Clubs: Motorcycle Club Romance (Savage Saints MC Book 6)

by Hazel Parker

  Now he had my full attention. He was probably the only person who could get me to stop and turn on this night.

  Because for all that we had been through, for all that had happened on Tuesday… he was the only person who even came halfway close to understanding me. He was the only person who excited me just by his voice or by his gaze. He was the only Brett Pierce.

  “Why are you talking to me, Brett?” I said.

  I didn’t have any sadness in my voice. I was just exhausted. I wanted to go home, let sleep take me, and figure out the rest tomorrow.

  “Because I know how badly I fucked up on Tuesday,” he said.

  My shoulders slumped at that—not in sadness, quite the opposite, in fact. I only realized by that action how tense I’d held them up.

  “Being with you, Cassie, got me excited. And when I saw BK, the rival sergeant-at-arms, I got desperate to hold on to something good. Those days, back when we were innocent and the most death we dealt with was your pet parrot? They were something good. No, they were something wonderful.”

  That damn bird, I thought with a slight smile. That bird squawked, kept me up at all hours of night, and sometimes repeated things I did not want my parents to hear. But at this point, it was a funny part of our past relationship to reflect upon.

  “I’ve thought a lot about how that could have been you, Cassie,” he said. “I’ve thought a lot about how you staying at the bar is what saved your life. If you had stormed out after what I did, which would have been a completely understandable decision, I don’t know that I could have lived with myself. In fact, just thinking about it is tough. It’s really goddamn tough.”

  It hadn’t hit me until just now that he didn’t have a cigarette or a drink in his hand. Either he just didn’t have them, or the incident had shaken him so bad that he wasn’t resorting to his usual vices.

  “I feel like life has given me a second chance to make things better with you,” he said.

  “Brett,” I said softly before I gazed into his eyes. “You’re not the one who needs to make things better.”

  “But—”

  “Tuesday night was bad, yes,” I said. “But it wouldn’t have gotten that far if I had just opened up with you more.”

  Brett nodded, not so eager to accept the freedom from responsibility but perhaps aware of where I was coming from. A gentle silence fell between us as I think we both appreciated that the other was willing to see the faults in their actions.

  “Well, if I may, then,” Brett said. “I’d like to do a mulligan with you. I’ll be good. No booze. I promise to listen to you and behave myself. Is that something you can give me?”

  For the first time all night, I smiled in a way that wasn’t forced. It wasn’t an enormous smile by any means, and I was still reeling from Crystal’s death. But it was a smile at the opportunity for a second—or maybe it’s a third?—chance.

  “I can give it to you,” I said. “Next Tuesday?”

  “Perfect,” Brett said.

  And then he said the words that reminded me that as much as Brett could be a wonderful person, he had turned into a biker: a rough, rugged, and sometimes unempathetic man.

  “Provided I don’t die this weekend.”

  Either he meant it as a joke and he had said it in very poor taste, or he was serious. Something had me erring toward the latter, given the fact that he betrayed no smirk, no laugh, and no other signs of sarcasm.

  It was just yet another reminder that while I might eventually make peace with Brett, I was never going to make this place my permanent home.

  Chapter 9: Barber

  The last thing I said to Cassie before she left probably could have been phrased better, or not said at all.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t exactly say that it was a joke, given what we as a club had discussed in our meeting just hours before.

  And now, with it being Saturday, I stood in the meeting room, cutting hair for Mama and Richard, who sat in their chairs, blankets on top of them. This was my chance to “meditate” as much as I could in such a moment; right now, my mind was racing a million miles per hour, and my hands seemed to be following suit.

  “Since when did you get a case of shaky hands, hun?” Mama said. “You’re gonna make me look like one of those butch protesters if you’re not careful!”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  “Take it easy on him, Mama,” Richard said. “It’s a stressful time at the club.”

  “Some of it his own doing.”

