by Jen Davis
Who was he kidding? She’d been over him a dozen years ago.
He downed the second beer even faster than the first.
Before he could twist open a third, a flying wad of crumpled paper bounced off the side of his head. He growled as his brother’s cackle carried across the room from the far end of the pool table.
“What the fuck, man?”
Scott ignored the acid in his voice. “Stop sulking. Life is too short for all your broody bullshit.” He tossed his stick to Frank, the club’s resident Casanova. With his perfectly maintained stubble and wavy blond hair, the guy looked more like an actor than someone who would take MC life seriously. He brought in more pieces of ass than Hugh Hefner probably got in his heyday. But when the chips fell, he never let his brothers down. Not once.
Scott stalked toward the recliner, then toed his foot with a heavy boot. “Seriously. What the fuck do you have to mope about?” He squatted down so they were eye level. “You’ve got your brothers. Money in your pocket. More pussy than you could ever fuck in one night.” He slapped the arm of the old vinyl chair. “Life is good.”
Kane knew better than to bring up Mandy. His brother didn’t like her, not from the day he introduced them after the first Braves game, to the day she left him with a broken body and heart in a hospital bed. “I’m not moping.” It didn’t even sound convincing to his own ears.
Pulling up to his full height, Scott scoffed. “The fuck you ain’t. Come back to the chapel. I’ve got something to take your mind off your troubles.”
Knowing Scott, that could mean anything from two women fucking on the table, to a midget stripper or a clown standing by to pie him in the face. Except for the fact they were headed to the club’s private meeting room; it was as close to sacred space as any of them had.
The chapel was empty when Scott led him to the big table. Intrigued, he took his customary seat, folded his hands, and waited as his brother paced the paneled room. The flimsy, dusty blinds were closed, as always, and the halogen lamp standing in the corner did little to relieve the room’s ever-present shadows.
“We have an opportunity, Kane. The club has an opportunity. We need to jump on it now.”
He cocked his head to the side, in a silent invitation for Scott to continue.
“Sucre has been dead for—what—a little more than a week? Shit on the street is already falling apart.” He loped from one end of the room to another then turned on his heel and paced the other way. “Say what you will about that sick fucker, he kept things straight.”
“Yeah, because people couldn’t so much as fart for fear he’d shove something up their asses.” Sucre had run Atlanta’s streets with an iron fist and unyielding consequences for failure. His methods and his brutality were legendary.
Scott flapped his hand like he was swatting away a fly. “Fear is the only thing guaranteed to motivate criminals and drug addicts, brother, and it’s got to be scarier than a slap on the wrist. Otherwise, what’s gonna work? We’re talking about people who already deal with terrible shit. They’ve got roaches on the floor and kids they can’t feed or pimps who slap them around. It’s got to get worse than what they’re used to if you’re gonna make them pay what they owe.”
His brother finally stopped moving and faced him. “It doesn’t matter right now anyway. Bottom line, the man is gone. Where are all these junkies getting their fix? You know how desperate they’ve got to be right now? They’d probably pay anything—do anything—to get their hands on a stash.”
His stomach churned as he followed the train of thought. “You want us to take his place.”
Biting his bottom lip around a wide smile, Scott spread his arms wide, palms up, then spun around. “It’s perfect. Who else is gonna do it? We’ve got the men; we’ve got the reputation.”
“We don’t have the money. Or a supplier.” He could tell by the faraway look in his brother’s eyes no argument was going to register. Once he had an idea stuck in his head, it played over and over like a song on repeat.
“We’ll put a second mortgage on the clubhouse.”
“No.” He sprang from the chair. “We only paid it off last year. We’re not pulling in enough cash to start making payments again.”
Scott rested both hands on his shoulders and brought their faces so close together, he could smell the bourbon on his brother’s breath. “That’s exactly why we have to do this.”
He shook his head. “But we don’t have any connections to score us a high volume of product. Drugs don’t just fall from the sky.”
