Empower (Pinewood Lake Book 2), page 1
Empower
Tiffany Casper
Pinewood Lake
Book 2
Wrath MC
Copyright © Tiffany Casper 2024
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Dedication
This book is not only dedicated to the people who liked my work enough to purchase it and escape but also to my boys who Empower me day in and day out.
This book is also dedicated to anyone who has ever been abused or mistreated. Hold your head up and be proud that you survived you're still here. You’re brave, you’re strong, you’re beautiful, you're handsome.
Empower
Playlist
Take Me To Church – Hozier
Marry Me – Jason Derulo
Half Your Age – Kid Rock
Sound of Madness – Shinedown
Just Hold On – Savannah Dexter Ft Adam Calhoun
Ride With Me – Cody Johnson
I Could Not Ask For More – Edwin McCain
Synopsis
Lena was your average girl. You know the one who meets a cute boy when she’s younger and falls head over heels for that boy. She’s living her best life.
Until she starts to notice things.
Until something tragic happens and she loses her mother.
And for the next six years, those things she noticed all came to fruition.
Thankfully, her mother had done something before Lena was born, or even thought of.
And it saved her life.
Storm was the president of the South Carolina chapter of Wrath MC. The most powerful club in the south.
He had his brothers.
He had his daughter.
And he had women available.
However, he felt as though something was missing.
That was until he saw a young woman sitting on a set of steps.
HEA/Age-Gap/No Cheating
Trigger Warning
It is not my intent to provide you an escape, and a release from your day-to-day, only to send you to a dark place.
It is something I never want to cause.
Therefore, if you have the following triggers then please don’t read this book.
This book contains child abuse, sexual assault, and murder.
The sexual assault is discussed in the past tense. And is located in chapter ten. If you want to read this story but skim that chapter, then please do so.
Again, it is never my intent to send you to a place you never want to be.
All my love,
Tiffany.
Pinewood Lake
Wrath MC
President – Storm
Vice President – Red
SAA – Clip
Enforcer – Tank
Road Captain - Gravel
Tech – Hippie
Secretary – Porter
Treasurer – Cason
Icer – Ripper
A Note From The Author
There is an age discrepancy between Rise and Empower. When I wrote Rise, I didn’t consider how badly it would be for Storm to meet Lena and feel the way he does while she is only sixteen.
So, for the purpose of this book, I changed Raine and Lena’s age to eighteen when Lena moves to live with her dad.
Table of Contents
Empower
Copyright © Tiffany Casper 2024
Dedication
Playlist
Synopsis
Trigger Warning
A Note From The Author
Table of Contents
Prequel
Preface
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
Epilogue
Thank You
Sneak Peek
Other Works
Prequel
Wrath MC
The most notorious, dangerous, one-percenter motorcycle club isn’t the one everyone knows about. It isn’t the one everyone sees at rallies, charity events, or even at bars. Some say Wrath MC is just a myth. A club that was savage, a club that passed around women and then sold them to the highest bidder. Others say the MC is full of nine-to-fivers and weekend warriors. They also say, no one wanted to cross them. Well, some of those myths just may be true. While there are rumors about the club and those rumors are galore, the rumor of where the mother charter could possibly be located is the largest rumor of all.
The people in a little old county in South Carolina know better. The three hundred square miles in Pinewood Lake held a secret. A very well-known secret or two. Little did they know, Wrath MC holds many more secrets, and a lot of those are made of stories your momma warned you about.
Some people have even been rumored to have gone missing in the area, never to be heard from again.
While others have either passed through and are but a fading memory, some have come and gone and left their mark. While others have come and made their mark on not only the MC but on the community as well.
This story is about one of the members of Wrath MC, Pinewood Lake Chapter—the President, to be exact.
Hold on for one wild alpha badass man and a romance that will last till the end of time.
Preface
Colleen
If Colleen Daniels knew what would happen twelve years, five months, and three days into the future, she never would’ve gone to that clubhouse.
She would have stayed to make it work with her husband, instead of running and needing an escape.
However, she knew, thinking she wished that night never happened, she would never trade a single second of seeing her little girl’s smile.
But five years, three hundred and fifty-nine days later… She knew she never needed to worry about her daughter from her perch on a cloud as her white wings fluttered in the breeze.
And then three days later, she knew that she could fly away and be someone else’s guardian angel who needed her. Because not too far from where her daughter stood, was a man. A man that she knew would love her daughter the way every woman wanted.
