got women and children to protect. Speck isn’t fully patched in yet and Lawson and Lyndon are still a year away from prospecting. We can’t afford to have sloppy bullshit and he’s been given chances. Too many of ‘em because I was doing time. That’s over with now. Everyone toes the line, everyone pulls their weight, everyone lives and bleeds for this club. Vic was only the first to go… there’s going to be a helluva lot more deaths before this is over.”
The chill down my spine tells me there isn’t a word of a lie coming out of him.
I just didn’t really see it coming.
The clubhouse is fucking writhing with bodies.
I knew from the parking lot it was going to be bad but I have to force my way through the crowd just to get out to the hallway and into my room. I have a private bathroom, thank fuck, and I take my time to wash the dirt and gore off of my skin. It’s fucking everywhere, even with me wearing gloves I can still see flecks of black under my fingernails which is a sure sign I’ll be smelling corpse stank until I’ve scrubbed myself raw.
There are some downsides to the one percent-er life.
I’m scrubbing my hair down for the third time when my phone starts buzzing like crazy on the countertop. It’s never a good sign when it blows up and I open the shower door to grab it.
Have you seen the new girl?
It’s from Law and I curse him through my fucking teeth.
You’re seventeen. Get your ass outta my fucking strip club before someone sees you and we get raided.
I drop it back on the countertop and finish washing up. It takes him a minute but he does eventually reply.
I’m leaving now, King sent me for more booze and the club is the only place that never runs out. But man, you gotta see this girl.
I don’t have time for a stripper right now, no matter how badly I wanna bend one over and fuck her into tomorrow. It’s been about a week since I last shot my load down a woman’s throat and that is at least six days too long. Fucking Vic and his bullshit has taken up too much of my time.
That and Rue going off the fucking rails over King coming home.
I mean, he’s only been waiting for this night every second of the day since he was twelve and his pops got pinned for shit he didn’t do. Problem was he wasn’t expecting the man King has become, the one who has just lost twelve years of his life and now he’s got a club riddled with rats who are trying to take our fucking business out from underneath us. To take away everything we’ve fought and killed and fucking died for.
The club my grandfather started, the brotherhood he built and bled for, these rats want to fucking spit on.
Over my dead fucking body.
Whatever it takes, I’ll burn them all out like a shot of penicillin straight into the bloodstream. Whatever it fucking takes.
Send me a photo of her.
I get dry and dressed, checking one last time that there isn’t any evidence of my night’s work as I pull my shit on. I slip my phone into my pocket and then forget all about this new girl as I get my head together before heading out.
My mom and my sister are going to be out there. My mom doesn’t need to be fretting about a goddamn thing and if Trink knew about shit going on… I don’t need that sort of fucking headache.
When I slip out of my room Rue’s getting out of his too, a frown still on his face but he’s clean and freshly shaved, the shadows on his face cleared up just a little.
“What’s the face for?”
He grunts. “Diego came in for the party with Luis and Poe just got back from her summer fucking holiday so she’s here with Trink. It’s a fucking mess waiting to happen.”
I cuss the whole world out and rub a palm over my face. “Are you sure you can’t get Thorn to budge and just give her your fucking patch already? Mom was pregnant with me at seventeen, it’s not that fucking bad.”
He glares at me and I shrug. “I’m not saying knock her up, I’m saying protect her from that asshole and all the other ones coming out of the fucking woodwork now she’s grown tits.”