Ava slumped into her seat. “This…is quite a speech.”
Her father fiddled with her fingers. It was the most physical contact they’d had in years. Normally, she was prickly when he came too close. They’d lived in a routine for the past several years. It was a delicate little dance they hadn’t strayed from. By bursting through the invisible fourth wall, he’d created a unique space of honesty. The courage to do that deserved a candid response from her.
“There’s no denying that I’ve resented you. It’s lessened since Kat’s mom left and I got closer to Kat. The way you stepped up to raise her helped change my image of you, which was pretty low.”
“Like I said, I regret hurting you and your mother. Neither of you deserved to be treated like that. I see myself in Puck, you know? The entitled asshole who doesn’t see past his immediate desires.”
“No.” She shook her head because there was a world of difference between her father and Puck. She had to make him see that. Truthfully, she was a bit offended by his harsh judgment and tried to maintain her equilibrium. “That’s where you’re wrong, Dad. Puck may come off like a bad boy, but that’s not who he is on the inside. He’s extremely attentive and caring toward me.”
“Humph,” her father replied.
“He’s not at the clubhouse, partying away every night. He works at the bar and then comes home to me.” Ava hesitated to bring up Puck’s arrest and incarceration, but she wasn’t ashamed of Puck’s stint in jail. After all, his case had been dismissed, and he didn’t have a criminal record. “When he was arrested—”
“What?” her father shouted, dropping her hands, and shooting to his feet.
“If you’d let me finish—”
His face slackened with shock. “Hell no. Not my daughter. Not happening.”
“Dad! Dad, will you calm down and listen to me? His case was thrown out of court, and he’d gotten arrested for protecting a woman from her abusive husband.”
“Forget the fact that his case was thrown out. He shouldn’t be engaging in behavior that will get him thrown in jail. Proves my point that he’s a criminal…or a borderline criminal. Whatever. The point is he’s not a regular, honest, hardworking man.” Raising his hands in a pleading gesture, he said, “I want what’s best for you. You could have any man you want. You have so much to offer. You should have the best, not some two-bit criminal biker.”
“You’re being unfair,” she said with a slight tremor in her voice. He was fast wearing on her patience.
“I’m being real. I’m a man and I know men, specially men like him and his friend. They’re more than rough around the edges. They’re criminals. The Squad has been one of the largest cigarette smugglers up and down the East Coast. Try asking him about it, although I wouldn’t trust what he says, because he’ll probably deny any involvement. Why can’t you find a nice boy…someone you work with or…or…anyone,” he pleaded.
She was a bit rattled by his revelation about the smuggling. She didn’t know about any smuggling. Was the Squad involved in illegal activities? She’d never considered it. The Renegades weren’t those kinds of bikers. It hadn’t crossed her mind, especially since Puck’s conversation only revolved around the Squad Bar and the Box. She’d ask Puck about it later. What truly concerned her was her father’s admission that he saw himself in Puck. Now, that was worrisome. Her father had never overstepped before, so he must feel strongly about it to broach the subject.
Ava rose and took his hands in hers. She happened to glance out the door and saw that Puck, Whistle, and Kat were back at the counter. Puck’s eyes ticked up and fused with hers. He knew something was up.
Breaking eye contact, Ava’s gaze returned to her father. “I appreciate your concern, but I have to go with my gut on this one, Dad. I will find out about the smuggling. That’s concerning because I don’t want Puck to spend another day in jail. Look, they’re waiting for me, and I need to go. We can talk about this another time.”
Griping her forearms, he shook her slightly. “Be careful. Don’t give your heart to a player. That man out there isn’t serious.”
Her jaw tightened, and she gritted out, “You don’t know him.”
“I know men, especially players. Remember? I was one once. Settled down too young. Wasn’t ready to get married and have a kid. Came to bite me in the ass, along with hurting you and your mom. Don’t let the same thing happen to you,” he warned somberly.
His tone sent a shiver down her spine. She definitely didn’t want a repeat of what she’d experienced when her father left or when Puck had ended their relationship. No thank you to that level of heartbreak.
“I’ll take your advice into consideration, Dad, but I’ve got to go.”