“Malcolm’s already working on it.” Scott’s smile was pure pride.
“Malcolm—so this is already decided?” The unease churning in his stomach solidified into a pulsing mass of anger. Guns were bad enough. Drugs would take the club down a path of no return. They’d all end up the same kind of scum as the man they took down—if they didn’t end up in jail first. “Did I miss some kind of vote, brother? Because I know you and Malcolm wouldn’t start making decisions for this club without giving everyone a say in what we do.”
Scott scowled. “Calm your tits, K. We’re only putting a few preliminary things in motion. The club will vote in a few hours.”
After Scott had a chance to set up all the pins for a strike.
“I don’t like it.”
His brother’s usually smiling, congenial face soured. “I don’t care. Make your case at the vote this afternoon, but don’t think you’re gonna stop this.”
Kane thumped his fist on the table. “This is gonna blow up in our faces.” He was far from done, but Scott was already stomping out the door. His only chance to stop this was to convince the rest of the club.
***
The air positively crackled with unspent energy as the brothers took their seats around the heavy wooden table. Even the prospect attended the meeting, leaning against the far wall. He wouldn’t have a seat unless they made him a member.
Kane had no doubt his brother had planted the seeds for support with most if not all the guys already, but still, he had to try to talk them out of this plan. They spoke among themselves in a low hum, but all talk ceased the moment his father walked into the room. Of course, Scott went for the big guns.
Malcolm walked to his chair, but instead of sitting, he stood behind it. “When I founded this club thirty-five years ago, it was only me and three other guys with a love of the open road and a big fuck you to anybody who wanted to tell us what to do.”
The men knocked on the table in a show of support. Malcolm winked and waited until the noise stopped to continue. “Case and Bender are gone now. We all know what happened with Wes.” He scowled, then shook it off. “But as I lost brothers, I gained sons. Sons who still embrace a life lived on two wheels and raise their middle fingers to anyone who wants to challenge our authority to carve out our own place in this town.”
This time the knocking was louder and punctuated by cheers. Malcolm took it as his due. “We have a unique opportunity to take this club to a level it’s never been before. No more scraping and scratching to get by. We’ve already done the hard part. We eliminated Sucre de la Cruz. Now we can step into the void he left behind.”
Kane’s mind raced as his eyes skimmed over the faces of his brothers, all lit with excitement. His father had them in the palm of his hand.
“I’m so proud of both my sons. Kane, who opened the door to this opportunity by setting up the hit—and Scott for mapping out a plan to turn this promise into reality.” More cheers. “Stand up, boys.”
Masterful. Now it looked like the whole family was on board.
Scott cleared his throat. “When Kane and I discussed the details earlier today, he brought up some good points, and I want to address any concerns you might have. Obviously, this is going to take seed money. We’ve got to purchase the products before we can sell them, and we haven’t exactly been rolling in cash lately.”
The men around the table nodded in agreement.
“Our first impulse was to
take out another mortgage on the clubhouse, but the bank isn’t making it easy…which got us to thinking. We may not have cash, but we do have something valuable.”
No. Don’t say the guns, Scottie. Don’t say the guns.
“Guns.”
You dumb fucking fool.
“I’ve made some quiet inquiries and discovered the name of Sucre’s heroin connection. They’re willing to discuss providing our first shipment of product in exchange for a load of semiautomatic pistols.”
“Scott.” He said his brother’s name as a warning. “If we trade the guns for drugs, we won’t be able to pay the Russians.” Their gun suppliers would expect cash. No excuses. No exceptions.
Scott nodded and smiled as though they were reading from a script. “It’s what all of you are thinking, right? But the beauty is, we pay the Russians with some of the profits we make on the drugs and use the rest to buy more. In the meantime, I’ve got a guy who can show us how to make our own meth. It’s fucking cheap like you won’t believe. You can do it with cold pills, lye, fertilizer, and some shit we have right here in the clubhouse. If you dumb fuckers can follow the instructions I found on the internet without blowing us up, we can be in business tomorrow.” He poked the tip of his tongue through his toothy smile. “Play some more Devil’s Advocate, K.”
