by Sophia Gray
I had decided before we left to split up a few blocks from the old warehouse the club used for a clubhouse. It was nothing like ours—the club had renovated our warehouse years ago, a long time before I sat at the head of the table. We had the money back then, thanks to the drug business. I wasn’t interested in staying in that game much longer. It was too dangerous.
Like the explosion during the drug deal last week. I’d been using that in the days since as another reason to get the hell away from drugs and into more legit more business. I didn’t want to lose any more of my guys.
Now that I knew it was a set-up involving Lance, I wondered if there wasn’t more unhappiness over my decision than I thought. Yeah, the other members had been pissed off at first. Drugs made us rich. They could afford nice houses for their families, if they had them, or nice apartments for their girlfriends. They got used to living the good life, or as good a life as people like us could expect. Criminals, roughnecks. White trash by most standards.
When they found out the well was gonna run dry, they weren’t happy. I heard all kinds of arguments, but they couldn’t make me change my mind. I wanted us to be legit. It would pay off in the end, I had argued back. Less chance of jail time—after all, who made money while they were in jail? Who would provide for their families, their kids, while they were behind bars for drug running? The FBI would crack down hard on us if they got the chance. We had been lucky for a long time, but our luck had to run out.
Alex, president of the club before me, got us into drugs back in the eighties. Since then the Fury Riders controlled the drug trade as far as clubs went. He had vision, and he laid a strong foundation. Other clubs resented that. Especially the Wolves and their president, Alexander York.
Just thinking the name put a bad taste in my mouth. He’d hated the Riders for years, ever since he came into power and probably before then. He had turned his attention to us the minute he was named head of his club. He wanted to take us down and control the drug trade.
As far as I was concerned, he could have it. But handing it over wasn’t enough for him. He wanted the club, too. I wouldn’t let him have that. If he wanted both, he would get neither.
Was that how he got through to Lance? Did he promise him money? Lance had a family, young kids, a young wife. Maybe he’d been afraid of losing the revenue. Maybe he’d just been pissed off because when he joined the club, we were flush with cash and riding high. I knew not everyone joined for the reasons I had.
Why had I? Sometimes it was hard to remember, when things were as fucked up as they were as I rode to the Wolves’ clubhouse. Friendship. Family, which I had none of after my brothers and sisters were split up. A support system. Fun. An endless stream of girls, just one after another until I was numb.
The men riding with me were my brothers. It would never have crossed my mind to betray them. That was why I was having such a hard time understanding why anyone else would do it.
We split up, just as I told the guys to do. Axel and I would come in from the south while Frankie and Chip would come from the west. To the east was the river, to the north was an old dump. They’d be trapped—if anyone was there.
I didn’t know what I would find when I got there, but I learned to improvise when I was a kid. Nothing was ever planned out. Everything off the cuff. After Dad died, all the stability left my life. It was that, and the way I had to step up for my brothers and sisters when Mom was too zoned out to do much, that made me a good leader.
I only hoped I would be good enough to get us out of this safely.
We didn’t run into any opposition on the way between the old, abandoned buildings. I wondered how long it would be before this district faced gentrification—the area was slowly turning into something more “desirable.” What would happen to the Wolves? It wasn’t them I cared about. It was the precedent something like that would set that bothered me. The idea that people could push a club out of town. Once people knew it was possible, the others would follow.
We stopped behind an old shed just next to the clubhouse. Frankie and Chip met us there. “We didn’t see nobody,” Frankie said, sounding as suspicious as I felt.
“This doesn’t seem right,” Axel said, looking around. “I mean, last night they were all over us. And today we don’t see anybody, not even around their own headquarters?”
I agreed, but put on a smile. “They’re making it too easy, aren’t they?” The others didn’t look convinced this was a good thing. I climbed from my bike. “Just keep a tight watch. If you hear a shot fired, come running. Got it?” They nodded, getting their weapons ready. Mine was already in my hand, held low at my side.
I crept along the side of the old warehouse, listening for any sound of noise inside. I didn’t hear anything but a tinny old radio, full of static and some song from the hair band days of the eighties. I rolled my eyes. One thing about the Wolves was their love of the old days, when they had power in town. Before the Fury Riders took it from them.
I stayed low, passing under the windows. The music got louder the closer I got to the front of the building. I still didn’t hear any voices, which was just as unsettling as not seeing any bikes on the streets. When I got to the front, I only saw one bike parked by the door.
None of it made sense. I had a pit in my stomach, warning me that this could be some sort of trap. But how could one Wolf trap me? Besides, I had three guys waiting not a hundred yards away.
I went to the door. It was open. Yeah, something was up. The Glock was heavy in my hand as I entered the building.