Her gaze flickered to Puck, whose gaze was intent on her. He pushed off the counter with a determined expression on his face, coming for her. Ava broke away from her father, kissed him on the cheek, and murmured, “Don’t worry about me, Dad.”
She was out the door and meeting Puck with a hand on his chest. Grasping her elbows, his gaze bored into her. “You okay, angel?”
“Yeah,” she breathed out. His touch stabilized the commotion her father had stirred up inside her chest. Puck’s dark eyes scrutinized her, drilling in as if he could comb through the layers of her soul.
“Come on, let’s go get something to eat. I’m starving,” she said.
Ripping his gaze from her, he raised his eyes over the crown of her head, probably latching them onto her father. Tugging on his jacket, she moved in front of him and dragged him away by his sleeve.
“Don’t like that fucker botherin’ my woman,” he grumbled under his breath from behind her.
“Hush now, that’s my father you’re speaking about,” she replied with a suppressed smile.
“He doesn’t like me,” Puck declared.
Her eyes slid sideways toward him. “How do you know?”
“Doesn’t take much to put two and two together. Kat looked surprised when he asked for your help, so I know that was a ruse to get you alone. And me being the first man you brought around the shop, at the age of twenty-nine—”
“That’s not true,” she cut in, although it was a total lie.
“Alright, but I’m the first biker. That much I do know. Either way, I mean something to you if you’re introducing me to your sister. I know that, and so does he. He’s threatened by me.”
“Yeah, baby, he’s jealous of your swag,” she teased, giving him a peck on the cheek. Puck let out one of his little quirky grunts. They’d reached Whistle and Kat, who had migrated toward the front door. Glancing over her shoulder, Ava found her father by the register, watching them intently.
Kat ran to give him a hug and then bounced back to the front door, and they left the store. Checking over her shoulder, she caught her father’s grim expression still following them. Ava stifled a sigh. Her father’s words tumbled around in her head. Smuggling. Player. She couldn’t let another person’s doubts—doubts based on assumptions and judgments, not on facts—affect her feelings toward Puck. But she would get to the bottom of what the Squad did, more specifically, what Puck did for a living. As for the rest, she had to trust him. She did, didn’t she? A flurry of fear flapped in her belly, and she didn’t like it. Not one bit.
Chapter Twenty-One
Puck emerged from the back office to tend to the bar during the afternoon lull, right before happy hour, during the turnover of shifts for the waitresses. He was behind the bar, wiping down the top, when a stranger came through the front entrance. Puck’s senses automatically went on alert. He was a big man, looked like a bouncer at a club, with a crooked nose that had obviously been busted up numerous times. But he was dressed mighty fine for a mere bouncer, sporting a cashmere coat and a silk scarf. Taking a seat on a stool, he placed his hands on the bar top. The sleeves of his coat pulled up and showed wrists decorated with curb-chain bracelets that looked made of eighteen-carat gold. Mafia, by the looks of him.
“You know where I
can find a man named Puck.”
Puck looked him over, meticulously memorizing every feature of his face, from his flat steel-gray eyes to the scar crossing his left eyebrow.
“You found him,” he replied simply, putting away the clean glasses that had been washed and left to dry beneath the counter.
It was the man’s turn to inspect Puck.
“What do you want?” Puck asked. He didn’t like this stranger nor the way he was being scrutinized.
“I’m an associate of Kingpin,” he declared. He paused for a beat. “Remember him?”
“Yeah, I remember him. I remember he’s in County Jail and I’m not. I remember I left his ass behind and went back to my life.”
“Funny thing about jail. The friends you make in the pen, specially if they’re a boss…that association can follow you outta jail.”
Puck barked out a laugh. “You don’t know shit about me, son. Did what I had to do while I was holed up in there, but I’m out now. I don’t own nothin’ to nobody. Men walk out of jail every single fuckin’ day of the year.”
“Yeah? Difference is that you left a void.”
“A void that can be replaced by the next sucker who comes along. Workers are replaceable. You know that as much as I do. Hell, that’s true in the real world. Kingpin and I didn’t have a discussion, much less an understanding, that I’d continue working for him.”
