Chapter Six
No Mercy
Romeo
“Thought you were going to be late for church.” Tyr greeted me as I walked into the Clubhouse’s main room. Wintry light slanted in through the multi-paned windows lodged in the former bank’s cinderblock walls, bouncing off the pale cream marble floors. Framed pictures of Gravedigger members who had served in the military lined the entryway on one side, and an American flag was pinned up on the other. I paused long enough to shrug out of my coat, then turned to face Tyr, who wore a cut that was virtually identical to mine. There were a few exceptions, of course. For instance, his title patch marked him as President, where mine marked me as Vice President. He also wore two small, curved patches on the left side of his chest—over his heart—with the road names and dates of Gravedigger members who were now dead. I’d known both of those brothers well, and each death—one lost to cancer and the other to a hit-and-run—had been a real blow. When a club as young as ours lost solid members, those losses threatened the stability and future of the Gravediggers MC itself.
No way in hell was I about to let the Gravediggers go down without a fight. Against all odds we’d made it out of Hades’s killing grip and established our own territory, building up a rep that not even Hades could tear down. At least not from the outside.
But he sure as hell could rip it apart from within.
“You know I’d never miss church.” I clasped hands with Tyr with a semi-chest bump. “Not unless I’m on my deathbed or in the gray-bar hotel. You get my text?”
Tyr nodded, then raised a hand to another group of brothers coming in from the cold. “That’s why I called all the officers in, in addition to the Original Four. It’s time to get serious about this shit.”
Yes. The sooner we put this behind us, the sooner I could focus on Shiloh and proving to her that MC didn’t always equal pure evil. “Outstanding.”
It took about twenty minutes for the officers of the club to show up, so I had time to touch base with my brothers and Tyr’s lieutenants, Slash and Ajax. The three of us had joined Tyr when he’d split from his uncle to start his own chapter of the Gravediggers, and that was when we’d picked up the name, the Original Four. Normally, founding a new chapter wasn’t a big deal; when a successful club grew so large in numbers and popularity, it had no choice but to branch out into new territory. The birth of new chapters for a motorcycle club was actually a sign of a healthy club.
But starting up our chapter, known simply as the Gravediggers, hadn’t been a genuine branching out from the Chicago Gravediggers.
It had been an all-out fight to survive.
When Hades had taken over the club from Tyr’s father, he’d proven himself to be a blight. He recklessly waged turf wars when negotiations would have been the better call, then screwed over one of Chicago’s most notorious street gangs, the ultra-violent Yard Kings from Back of the Yards. These spectacular fuck-ups had eventually led to a war that lost the Chicago Gravediggers over a third of its members, half of its business deals, and most of its reputation as being a solid, money-making club.
If Tyr hadn’t split from the mother club to strike out on his own, I would have bounced the hell out of that death trap. But this new chapter we’d created was now on the verge of becoming something not just real, but legendary, in both our world and in the civilian world. All we had to do was keep Hades from poisoning it from the inside out.
“There he is, Mr. Grab-Ass himself.” I held my hand out to Tomahawk, then spied Zee a few steps behind him. “You two kiss and make up?”
“Like I’d kiss anything that ugly,” Tomahawk drawled, tossing a wry glance Zee’s way. “I’ll never be that desperate.”
“Yeah, I heard you two were having a tiff.” Beside me, Ajax crossed sleeved-out arms in front of his chest, a Gravediggers bandana covering his bald head as he stared at the two men through reflective sunglasses he wore even indoors. “What was it all about?”
“Ooh, Ajax, lemme give you the cliff notes.” Slash, Tyr’s other lieutenant, came up from behind me, sipping on a cup of coffee that was probably his third or fourth of the day, even though it wasn’t yet noon. Slash wasn’t big on booze, but his caffeine addiction was in a class by itself. “Zee brought in a sweet young thing with no clear tags on her that said she was his property, then left her on her lonesome like a fucking dumbass here in the club—”
“For no more than three minutes,” Zee put in, shaking his head.
