Iron Hearts (Royal Bastards MC St. Augustine #1)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

S triker…

It was a sun-shining and beautiful fuckin’ day in St. Augustine as I breathed in deep the salty sea air of the Atlantic, looking at the steel-gray waves coming in from the far distant horizon. I felt better than ever about being out here.

I’d had some trouble back in my rearview with how my last chapter had been going about doing things. I was lucky enough that the big dogs had taken pity on the situation enough to throw me the bone of laterally transferring here to help with the start-up of this new chapter under Renegade.

I’d found that we thought along the same lines, and there wasn’t a better fit for me if it’d been custom made. The beach life suited me just fine, too.

I leaned way back in my creaking old desk chair and rocked a little, satisfied with the creak-clack , creak-clack sound that it made. I was sitting up top above the garage in the office space of the clubhouse for the St. Augustine chapter of the Royal Bastards MC.

It was a good building – strong bones, enough to withstand the worst kind of weather. With steel girders along the ceiling down below and a series of chains and pulleys – enough to lift the bikes out of harm’s way should any of the more brutal weather that was prone to pop off during hurricane season decide to put a bullseye on the oldest city in the continental US.

By day, the floor below operated as a custom bike shop specializing in new builds and bitchin’ skins to meet the dreams and demands of any motherfucker with enough coin to afford what we were offering – which was sicker than any other bike shop out there was capable of producing as far as we were concerned.

There were shelves up near the ceiling with dust-covered trophies from just about every bike week and fuckin’ expo all over the US and some even international, too.

Renegade had an eye for making wicked sick and beautiful bikes and kept quite a few of us employed – at least on paper.

Above the garage was the office space – partially for the business downstairs and partially for the clubhouse upstairs. Upstairs is where it was at, though – a full bar, couches, a couple billiard tables and a row of dart boards. Even one of those arcade rock ‘em sock ‘em games where it measured how hard you could punch the speed trainer bag. It also measured speed depending on the setting.

We had weights and other equipment up there, too, and a room or two dedicated to the odd fuck, or some slap and tickle.

Best part about it, like down here, it was roofed, but the whole side of the building was open to the salt air and cooling breeze off the water. The ceiling fans spun lazily above to move some air on the more humid and stagnant days.

A lot of us spent the majority of our time here, working days and wild nights – like me. I handled a lot of the logistics for the shop below – inventory and the like, in charge of ordering supplies and keeping stock up to standard. I was also in charge of the books, taking payments, shipping and delivery of products. Shit like that.

For the club, I was the road captain – putting together runs and keeping the rides cohesive and safe.

Yeah, I was here more often than not, but I was good with it. I never got tired of it, that’s for sure. Not with a view like that.

Some of us worked outside the shop, like the Butcher Brothers – our sergeant-at-arms and enforcer. They were born-and-bred bayou boys, transplant gator hunters from out in the Louisiana swamps, set on making a name for themselves hunting invasive species out here in the Glades.

They did pretty good for themselves, but they did even better working at the Gator Farm tourist attraction around here, which was kind of a trip for me. Those two, hanging around gator enclosures, wasn’t what was weird to me. No, it was the thought of those two entertaining the kiddies and families from all over. That part was just fuckin’ bizarre .

I dragged my eyes away from the preserved gator head chilling, sticking out from the wall above the archway that led out to the open deck with the view of the Atlantic beyond it, and sighed. My gaze fixing on one of the Bucher – pronounced boo-shay – brothers’ trophies had drawn my thoughts to the brothers.

Skull, government name Jacques Montrose Boucher, never hesitated to correct you if you mispronounced his name. He said it was pronounced Joc-keest and not like Jaque Cousteau or whatever. The “Montrose” was where his great-granddaddy had been born.

His taller, lankier, and more unhinged younger brother, Bones, was Luis or Loo-eese Carentan Bouche – and had been named after where their great-granddaddy had died somewhere in Normandy.

It explained a few things. It seemed like their whole fuckin’ family was a pack of morbid weirdos. Didn’t help that the boys were only ten months apart and in the middle of the pack of something like seven kids.

Like their father and mother – their favorite pastime was fucking – either a pair of best friends or, most of the time, the same girl at the same time.

It reeked of some deep-South cousin-fucking type of shit to me and gave me the willies. Still, even with their weird-ass sexual proclivities and the fact they were both certifiably and deeply unhinged, they weren’t bad guys.

I mean, they were, but we all were, at least by citizen standards. That just was what it was.

The world hadn’t done many of us any favors, and a lot of us were pretty much fuck the world in response. We did things our way, and that’s just the way we liked it.

I was an Army veteran, and my moment where the wool was stripped off from over my eyes came when I got back stateside after my last tour. My battle buddy, he wasn’t doing as good as me with processing all the shit from over there. Tried like a motherfucker to go through all the proper channels through the VA, but they kept giving him the run-around. They kept putting him off, declaring parts of his body and mind failing him were not service-related when it had every-fucking-thing to do with what we did for this country over there.

