by Sophia Gray
“You don’t touch me, old man,” I snapped, smacking his arm away from me. “I may be here as your boss’s guest, but that doesn’t change what I will do to you if you touch me again.”
“Hey, hey, hey! What’s going on down here?” Mason called out from behind Liam.
“Just checking out your new toy, son,” Liam said venomously as he walked past Mason and up the stairs. “I’d keep an eye on her if I were you.”
“Are you okay?” Mason asked, rushing to my side as Liam ascended the stairs out of the basement.
“Yeah, I’m fine, but you might want to keep an eye on your boy,” I told him.
“What do you mean?” He took me by the arm and guided me away from the wall.
I looked at him and took a deep breath, shaking my head. Then I realized my whole body was quaking from anger and adrenaline.
“Clara, what’s going on?” Mason asked, the concern in his voice growing.
“He cornered me, Mason,” I told him. “He pushed me downstairs and cornered me. He ran his fingers through my hair and kept talking about how I was your new plaything. He told me he wanted a taste, too, and that you were going to pass me around the MC once you had your fill of me. What the hell?” I gave in to my shakes and stress, letting a few tears roll down my cheeks for emphasis.
I knew that wasn’t what had happened, but I wanted to test Mason and see what he would do if I had been threatened by one of his guys, no matter who it was.
“Are you serious right now?” Mason asked, all emotion gone from his voice.
I looked at him with sad, teary eyes and nodded. Inside, I was cracking up, but I maintained a straight face through it all.
“Come upstairs,” he said in a commanding tone, and for a moment, I thought I was in trouble. The whole way up the stairs, being led by my hand, I just knew he’d seen through my show and was going to let me have it in front of everyone before sending me off.
That wasn’t what happened at all. When we reached the top of the stairs, he waved Alec over. I remembered him from the times he watched me.
“Clara, good to see you out of the chair,” he joked as he approached.
“Listen, keep an eye on her for a minute. I’ve got some business to handle,” Mason said as he walked away, leaving me in Alec’s care.
I cut my eyes to Alec and saw the nervous look on his face while he watched Mason. I could see that having me out of bondage made him anxious, and I smiled. He was a lot smarter than that jackass who’d just practically attacked me downstairs. I watched Mason walking towards him.
The bay doors were open to let the light and fresh air in. Guys were coming and going on their bikes. It wasn’t a constant traffic, but it seemed pretty steady. A few would leave, and a few more would show up after a small interval. I could see how Mason and Storm’s Angels were so powerful. They were huge. They were big enough that this couldn’t have been the only chapter.
“Hey, Liam,” I heard Mason shout as he reached the old timer. “Kill the bike!”
Liam killed the bike and climbed off of it to stand up straight in front of Mason. He may not have been built as thick as his younger counterpart, but he definitely seemed bigger when he wanted to. He was probably former military, probably served overseas with lots of war stories to share.
They looked like they were having words, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I started walking towards them, as did just about everyone else in the room. Pretty soon, we all encircled Mason and Liam in a semi-circle that left only the bay door open as a way out. I looked around all the stern faces looking at their leader and a member who had have some kind of status among them.
“What’s everyone’s opinion of Liam?” I asked Alec, sort of as an aside. I didn’t want him to think I was trying to drive a wedge between the men.
“He’s a grouchy old-timer. I don’t think anyone really likes him,” Alec said.
“Who’s that?” I asked, pointing at the large bald man with a full, glorious beard and a tribal tattoo wrapping around his shaved head.
“That’s Mick. He’s Mason’s right-hand man.”
“He looks like he got kicked out of ZZ Top,” I told him with a light laugh.
“Yeah, he does. Or like he kicked them out,” Alec offered. “I wouldn’t want to tangle with him.”
“I wouldn’t either, but it looks like Liam is about to tangle with both of them,” I told him.
I still couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I saw Liam lift an old battle-worn hand and point at me. That was when Mason lunged forward, planting a fist in the old man’s face and shoving him back with a couple of shots to his chest when he didn’t immediately go down.
Mick followed closely behind him. It looked like Liam was trying to crawl away on his back, but Mason stood over him. I clearly saw a hand held up to block any further blows. Mason looked like he said something to Mick over his shoulder, and the muscleman came back inside for Liam’s motorcycle. He lifted it off the ground and chucked it outside, returning to Mason’s side to watch the old man get up and walk to his bike.
He shouted something back at the men standing in the bay door, watching him. He stood up his bike, climbed on, and fired up the engine.
Mason and Mick walked back in to a round of applause from the rest of the MC, myself and Alec included, but Mason shook his head with a serious look on his face. Mick joined the group as everyone went back to what they were doing.