“Which was more than enough time for Tomahawk to get handsy, because he’s Tomahawk and his dick does most of his thinking for him,” Slash went on, talking fast because Slash on caffeine always talked fast. “Zee’s chick went from sweet young thing to Kill-Bill psycho in a New York second, scared Tomahawk into shitting his pants, and Zee was somehow to blame for everything. That’s what I heard, anyway.”
“Accurate, especially the part about Tom shitting his pants,” Zee drawled, snorting as he nudged Tomahawk with his shoulder. “But we’re not going to spread that around the club, Tom, honest.”
“Yeah, you can trust us,” Slash said, grinning, then turned to a brother who happened to be passing by. “Hey, did you hear Tom shit his pants?”
“You guys suck,” Tomahawk muttered just as Tyr took his place at the head of a large banquet table set in front of what had once been the teller counter and was now a fully stocked bar. Glancing around the room, he grabbed up the custom-made gavel with a grip shaped like a skeleton, and banged it down.
“Church is in session, so sit your asses down,” Tyr said just below a bellow. “We’ve got a lot of shit to get through and none of you are gonna like it. The quicker we get this over with, the better.”
Like that, the mood in the club changed. I watched the men around me exchange speaking glances as I took my place next to Tyr. Ajax sat on my right, while Slash sat on the other side on Tyr’s left. The four of us had been tight long before we’d officially become the Original Four, so while we were about to go through some things, at least I’d be going through it with my brothers. There wasn’t anyone on earth I was more comfortable with than them.
Then the memory of Shiloh flashed before my eyes for the millionth time that day—her wary green eyes, her irresistible smart mouth and all that damn hair begging for my hands. Hell, yeah, I was comfortable with her, too. But considering she’d looked at me like I was the monster under her bed when I’d dropped her off at her place yesterday, I doubted the feeling was mutual.
“A few months back we struck hard against some bottom-feeding mob boss, because he’d grabbed my little brother’s woman,” Tyr began, and the room fell unnaturally silent. No doubt everyone remembered that brawl. It had been short, vicious, and crippling for our enemy. Just the way a Gravedigger liked it. “When he got her out, Loki’s woman told us these assholes talked about how Hades had given the mob guy loads of information on just how important she was to my brother, and therefore to the Gravediggers. Nobody but the people in this room knew that.” He let that sink in, which it obviously was, since everyone started looking around the table as if they would somehow be able to spot the snake that had somehow bitten us.
“I’m not going to demand to know who the hell is sitting here, lying to our faces as he betrays us. Waste of fucking time. And I’m not going to ask who dares to hold loyalty to the man who drove our original mother club into the ground,” Tyr continued, and though his voice was calm and even, the rage behind it seemed to make the walls around us heave like a bellows. “That’d just get us all mired down in a finger-pointing hissy fit that would tear us apart even more than we already are. Instead, I’ve decided to let you all know about the spy sitting with us right now, because I want to promise you loyal Gravediggers something. I’m promising each and every one of you, my brothers who mean more to me than my own flesh and blood, that I will give you each a turn to do whatever the fuck you want with the traitor when I find him. Slash,” he said suddenly, making the other man jump, “what’re you gonna do to the traitor once I have him? I’m curious.”
At first Slash looked like he thought it was a trap. But then the caffeine got the better of him, and he began to grin like the maniac he was. “You know that guy on Game of Thrones who tortured that other guy for, like, half a season?”
“They all did that, dude,” Zee drawled, making some members laugh, albeit nervously.
“Yeah, but this guy was a fucking nightmare. His whole family was, because they were known for skinning people alive. I’d try my hand at that, because I can’t think of anything more painful than having your skin removed inch by inch, but you’re still alive and you have to watch it happen.”
“Skinning. Damn good start.” Tyr nodded, then looked over to Ajax. “What about you?”
“Fire’s always good,” Alax shrugged.
Again Tyr nodded and looked to me. “You?”