One man, only one, sat at a table with his back to the door. I crept up behind him, though I didn’t need to. The radio was loud enough for me to walk right in without him even flinching. When my arm snaked around his neck and I pressed the Glock to his temple, he stayed fairly still.
“Hey there,” I said. “You alone?”
“Yeah,” he said. For a man with a gun to his head, he was pretty calm.
I loosened my grip, and he stayed still. With the gun pointed at his head, I moved to the radio and turned it off. “Keep your hands where I can see them,” I ordered.
He glanced down to where they were resting on the table. He’d been playing solitaire.
I looked over the cards. “Black nine on the red ten,” I said. Then I turned my attention to him. “Tell me what you know about Lance.”
“Who’s Lance?” He smirked.
“That’s strike one,” I warned, thrusting the gun toward him. “You get two more before you’re out. I’m gonna ask you again. Tell me about Lance and what he had to do with your shit club.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Strike two.” I looked him over. “You’re not a bad-looking kid. I bet the ladies love you, huh? They won’t love you so much with half your fucking face gone.”
He gulped. I got the impression he knew I meant business. I pressed on.
“Listen, I don’t know who you are or why they left you here alone. Maybe Alexander doesn’t give a shit about his lackeys, who knows?”
“I’m nobody’s lackey,” he said.
“Aren’t you? You weren’t important enough to go wherever the rest of your club went today. You were left here for me to find. That doesn’t sound so important. That sounds like a lackey’s job.”
“That’s what you fucking know,” he spat.
“Fine, then. You wanna die for some asshole who left you on your own to face God knows how many Fury Riders? That’s your choice. Or, you can tell me what I wanna know,” I sneered. “Unless you weren’t important enough to be in the know. That’s understandable.”
That got to him. I saw his face change from smug calm to indecision. He wanted to prove I was wrong, that he was valuable to Alexander and his club. But he probably didn’t know much. That was likely the reason it was safe to leave him behind—he couldn’t tell me much of anything.
But he had to know something.
“I’m getting bored, and you’re wasting my
time. I’m gonna ask you one more time before things get messy.” I aimed the gun at the kid’s forehead. From the patch sewn into his kutte, I saw his name was Steven. “Steven, last chance. What do you know about Lance?”
He took a shaky breath. “I don’t know anything.” When I lowered the gun, he looked relieved. That was before I lunged at him.
His chair tipped back, throwing him to the floor on his back. I pinned him to the grimy floor, filthy with years of dirt and spit and spilled beer and cigarettes. I wondered who the fuck ever cleaned this place as I pressed my knee against his chest. He gasped for air.
When I was sure he was immobile, I pulled the hunting knife from the sheath on my belt. His eyes went wide with terror when the dim light from the dirty windows fell on it, making the blade gleam. He gasped when I put it to his throat.
“You ever go hunting, Steve? And if the answer’s no, I wouldn’t shake my head.” I grinned, pushing the blade ever so gently against his skin.
“N-no, man.” He was gasping for air, nearly hyperventilating.
“Stay with me, Steve,” I murmured. “I used to hunt. Still do sometimes. There’s nothing like it. It feeds the animal side of me, I guess.” I watched him carefully. His eyes kept going from my face to the blade and back again. “Anyway, you remind me of a scared rabbit right now. The way your eyes are so big and round. That’s what a rabbit looks like when it knows it’s about to die. Only, I’m usually pretty easy on the rabbits. They didn’t do anything to piss me off.” I leaned closer to him. “You’re pissing me off. Get my point?”
“Yeah. I get it.” He was close to crying. The kid couldn’t have been more than seventeen, maybe eighteen years old. He wasn’t even a full member yet. The back of his kutte was blank, the club’s patch missing. Alexander picked the weakest to do the grunt work. Fucker.
“Okay. Now that we understand each other a little better, I’m gonna ask you again. I think I’ve been pretty nice up till now, don’t you?” I pressed a little harder against his throat. The hissing noise he made, and the little yelp he gave, told me I just broke the skin. I was a pro with the knife, though, and I knew it would take more than that to slit his throat. Not much more, but more than what I was doing.
“I’m telling you,” he whispered. “You were right. I don’t know shit. You’re wasting your time.” Then his eyes hardened just a little. “You better get out of here before it’s too late.”
“Too late? For what?”
“They’re gonna be coming back soon. Maybe they were expecting you to do this to me, and wanted to wait until your guard was down.” Son of a bitch, he thought he was in control. He got a little of his confidence back. All I could do was laugh, and when I did, the confidence drained from his eyes again.
“I gotta give you credit, man.” I chuckled, adding a little more pressure to his throat. Now there was a thin line of blood trickling from the spot where the blade met his skin
“For wh-what?”
“For acting like you have control over the situation when I’m the one with a knife to your throat. One little slide. That’s all it would take. But you’re still standing strong. I give you credit. You’ve got balls.”
