by Nicole Fox
“What a gentleman.”
I didn’t even argue with her then. After all, what she knew of me was that I had tried to get into her pants and that I had, now, stepped in twice against shit happening to her. I shrugged, and turned.
“Do what you want. I’ll be back.”
Chapter Four Wheeler
I left Ember in my room, figuring she would either listen to me, or she wouldn’t—whatever the case, it wasn’t the biggest problem on my plate right now. I had other things to settle.
I headed over to the boss’ room, Satan, as he was called, founder and leader of Satan’s Sons. He was like a father to me, and I respected the hell out of him. It was the only reason that I had remained with the Sons for so long; any other reason didn’t seem like enough to continue on with the same kind of wanton childish foolery that I had witnessed tonight.
I didn’t need to knock to be let in, and I pushed the door open in the middle of Leech regaling him further with the night’s tales.
“They were running and yelling—probably some of them shit their pants, they were so scared,” he snickered out. “They’re totally done, Pops. Done. Finished.”
A laugh came from the bed, and as I approached, my eyes fell to Satan. He was once a formidable-looking man. For the last few months, though, he’d been inexplicably sick. He cited old age—though I wondered how a man who was otherwise so strong just started to get sick for no reason. He refused doctors, saying that he would pull out of things. I wasn’t so sure.
His questionable health almost seemed nonexistent in his laugh, though, as he listened to his stupid son talk up the idiocy of the night.
“And then we—hey, Wheeler.” Leech’s face lost all of the animated fun that it likely had before. “You can’t just walk in here—”
“Hey, hey, let him be, let him be.” Satan, old man, smiled up at me as I stood next to his bed. “Wheeler, my boy! Leech was telling me about the night. Good job, good job.”
“I don’t know if I would call it a good job, Boss,” I said. I ignored the fact Leech was still in the room. I didn’t give a shit about his opinion. “Tonight—”
“Was a huge success,” Leech butted in. “We sent the message—”
“What message? That you’re good at starting fires and destroying property? We were supposed to make a noise and send the message about the drugs, not do what you did. What exactly did you accomplish, oh wise one?”
“We sent the message that we were supposed to send. That the Satan’s Sons aren’t to be messed with. Pops.” Leech came up beside me, trying to nudge me on out of the way, but I didn’t let him. So he stayed close beside me and leaned over the bed to talk to Satan. “They were so scared, so fucking just—Damn, Pops, I wish you had been there to see it. It was great. They’re not gonna fuck around in our territory ever again.”
Satan laughed. He was hooked. And when he was hooked, I knew that there was nothing that I could do to unhook him. Sometimes that was the perks that Leech had to actually being Satan’s son. The kid could spin shit any kinda way, and for the most part? Satan ate it up.
I couldn’t begrudge him that, but it didn’t make it any less of a pain in the ass to deal with.
“See, Wheeler? You’re so serious sometimes. Lighten up when there’s victory! The rich boys won’t be messing around in what’s ours ever again.
It was hard, but I held my tongue. I was annoyed, but didn’t have the heart to tell him that I was pretty sure that whatever the rich boys were pushing, they would keep pushing it. There had been nothing about tonight that had been about reclaiming territory, anyway. There was a time and place and way to do that, and this sure as shit hadn’t been it. All this was going to tell people was that the Satan’s Sons were out and about setting shit on fire and disturbing the peace.
Some big accomplishment. What had even been the point?
Oh, that’s right. There hadn’t been, other than for Leech to show the fuck off.
Satan beamed up at Leech, clearly proud of what his son and his boys had accomplished. So instead of arguing, I hung back. There was no talking Satan down when he got it in his head that something had gone well—even when it hadn’t. And hell, he hadn’t been there. He hadn’t seen ...
I shook my head though as I watched Satan clasp his hands around Leech’s, speaking to him about further plans to be made. I noticed a strange ... twitch to Leech’s hands. A jitter in his body. Almost like he was vibrating with excitement but ...
No. I knew that tick. My jaw clenched but still, I held my tongue.
“Wheeler,” Satan waved me over. I approached him, nudging Leech out of my way like he had tried to do to me before.
“Yeah, Boss? What do you need?”
“I want to keep this momentum going, all right? I want to keep this moving, growing, going. I need you to help Leech however you can to make sure this victory tonight sticks. You understand me?”
My jaw tightened, but I nodded.
“Of course. Whatever you need, whatever you want, Boss.”
He patted the side of my face. It was a father’s caress, and one that I was admittedly weak for when it came to Satan.”
“Good. Good. My boys working together.” He pulled away, covering his mouth as he began to cough. I leaned over him in worry.