“Maybe you were such a good worker that he wants to keep the job going.”
“The job’s done, yo. I’m out. I got a job right fuckin’ here. I’m not lookin’ to make extra cash, but if the need comes up, I’ll reach out to Kingpin myself. You’ve got balls, man. You come in here and don’t even introduce yourself. What’s your fuckin’ name, anyway?”
“I go by Nikki. Funny thing, but a couple weeks after you left, his life got a helluva lot harder. He thinks you might have something to do with that.”
Puck’s face hardened, and he crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I haven’t heard shit from him or about him. If his situation went south after I left, I fuckin’ guarantee you that has nothing to do with me. First you tell me I’m indebted to him in some way and I gotta continue working for him. Now, you’re fucking insinuating I was involved in fucking with his shit when I don’t know nothing about it. You know what?” Puck said as he bent over the bar top and thrust his face in the fucker’s space. “You can go fuck yourself.”
He’d kept his voice low, but Whistle appeared behind him in the blink of an eye. Yanking a bottle off the shelf, Whistle smashed it, and liquor gushed everywhere. Puck inwardly cringed, hoping it wasn’t one of the more expensive bottles. That could’ve been two hundred dollars down the fucking drain. They were both carrying, so it wasn’t a matter of actual power. It was a symbol. Wielding a jagged-edged broken bottle was a show of strength.
“What the fuck is this Russian Bratva doin’ here?” Whistle sneered.
Puck’s gaze cut to Whistle.
The man named Nikki chuckled darkly. “Little shit knows nothing. I’m not Bratva,” he snarled.
“Whatever the fuck you are doesn’t matter. I’m not in the goddamn slammer no more, so Kingpin has no power over me, you hear? I did my fucking time. Did what I had to do to survive, but I don’t owe no one nothing. Don’t know how tough he thinks he is, but I’m a member of the Demon Squad. Unless you wanna start a war, get the hell out of my bar before my associate here stabs that fucking broke-down bottle in your motherfucking eye.”
Puck backed down and spat on the floor.
Nikki gave him the evil eye. “You fuckin’ spit at me? You must not know what that means where I come from, but I fucking guarantee you it’s nothing pretty.”
Puck almost laughed in his face. He wasn’t going to be intimidated by some two-bit mafioso criminal. Once a fucker thinks he’s a Made Man, he likes to go Soprano on people, but he wasn’t living out a fucking HBO special. “Unless you’ve got something else to say, I suggest you turn your ass around and get the fuck outta here.”
The man didn’t move. Puck arched an eyebrow while Whistle snapped his gum behind him, waving the bottle around a little. With one last vicious look thrown his way, the asshole stomped out of the bar and slammed the door behind him.
“What the fuck was that about?” inquired Whistle. “Been in and out of Duchess County half a dozen times, and no one’s come after me on the outside.”
Puck grunted as he marched over the broken glass that crunched under his boots. He skirted the bar and checked which direction the man had gone, but there was no trace of him. Luckily, the waitresses were gabbing in the backroom and had missed the drama. Coming back around the bar, he explained, “Had to do some things when I was in Duchess County that I wouldn’t normally do. For Ava.”
Whistle’s eyebrows jumped up. “No shit.”
“Yeah, and I don’t know if he wants more of me or if he’s onto the fact that I snitched on him.”
“Fuckin’ hell,” Whistle muttered.
“Had to help my woman, Whistle. One day you’ll understand what that means. Kingpin is a bad mofo, and he had to be put down. He might suspect me, but that bastard could be shaking down any number of men. I wasn’t the only one working for him, and he’s a rat, so he has enemies. After I left, he got caught with contraband. Don’t know exactly what Kingpin wants, but if he’s associating with mobsters, that could be a problem in itself. I wasn’t aware of every one of his contacts.”
“Christ, Puck.”