“Thanks, Alec. I’ll take her from here.” Mason wrapped an arm around my waist and started walking me away from the scene.
“So, what just happened?” I asked him timidly.
“I just kicked Liam’s ass,” he said plainly. “He’s been fucking up a lot lately, and it needed to be handled. At the very least, you’re my guest. He needs to respect that. If he can’t, then he doesn’t have to be here.”
“At the least, huh?” I teased him. “What am I at the most?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” he told me, looking me dead in the eye.
“So what happens now?” I asked.
“He’ll probably go to another chapter for a while until he gets his head straight. He may or may not be back. It’s sad to lose him. He’s been with Storm’s Angels since the beginning, or close to it,” Mason explained, growing introspective.
“Hey, I didn’t mean to cause that kind of trouble,” I said, putting my fingers under his chin and turning his face to mine. “I can leave if you need me to.”
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “You can stay. I want you to stay. But you have to be comfortable with the fact that I’m not going to let any of my guys fuck with you. Anyone who starts anything is going to get the same treatment Liam did.”
“Damn, okay.” I was taken aback by his sudden devotion to me. I was getting too deep too fast. My professional side told me to bail, but my heart told me I couldn’t, that it wasn’t business anymore, and I deserved something real like this after hiding myself away from the world for my work for so long.
Just then, I saw Mick walking over to us with a serious look on his face. I knew that look. It was business. Something was going down.
Chapter 8
Mason
I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on anymore. I didn’t realize what I’d just done until I was talking to Clara about it. I’d just knocked the shit out of Liam, one of our longest standing members, for Clara. My relationship with her was just supposed to be professional. I was supposed to just be using my connection with her to get information from her. Instead, I was getting involved and punching out my own men.
At least I could take comfort in the fact that Liam had asked for it. He’d been asking for it for a long time. I told myself it was his insistence on being a jackass that lead to me kicking his ass. His incident with Clara had just been the last straw.
“Boss, we have a problem,” Mick said over my shoulder suddenly as I walked away with Clara.
Before I turned around, I looked into her eyes and saw she
was as worried as Mick sounded. “What is it?” I asked him, turning away from Clara.
“I think we may have tracked down some of our stolen product,” he said.
“How do we know?” I asked, holding Clara behind me by her hand.
“A friend,” Mick said carefully, shifting his eyes to Clara standing behind me.
I pulled her in front of me, to stand between us. “Is someone selling my drugs?” I asked her.
“I don’t know. I would imagine if my boss has me stealing them, he’s doing something with them on the other end.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, pressuring her with my look to make sure she was being as honest as she could be with me.
“Listen, I don’t know. My job was just to steal. I didn’t handle anything else,” she defended herself.
Not satisfied with her answer, I waved for Alec again.
“Yes, sir? You want me to watch her again?” he asked.
“Yes, keep a close eye on her. If she does anything, use this.” I passed him my gun.
“I’m sorry, do what with it?” he asked.
“What do you think, Alec?” I asked.
“Yes, sir, I read you loud and clear.” He stuffed the gun in his waistband and pushed her away.
“I’m sorry, Clara, but security comes first,” I said to answer the angry look in her eyes as Alec pushed her away.
“All right, tell me what we know,” I told Mick with a hand on his shoulder.
“Sure. One of our partners called from the field this morning. Said he met with a new dealer last night who’s been trying to get him to come on board,” Mick started.
“Is this someone we’ve shorted recently?” I asked.
“No, just a rat,” Mick assured me. “Small time.”
“Okay.” Those guys were great because their allegiance wasn’t necessary for business. They were guys who just hopped around trying to find the best fix for the best price. They acted as informants for us.
“Anyway, he calls and tells us he thinks he got some of our heroin off this new dealer. Mason, how much you want to bet this dealer is connected to Clara’s boss?” Mick asked.
“I know he is,” I told him. “You know where the deal went down?” I watched Alec urge Clara upstairs with my gun. I hoped I could trust him alone with her—more like her alone with him; I wanted to come back to find both of them still intact.
“I can get the address,” he told me.
“Do it. We’re taking a little ride to check it out,” I told him.
“On it.” He pulled his phone out and called the guy, stepping away a moment so he could hear him better.
I hopped on my bike and waited.
“Got the address. It’s not far from here,” he said.
“All right, let’s go.” We fired up our engines, both bikes coming to life in a loud roar that filled the room and echoed off the far wall.
We drove farther into the old industrial section of town, where more and more dilapidated buildings populated the streets. The only thing that hung around this part of town was the riff raff and vermin. The only life that seemed to crawl through these streets—if it could be called life—were the forgotten ones. Honestly, most of the people we ran into on this side of town seemed to be little more than ghosts. It wouldn’t have surprised me if none of them were even real.