The way she herself wanted to be loved all those years ago.
As she saw the look on the man’s face, she smiled, shifted her body, lifted her wings, and flew away.
Prologue
Storm
Why I put up with this shit, I couldn’t fucking tell you.
That was my only thought as the clock ticked over to eleven twenty-six.
And she wasn’t home yet.
With my luck, she wouldn’t even bother coming home and I wouldn’t have to deal with her ass.
But I didn’t get that lucky.
The only luck I’ve ever had was meeting my brothers, starting my club, and having my daughter.
But that’s for later if she comes in here with shopping bags that have certain logos, then she’s going to be getting sent out the door with all her shit.
Because I was tired of it.
So, fucking tired of it.
But this was the last and final straw, and this was also the third one she hadn’t remembered.
Who the fuck doesn’t remember their own child’s birthday?
Shaking my head, it was just in time for me to hear a door shut.
And then I waited there on the couch, I had parked my bike around back, wanting to have visual proof of this shit.
And I also had a camera at the ready, in case she tried to pull some shit later in life.
The front door opened, and she was talking, “I know. I’m sorry. I found this adorable bag, and then I had to find shoes to match it, and then I had to find the right outfit. And then jewelry. But don’t worry. Let me get ready and then I’ll be there. Tell Rich I bought a special lingerie set he can tear off me later if he’s a good boy.”
I shook my head.
And didn’t even want to bother to listen to more of her shit, that was all the proof I needed that she hadn’t been faithful to me, which was why I never went ungloved in her.
And that she had plans already made on a special day when she should have already had plans made for Raine.
“Where have you been?” I asked her.
She jumped, then said, “I’ll call you when I’m on my way. Bye.”
She lowered her phone, and then sweetly, she set her bags down, acting like I hadn’t heard her.
“I was shopping. I got a few things for you to see later,” she winked.
I grabbed my beer, took a pull, then looked at her, “Funny, ‘cause in all the times we have been together, I ain’t never seen another man in my bed. Want to tell me who you plan to bring Rich into that?”
The fake sweet shit she was sporting went away, she planted her hands on her hips and snapped, “Maybe if you would get off your fucking high horse, I wouldn’t feel
the need to get it from other people.”
I chuckled darkly, “That’s not being on my high horse. That’s because you’re a fucking whore.”
She gasped, “How dare you call me a whore?”
“How many men have you been with in the past year? Fuck, how many men have you been with in the past week?”
She didn’t utter a sound, and that was when I shook my head, “You want to know why I won’t make you my ol’ lady? Because you're unfaithful. Hell, if Raine hadn’t looked just like me when she was born, I would have done a paternity test.”
“I can’t believe you would say that to me. Everything I’ve given you?”
I didn’t even bother to explain that shit. It would take at least a year for me to lay all the shit she hadn’t given me, and I didn’t have that kind of time. I had somewhere to be.
And unlike her, I wouldn’t miss it, nor would I be fucking late for it.
“What’s today’s date?” I asked her.
“It’s the fourteenth. See, I’m not some dumb blonde.”
“And?” I asked.
I waited a beat for her to go on. But the dumb bitch didn’t take the hand I had given her to help her out of the hole she had been digging herself in for years.
“Right. You don’t even remember. Fuck this shit. I’m fucking done. You have an hour to pack all your shit and get the fuck out of my house, Raine’s, and gone from my life.”
Her face paled for a split second then she got this nasty look on her face, and I knew what was coming, which she proved with her next words, “If you do this Storm, I’m going to tell the world all about your club,” she taunted, thinking she had the upper hand.
I threw my head back and laughed.
Once I got it under control, I asked, “Yeah, and what are you going to tell them? That we’re a bunch of motorcycle enthusiasts?”
“Noone brings in the kind of money y’all do without some shady shit.” She snapped.
I rubbed my beard-covered chin, “Well if you go that route, everything you’ve ever bought with my money could be confiscated as evidence.”
I didn’t let her say anything to that and continued, “And seeing as you had nothing when you met me, everything you supposedly own is technically mine. Hmm, I wonder, since I never put your name on my accounts, but gave you a card to use for necessities, if I could file charges on you. I gotta look that one up.”
“You wouldn’t do that to me. I’m the mother of your child.” The bitch said with a smirk.
“That’s funny, ever since you walked in the door, not once have you cared to ask about your so-called child.”
“How could I? You jumped down my throat the minute I walked in the door.”
