Chapter 18 Warren
Warren
Max and I share a quick look before someone’s banging on the door. All eyes swing to the security camera screens. It’s the police and they’ve come heavy.
Luca turns to the rest of us as another round of banging assaults the door.
“Angel,” he snaps. “Text Rudi and tell her and Tor not to come back until they hear from one of us. And to stay in public.” He turns to the rest of us as another round banging echoes around us. “The rest of you, lay your guns on the tables and give the cops no reason to arrest you.”
“We’re gonna make it easy for them?” Max asks.
Luca’s laughter fills the bar menacingly.
“Of course we’re fuckin’ not. We don’t surrender to anyone, including the city’s police force.
However, today I suspect they’re here to question us about the trip to the bookstore, considering reports will be saying bikers.
And since we’re meant to be the only bikers in town, it’s us they want answers from. ”
“Cops don’t always ask questions before they haul your ass to jail,” King mutters.
“No one’s being hauled anywhere.” He gives one last order to Trey before taking out his gun. “We fear no patch and no badge. This is our city and we’re here to stay.”
Trey leaves through the back to scale the back wall and hide out in the warehouse Luca wants to buy. If we are to be arrested and hauled off to jail, Luca wants him here for Victoria and his son.
“No one say a word. No one back down. Now open the door.”
“We have Effie and the Mayor’s daughter upstairs,” I remind Luca.
“They’re not gonna get that far. But to be sure, King, go and make sure your guest doesn’t make a peep, take her into Effie and do what you have to do to keep them quiet.”
Each of us stand in the bar, Luca still sitting at his table. He gives the nod to the prospect to open the door, and I move to stand at the foot of the stairs. In seconds, the silence weaved around us is disturbed by the police hollering.
I count ten of them filing through the door, with their guns aimed at us. Only the lead officer strolls in unarmed and unconcerned of where he’s walking into.
“How can we help you, officer?” Luca asks.
“I’m sure you’re aware of the shooting not an hour ago. Witnesses recall five bikers shooting and speeding through the streets like it was a playground.”
Luca says, “Then you should be out looking for those five bikers.”
“That’s why we’re here. We’re aware that your presence in the city has changed the streets since your arrival, but you do not have the right to do as you please.”
I watch between the two of them and out of the two of them, Luca is the calmest. Though the officer is trying his best to keep his frustration locked down.
“Which of my brothers have been pointed out? Which of my brothers fired shots? Which of my brothers broke any of your laws?”
The officer disgraces himself by stuttering. Luca cuts him off and stands.
“Are you here with arrest warrants?”
“I told you, we’re here to…”
“Ask questions, yeah-yeah, I heard. This is the first and last time I let you walk into my club. Not one of my brothers fired shots today, that much I’ll tell you. And I’ll tell you this, you’re not welcome here, and someone who isn’t welcome yet still comes through my door, disappears.”
A couple of the officers laugh but they take one look at my president and stop.
“You can’t threaten the law,” one of the officer’s states.
“I think you’ll find I just did. Now, you have thirty seconds to get out of my club before you regret coming here in the first place.”
He must see what we already know about Luca, he motions for the officers to leave, and they do.
Once the door is closed, Angel says, “I’m not sure if that was wise.”
Luca’s smirk returns. “I guess we’ll find out.”
“We don’t need to make unnecessary enemies,” Angel argues.
“Everyone is an enemy until they prove otherwise.”
I admire Luca and how his mind works. I couldn’t figure him out at first, but once you spend time around him and see him in action, it’s easy to see what kind of man he is. Ruthless. Brutal. Cold. But loyal, smart, and I always know where I stand with him.
“Max. Warren. Head out, take Tor’s truck, and see if you can locate where the Hades Hogs are staying,” Luca instructs.
It would be with pleasure to get out of here for a while. I served two years when I was sixteen in a juvenile detention, and I have no plans of ever finding out what an adult jail or prison is like. I’ll stand and fight side by side with Luca when it comes to anyone, especially the police.