We pulled down an alley lined with stolen or otherwise forgotten dumpsters and loose newspapers. Real rats wouldn’t even live down here, I thought.
“So, where is this guy?” I asked Mick after we killed our engines. I glanced around at the tired, old gray concrete buildings with their empty windows. They were merely vacant husks providing homes for the derelict and the feral, the lost souls who roamed the streets down here on the edge of civilization.
Mick just nodded to the building to our left. I followed him, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching us. It felt like we were walking right into a trap.
“Listen, do we know we can trust this guy?” I asked.
“Yeah, he’s cool. He’s helped us out before, man. Chill out, paranoid. It’s not a trap.” He crept carefully in through an empty doorway.
“Hey, man,” a voice croaked from the shadows, and a shifty-looking dude in ragged clothes appeared, merely a shadow himself, his skin as gray as the concrete surrounding us. His rotten teeth—what few he had—smiled at us as he drifted towards us in the darkness of the abandoned building.
“Good to see you, buddy,” Mick said as the guy approached us. “I brought my boss with me, man. I think he’s got some questions for you about the drugs.”
“I’m not in trouble, am I, boss?” the rat asked me. There was a fear in his eyes that pleaded for his life with me.
“No, you’re fine. Do you have any of it left?” I asked.
“Nope, it was just a little bit. I already used it, which is why I think it was yours,” he said.
“But you told my partner here that this new guy has been trying to get you to come on board for a while,” I pushed.
“Yeah, man, he’s been around for a while, keeps telling everyone to buy from him, but he’s never had any product, not until last night. Last night he shows up, and he’s actually got something,” our rat told us. His face lit up as he told us about this new dealer.
“What did he look like?” I asked.
“He looked like a snake, man. He had these dark, narrow eyes and a long, forked tongue, man.”
I shared a suspicious look with Mick. Can this guy be for real? I wanted to ask him. He shrugged, as if answering my unspoken question.
“Okay, so he looked slithery and shady, right?” I asked, trying to rephrase and make sense of the rat’s description.
“Right. Except he had dope on him this time. He met with some other guys and it looked like they gave him a large sum of money for a good bit of the stuff.”
“Okay, so you witnessed the deal go down?” I asked. Now it felt like we were getting somewhere. Our village idiot might have had some real information.
“Yeah, but I didn’t see the other guys very well. They just looked like business men. You know, gray suits, sunglasses, even at night, ties, the whole nine, man,” the rat continued. He was really more of a specter than a rat. He was barely even there, and at times it was like I could see straight through him, but he was our rat, and according to Mick, he’d been a good rat.
“That’s fine. As long as we know who this other guy was, we can find the guys who bought from him,” I assured the guy.
“Cool.” He nodded.
“So, where do you come in, man? You said you tried some of the shit he was selling? How did that go down?” I asked.
“Okay, so, he pulls up between the two buildings here, just like you guys did, and his buyers pull up in front of the building.” He pointed to the road crossing in front of the alleyway where we’d parked our bikes.
“Right.” I turned to look where he was pointing.
“So, of course, the headlights get all kinds of attention. We aren’t used to headlights around here unless it’s the cops, right?” He laughed coarsely before continuing. “Anyway, I kind of crawl up close to the window over here to keep an eye on what’s going on. You know, this guy’s been coming around telling everyone he’s going to have a stash of his own soon, and he’s going to keep a regular supply. He’s going to let it go cheap, too.”
“This motherfucker,” I said, interrupting him with the words falling out of my mouth before I could even think to stop myself. “Sorry, man, keep going.”
“He’s kind of become friends with everyone. He buys us food and shit, sends the weed man around, and brings us liquor. You know, he takes care of us, man. So, yeah, I’m going to watch him when something goes down, just in case shit turns ugly and he needs some back up.”
I heard a gun cock in the shadows behind our rat, and my veins ran cold with ice. Mick didn’t even seem to notice.
“Hey, man,” the rat laughed, “as long as you’re not he
re to bust anybody or hurt someone, nobody’s going to mess with you. He’s just back there letting you know we can defend our people when we need to.”
Okay, I’d been on the streets as long as I could remember. I thought of myself as a badass. I’d seen a lot, and, hell, I’d done a lot. I was the youngest president of Storm’s Angels, and still the youngest chapter head even at twenty-eight years old, after being president for a few years. But I’d never seen some shit like this. I had no clue guys like this even existed out here in this little ghost town. I shot a nervous glance at Mick. It was time to get the information we came for and get the fuck out of dodge.