  That’s true. If I hadn’t been such a drunk on Tuesday, maybe I wouldn’t feel so stressed with Cassie.

  But then again, maybe if I hadn’t been such a drunk, she and I would have been leaving the club, and then we’d both be dead. And then BK really would have to take over the Las Vegas chapter of the Savage Saints.

  Not that I’m trying to justify it. Fuck, this is supposed to be my relaxation time.

  “In any case,” I said, trying to steer the conversation in the right direction. “Richard, you feel pretty good about tonight’s strike?”

  “How could I not?” he said with a smirk. “We have reinforcements now. We have all the help we need to obliterate the Sinners once and for all. Those bastards will be six feet under before the end of the night.”

  I sure hope it’s that easy.

  “I trust, Barber, you can hunt down some of the more aggressive ones?”

  “Without question.”

  I had multiple knives and two guns on me whenever we went on runs like these. Bullets worked better than knives at instantly killing someone, but knives were better at sending a message. Knives could prevent someone from ever fucking with you again and living to tell it; bullets would prevent trouble, but they also wouldn’t let the opponent live. It all depended on how merciful I was feeling.

  After Crystal’s death, let’s just say mercy wasn’t something that I was in any mood to provide to anyone.

  “Good,” Mama said. “We need you, Barber.”

  I paused for just a second over her hair. It was good to hear those words of assurance, even if I didn’t like to admit that I needed them.

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “We know—”

  Before Richard could finish speaking, the door to the stage burst open. I looked up just as I snipped a bit of Mama’s hair to see BK storming in, his arms crossed, a scowl across his face.

  “It’s time.”

  Who’s in charge here, anyway?

  Unfortunately, it was meant more as a protest question than an actual question. We’d all agreed that BK would lead the charge against the Sinners on Thursday; I felt it was my penance of sorts not to take hold. I felt guilty about Crystal’s death, and even if that penance had turned into some sort of uncontrolled rage, BK would still be able to better plan as someone detached from the situation.

  That didn’t mean I liked it, though, or that I liked what it might mean for down the road.

  “Alright,” Richard said, groaning as he stood out of his chair. “Barber, we’re gonna have to wait on that haircut till after. Mama?”

  “I’m sexy enough,” she said as she moved forward.

  It wasn’t quite true. Her hair wasn’t done. But to a lazy eye, no one would know the difference; it wasn’t like Mama had one side of her hair down to her shoulders and the other side a buzz. And even if she did, Mama had such a presence and authority to her that very few people would have had the balls to stand up and say something about it.

  “Let’s get ready and meet in five.”

  I let Mama go and headed to my room, ignoring BK standing in the doorway. Inside, I opened a drawer right by my bed and grabbed the five knives that I used. Given that combat may have seen me throw a few of them, it never hurt to have backups just in case they missed.

  But I rarely missed. Of the five knives in my drawer, I’d had four of them for over a year. It was a little sadistic, but no one ever said that being a sergeant-at-arms was an easy job. Which just makes it all the more f
ucked up that BK is coming in and that I’m acting so weak with all this Cassie shit.

  I then found two forty-fives, put them on my belt, and headed out the door. In my cut, with the sergeant patch on my right chest, and my weapons lining my hips, I looked every bit the part of a man ready to kill and send a message for my club.

  It was a damn good thing, too, because I wasn’t feeling much better on the inside.

  I nodded to BK, who barely nodded back. It was at least an acknowledgment, an understanding that the two of us were going to be allies on this run. Mama and Richard emerged seconds later, and the four of us met the rest of the club outside, sans Walker and Dom, who were staying behind to watch over The Red Door.

  “Listen up,” BK said, his voice harsh and sharp. “Your pincer attack worked well before. We’ll do it again. Ten with me, ten with Richard. Let’s go.”

  I didn’t think I’d ever heard a pre-battle speech as quick and as simple as BK’s. That was probably another thing that pissed me off about BK; he was so simple, there wasn’t much to read into about him. Cassie gave me a lot of things to think about, but BK’s quietness and simple speeches made it hard to understand him and dig beneath the surface.