“He talked.” For me, that was the bottom line. “That wagging tongue put all our lives on the line. Because he couldn’t keep his fucking tongue still, he needs to lose it.” Then I glanced around the table at my brothers, chilled and furious that one of them wasn’t what he seemed. “I’m fine with that.”
“So there you go,” Tyr said almost jovially, while everyone sat as if they’d become frozen in place. “Skinning. Burning. Losing your goddamn traitorous tongue. And that’s just the beginning, traitor. You think about that while you sit here, surrounded by your enemies. Now, let’s get on to other business. Yesterday—”
“Wait, what the hell.” Tomahawk put up his hand. “We’re just going to move on from that? Like… shit, I don’t know. Like nothing’s changed?”
Tyr gave him a hard stare and let the silence spin out until Tomahawk dropped his hand and seemed to shrink in his seat. “Interrupt me again, any one of you, and we’re going to have a real problem. Now, to answer the question, Tom, yeah. Moving on is exactly what I’m going to do. From my perspective, nothing has changed. I’ve known for weeks that there’s a spy in our house. The only thing that’s different is now you know it too, and so do they. That fucks them up in a big way.”
Tomahawk’s face couldn’t have been blanker if he’d been a robot whose circuits had blown. “What do you mean?”
Tyr’s smile was like looking into the face of Death. “Do you really have to ask?”
“Think what they must be going through, listening to Tyr,” I said, locking my eyes on Tomahawk while clocking each movement of the men around me. “As of now, they don’t know if any information Tyr gives out is something they can reliably pass on to their master, or if it’s a false flag.”
“It could be something I fed them in order to reveal them,” Tyr expanded when the other man continued to stare. “For instance, some of our guys might be taking a specific route on a long haul to the border. Is it legit, or did I just set up an ambush, knowing that particular long haul is going to be hijacked?”
“Jesus,” Zee muttered, looking grim. “Fucking 3D chess.”
“Then again, it could be legit shit that they don’t know they can trust, so they don’t follow through on my orders, or they act in a weird way,” Tyr went on, ignoring him. “That’ll make him look just as guilty.”
“Damned if they do, damned if they don’t,” Slash said, smiling gleefully. “Fucking awesome. I’m gonna read up on skinning.”
“And if they’re really smart,” Tyr went on, “they’re sitting here wondering if I’ve already fed them false intel that’s put them in my crosshairs, and now I’m just fucking with them. They’re sweating now, wondering if I already know who they are, because all those false flags I’ve fed them has made them stick out like a virgin in a whorehouse. Maybe now they’re thinking I’m just waiting for them to fuck up one last time so that my suspicions about them are confirmed, and that’s the real motivation behind me telling you all this now. I want them to fuck up. So yeah. It’s time now for me to move on to other business. Gravedigger business that puts roofs over the heads of your families, food on the table so your babies don’t starve, and quite possibly, puts a final nail in the traitor’s coffin. Show of hands of anyone who has a problem with that.”
Again every man went statue-still, and I couldn’t help but give the point to Tyr. This was some high-level psychological warfare. In that moment I had no doubt that the traitor in our midst would have to change their damn shorts once this meeting was over.
“As I was saying, yesterday Romeo was approached by one of our former brothers from Chicago Gravediggers MC, a guy we all know and love. Radar.”
“That asshole,” Ajax muttered while Zee made a sound of disgust from his end of the table.
Tyr waited until the worst of the grumbling died down. “Now, since it was at the Harley-Davidson store, this surprise meet-up could’ve been just a coincidence. Thing is, Romeo’s been on special assignment for me, working on a project for the past month. No specifics, since we now know Hades has eyes and ears in the club, but Radar happened upon our brother Romeo while he was on the clock.”
“Really?” Ajax looked to me, frowning from behind his sunglasses. “Did it feel like Radar was targeting you?”