“You good—”
“I’m fine,” he said. He waved me away and I pulled back, not one to hover over a man that clearly didn’t want or need it. “I’m fine. I just need you and Leech working on keeping this up. It’s important. My legacy ...”
I frowned a little, but like the incident with the music festival, I let it go.
“Oh, Satan—” I stopped though.
Satan leaned back against his pillows, and like a light that had blown, was out cold. This wasn’t anything new. When he got excited or there was too much tension, he got tuckered out quickly. I shook my head and pulled the covers up back over him, tucking him in. Continuing to ignore Leech, I turned to leave. I would tell him about Ember another day, when he was a little more with it and Leech wasn’t involved.
When I got outside Satan’s door, however, he tugged on my kutte.
“Wait, Wheeler.”
I grimaced; I didn’t want another word with this asshole, but turned around anyway.
“What do you want?”
“Listen,” he said. “I know you want to do things a certain way, right? But like Pops said, we need to work together.” He smirked. “You wouldn’t want to upset my dad, would you? He admires you a lot and likes what you’ve done for the MC. You’re like a son to him ...” The last part, said a little bitterly, revealed more to me than anything else where his little spiel was going to.
“I don’t need you to tell me that, and I don’t need you to tell me what I need to do for Satan. I said I’d do what needed to be done—”
“Good. Then you’ll be fine with just. Going along with me and not questioning or trying to undermine my actions like that again.”
I scoffed.
“I’m not your yes-man.”
I turned from him, and was set on heading back to my room. He grabbed at my kutte again, and that’s when I had had it.
I wheeled around, grabbing him by the front of his kutte and pressing him against the wall. I’d have slammed him, but I didn’t want to disturb Satan now that the man was asleep.
“The only reason that I’m going along with anything is because Satan asked me to,” I hissed at him. “He said to work with you, not under you. Don’t think I’m going to be a doormat for you because that’s what’s going to help you.” I sneered and leaned forward to him. “And I’ve noticed something, Leech, that you might not want Satan to be made aware of.”
He scoffed.
“Oh? What’s that?”
“You’re starting to tick,” I said. “How long has it been since you’ve had a fix? How much are you skimming? How often? I don’t think Satan would be very happy with you.”
He shoved me away from him. There h
ad been a haughtiness to Leech’s expression before I’d made my accusation. Now he was livid, with his eyes blazing at me.
“The fuck did you say to me?”
“Nothing that means anything if there’s no truth to it, but you would never do something like that, would you?”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he hissed out at me.
“I hope for your sake that that’s fucking true.”
I turned, back to my room. At least that had been the intention. Apparently, Leech wasn’t done with me yet; he had to have his last word in.
“You better watch your back, Wheeler.”
“So had you, Leech.”
I was back to my room before Leech could say anything further, closing the door in his face to drive home the whole fuck-off message that I was trying to send him.
“Ember?” I called out, looking this way and that for her.
I got no answer, and would have worried had I not heard the shower. Seemed she was settling in well enough. Good. Took some bad off of me. She had even gotten out clothes from my drawers. I could have laughed; she was going to need shit that fit her better than the T-shirt and sweats that she had laid out. I hadn’t even thought about that.
So instead of leaving her there with my clothes to change into, I decided to change into them myself. I went downstairs. Music was blaring, as it usually was this time of night. Satan’s Sons never stopped going and it didn’t really bother me. I just no longer felt a huge pull to join in on the entertainment like the others did.
“Hey, Wheeler!”
“Come on, get some shots with us, man!”
“Wheeler, come celebrate; that shit was great!”
“Wheeler!”
“Wheeler!”
I ignored the calls of my name and the rowdy requests for celebrations. Instead, I went back to the rooms that the club girls took when they were entertaining. I knocked on one.
“Elise?”
There were moans and some rustling inside.
“Hold on!” A breathy, girly voice came from the other side of the door. If you’ve ever seen a movie with Jennifer Tilly? Yeah. Then you know the kind of voice that I’m talking about; that was exactly the kind of sex-walking voice that Elise had. It made men weak. And honestly? I was no exception. She was my favorite.
There were more sounds in the room, a ‘hey, come on, really?’ I chuckled, but waited patiently outside the room.
Elise sounded like Jennifer Tilly, but she didn’t look much like her with full, thick black hair and shiny blue eyes. She did have a body on her, however, and I took it in as she leaned against the doorframe. She was full-bodied, curvy. Her breasts were covered in a bra that glittered in jewels; her lower half was shaved and bare of any clothes. She was wet between the thighs.
