, I was keeping a close eye on him where the doctor was concerned.

  The game he’d been so interested in on the television earlier clearly wasn’t as interesting as he found Regina. As a matter of fact, the volume on the television had been turned down low. Now, it was nothing more than a hum in the background. Back in the day, I wouldn’t have given a second thought to sharing the doctor with my uncle but seeing him viewing her with such desire in his eyes had me feeling possessive.

  I plopped my ass down in the tight space between them, wiggling my body to make room to separate them. My uncle moved over with a frustrated huff as my hand automatically went to Regina’s thigh. I think I’d officially marked my territory and the doctor didn’t appear to mind one bit.

  Chapter Ten

  Aaron

  Ansel slammed his phone down on the 3-D model, breaking off a chunk of the model’s clay roof.

  “Mother fuck!” he shouted, his voice drawing gazes from around the room. The heavy silence filled the space as tension tightened our postures. We had all gathered like we’d been doing daily, going over the plan. We were constantly studying different scenarios and formulating reaction strategies for events that may or may not happen.

  Rage, anger, confusion, and an emotion I couldn’t describe flashed over his face.

  “Those motherfuckers are coming right now, a fucking day early. This is their way of showing me they don’t trust me. This is their fucking way of foiling any plan we might have to destroy them. The sons of fucking bitches!”

  Attempting to calm him, I placed a firm hand on Ansel’s shoulder. “We know this plan like the back of our hands. If they want to get this started today, we’re ready.”

  Eager voices around the room agreed. The devious smirk that inched onto Ansel’s face revealed the full story of the firestorm rolling through his twisted mind. He’d been itching for months to kill somebody…hell, anybody. And today he was about to get his wish. I didn’t believe that bullshit about him playing it cool while making plans to take down DG6. Ansel had dropped some bodies in the six months that I’d been away. I was sure of it.

  My watch flashed 3:17 p.m. Before I could ask the question on my mind, Ansel answered it. “They are sending an advanced party, whi
ch will be here by 4 to check out the house for bugs and to ensure I’m not setting them up.”

  “The fuckers don’t trust a soul,” Galvin stated.

  “They don’t, but neither do we. So, let’s get ready. Let’s make DG6 disappear,” I declared with firm conviction.

  “Either they die or we die,” Shark, Ansel, and I declared in unison, our gazes spilling over with hate and evil intentions. More expletives about dying pieces of shit followed as the room became filled with enough hostile intent to choke on.

  ***

  Like a scene out of an old western movie, a tumbleweed blew over the flat portion of the hilly plains we were located in. Except for the plush vegetation of the interior yard, the grass grew in patches and was more beige than green along the hills. The only visible trees were the few that Ansel had bought and transplanted in his yard. The landscape was a vast portrait of rolling hills, some stories high, as far as the eye could see.

  Clear plastic goggles kept dust out of my eyes as tiny particles swept against my face and peppered my exposed skin. Ansel had considered everything. I stood inside a foxhole that blended into the grassy ground a few hundred feet from the house at the bend of his fence in the front yard.

  My location was the furthest from the front entrance of the house, but it gave me the best view of the front grounds, the hills outside the property, and a distant view of the street that dead ended at Ansel’s entrance.

  There were four foxholes inside the gated property. Dude, Rob, Max, Hwang, and I manned those areas. At my suggestion, we’d dug three additional foxholes outside the gates in the nearby hills. My father, Galvin, and Finn manned those areas. We had JG and Lucky on the roof.

  Ansel had planned for an all-out war. Each of the small underground foxholes contained enough reserve ammunition and weapons to support the war to come. I knew from experience that DG6 employed soldiers willing to fight their battles, so our efforts weren’t unfounded.

  Fernando and Alonso Dominquez traveled with at least a four-man detail watching their backs. The family believed in backup, and if they were bringing an original member to Ansel’s front door, they were likely bringing a fucking army. Now that Sorio had decided to join the party, the army had grown.

  From my vantage point, a small doorway that slid up and down allowed me to see above ground. Dust flew into the air in the distance. The subtle tremble in the ground registered as the roar of an engine traveled along the air and landed in my ears. At least two vehicles indicated that DG6’s advanced recon team had arrived.

  Although unseen, I knew it was Rob and Max who were manning the front gate bunker. Two black Hummers sat at the tall iron gates waiting to be allowed entrance. The thick iron bars of the front gate entrance were wide enough to allow me to see what was happening outside the gate.

  The metal screeched, filling the air with its whine as the gate slid open at a lingering pace. The bunker Rob and Max manned was double the size of the others and served as a small command and control center.

  The gate slid closed, the heavy metal left its screeching cries in the air, signaling the start of OTS. I turned my gaze to the circular driveway as the Hummers parked side by side in front of the large bulletproof glass door at the front of Ansel’s large two-story home.

  Four heavily armed men exited each vehicle. The first four climbed the steps and entered Ansel’s house after he opened the door. The remaining four divided into teams of two and went in opposite directions to inspect the outside of the house.

  Ansel’s plan was to lure the flies into his web and destroy them. It was a great plan, and although we hadn’t counted on them arriving a day early, I believed we were ready. We had to assume that DG6 had access to just as much technology as we did, so we’d put in an emergency call to D to work on scrambling any spy devices they may have attempted to sneak in overhead.