He tried, man. Tried like a motherfucker to get them to fucking help him , which was what was fucking owed to him. He sacrificed everything and then some on the altar of Uncle Sam – his mind, his body, his fuckin’ spirit – and they just wouldn’t fucking help . Wouldn’t give him the care that he was owed.

He died on his bathroom floor of an OD that was entirely preventable if they’d just fuckin’ done what they were supposed to fuckin’ do – but no . Three fuckin’ tours, and he died of an overdose of some street drug he’d started on just to get some fuckin’ relief from the monsters in his head and the pain racking his body.

He was still active duty when it’d happened. The Army quickly declared it a suicide and stripped his wife of survivor benefits, and had put him out bad with a less-than-honorable discharge or whatever.

It was an added insult to injury. One that she and I were fighting to this day because fuck…

I hated the fucking world for that one. It should have fuckin’ been me…

My thoughts were pulled from their meandering path by the door to our VP’s office opening. I was out in the open floor plan with a smattering of a few other desks – mostly empty up here. I hated being boxed in and preferred the open, now that I didn’t have to worry about snipers or roadside IUDs and shit.

Renegade and Shadow each had their own offices, the doors remaining closed despite their open-door policy with the rest of the shop and the guys in the club.

We didn’t tend to bother either one of them with any personal shit. We tended to keep it official club business with our leadership.

Anything personal, we took to each other or to the club’s Chaplain – Pope. Me, I just kept it to myself for the most part. I didn’t feel like baring my soul to just anyone. I was always down to help anyone else who needed it, though.

If I couldn’t have Byron back, I’d settle for preventing anymore to go like he did, or worse, from actual suicide. I was pretty sure Byron hadn’t wanted to die. He was reaching out for help at every turn. I think he just overdid it. He had everything to live for in his kid… even if he and his wife were on the outs and sleeping in different rooms when he’d died.

I slammed the door on the thoughts of a twelve-year-old girl finding her dad like that on his bathroom floor and looked up at Shadow’s approach.

“What’s up?” I asked, raising my eyebrows at the look of consternation on his face.

“Do me a favor and get the guys in here.”

“Full table?” I asked curiously.

“Yeah, non-negotiable,” he said unhappily.

“Shit,” I muttered and picked up the handset on my desk phone. Shadow marched past me and headed down the front stairs in the direction of the shop below, no doubt to scare up Renegade.

I went down the phone tree and let everyone know what was up, to get their ass in gear, and get in here.

At least it was always two birds with one stone when it came to Skull & Bones.

I rang up the two brothers first, and Skull answered on the first ring. I could hear an announcer in the background as he grunted into the phone by way of greeting.

“Skull, Striker here. You and Bones need to get in here yesterday. Something’s up.”

I heard him swear low and soft in a string of Cajun-French. “A’ight, be d’ere soon,” he said and hung up.

I pressed the button on the receiver and punched the next speed dial down the line. It would ring through to Enigma.

“Yo,” he said.

“Clubhouse, now,” I said.

“What’s up?” he asked.

I laughed. “Motherfucker, you know better.”

“Right,” he said and grunted. I could hear a bunch of bombs and gunfire going off in the background.

“Sorry to interrupt your stream,” I said. “Duty calls.”

“Copy that. Be right there,” he said and cursed before hanging up. Sounded like the curse of every frustrated gamer when they took a kill shot to their toon’s dome in-game.

Next was Kain.

“Yellow?” he answered in his deep, melancholy voice.

“Club. Now.”

“I got’cha,” he said and hung up.

Next was Pope, then Pud, Toad, Mugshot, and Forks.

I hung up with Forks, who laughed at me for calling him up when he was just downstairs, but it wasn’t like I knew if he was here. It was lunchtime, and there was no telling where any of these fools were at in any given moment.

I got my ass up and stretched, casting a longing look at the waves outside the apertures that we zipped clear vinyl “windows” closed when it called for it. It almost never did unless the rain came in sideways or in the heart of winter when it could get a little on the cooler side.

I needed to eat, and it would take a while for all the boys to arrive. With that in mind, I opened up the drawer I kept my bike’s keys and my favorite firearm in and tucked it safely in the back of my waistband up under my colors. Straightening up, I moved to the front stairs.

“Where the fuck ‘re you going?” Renegade demanded when I appeared in the garage and headed for the open bay door.

“Grab a bite around the corner and bring it back. You hungry?” I asked.

“Yeah, get me a burger,” he said, and I nodded.

“Combo?” I asked.

“Just the burger,” he said.

“Cool.” I looked to Shadow standing behind him and asked, “You?”

He shook his head curtly.

I saddled up and rode out of the gate. The burger place we frequented was a mom-and-pop place called Smokey’s Char Broil, which wasn’t but two blocks away. They didn’t have a drive-thru. You had to go in and to the counter – and it was a cash-only joint. One that we looked out for, free of charge. We liked the food, and we liked the dude who owned it. It’d been in his family since the fifties.