“It felt like he was an enemy that got too damn close, too damn fast.” And I was still furious with myself for not clocking him before he rolled up on Shiloh and me. If he’d had any intention of hurting her, I wouldn’t have been able to stop it. That was unacceptable. “Whatever his target was, if any, you can bet that after all was said and done, Radar did what he’s known for—he went straight to Hades and reported everything he both heard and saw, which hopefully wasn’t much.” I’d slammed Shiloh into a dressing room as fast as I could, something I was sure I would have to answer for later. But, better to have my Shy girl pissed off at me rather than spotted by an enemy.
“I don’t know,” Zee said, also frowning. “If he’d been given a mission to follow you, I doubt he’d suddenly roll up on you as noisy and obvious as a brass band and make himself known. Not even Radar is that dumb.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Slash said with a high-pitched laugh. “Question is, what did he see? Were you with anyone, Romeo?”
“That is not the fucking question,” Tyr muttered, shooting a quelling glare at Slash. “I know what Romeo was doing, and Romeo knows what he was doing. The real question is whether or not anyone else here wants to take their eye off the damn ball—which is Radar and why he was there—to gossip about club members’ movements. Don’t ask questions about a brother’s club business again, Slash.”
“In case you’re not getting it,” I said when the silence became explosive, “things have changed here for us. We need to be smart, we need to lock our shit down, and most importantly we need to understand that we’re neck deep in a cold war that could go nuclear-hot in an instant. Radar crossing my path is a shot across the bow, as far as I’m concerned. So as of now, my eyes are wide open looking for any sign of danger, and the only thing that matters to me is making sure that the things I care about most in this world are protected.” That included Shiloh, whether she liked it or not.
And I was sure she wasn’t going to like it.
“We have to assume we’ve got eyes on us everywhere we go,” Tyr said, looking like he was one stupid question away from tearing someone’s head off. “I want each and every one of you and the crews you run to be ready for anything. Also, no one does anything alone, understand? Unless you’re carrying out specific orders from me, I want everyone moving around the city in pairs. Lock down your homes and places of business and put everyone in your personal circle on alert. If someone tries going off on their own, I want to know about it. When you’re out in the world, keep your eyes open and your mouths shut. And when you’re here… same goes. If someone questions you about what you’re doing for the club and why you’re doing it, tell me about it immediately. Questions?”
“Shit,” Tomahawk muttered, looking down at the table.
“That’s not a question, Tomahawk.” Ajax, like everyone else, now sat ramrod straight in his chair. “You got something to say?”
Tomahawk looked around the table, his expression torn between fear and what looked like an oncoming tantrum. “This is like, Gestapo tactics, man. Looking over our shoulder. Having us look over everyone else’s shoulder. Snitching on each other. That’s not what the brotherhood is supposed to be. That’s not who we’re supposed to be. You all are my brothers, goddamn it. My brothers. How the hell am I supposed to snitch on any of you?”
“Aww, look, Tommy loves us,” Slash cooed, earning himself a one-fingered salute from Tomahawk.
“If a brother is responsible for putting a shiv in your back, is your loyalty to him going to keep you from bleeding out?” I wanted to know. “Because that’s what the traitor’s doing to each and every one of us—shivving us right in the back like the spineless bitch he is.”
“Exactly.” Tyr nodded, his lips curling back in a snarl. “He has a problem with me and how I run things? Fine. Get the fuck out. But that’s not the choice he’s making. He’s making a choice to betray us. So you tell me, Tom. What should we do about people who make the decision to betray us—who have never been loyal to you or me—when we’ve all dedicated our lives to committing our loyalty to this club, to this brotherhood? To this family?”
Tomahawk’s tantrum face abated, and righteous anger began to trickle in. “We show no mercy.”
“Damn right.” Tyr pounded his fist on the table. “No mercy.”
“No mercy.” The chant gained strength and took on a life of its own. As the words rang through the marble and cinderblock front room, I knew with everything in me that if anything happened to Shiloh, I would absolutely show no mercy to my enemy.
All I had to do now was convince Shy that the enemy wasn’t me.