“Asking where you’ve been since I thought on this particular date, a parent should be with their child is me jumping down your throat?”
She didn’t say anything just lifted a brow, and that caused me to shake my head, wondering what in the fucking hell I saw in her all those years ago.
“You haven’t even asked where Raine is,” I said with a sorrowful tone for my daughter.
“She’s with Bridget. Like she always is. And where she’ll be for the remainder of the day since something in your club always comes first.”
“Nothing comes before my daughter. And you, nor anyone else can say otherwise.” I knew what she meant by that shit. She just didn’t have the balls to say it.
That Raine and the club came before her, just like they always would, because she hasn’t done anything to deserve being put in that place.
“Pretty fucking bad she thought Bridget was her mother. And no one can fucking blame her. If you’re not on your back, your knees for other men, then you’re out with your so-called friends spending money left and fucking right.”
“Well, what else do I have, Storm? I can’t work. I can’t deal with the looks from the town’s folk knowing that I’m the woman to a biker.”
“Funny, you don’t mind that tie when you need something.”
I shook my head with this shit, I was done, which was why I pulled my phone from my pocket, and called my VP, all the while ignoring the bitch who was yapping about shit that should be hers and shouldn’t have thrown in her face.
The moment Red answered, I said, “Bring a couple of the brothers to my place, with trash bags.”
He was silent for a beat, then asked, “Is the cum dumpster heading out?”
“Fucking right.”
“Hallelujah,” Red shouted.
That was when I heard a few of the brothers asking what was up.
“Pres is finally kicking that piece of shit out of his bed and his house.”
Whoops and hollers could be heard.
And within two hours, all that bitch’s shit was out of my house.
See, I can be an asshole. But I’m only an asshole when I’m pushed past the point of no return. That was why when Bridget dropped Raine off right as we were getting the last of her mother’s things out of the house, I walked over to her and knelt.
I took in her features that were so much like my own, “Hey sweetheart, did you have a good time with Bridget?
She smiled, wide, her two dimples popping out, “Yes, she got me some cute stuff and we had ice cream.”
“I’m glad you had a good time,” I told her.
She nodded, “Where’s she going?”
“She’s leaving, baby. Now, I gotta ask, do you want to go with her?”
Raine glared, “That’s not even funny, Daddy.”
I nodded, “Okay then. Head into the house, put your things in your room and then we gotta go.”
Raine giggled and then raced into the house, her words not going to her mother, not even her eyes.
And wasn’t that the kicker that anyone needed to see?
Bridget looked at Sara and then looked at me and winked.
I watched as Sara put all her stuff in the back of the SUV she just had to have and thought about calling the cops and reporting it stolen.
And if it was at another man’s house, I was going to do it.
Let her be his problem.
Which was why I sent a text to a prospect.
Once the bitch was gone, I put Raine on the back of my bike, and with my brothers, we headed to the park where the club had already set everything up.
I was the only thing Raine wanted for her tenth birthday this year.
And then, hours later I was laughing my ass off at men in leather kuttes, jeans, and boots, playing soccer with my girl.
And then again, a few hours later, after I’d had a prospect trail her, I did call the cops and reported the SUV stolen.
I was back in my driveway the very next morning.
Seven Years Later
I sat in my chair at the clubhouse and snickered at the image on my phone.
Over the past seven years, Sara realized a few things.
But unfortunately for her and fortunate for me, it was all too late.
She tried to come after the club.
She was charged with filing false police reports.
She tried to extort money for Raine.
The club’s lawyer had the video from that day I kicked her ass out, and he had another video of Sara snorting cocaine off some guy’s dick that a woman had given to me. Sara had fucked her fiancé. And he had another video another woman had given me of her flirting with a teenage boy.
Sara had signed her rights over in a courtroom.
But the picture I was snickering at, was her mugshot.
Six months ago, she was so in love with the man she was fucking that she had been in a world of bliss.
Which was her defense on why she had left white powder on her coffee table.
And the man’s four-year-old daughter had seen it and scooped it up and put it in her mouth.
I felt sorry for the man and the child.
The child who luckily survived. Had she swallowed more of the cocaine she wouldn’t be here today.
Since the man wasn’t a dumbass, he had cameras all over his house.
She got eight years without the possibility of parole.
I had shown it to Raine right after the news had covered the story and she laughed.
But we had sent flowers to the little girl and a stuffed teddy bear.
Just as I put my phone back in my pocket, the club phone rang. And it never did unless something bad had happened.