“Uh…thanks,” he whispered. His eyes were still on the blade. He was barely breathing, afraid to make a move.
“Maybe it’s your balls I should be focused on instead.” I pulled the gun from the waistband of my jeans and pressed the muzzle to his crotch.
“No! No! All right, I’ll tell you everything I know. But it ain’t much, I swear!”
“Tell me.” I pressed a little harder with the knife, and he hissed in pain and panic.
“They went after her! That’s where they are!”
“What? Who’s they? Who’s her?”
“The girl! The girl from last night! They went after her.”
I stepped away, seeing him gasp and put a hand to his throat. It didn’t register in my mind, though. I took a step away, then another.
They knew I would come. They knew she would be alone.
I ran outside, pulling out my phone as I did. Axel and the others looked stunned but followed me in getting on their bikes.
“They went after her!” I screamed, starting the engine. The phone at the clubhouse rang and rang. “Where is everybody? Shit!” I wanted to throw the phone on the ground but slid it in my pocket and settled for peeling away from the Wolves’ clubhouse.
It didn’t occur to me to care what my men thought about the way I raced away, after Erica. All that mattered was finding her.
Chapter Thirteen
Erica
I couldn’t help feeling a little shaky when Vince left, though I did my best to hide it. With him no longer there, it was just the rest of the club and me. I felt more comfortable while he was around.
I knew I was safest in the clubhouse. It was the chasm of difference between me and the people who surrounded me that left a bad taste in my mouth. On any given day, I would have crossed the street to avoid these people. While the past twelve hours had been proof of how wrong I was, the feeling of being a fish out of water was hard to shake.
It didn’t help that the men treated me with kid gloves. Was that because Vince told them to leave me alone? Was I…his woman?
I looked at the men as they passed through the lounge, wondering what they were thinking. Did they see me as a new “old lady”? Was that what they called it in real life, or was that just something from TV and the movies? Regardless, did they think that was who I was?
Did I want to be?
It was impossible to separate the man from his club. Granted, I didn’t know him very well. But I wanted to. For now, the line between who he was and what he did was blurred.
I wanted the man. I wanted the way he made me feel. There was an instant spark between us, something I couldn’t deny.
I didn’t want the club. I didn’t want to have anything to do with the world he traveled in. These women, so cheerful and helpful and on top of things. I didn’t want to be them, essentially playing den mother to a bunch of little boys. Den mothers didn’t sleep with their boys, though. That was the key difference. I knew these girls did.
Brett approached with a smile, as though hearing the direction my thoughts were taking. “You doing all right?” she asked, handing me a glass of water. “You look like you’re taking it well.”
I nodded, not wanting to upset her or ruin the delicate sort of friendship we were forming. I felt a strange kinship with her. Maybe it was her approachability. Or maybe it was the feeling that we both cared for Vince. We shared concern for him. Only, in my case, it was my fault he was getting into so much trouble. He tried to convince me otherwise, but deep down I knew it to be true.
I gave her what I hoped was a confident smile. “I’m doing my best, just like everybody else.”
She nodded sagely. “That’s all any of us can do.” She looked around the room, and into the room where the poker game had taken place the night before. Now, a bunch of people were playing Monopoly. I stifled a giggle when I saw how seriously they were taking it. Who would have guessed the big, bad biker dudes would be so into a board game?
Brett saw me looking, and smiled. “It gets pretty intense,” she murmured, nodding in their direction. “They can turn anything into a fight.”
“Monopoly is a pretty intense game,” I agreed, grinning. “And Uno. Ever play that?”
“Oh, Uno’s been banned,” Brett said, shuddering. “I mean it. You wanna see things get ugly? Vince said he never wanted to see a pack of playing cards in here again.”
I laughed at the image of grown men fighting over a silly card game.
She shrugged after a moment. “At times like this, you have to do something to get your mind off of what’s happening.”
“Does this happen all that often? Being locked down, I mean?”
“Nah. It’s not usually this dramatic. Every once in a while there’s a flare-up. I mean, when the explosion happened a week ago, and some of the
guys got killed, we were locked in overnight until Vince knew it was safe for us to leave. That was a scary night. I was glad to be here, with everybody.”
That got me thinking. “What happened that night? I heard it was a bad drug deal or something like that.”
Brett shrugged. “I don’t know these things. We’re not really allowed to know. I mean, the less they tell us—the girls and me—the less dangerous it is for us. And for the club, too. Who knows what would happen if another club got a hold of us and tried to get us to talk?”
“I know Vince shared things with you, though.” She shot me a look that fell somewhere between surprise and defensiveness. I held up my hands. “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. Believe me. I just know you two are closer than the rest.”