Pagan (The Henchmen MC 8)

I could have dressed up. I even considered it. I had a suit somewhere. But in the end, I had chosen to go as myself- jeans, boots, a black tee, and my Henchmen cut. He would take me, cheap clothes, scabs, and all, I had decided at the compound.

But standing beside that building I had never walked into without at least a dress shirt and slacks on, even as a toddler, I was starting to feel weird about it.

Then, being pissed that I felt weird, I charged up the drive, pounding my fist into the door.

Take me or fucking leave me, Gramps.

"No fucking shit," I said with a grin as the door opened to reveal a very familiar face. One I had first learned how to put an O-face on. She had been twenty-three when I lost my virginity to her in a bathroom. So she was somewhere around middle age now, body a bit rounder, with a few crows feet next to her brown eyes, but still a good looking woman.

She looked at me for a long second before her mouth opened, her eyes going big. "Robby?"

"Oh, fuck no," I said with a laugh. "Pagan. I changed that name ages ago. Looking good, Sheila. Weird that they move you guys around like chess pieces, but I figure Gramps is easier to work for than Pops was, so congrats on the promotion."

"Rob... Pagan," she corrected, brows drawing together. "What are you doing here?"

"Impromptu meeting with the old man," I said, shrugging, tucking my hands into my back pockets because I was itching for a cigarette, but I knew smoking wouldn't be allowed inside. Unless they were cigars. "He's home. He's the only one here who would be driving that Rolls," I said, jerking my head toward the car in the drive.

"Oh, um, okay. Let me just..." she said as she backed in slightly to tell me she was going to ask if it was alright.

And me, well, no one could say I was a fucking patient man. Or one who gave a shit about manners. "No need, Sheila, I remember my way to the office," I said, squeezing past her and moving into the foyer.

Whatever you might be thinking the house looked like, add five million in ridiculous upgrades, and then you would be getting closer to what it was actually like.

But I wasn't sightseeing.

So I turned down the hall and went toward the back of the house, passing faces who eyed me like I was there to rob the joint, before I came to the slightly open door to his office.

I stopped to take a breath before pushing it open.

It was like stepping back in time. Everything was exactly as it had been fifteen some-odd years before. The walls were lined with dark wood built-in bookshelves. The ceiling was coffered, dark like the shelves and floor.

The center point was a massive executive desk that cost a small fortune and Gramps had always been sentimental about.

There, sitting at it, was Richard Scott, Sr. himself.

He'd aged. Of course he had. But money made it so it was done regally, allowing him to keep his stature, his hair, and his air of importance, instead of the frailty most men his age would allow themselves to experience.

His head jerked up at the sound of my boots, likely dragging him away from the mounds of paperwork he always seemed to have to work on, no matter how many hours he put in at the office.

Recognition was fast for him; I guess I was the only biker he was acquainted with.

"I didn't expect this," he admitted, moving to stand, buttoning his coat as he did so, the move so smooth from years of practice that it was practically easy to miss.

"Figured it was time," I said, moving in a few feet.

"You still drink whiskey like a fish?" he asked as he moved toward the sidebar. "Don't give me that look," he said with a smirk, one that looked very familiar because it was the same one that was perpetually on my face. "You might have thought you got away with something, Robert, but your father knew exactly how much of his hundred-dollar whiskey was missing each month."

"And yet he didn't seem to have a problem with a fifteen-year-old drinking it all," I said, accepting my glass, tipping it at him, then taking a sip.

"Well, he learned from experience that boys do that."

"No shit," I said, brows drawing low. "Pops was drinking all your liquor?"

"He didn't get away with it quite so easily with your grandmother around, but he did his best to keep the local liquor store in business."

"Interesting."

"Your father wasn't always the man you knew him as. He, at fifteen, could have given a fifteen-year-old you a run for your money. Though, he eventually did what was expected of him. Not exactly what he wanted, per se. Which might have explained how he turned out. Maybe if he had gone off to tour the world as some reporter like he had been interested in, he might have been a better father to you."