“The Russians are going to be pissed, Scott. Even if we can pay them back—”
“You mean when we can pay them back.”
Scott’s arrogant tone was digging under his skin like the needle of a tattoo gun. “If, when, it doesn’t matter. It’s their money, not ours, to gamble with.”
“Kane is right,” Malcolm boomed. “This is why any move we make must be done with complete discretion. I know most of us don’t socialize outside the MC, but if you do, it’s more important than ever for us to keep club business inside the club.”
“That’s not—”
“All in favor of taking over the cash flow we wrestled from that bastard bottom-feeder?”
A chorus of “ayes” shook the rafters. Kane was poised to vote no, but his father didn’t give him the chance.
“The ayes have it.” Malcolm nodded. “Meeting adjourned.”
Laughing and slapping each other on the back, the men filed out of the room. All but Malcolm and Scott were completely oblivious to his objections.
“You really thought you could push them against my wishes?” He fought the urge to jump at his father’s words behind him. “This is my club, Kane. Or have you forgotten?”
He faced his dad, who wore his club cut, the “President” badge on full display over his heart. The man lived and breathed the MC, and the brothers treated him like a god.
“I haven’t forgotten anything. But it sure seems you have. Like what happened to Kip’s club in Raleigh when he pissed off Sergei. They made him eat his own fucking eyes.”
“Kip was an idiot. He deserved what he got.”
“Yeah, because he was dumb enough to cross the goddamn Russians.”
“No!” Malcolm roared. “Because he was dumb enough to get caught.”
He clenched his fists at his sides. “I’m not willing to bet the lives of my brothers on the hope you’re right.”
His father’s eyes glittered with malice. “Then it’s a good thing it’s not up to you, isn’t it?”
Without another word, he went searching for Scott. He had to try one more time to make him understand.
He didn’t have to look far.
Scott stood in the hallway right outside the chapel door, leaning against the wall. Jeans bunched around his thighs, he leisurely pumped his hips toward the open mouth of the woman on her knees at his feet.
“You need something, K?” he asked, his rhythm never missing a beat.
Charlene looked up, her gaze challenging, as her cheeks hollowed around his brother’s cock.
“Nah.” He shouldered past the spectacle they both designed in an effort to get back at him for their perceived slights. They were wasting their time. It was just another Monday night at the clubhouse. “Knock yourselves out.”
Gritting his teeth, he stepped out the front door and nearly tripped over the prospect lighting up a smoke on the porch. The kid struggled to his feet, an apology falling from his lips.
He waved the guy off and kept heading to his ride. “Not your fault, man. Forget about it.” He stopped when the prospect put his hand on his shoulder.
“Kane?” The man shrank back when he turned to face him but found his nerve after a moment’s pause. “In the chapel, Malcolm said something I don’t understand.”
Trying not to take his frustrations out on the new guy, he simply raised his eyebrows.
“He said, um, everyone knows what happened with Wes. But I don’t. Know what happened, I mean. Is it okay for me to ask?”
Ah. His uncle. Everyone knew what he did, but no one talked about it. “He patched out.”
The prospect gasped.
“He got arrested, I don’t know, maybe twenty years ago. His probation officer rode him hard about the club, threatened to put him back inside if he didn’t cut ties. So, he made a choice. He chose his freedom.”
The prospect said nothing else; he shook his head as he walked away.
That was the thing about patching out. A brother didn’t just leave the club, the club left him. Walking away made Wes dead to them all. He hadn’t seen his uncle since he was a kid. He didn’t know if the man was even still alive.
It was why he never thought about leaving, even when he knew the club was on the wrong path. Those men were his family. They’d been there for him when he needed them the most. They laughed together, partied together, and picked each other up off the floor.
Patching out was the ultimate betrayal. If he didn’t like what was happening in the club, he’d need to fix it from the inside, or else he’d be left with no family, no friends, and no hope of ever getting them back.
