SNEAK PEEK WICKED’S WRATH
Chapter 1
The contractor's blood looked black in the dim light of the Charlestown warehouse.
Wicked watched the man crawl toward the door, leaving a smear across concrete that had seen worse. Tommy Cantlay had stiffed a Bastard-connected construction outfit for sixty grand, then had the balls to think he could hide in Townie territory like the club wouldn't find him.
Stupid bastard.
"We done here?" Southpaw asked, flexing his left hand. The knuckles were split, but he'd had worse in the ring. Hell, he'd had worse last Tuesday.
Wicked crouched beside Cantlay, grabbed a fistful of the man's hair, and yanked his head back. Blood bubbled from a broken nose, and one eye was already swelling shut. The other showed pure terror.
Good.
"You're gonna pay what you owe," Wicked said, his voice carrying the flat Southie vowels that marked him as neighborhood.
"Every dollar. Plus interest for making us come find you.
" He let the silence stretch, let Cantlay's ragged breathing fill the space between them.
"And if I have to come back, Tommy, I won't bring Southpaw. I'll bring Hatchet."
The name landed like a physical blow. Everyone in Boston knew what Hatchet did to problems.
"I'll pay," Cantlay gasped. "I swear to God, I'll pay. Just—"
"Forty-eight hours." Wicked released him, standing in one fluid motion. "Money goes to Callahan at the site. You don't show, we don't talk again."
He walked out without looking back, Southpaw falling into step beside him. The night air hit them like a slap—early October in Boston, cold enough to cut through leather and remind a man that winter was coming. Their bikes waited in the shadows, chrome catching the distant glow of the Tobin Bridge.
"He'll pay," Southpaw said, swinging a leg over his Harley.
"He'll pay or he'll disappear." Wicked pulled on his gloves, the worn leather molding to his hands like a second skin. "Either way, message gets sent."
The engine roared to life beneath him, and he let the vibration settle into his bones. This was the work—not pretty, not legal, but necessary. The Bastards kept Southie running the way it was supposed to run. Pay your debts. Keep your word. Cross the club and face the consequences.
Simple rules for complicated times.
They rode back through streets Wicked's grandfather had walked, past triple-deckers where three generations of Irish families still lived stacked on top of each other, past corner bars that had survived Prohibition and gentrification and every other plague the city threw at them.
The neighborhood was changing—glass towers rising along the waterfront, coffee shops charging six dollars for what Dunkin' sold for two—but the bones remained. His bones. His blood.
His responsibility now.
The compound appeared ahead, a converted warehouse squatting on a corner lot with sight lines down three streets. Razor wire topped the fences, and the Bastards' colors flew from the roof—a grinning skull wearing a shamrock, middle finger raised to the world. Home.
Bruiser stood gate duty, his massive frame blocking the entrance until he clocked the bikes and hauled the chain-link open. The big man nodded as they rolled through—respect for the President, acknowledgment of a job done.
Wicked killed his engine in the courtyard and sat for a moment, listening to the night. Music thumped from inside the clubhouse, bass heavy enough to rattle windows. Laughter. Bottles clinking. The weekend starting early because his brothers had earned it.
He should be in there with them. Should be drinking, shooting pool, enjoying the peace they'd carved out of Boston's chaos.
Instead, he felt the familiar itch beneath his skin. The restlessness that never quite went away, even when everything was running smooth.
"You coming?" Southpaw asked, already heading for the door.
"In a minute."
His VP disappeared inside, and Wicked stayed where he was, staring at the South Boston skyline.
Somewhere out there, beyond the new construction and the old neighborhoods, Callahan's Irish Pub was serving Thursday night drinks.
Had been serving Thursday night drinks since 1932, when Maeve's great-grandfather opened the doors with Prohibition barely cold in its grave.
His father used to drink there. Every Thursday, regular as church on Sunday. Wicked remembered being fifteen, sixteen, sneaking in the back to find the old man three whiskeys deep and full of stories about the neighborhood. About loyalty. About what it meant to be Southie.
Now his father was in the ground and Thursday nights felt hollow.
Wicked shook off the thought and headed inside.
The clubhouse hit him like a wall of noise and heat.
Bodies packed the main room—brothers in cuts, women in tight clothes, enough cigarette smoke to violate six city ordinances.
The bar ran along the back wall, built from wood salvaged when three neighborhood pubs closed in the same year.
Different grains, different stains, but all of it Southie. All of it theirs.
Pike raised a beer from the corner booth, where he was holding court with Stitches and two women whose names Wicked couldn't remember. The Road Captain looked relaxed for once, his usual intensity softened by alcohol and the blonde pressed against his side.
Wicked nodded but didn't join them. Instead, he made his way to the far end of the bar, where the noise dimmed and a man could drink without shouting.
The prospect working the taps knew better than to ask. A glass of Jameson appeared in front of Wicked before he'd settled onto the stool, the good stuff from the bottle they kept behind the bar for officers only.
He drank, letting the whiskey burn down his throat, and watched his brothers.
Bruiser had come in from gate duty, his massive shoulders clearing a path through the crowd as he headed for the pool tables.
Stitches was telling a story that had Pike's booth laughing, his hands moving with the dark humor that came from years of Navy medicine and the violence that followed.
Even Southpaw had found his way to a corner with a brunette, his boxer's hands gentle on her waist.
His men. His club. His responsibility.
Twenty-three brothers wore the Bastard patch, plus a handful of prospects hoping to earn their way in.
Twenty-three men who'd sworn to bleed for each other, to hold territory, to stand against anyone who threatened what they'd built.
Wicked had welded them together from neighborhood kids and military vets, from dock workers and bar bouncers, from every bastard who'd ever been told he wasn't good enough and decided to prove the world wrong.
