Chapter 6
PAGAN
Itapped my pen against the round table in Church, trying to keep my shit together while my men told me what bullshit went down the night before.
“The shit stain acted like a douche before he even walked in the damned place,” Rodeo, my enforcer, relayed.
“He strolled up to the doors with two of his buddies and demanded to be let in without payin’ the cover charge.
Now you and I both know, boss, every fucker pays the cover charge.
Hell, if we’re there to socialize, we pay the cover charge.
If you’re too much of a cheapskate to hand over a Benjamin to walk inside the place, then you don’t get to see some of the best titties that Wyoming has to offer.
And chances are, you won’t spend at the bar or pay for a lap dance, either.
We don’t want broke motherfuckers in our strip club.
We want big spenders. The girls have to eat and pay their bills. ”
“He’s a tight-fisted little motherfucker,” Bootneck agreed. He folded his arms across his chest and tapped the sole of his boot on the newly painted slate grey wall he was leaning on while listening to the conversation around the table. “Don’t he still owe the club a gamblin’ debt?”
“Five grand,” Bounty confirmed. “Gonna start chargin’ the little pissant interest soon. We’re the Kings of Anarchy, not the goddamned bank of Anarchy. He’s had a month to repay, but nada.”
Bootneck’s mouth thinned into a tight line. “The entitled little fuck’s takin’ the piss. We can’t let it slide.”
I shrugged. “I’d have slit the little bastard’s throat the night he started trouble with Callum O’Shea and his woman, but you assholes kept telling me we had to keep his daddy sweet.”
“Well, his dad is the sheriff, and we pay him to turn the other cheek,” Castle pointed out. “Slittin’ his son’s throat wouldn’t do much for business relations, and do we really need the law breathin’ down our necks?”
I looked around the table where most of them sat. Every one of them was here because they were the best, they were loyal, and they were Kings through and through. I’d met most of my boys on my travels, back when I was a nomad, fresh out of the Marines, and too antsy to settle anywhere for long.
Castle, my VP, was probably the man I was least close to. Most presidents had their best buds as their second-in-command, but I wanted the opposite. I wanted a man who would challenge me and fight me on decisions that he felt weren’t in the best interest of the club.
I’d seen many presidents of outlaw clubs start to believe their own hype, and it never ended well. Men bowed down to us, women threw themselves at us, and we had authority to do shit the average man couldn’t dream of, so it was easy to let it go to your head and turn into an entitled dick.
I took my position seriously, and it started with living by the Kings of Anarchy code, in particular, the part where we put the brotherhood above all.
My club came first, and it would also come before my future wife because that was what I agreed to when I took the gavel.
The night before was the first time I’d not been around to sort club shit out, and although I knew Castle had handled it, I couldn’t ignore the uneasiness rippling through me whenever I thought about crawling back into bed with Aislynn when I should’ve been heading back to the club.
I still didn’t understand what the hell happened. One minute, I was glancing up at the sign telling me I was hitting Boulder, and the next, I was pointing my bike in the opposite direction to head back to Aislynn.
The cold had taken hold of me, and just the thought of navigating the icy roads without wiping out left me feeling exhausted.
The raw need to ride back to my woman, slide under the warm sheets, and press my body against hers was overwhelming, so I did.
The emotions that filled my chest as I slipped into bed beside her were unfamiliar and not entirely welcome, but still, it didn’t deter my deep-rooted desire to be close to her.
In the cold light of day, I felt like a failure because I’d broken the most sacred code—Brotherhood above all—and it wasn’t sitting right with me. Still, it was done now, and Castle had stepped up, so at least the club was no worse for wear for my neglect.
“What do you wanna do with the Huntley boy?” Bootneck asked me. “Can we play?”
“Thought you would’ve done that already,” I replied dryly. “You don’t usually hold back.”
Boot gave me a smug look. “Well now you come to mention it, my fist may have slipped last night when we dragged him down the cave, and he may have a teensy-weensy black eye.”
I snorted, and not just at the notion of my SAA landing a punch on Huntley Junior, but also at the big, burly mammoth even daring to allow the phrase ‘teensy-weensy’ to permeate his brain, let alone say the fucking words.
I caught the eye of my tech man, Wiki, who, like always, was tapping on his phone. “Huntley Senior still in the holdin’ room?”
Wiki jerked a nod. “Fabio’s with him. He’s been pacin’ like a caged tiger for twenty minutes.”