“I had no choice. Ava wanted something bad, and I did what I had to do to get it for her. I knew the risks, and I was willing to take them. True, I didn’t expect them to follow me out of jail, but he’s a coldhearted piss-ass pussy. He’ll be on trial soon, and there’s no doubt he’ll be convicted. Then he’s off to Green Haven maximum-security prison, where he’ll have to start over, build new contacts, and find creative ways to smuggle his drugs into prison. There’s no stopping a man like that. All we did was keep him off the streets.”
“Does Kingdom know about this?”
“Yeah,” Puck replied wearily. It hadn’t been an easy conversation to have, but in the end, he got Kingdom to admit he would’ve done the same thing in Puck’s shoes. “I’m not naïve, but I didn’t expect that fuckwad to sic some dirty mafioso on my ass. You thought he was Russian?”
“He’s not be Russian, but he’s from the old country. I can tell by the way he speaks, the way he moves.” He blew out a breath. “Not good, brother. Take it from me, those fuckers are animals. Think he’ll be back?”
“No fuckin’ idea, brah. No fuckin’ idea,” Puck answered, his eyes glued to the empty street outside the bar.
※※※
After his visitor the other day, Puck wasn’t especially surprised to find the bar’s front door busted open, swinging wide in the gusty wind. Didn’t make the bitter pill any easier to swallow when he surveyed the extent of the damage.
“Motherfucker,” he cursed aloud. The place had been trashed. Some of it was legit destruction for the sake of destruction. Besides the splintered pieces of broken stools strewn all over the ground, the cushions of the booth seats were slashed, stuffing spilling out like disemboweled carcasses. Half the liquor bottles on the shelves behind the bar were gone. He guessed they were lying broken on the floor beneath. TV screens had been pried off the walls and thrown across the space. It was like a tornado had passed through.
His fists instinctively balled at his sides. Fucking hell. Rage and an excruciating sense of helplessness battled for dominance in his chest. The bar had just started to turn around and make a profit. All gone to hell. The financial hit of the attack was going to be felt by the club, but it was the hit to their pride that stung the most.
Gently nudging pieces of a broken table with his boot to pave the path ahead, Puck made his way to the back rooms. The storeroom had been emptied of everything that wasn’t bolted down to the ground. They’d had a delivery the day before, so this attack was meant to hit them where it�
��d hurt the most. Either it was an inside job, or there was a lookout casing the bar, but either way, it was a professional job. Chances were high that it was Kingpin, but the Squad couldn’t start a war with a dealer and the mob without proof.
There were cameras, but he doubted they’d find anything worthwhile. He’d get Flicker to comb through the footage. For real proof, though, he’d need Cutter. Cutter was the tracker of the club. Opening the walk-in cooler, Puck stopped in his tracks. Christ, they even took the kegs. He hit dial on his phone and waited for Kingdom to pick up.
“Whattup?” Kingdom began.
Without a greeting, Puck broke the news. “The bar got busted up.”
There was silence. “Come again.”
“The bar got trashed. It’s a professional job. They did the maximum amount of damage possible. Someone wanted to send us a message. I need Cutter down here to get any clues of who did it.”
“Fuck!” Kingdom bellowed so loud that Puck had to pull the phone away from his ear. Putting his president on speakerphone, he went through the bar, describing everything as he’d found it. If this was Kingpin, if Puck was the reason behind this clusterfuck, then he’d decimate that motherfucker. Shame burned a hole in his gut. He was the fixer, not the fuckup who brought trouble to his club.
“This could be Kingpin, though it seems like a bit much,” suggested Puck. “It’s not like I owed him money or any product. It doesn’t make sense, Kingdom. Someone wants to fuck with us, or me, but I can’t figure out a good enough reason why.”
“I’ll be right over. Get ahold of Cutter and tell him to meet us down there. Don’t clean or move a thing before we get there. We’ll go through the place together with a fine-tooth comb. I’m going to contact the brothers and call Church. This needs to be addressed today. No one fucks with the Squad and gets away with it,” he vowed before hanging up.
The die had been cast. It was just a matter of figuring out who’d cast it, but someone out there was in for a whole world of pain, and Puck would be first in line to inflict it. Like Kingdom said, no one fucked with the Squad.
Puck's Property: A Bad Boy Biker Romance (The Demon Squad MC Book 5) Page 17