  Once the initial inspection was completed, two of the guards who’d entered Ansel’s house exited and took a firm stance at the front door. Two reappeared from the back of the house and positioned themselves in Ansel’s front yard. They hadn’t discovered any of our foxholes nor had they bothered to check outside the property.

  An hour after the advance team had arrived, the sight of dust alerted us that the main party was on the way. This time, four SUV’s were granted access. With four men in each vehicle, we were looking at twenty-four hostiles so far. They parked the vehicles on Ansel’s grass, ensuring the two vehicles that contained the four DG6’s leaders were sandwiched between the outside vehicles.

  Four guards exited each outside vehicle and fanned around them with their weapons at the ready before one talked into a device on his wrist—his call to alert the others that it was safe for Tomas, Fernando, Alonso, and Sorio to exit the vehicles.

  My body tensed up, every muscle threatened to snap when I saw his face. My mind, back in one piece, zoomed in on him like facial recognition software identifying a criminal. The cracking sound my bones made, echoed off the dirt walls surrounding me, and the blood in my veins had been replaced with liquid fire.

  It was the face of the motherfucker who’d tortured me, the same motherfucker who’d sent men to track, hunt, and kill Megan. The motherfucker had also put his fucking hands on Regina. I prayed my face would be the last one he saw before the fires of hell opened and swallowed him.

  The arrogant prick walked up to Ansel’s door with his cousins and uncle. He was the only one of the four who was on full alert as two guards led them and two followed. I could tell at a distance that the Hummers they’d exited were armored. Four of DG6’s top men were walking into my cousin’s house, and if we had anything to say about it, they weren’t going to be walking back out.

  When the mic went live in my ear, I started talking. “Luke, what does it look like out there?” Luke was on roving patrol on foot. He’d gone about setting up distinct hiding spots along the path of the only street that led to Ansel’s house.

  “They have a Hummer hanging back. Four inside,” he confirmed. His voice was scratchy in my ear, but understandable.

  “Keep eyes on,” I suggested.

  “Tracking,” Luke replied.

  “Shark, what does it look like out there?”

  “How the fuck do you think it looks? I’m on a fucking hill inside a hole in the ground.”

  The hint of laughter in my father’s tone made me smile. He was an asshole, but I loved his grumpy, old ass.

  I went down the line checking the men’s status and ensuring our mics worked as I kept a keen eye on the targets entering Ansel’s house.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ansel

  Two DG6 guards staked out my living room after they’d conducted their bug scan, and two stepped outside the front door. No words were exchanged between us as we awaited the main party. I sat on my couch and flipped through the channels of my television.

  Thanks to D, I was actually using the remote to re-arm our listening devices so I could communicate with the rest of the team. D had fixed it so that all devices could be turned off and rendered undetectable in the event DG6 decided to conduct a scan. They had, and we’d taken the extra precaution to be prepared for them.

  With a few clicks of my remote, we were back up and running and able to hear each other.

  My device was on the lowest setting, but I could hear Aaron making a round of mic checks. The sound of the front gate sliding open alerted me that the main party had arrived.

  My job was to escort the members of DG6 into the designated spots in my study while they inspected a sample of the guns they were prepared to purchase. If I succeeded in getting them to the right locations, our team could take their asses out with the flick of their trigger fingers.

  Aaron was outside, but he hadn’t placed himself in one of the locations that would allow him to take out the one I knew he wanted to kill most—Sorio. Aaron and I would have preferred to kill these assholes slowly with our bare hands, but there were times when you had to sacrifice self-gratification to compl
ete the mission. Also, with the amount of armed guards DG6 had brought, we had to stick to the plan.

  The first two guards, who had led the men, entered my living room and fanned out like soldiers. They strategically placed themselves at my windows and interior doorways, so they could protect the four bastards who’d followed them into my house.

  It was time for me to put my acting skills to work. With a smile pasted on my face, I walked towards the four with my hand out, attempting to shake Tomas’ hand, since he was a well-respected original. The metallic click of weapons as they were drawn and aimed at me alerted me to throw my hands up in surrender. Little did they know, I’d had so many guns clicked at me, the sound did nothing but amp me up.

  “I was attempting to shake the hands of one of my idols,” I explained, keeping my gaze on Tomas. Saying those words had damn near killed me. All I truly wanted to do was rack bullet after bullet and watch them fly into that asshole’s face until his head melted into pieces.

  A smile crept across Tomas’ prune-like lips before he waved a disarming hand at the men and reached out his wrinkled hand towards me. The skin covering his face was cracked and leathery, and his pores were so wide that it appeared they’d been surgically enhanced. Gray and black hair dotted his head, and he was no more than 5’5”. It was hard to keep a straight face when all I wanted to do laugh before I brutally committed murder.

  “Mr. Blake, it’s so nice to meet you. I’ve heard wonderful things about you.”

  Antonio Blake was one of several aliases I’d had my friend at the FBI create on my behalf. I was sure DG6 had thoroughly researched me, so I’d left them a shadowy past that they would appreciate.

  The identity I didn’t want them to find was the real me and my association with the August Knights. I’d quickly grown to trust D as much as Aaron had, and he was the only one I wanted handling the task of hiding my true identity: Tyler Ansel Knox.