“Good,” I muttered. “We’ll leave the douche hangin’ for a while longer. That way, we can really get the asshole riled up.”
“He wasn’t happy we incarcerated his boy,” Nox, my club secretary, commented.
“So, his boy shouldn’t come to our strip club expectin’ freebies and throwin’ tantrums when he damn well knows he doesn’t get ’em, should he?” I retorted.
Nox held his hands up defensively. “I’m with ya, boss.
You know what I think of the little fucknut.
You can shoot him in the head for all I care, or better still, let me do it.
He had his hands on Roxanne a week ago, tryin’ to force her to give him a free private dance.
I would’ve put a round in him then if Castle hadn’t stepped in. ”
“Nox is right,” my VP agreed. “Junior’s becomin’ an issue.”
I nodded slowly. “You’re not wrong. He’s a loose cannon, and sooner or later, we’re gonna have to deal with him.
The downside is that we’re in business with his daddy, who could make our lives difficult if he suspected for one moment we took his boy out.
The upside is that those assholes have made enough enemies over the years that if we did do it, there’d be a long list of suspects. ”
“You wanna put a hit out on Junior?” Rodeo asked.
“I don’t think we’ll have a choice,” I confirmed. “He’s a law unto himself, and that’s okay if you can play it smart, but he’s a stupid fuck who rules with a reign of terror.”
“He throws our club’s name around, too, boss,” Nox announced.
My eyes slid to meet his. “He does what?”
“Roxie told me somethin’ disturbin’,” he went on. “You’re not gonna like it.”
A bad feeling slid through me. “Spit it out.”
“Junior pulled Hank Young’s daughter, Gracie, over a couple of weeks ago for speedin’, except she wasn’t speedin’.
Told her he’d let her off if she fucked him.
She told him to give her the ticket, and that was when he got nasty.
Told her to be nice to him, and if she didn’t comply, he’d make a call to us and get her daddy’s farm burned down. ”
“What the fuck?” Bootneck rumbled.
Castle growled.
“How does Roxie know this?” I asked Nox
“It came from Peggy, Gracie’s mom,” he confirmed. “The intel’s good... credible. The town’s talkin’ about us, and it ain’t good.”
Castle’s stare hardened. “Don’t put a hit out. I’ll do it.”
I gave him a nod. “If you want it, you’re up.”
“Wait. How old’s Gracie?” Rodeo asked.
“Just turned eighteen,” Castle muttered. “Still a kid.”
My head swiveled back to my VP, and the wistfulness in his tone settled in me.
It seemed my VP had an interest in the girl, which meant things were about to get complicated. I got why, though. The Young girl was good and decent like Aislynn, and she was beautiful.
Gracie Young was the resident town sweetheart, and everybody loved her.
She organized a program where the residents drove all the seniors who lived in Coal Creek to the community hall for coffee and bingo every week.
She also delivered meals and did welfare checks on them while she cooked and helped them around the house.
Gracie was a nice girl with a good heart, definitely wifey material in the making, so I could see why my VP carried a torch for her. The problem was, my VP was thirty-six, and although Gracie was just legal, he wouldn’t go there until she was older.
My boys were dawgs, and pretty much anything went in the bedroom with the majority of them, but they liked their women to be women and not girls.
We had a strict rule for our whores and our dancers.
Twenty-three and above, no exceptions. So the thought of Augustus Huntley the second—or Junior as everybody called him—coercing a barely legal sweet young girl to fuck him out of fear and intimidation wasn’t only unacceptable, it also made my gut roil.
I had no problem being a cunt and playing games when I saw fit, but not with eighteen-year-olds who were still in fucking high school.
“Could somethin’ happen to him while he's down in the cave?” Bootneck suggested.
“Too obvious,” Rodeo dismissed. “We may have to bide our time with this one. He’s an officer of the law, and his daddy’s as crooked as they come. If there’s any hint of us bein’ involved, we’ll be fucked.”
“Good news is, he’s pissed a lotta people off,” Bounty pointed out. “When he does eventually catch a bullet, the list of suspects will reach New Mexico.”
“We’ve got another problem in the meantime,” I told the brothers.
Boot’s forehead creased. “How so?”
“If Huntley, Junior, and the rest of their corrupt crew are goin’ around town tellin’ folk we’re their enforcers, all of our work in the community will have been for nothin’.” I looked at each of my men in turn. “We need to do some damage control.”