“Hey, Wheeler.” She bat her eyes at me.
“Hey, man, come on, I’m busy here—”
“Just a sec, Bones.” I continued to look at Elise. “I need some clothes for a girl. Can you do me a solid?”
She smiled at me.
“Sure, come in!”
I gave a salute to Bones, who was laid out on the bed with his dick out and wet. I shook my head at the glare that he gave me, grinning at him.
“I’ll be out in two seconds and you can get back to it.”
“Yeah, yeah, jerk off.”
I chuckled and followed behind Elise. She went to her dressers, rummaging around.
“She gonna be a club girl?”
“Nah, she’s just ... Here for a bit.”
“Ohh, a girlfriend?” Elise looked at me over her shoulder and winked at me. “I was wondering when Big Bad Wheeler would finally settle down.”
I laughed.
“Not a girlfriend, just a guest.”
“Oh, well, that’s no fun,” she pouted. She turned around and handed over a small armful of clothes. “That should be good for a guest. Show her off sometime, yeah?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll try.”
Elise let out a big squeal when Bones pulled her back to the bed with him.
“Okay, now that that’s out of the way, scram!”
I snickered as Bones pulled Elise back on top of him, sliding back into her wet pussy easily. I shook my head as the two started going noisily at it again, leaving them to it.
Back up the stairs I went, clothes in hand. I didn’t know if they would be to Ember’s tastes, but she and Elise were about the same size, so it would be good enough for now while Ember was staying here. However long that would be ... I needed to assess the situation and perhaps get some answers out of her.
Chapter Five Ember
My shower had been a temporary comfort to this shitty, disastrous night. I had come out to the fact that the clothes I had pulled out were gone. I’d called for Wheeler, but he wasn’t in the bedroom. I didn’t know what kind of prank he was trying to pull, but honestly? I wasn’t having any of it.
I plopped onto his bed, bouncing on it, surprised by how comfortable it was. I figured that I could entertain myself with some television while I waited for him to come back and explain himself, but what was on the television was worse than some missing clothing.
The news was already covering the fire. It had spread through the forest—completely decimated and burned down the festival grounds and everything that had been left behind by the performers and vendors.
“Several people have reported destroyed or stolen property following the event,” the newscaster said. “So far, no one has been reported as dead, but there are several people, including a mother and daughter, who are missing. Firefighters have yet to weigh in on the exact origin of the fire, but several reports coming in cite biker involvement, and someone on the inside.”
The broadcast cut there, and the person on the screen honestly shocked me.
It was Jameson.
“Here is an eyewitness from the scene, philanthropist Jameson Mathers. Now, Mr. Mathers—”
“You can call me Jameson,” he said. His smile was dazzling as ever, and I wanted to throw the remote control at him.
“Jameson. Can you recount the events of the evening for us? If It’s not too much trouble?”
“Not at all. Me and a few other friends put together this event hoping to bring in some more culture and intrigue, you know? We picked the entertainment and vendors very carefully. The last few days had gone well.”
“Tonight was different?”
“Very different.” Jameson nodded, solemn. “There were some bikers that showed up. They were very rowdy, hadn’t been invited, of course, but it was a public event and though they were a little loud, I didn’t think it would be too bad to let them stay about. It was supposed to be a fun event, after all. I didn’t want to cause too much trouble that didn’t need to be there.
“Well, that was different when they started breaking things. They were all drunk, you know, disorderly. And I can go with some partying and everything, but this was a bit much. They didn’t listen to anyone that tried to get them to calm down and things ended up escalating a lot faster than I think anyone was expecting.”
“And do you know the biker group that was responsible for this disruption? Were they just a group of people that came?”
“I’m not sure if they came with the intention of destroying things, but I will go on record and say that it was definitely Satan’s Sons. It was all over their jackets.”
“You’re saying Satan’s Sons are responsible for tonight.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. They started getting equipment from the fire dancer’s stage and lighting things up—they had help, though. It’s not all on them. The girl dancing tonight went about helping the light things up. Looked like she was having a lot of fun with it, too.”
“You’re saying one of the acts from the festival helped set the fires that led to tonight’s destruction?”
“I’m one hundred percent certain.”
“Well, this is an interesting development, folks. We’ll ha
ve more after the break.”
I couldn’t believe this shit! He was seriously trying to pin all this shit on—
“I see you’ve finally come out of the shower.”
I jumped at the sudden voice and looked over to the source. Wheeler came in and had a handful of clothes. He stood between me and the television, getting in my way.
“Well, you said that I could use the shower.” I eyed him. “And wear your clothes. Thanks for stealing those from me.”