“That was a fuckin’ rush, brother,” Max hollers once we’re in Tor’s truck and I’m pulling away from the clubhouse.
I admit, my heart was pounding a little harder than usual.
My brother, as much as I love him and would die for him, he can be reckless, and he enjoys the dangerous side of life more than any other person I know.
“Do you think Luca would have had us spill police blood right there in the bar?”
I round the corner and drive along East and third scoping out every parking bay for motorcycles.
“I think he would’ve gone as far as he needed, but I don’t think he would have had us shoot them. It would have brought too much attention to us. You think the city would have let us get away with killing ten cops? Come on, Max. Be smarter.”
“Fuck you. I am smart. That’s why I reckon he would’ve shot them and fuck the consequences.”
I’d laugh if it wasn’t so stupid. “There’d be no way we could get away with it, nor would we have been able to stay in the city. We’d have to spend our lives on the run.”
“I think he would’ve if they tried taking any of us,” he murmurs.
“I think that Luca has the ability to make anyone believe they’re in danger and he knows that, and he used it to his advantage.”
“I don’t agree. Surely you saw the difference between him and the Willow’s Peak chapter. He’s different to Leo. Leo’s more reserved, Luca’s wild with control.”
“You admire it?”
“I do and so do you.”
I can’t argue with that but if I tell him so he’ll think he can be even more reckless.
We drive around the city for hours. Not a single motorcycle raises our suspicions or a Hades Hogs brother in sight.
“I’m hungry, let’s stop by Mom’s.”
It’s always Mom’s, never Mom and Dad’s. Though our parents are still married, we don’t have a relationship with our father. He made sure of that while we were growing up and then we made sure of it when we embraced being the disappointments he constantly told us we were.
I park up outside our childhood home and kill the engine.
There have been a few times I haven’t had the energy to deal with our dad but tonight isn’t one. I’m hungry and I haven’t seen my mom in a couple of months. She’s the only reason I step through her front door. The day she’s gone, I’ll burn it to the ground.
It seems we’ve caught them at a convenient time for us. Dinner time. The family is sat around the table with our father sat at the head and our mother to his left.
“Ah, Jessica,” Max sneers. “How lovely it is to see such a backstabbing whore at our table.”
I’m the one who shouldn’t be able to keep my mouth shut. I’m the one she promised she loved before she took up with my brother and then went on to marry him.
“Maxwell!” Dad roars, his face turning an angry red.
He pushes up from his seat and slams his hand on the table causing the glasses to shake.
“How many times do I have to tell the two of you that you’re not welcome in my house?”
Ignoring him, Maxwell rounds the table to the right of me and ruffles our ten-year-old brother’s hair. Henry laughs and quickly loses the smile when Dad glares at him. While I round the table to the left and press a kiss to my mom’s cheek.
Her smile at our presence makes the grief of our father’s mood worth it.
She’s the only reason Max and I knew love and happiness in our childhoods.
She’s the one who said she was proud of us when we achieved something in school.
She’s the one who taught us how to be men when our dad had no interest.
“Sit yourselves down. I’ll get you a plate.”
“They’re not staying. Get out of my house!” Dad bellows.
This is another reason we have so much love for our mother. She stands and stares him right in the eye.
“I cooked this meal, like I have cooked every meal for the last thirty years. If I want my sons to eat at my table, they will.”
Silence hangs heavy around us, and Max and I smirk.
Max is first to pull out a chair and I follow suit.
“Sit down, Frank, your food’s getting cold,” I tell him, and he storms out of the room.
“You can understand why he refuses to eat with you,” William, the brother who married my ex, sneers, adding, “What is that you’re wearing? You’re in a biker gang now?”
Max goes to argue but I get in there first. “Tell me, big bro, how did you like the taste of my dick the first time you went down on your wife?”
Max’s laughter has mom grinning as she enters with two plates of dinner. She places them in front of us and asks, “It’s so good to hear your laughter, Maxwell. I miss it around here.”
She presses a soft kiss to the top of his head before taking her seat.
William shoots his glare across the table and Jess won’t meet my eye.