  And what I couldn’t understand tended to piss me off, especially when what I couldn’t understand was threatening to take over my role in the club, no matter what Mama said. Richard hasn’t said any such thing, after all.

  I rode behind Richard en route to the Sinners’ warehouse, as much a mark of my loyalty to the head of this chapter as it was a repudiation of BK’s presence. As it was, the bikers pretty much split down even lines of California and Las Vegas chapters, with a few of our members filling in the gaps on the California side. A couple of the California guys had introduced themselves to Richard, but I made no effort to extend the courtesy back to them.

  When we turned off of Interstate 515 and toward Desert Inn Road, I felt my chest tense and my heartbeat elevate. This was where Richard had pulled off the daring rescue of Natasha; this was where we should have finished off Scar before he got away. We’d won the battle we needed to win at that time, but that wasn’t the battle we needed to win overall. This was our chance.

  We went further away from the Las Vegas Strip, the lights fading in favor of the darker, more seedy parts of town. I couldn’t hear a goddamn thing over the rev of our engines, but I kept my eyes on the horizon, looking for any light, for any sign at all that the Sinners were waiting for us. I envisioned encountering Scar, cutting him to death with my knives, and sending a message loud and clear that BK might have worked in Green Hills, but he was nothing in Las Vegas.

  This was my city, this was my club, and this was my battle, damnit!

  We pulled up to the warehouse. The lights were out, but that didn’t mean a thing to me. The Sinners were known to hide in the darkness to avoid attention, and all one needed to conduct club business was a phone light or a flashlight. Bullets didn’t need light to kill.

  Richard pulled out his phone and dialed BK. A few seconds later, he dropped his phone, turned to the group, and gave the signal.

  “Fire!”

  Bikers pulled out rifles and machine guns and laid waste into the building. I held back, usually the one to go in at the end and clean up any remaining enemies or extract some torture. Sometimes, I brought a larger gun and partook in this initial firing, but with the manpower we had, BK had decided I could go in and take care of any remaining hostiles.

  Or maybe that’s his way of making sure that I perish in whatever shit goes down. The first person to die is usually the first person to encounter the enemy’s crosshairs.

  The bullets raged for what was probably only a dozen seconds but felt like minutes on end. Dust and concrete fell from the building as the tat-tat-tat-tat-tat and the pow-pow-pow of gunfire enveloped my ears. Only when Richard held up his arm did the firing end, and a cloud of dust filled the air.

  “Barber,” he said. “Go check it out, will ya?”

  “With pleasure,” I growled.

  I looked back briefly to see Richard calling BK. Thank God. I wasn’t willing to trust BK’s trigger happy fingers from holding back if he saw me moving in a window.

  I pulled out a gun with my right hand and a knife with my left and approached the door. I decided between the slow open and the forceful, violent one before settling on chambering my knee up and slamming my foot into the door. If anyone had set up for a secondary attack, I wanted them to be shocked by my move.

  But when I looked in, I saw an empty room.

  “Hmm,” I growled, alert for ambushes.

  This was almost too good to be true—or perhaps too bad to be true. There wasn’t anything in here but boxes, which, upon examination, contained nothing. There were no bodies, no Sinners waiting to ambush me… nothing breathed except me, and even that was more or less sporadic.

  There had to be some men here. There was no way… no fucking way. We didn’t have any intel about the Sinners moving locations, and we almost always knew when they moved. Maybe they’ve gotten smarter. Maybe Scar is more serious about this shit.

  I moved further into the building, but the findings remained the same—there were none. Even just a mutilated finger would’ve been something, but no, that wasn’t available either. Frustration was starting to mount, and it didn’t just have to do with the failure to locate any of the Sinners.

  Eventually, I had to come to an inescapable conclusion. There were no Sinners in this building. This place was abandoned.