CHAPTER SIX
Kane
The back of Kane’s leather jacket pulled in Robby’s clenched fingers, as the man scrambled for purchase on the back of his motorbike. No chance in hell the guy would fall off, not with the death grip he had going. If this was how hard he held on now, God knew what it would be like once the engine started.
“Nervous?” Kane turned his head to the side, catching a glimpse of pinched features on Robby’s normally cheerful face. “Is it the bike, or is it me?”
“Scared of you?” Robby scoffed, the tension melting from his face. He relaxed his hold a fraction. “Okay, maybe a little. When I first met you. Other than Brick, you’re probably the biggest guy I’ve ever seen in real life. When you mix in the tattoos and the scar…”
Yeah, the scar was kind of hard to ignore. But it was a part of him now, just like the ink covering both arms from shoulder to wrist.
Robby shrugged. “Then I realized, you can’t be all bad.”
He grunted, his finger hovering over the ignition button. “Gee. Thanks.”
“No, I mean it. Brick wouldn’t have chosen you as a friend if you were a bad guy. He doesn’t hang around with people like that anymore, you know?”
If Robby only knew how true his words were. Not only did Brick keep bad guys out of his life, but the man had also led the execution of every one of them who posed a threat to him or the woman he loved. He and Robby were probably the only people Brick had given a peek behind the curtain of his tough guy shell. Well, them and his girlfriend, Olivia.
“If Brick thinks you’re good people, I trust his judgment.” Robby had the voice of a true believer. “So, no, I’m not scared of you. I’m just—not great on two wheels.”
“I’ll keep you safe, kid. We’ll be there before you know it.”
True to his word, he got Robby to their destination in one piece. Brick now lived at Olivia’s apartment, since he’d left his old place—and his old life—behind.
He climbed off the bike, the rumble from beneath his thighs still echoing in his muscles.
; As unsure as his passenger had seemed before they left, now Robby hopped off the bike like he’d been riding for years. “Are you sure he’s up to having company?”
Unbuckling his helmet, he pulled it off and hung it on the handlebars. Robby followed suit.
“I’m sure. He’s looking forward to seeing you. C’mon.” He led Robby to the closest door and rapped on the heavy wood, his hands still sheathed in his black fingerless gloves.
Hopefully, Brick’s recovery was going as well as he’d promised. His skin had looked a little gray when Kane had dropped by to return his money this other day. But Robby was worried about his hero, and well, seeing was believing. At least, that’s what Brick said the last time they talked.
His hand was balled up to knock again when Brick finally opened the door. His buddy was barefoot, wearing a black T-shirt and gray sweatpants. Instead of sickly or fragile, Brick looked better than ever. His cheeks were rosy with color, his eyes sparkled, and he was…smiling.
Instead of waiting for either of them to step forward, Brick came out of the apartment and dropped his big hand on Robby’s shoulder. “I hear you’ve been worried about me.” The deep rumble and cadence of his voice made his Georgia roots unmistakable.
Clearly swallowing back tears, Robby nodded sharply. It was like the kid had been so prepared for the worst, he didn’t know how to deal with good news staring him in the face.
Keeping the grip on Robby’s shoulder, Brick led him into the apartment, Kane two steps behind. Olivia’s place wasn’t exactly girly, but it didn’t look like a man had ever lived there. The overstuffed blue sofa was covered with a mountain of pillows and a fluffy blanket where Brick must have been lounging in front of the TV.
Brick swept it all up and carried it back to what was presumably a bedroom, then returned empty-handed. “Sit down. It’s good to have some company.” Robby swiped a throw pillow wedged under the coffee table and hugged it to his chest as he settled on the cushions.
Kane glanced dubiously at the sofa where the kid settled in, then grabbed one of the chairs at the kitchen table and carried it one-handed back to the living room. Straddling it backward, he winked at Brick. “I know how you feel about snuggling up next to me.”