I slide my ass onto the bar stool and slide over a roll of cash to my brother.
“Is this my cut from the car heist?”
“Say it a little louder, I don’t think they heard you down at the precinct,” I grunt, digging out my phone from my pocket. “Make it last, no work is coming in and I’m not paying your way again.”
Even though I will, and he knows it.
“So, listen, I’ve got something to tell you and you’re not gonna like it.”
I signal to the barman I want a beer and turn to my brother. When he starts a sentence like this, which is usually once a month, my stomach tightens in anticipation.
“Go on,” I urge.
It’s best to get it over with. The sooner I know, the sooner I can clean up his mess.
“Jess is seeing someone.”
That explains why she hasn’t been blowing up my phone for the last couple of months.
We went six months apart during one of our many break-ups, so not seeing one another until we bumped into each other in a club isn’t out of the ordinary. It hasn’t surprised me she’s been quiet over the past weeks.
“She sees a lot of people,” I say shrugging it off.
Neither of us are exactly celibate when we’re apart. She’s probably latched onto someone hoping I’d find out. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s done it.
“This shit is different.”
I glance at him and because I know my brother so well, I know that he’s dragging this out, not to piss me off, but because he doesn’t want to tell me.
“Just spit it out, Max.”
“William.”
“William who?”
“How many do you know, Warren?”
He’s wrong. The only William I know is my brother and not only would my brother not be stupid enough to step on my toes, he’s not Jess’s type in the slightest.
He’s a fucking bore who prefers to take leisurely walks like an old man than actually live life and enjoy it.
There are no words hearing this. But the rage, that’s something I can work with.
I leave the bar and since dad’s golden son still lives at home like a kid, I know where he’ll be at this time of night. I’ve never been close with my older brother of three years but to go after my woman? That’s something I never saw coming.
By the time I reach the house, I can’t think straight. I’m after blood and because my brother is a pussy ass fucker, it won’t be my blood flowing.
Max is hot on my tail as I storm into the house. He’s not downstairs. I climb the stairs and burst into William’s room. How the fuck is he happy still sleeping in his childhood bedroom? And just like an old man, he’s sat up in bed, in a pair of fucking pyjamas reading a book.
“Warren? What the…?”
I haul him out of bed and shove him down onto the floor. I beg he fight back but the pussy shrivels up.
“Is it true?”
Recognition falls over him and he backs off across the room.
“Warren, I was going to tell you. It just happened!”
It’s not what I want to hear, and I throw the first punch. Instantly the rage drops to a simmer. How the fuck can I kick his ass when it’s like beating a defensive child?
I stumble back and turn to see Mom stunned silence stood next to Max, who I noticed didn’t step in to help William. Not that he would. Our older brother looks down on us both.
“I’m sorry for waking you, Mom.”
“What’s going on, Warren? Why did you hit your brother?”
I have to get out of here. As I go to leave, I lean in and kiss her cheek.
“Ask William and Jess, Mom.”
I don’t hang around to hear his voice, and Max follows me out. I note Dad didn’t come to William’s rescue like usual.
Max’s phone pings and then he tells me, “I’m out. Got a booty call with Natasha.”
I barely acknowledge him as I jump in the truck I bought last week. My motorcycle is in the shop and it’s not looking good.
I aim to drive to my apartment but find myself parking up outside Jess’s apartment. I loved, love, her. Or do I?
Fuck.
I couldn’t give a shit that she’s met someone else. I give a shit it’s my brother.
Then it hits me.
For my brother to start up a relationship with her, there must be something there between them. Which means she’s going to be eating dinners with us. Sat across the table from me. Next to him. My fucking brother.
Clarity hits me and I choose not to go up to her apartment and have it out with her. Hear bullshit answers and watch bullshit tears fall from her eyes. I’m not going to do anything. Slamming my fist into the steering wheel, I scream out in frustration.
She could have gone with anyone!
Why my asshole brother?
I don’t taste mom’s lasagne, but I shovel it down staring at Jess. The only satisfaction I get nowadays is making her and my brother uncomfortable.