  I pulled out my phone and called Richard as I headed back out.

  “Whatcha got?” he said.

  “Not a goddamn thing,” I groused. “There isn’t anyone in here.”

  “Fuck. You’re sure?”

  “As sure as my eyes are,” I said.

  “Jesus,” Richard said, followed by a long sigh. “Alright, get your ass back here. BK is coming here too. We can reconvene and figure it out.”

  I kept my knife and gun at the ready in case I had missed something, but I knew by now such an attack wasn’t going to come. The Sinners would have captured me and tortured me long before I would have made a call to Richard; I was too well known among their members to not be in some serious trouble.

  When I returned to my bike, BK stood against his, his arms crossed. Richard had a similar posture, while the rest of the club members leaned forward on their bikes, eagerly awaiting what news was to come.

  “This was faulty intelligence,” BK said.

  “Bullshit,” I snapped.

  The intelligence aspect of the job fell primarily on Dom, Richard, and me. The three of us used our knowledge of Las Vegas, our connections, and general spying on the Degenerate Sinners to know what was happening with our rivals. For BK to come in and here and just make that sort of bullshit claim without any evidence in support of it, other than one failed run…

  “This shit happens sometimes,” I continued when I saw Richard looking at me curiously. “We had some bad fucking luck, but that doesn’t mean that the intelligence was bad.”

  “Something was bad,” BK said, staring at me. “I was in the military. I know bad intel when I see it.”

  “Swear to God—”

  “Enough,” Richard said, stepping between the two of us.

  I knew now that we were almost certainly going to come to blows before it was all said and done; I disliked BK too much, and BK almost seemed to encourage the aggression on my part.

  “We took a shot, and we missed,” Richard said. “We’ll take the lessons learned from this moment and do better in the future. OK? Plain and simple. Let’s convene at The Red Door.”

  “As you say,” BK said.

  The more I watched him, the more I became convinced this wasn’t just about usurping my power. This was about the entire California chapter coming in and taking control of us. We weren’t distinct chapters, anyway, not in the sense that we collaborated before this. We were more like separate businesses started by estranged brothers that happene
d to have the same name.

  And now, I imagined, BK and his president were going to come in and assume that they were the rightful leaders of our club, kick Richard and me out, and take over financial ownership of The Red Door.

  To which I said, fuck that!

  We all rolled back to The Red Door. BK, thank God, didn’t stay too long. He told Richard that he would return the next day in the early afternoon, and Richard told him to drive safe. Not surprisingly, the silent soldier didn’t say a goddamn word—it was like courtesies didn’t extend to him.

  As soon as I got the chance, I grabbed Richard, literally yanking him to the side, away from the mass of disappointed bikers who had not gotten to kill as many Sinners as they might have hoped.

  “Remind me of the president’s name of the Green Hills Saints,” I said in a low whisper.

  “Trace Cole,” he said; I could see Richard was already starting to see where my line of questioning was going. “His wife is my niece.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “And have you only discussed help? Or has there been more?”

  Richard put a hand on my shoulder, gave a gentle but solid squeeze, and shook his head.

  “Is this about BK?”

  “It’s about the club,” I said.

  “Barber, come on,” Richard said. “I understand your frustration with tonight. But I know that if we brought Trace over, you probably wouldn’t feel the same way.”

  I looked straight into Richard’s eyes for the longest time, trying to determine if I needed just to tell the damn truth or if I was going to play the evasive statement game for a little longer.

  “I worry about the autonomy of the club,” I said. “I think BK is just the start of it. Your older brother started the one in Green Hills, right? You don’t think Trace and Jane are going to claim some sort of bullshit ownership?”

  “And how would they do that?” Richard said, nodding out to the sea of Green Hill bikers interacting with our own. “You think they want to attack us? Do you think BK is going to come and take your job?”

  Boy, talk about getting right to the heart of the matter.