"Looking like a man with something on his mind."
Wicked didn't turn at the voice. Hatchet moved quiet for a man his size, but the Sergeant at Arms always made himself known before he got close. Professional courtesy.
"Just thinking."
"Dangerous habit." Hatchet claimed the stool beside him, signaling the prospect for a beer. His face showed nothing—it never did—but his eyes swept the room with the constant vigilance of a man who'd spent six years doing work nobody talked about. "Cantlay handled?"
"He'll pay or he won't. Either way."
Hatchet nodded, accepting the beer and drinking deep. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. That was the thing about his Sergeant at Arms—the man could sit in silence for hours without it getting awkward. Words were currency, and Hatchet spent them like a miser.
"Heard something today," Hatchet said finally. "Might be nothing."
Wicked turned, giving him his full attention. Hatchet didn't waste breath on nothing.
"Strangers been pushing into some Southie businesses. Couple of the shops on West Broadway, maybe a bar or two." He took another pull of his beer, eyes still scanning the room. "Nothing solid. Just whispers."
"What kind of pushing?"
"Protection money, from what I hear. Pay up or bad things happen." Hatchet's jaw tightened—the only sign of emotion the man ever showed. "Been going on maybe a month. People are scared to talk."
Wicked felt the restlessness sharpen into something colder. Something useful.
Southie was Bastard territory. Had been since he'd founded the club eight years ago, riding back from his father's funeral with a head full of whiskey and a heart full of rage. Anyone pushing into their neighborhood was pushing into them, and that meant only one thing.
War.
"Names?"
"Not yet. I got feelers out." Hatchet finished his beer and stood. "Could be nothing. Could be someone too stupid to know whose territory they're stepping in."
"Find out." Wicked held his gaze. "Quietly. I want to know who they are before they know we're looking."
Hatchet nodded once and melted back into the crowd, gone as silently as he'd come.
Wicked turned back to his whiskey, but the taste had gone sour. Strangers in Southie. Protection rackets on West Broadway. Someone testing the boundaries, pushing to see what they could take.
His father's voice echoed in his memory, whiskey-rough and certain: This neighborhood takes care of its own, Declan. Always has. Always will.
He'd been fourteen when he heard those words.
Had believed them with the fierce faith of a kid who didn't know any better.
Then he'd gone to war—three tours in Iraq, house-to-house fighting in Fallujah, the kind of violence that stripped everything down to survival—and come home to find his father dead and his neighborhood bleeding out.
The old man had drunk himself into the ground while Wicked was clearing houses half a world away. Died alone in the apartment above Callahan's, three blocks from the bar where he'd spent every Thursday night for thirty years. By the time Wicked got stateside, they'd already put him in the ground.
He'd founded the Bastards a week later. Grabbed the men he'd grown up with, the ones who'd stayed when everyone else fled for the suburbs, and told them they were going to take Southie back. Block by block. Corner by corner. Whatever it took.
Eight years later, they owned these streets. Every bookie, every dealer, every contractor and bar owner knew the rules: you operate in Southie, you answer to the Bastards. You pay your tribute, you follow the code, and in return, you get protection. Real protection, not the bullshit the cops sold.
Someone was trying to change that.
Wicked finished his whiskey and signaled for another. The prospect poured with a shaking hand—kid was barely twenty, still learning that the patch came with more weight than glory.
"Relax," Wicked told him. "I don't bite unless you give me reason."
The prospect—Marco, he thought, but wasn’t sure—nodded too fast and retreated to the other end of the bar. Wicked let him go. He'd learn or he'd wash out. Either way wasn't Wicked's problem tonight.
The music shifted to something slower, and a few couples made their way to the open floor near the pool tables. Wicked watched without really seeing, his mind still chewing on Hatchet's words. Strangers. Protection money. A month of pushing before anyone thought to tell the club.
That was the problem with running a neighborhood.
People got comfortable. Started thinking the peace would last forever, that the Bastards would always be there to handle trouble.
They forgot that peace was earned every single day, in blood and violence and the willingness to do what softer men wouldn't.
His phone buzzed. Text from Pike: Card game in the back. You in?
Wicked considered it. Poker with his brothers, a few hours of normal, the pretense that he was just another man in a cut instead of the one who carried all the weight.
Not tonight, he typed back. Early morning.
He drained his second whiskey and pushed back from the bar.
The crowd parted as he moved through it—not consciously, just the instinct that made people step aside for dangerous men.
He took the stairs two at a time, past the second floor where brothers crashed when they were too drunk to ride, up to the third where the President's quarters overlooked the street.
The room was sparse: bed, desk, weapons locker, a window that gave him sight lines to the front gate.
No pictures on the walls. No personal touches.
He'd been living here for three years, ever since his apartment got firebombed by the last crew stupid enough to challenge the Bastards, and it still looked like a temporary arrangement.
Maybe it was.
He stood at the window, watching the South Boston night. Streetlights painted orange pools on the pavement. A car rolled past, bass thumping. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed.
His city. His responsibility.
And somewhere out there, someone was trying to take it.
Wicked pulled off his cut and hung it on the hook by the door, the leather heavy with years of road and blood and brotherhood. The Bastard skull grinned at him from the back, shamrock clutched in bony fingers.
Bastards forever, the words beneath it read. Boston blood.
He'd find out who was pushing into his territory. He'd find out what they wanted and how far they were willing to go. And then he'd show them what happened to people who threatened what was his.
The restlessness was still there, coiled in his chest like a snake waiting to strike. But now it had a direction. A purpose.
Someone was about to learn the hard way that Southie belonged to the Bastards.
And the Bastards didn't share.