Every once in a while, they’d comp our burgers, and every once in a while, they’d hit the button Enigma had installed under their counter that would send an SOS to all our phones. Whoever was closest would answer the call. Usually, it was some dumb fuck punk kid trying to rob the joint or a drunk homeless crazy fucker hollerin’ for some bullshit reason.

“Striker!” Wally called from behind the counter. “What can I get you?”

“Couple half-pounders, if you don’t mind.”

“Combos?”

“Fries with one of them, but no drinks.”

“I got you!” he called, and he went back to flipping, hollering out to the kid manning the deep fryer to get me some fresh.

The kid came around the counter with a grease-stained brown paper sack and slid it across the counter at me. I put a twenty on the counter and threw Wally some chin.

“Thanks for your business!” he called out.

“Any time, man!”

I left. Two burgers and a large fry only came to like twelve bucks and some change, but they looked like they were running a little lean today on patronage. I didn’t mind leaving a bigger-than-usual tip on top of paying for my food, which Wally had fully intended to make on the house for me.

I got back to the garage and jerked my head toward the stairs at Renegade, who stood up from the bike he was working on the electrical on and said, “Grab me a beer, and I’ll be right up.”

“You got it, boss,” I said and took the stairs two at a time, crossing the open office floor and taking the back stairs the rest of the way up to the third floor.

The third floor was worlds different from the garage and the office space. You would never guess, looking at either of the two floors downstairs, how fuckin’ nice it was up here.

The walls were a deep, flat black with red breaking it up from the crown molding to the chair rails to the baseboards. The tile was an easy-to-clean linoleum in big, fat, classic checkerboard pattern in the equally classic black and white.

The pool tables were black with red felt, with the MC’s logo in the center of each.

The back wall had a black-and-white mural of the Royal Bastards MC logo and track lighting, giving our club’s colors a subtle but respectful glow.

Above the doors leading into the private rooms for playtime were a line of photo frames, simple black, eight-by-tens of each and every mugshot we’d ever taken.

A lot of us had been arrested plenty, some of us had served time, but most of us didn’t have so much as a misdemeanor on our record thanks to Shadow’s connections and some damn fine club lawyers that Renegade kept on retainer.

I was up there once or twice. Still no convictions, though.

I slipped past the archway leading to the front half of the third floor and what served as our chapel. It was in the front of the building, with windows on three sides that were deeply tinted and mirrored to the outside world.

Despite the deep tint, the room could get toasty, and we had an HVAC unit on the roof pumping cool air into it to keep it nice.

The table was long, burnished steel, with the club logo cut out in the center. The steel was heat treated and rainbowed out around the cuts with enough room at each place around the table for us to eat, drink, or do whatever.

I set Renegade’s burger at his place at the head of the table and looked down the row of six chairs on either side.

I set my food down at my place and went back out to the bar to open up and bring in a couple of beers to go with our food.

I cracked the top on the bottle of what I called sex in a rowboat beer for Renegade. The shit was so fucking close to water it wasn’t even funny.

I picked myself a nice IPA out of the row of taps, poured myself one, and took glass and bottle to the table, setting out a couple of the stone coasters, likewise with our club logo embossed in the top, at our places and set our beers down.

I dropped into my seat with a sigh and belatedly checked my pockets for my cell phone, which I already knew resided in my desk drawer where I left it downstairs. Still, I didn’t want to be the dumb motherfucker to catch an ass whoopin’ for breaking the rules.

I dug into my food, ripping open the bag to use as a placemat as Renegade walked in, Shadow on his heels, and dropped into his seat at the head of the table. Shadow, a beer of his own in his hand, dropped into the chair at Renegade’s right hand.

I didn’t bother asking what was up. It wouldn’t be discussed until everyone was present and accounted for.

Forks came in a minute later, wiping grease off his hands with a sorry, faded red mechanic’s rag.

Next came Enigma, then the Butcher Brothers – Skull & Bones, and a little after that, Pope, Toad, Pud, Kain, Switch – and then we waited.

…and waited, and waited, and waited … Renegade got pissed, Shadow stepped out, making repeated texts and calls, and then finally, Mugshot brought his happy ass in.

“What the fuck took you so long, pretty boy?” Switch demanded before anyone else could with a sniff.

“Never mind that now. He’s here, and that’s all that matters,” Renegade declared. Still, Mugshot wasn’t entirely off the hook as Renegade shot him a dark look and said, “I’ll want an explanation later.”

Mugshot looked a little green around the gills, and I couldn’t say I blamed him – because fuck that. No one wanted to be on Renegade’s bad side, especially not someone who wanted to keep their face as pretty as Mugshot did.

Modeling was his main gig – thus, he did a lot to keep his face and skin in good condition.

The meeting was swiftly called to order, and I had a regret that I didn’t grab a second beer or at least a soda before we got started.

Oh, well .