Property of Tyrant (Kings of Anarchy MC: Nebraska #1)

Chapter 1

I looked around at the bloodbath surrounding my brothers and me.

There were dead bodies all over the building’s floor.

Grim satisfaction filled me. The structure was out in the middle of nowhere.

The dead men thought they’d pull a fast one on us.

They discovered the error in their thinking the hard way.

No one fucked with the Kings of Anarchy MC and got away with it.

When someone did, we hit them hard and drove the lesson home.

Some people were fortunate to have minor infractions that got them an education they lived through. This bunch wasn’t that lucky.

This group was new and was to supply us with guns that we’d then move through our pipeline and onto the black market.

We’d been told about this group by another crew we usually purchased many of our guns from.

We’d keep a percentage of the weapons for ourselves and send the rest off to be sold.

We made good money off this business. It wasn’t our only one, but a staple for all chapters.

We were encouraged to have other businesses, whether legit or not.

There was no limit to how much we could make.

It all depended on how hard we wanted to work and how much we wanted it.

These men had seemed to be on the up and up when we set the deal.

Since none of us wanted to chance being caught by the cops, we’d agreed to meet in this out-of-the-way place.

That was normal for deals of this kind. However, as with all runs, we never trusted anyone entirely unless they were our club family.

We’d sent men out ahead to observe well in advance and had more with us than was visible when we rolled up to the meet.

Only a fool went in, showing all his cards.

Everything had been going smoothly. They inspected the guns.

The lead guy even shot off a couple outside.

He claimed he liked what he saw, so we went back inside to complete the transaction.

When it was time to hand over the money, they pulled it back.

It seemed they thought they’d keep the guns and take the money.

They were wrong. Before they could get the upper hand, we’d mowed them down.

I scanned my club brothers for signs of injury. They all wore pissed-off expressions. Who could blame them? I stopped inspecting when I noticed there was blood on Handler’s arm. He was our road captain. I marched over to him.

“What happened? How bad is it?” I barked.

“It’s an upper-arm wound, through and through, Pres. I didn’t get behind a crate fast enough. I’m good,” he answered.

“Let Cardiac look at it.”

“It’s no big deal. It can wait until we get home.”

“No, it can’t. Get your ass to Cardiac now. We’ll mark this spot so we can clean up your blood. Can’t leave DNA behind.”

Handler knew that it was an order. He’d let our medic take care of his arm. He nodded as he walked away. I turned to face the others standing or wandering around. I yelled loud enough for everyone to hear me.

“If you have even a scratch, I want to know about it, and you get your ass to Cardiac now. If you’ve bled, we need to know where.”

There were nods, but no one moved, so I took that to mean only Handler had been hit.

They knew the drill. Telling them to mark the spots was normal.

Besides being our medic, Cardiac was something of a mad scientist. He’d come up with a concoction that made finding DNA impossible.

We named it Special E. The E stood for eraser, and we carried that shit with us everywhere. You never knew when you might need it.

“Hey, Tyrant, there’s a live one over here,” my VP, Cobra, hollered. He was standing over a body. When I glanced at him, I saw the body at his feet move slightly. I went to them without delay.

I chuckled darkly without an ounce of humor when I saw who it was.

I was glad to see him still alive. It was the lead guy, Arturo, who made the deal and then tried to steal from us.

His eyes were barely open slits. His face was filled with pain as he clutched his stomach.

Blood coated his hands and the floor underneath him. I crouched next to him.

“See what happens when you fuck with the Kings of Anarchy, Arturo? You get royally fucked back ten times as hard. You should’ve never made the deal, or you should’ve kept to the terms. If you had, you and all your men would still be alive.

What made you think you could do this and get away with it?

The guys who referred you to us know the risk of betraying us. They had to tell you.”

He coughed, and blood dribbled from his mouth.

Yeah, he was gutshot, and it was a slow, ugly way to die.

I’d watched others die that way. He tried glaring, but he couldn’t pull it off.

I had news for him. It didn’t scare me one bit.

I’d been fighting scarier men than him since I was a kid.

These days, there was nothing I feared, but plenty of people feared me. I liked it that way.

“How?” he whispered. The word came out garbled due to the blood.

“How did we survive your backstabbing?” I asked to be clear about what he was asking. He gave a tiny lift of his chin.

“We’re prepared to be betrayed every time we go out on a run.

Even if it’s someone we know and have dealt with in the past, we come equipped.

You don’t reveal everything you have in your hand.

That’s stupid. If you shoot straight with us, we do the same, and you never know we have aces in the hole.

However, do what you did… Those aces become our surprise offense.

You were dead as soon as you pointed that fucking gun at me. ”

Howler, our sergeant-at-arms, and Satyr, another member, approached us. They held high-powered rifles equipped with special optical scopes. They gave Arturo a dispassionate look.

“Arturo, let me introduce you to our guardian angels. This is my SAA, Howler, and our brother, Satyr. They were the ones shooting from afar. They’re our aces in the hole,” I informed him, smirking.

“I’m sorry, Pres. I was aiming for the fucker’s heart when he jumped up on that box. It wasn’t a clean shot,” Howler apologized. He hated to miss where he intended, and it rarely happened. But when it did, he’d dwell on it.

“Howler, you can’t predict shit like that. Don’t let this fucker make you doubt yourself. He’s a goddamn idiot. Look at what he tried to do. Only a dumbass of the first order would do that.” I attempted to ease his guilt. There was no reason for him to feel that way.

“I know, but it still pisses me off. He’s fucking up my nearly perfect score. If I keep that up, Satyr will think he’ll take the top spot.” Howler grumbled.

Satyr elbowed him and grinned. “You’d better watch it,” he teased.

The two men were good friends and club brothers, but that didn’t stop them from having a friendly rivalry over who was the better sniper. They counted bodies and how many were kill shots versus wounding people. Howler had been with us longer, so he was ahead, but Satyr kept adding to his score.

I turned back to Arturo. He was still with us, but not for long. I wanted answers. “Arturo, we can do this one of two ways. We can add to your pain and make these last minutes or hours even worse, or we can get answers and then end it immediately for you. I have only one question.”

He stared at me for several seconds, then said, “I’ll answer. Just promise you’ll end this.”

“I swear on my cut, if you answer and it’s truthful, we’ll let you go. I want to know why you did it.”

“It was the Jacquots. They said if we took you out, they’d give us their guns at a discount.”

This news made me stiffen. “Which Jacquot?” I asked.

“Hugo,” he whispered.

“Why would they do that?” I asked.

“B-because…” his eyes closed, and the breath left him.

I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. His head flopped around like a rag doll. He was gone. Dropping him in disgust, I came to my feet and paced. I had to think. My brothers watched me. No one said anything for a good minute or more. It was Cobra who eventually did.

“Tyrant, was he telling the truth?”

They all wanted to know that, and they asked me because of a gift, or what some would call a curse, I had.

Most of the time, I could tell if someone was lying.

When I couldn’t, it was because of some conflict or interference that messed up the signal.

Often, it was when they mixed lies with truth.

It didn’t happen frequently, but it did happen.

“I don’t know. Fuck, if he was, then we’ve got a big problem.

Why the hell would the Jacquot family want out of our partnership?

It’s been lucrative for them and us. They make a more-than-decent cut.

We’ve been working together since we formed this chapter.

We chose them because they don’t dabble in that other shit,” I growled.

The shit I was referencing, and they knew it without me saying it, was one we had nothing to do with.

Yeah, we were into illegal shit. The one-percenter patch on our cuts was there for a reason.

However, even if we were outlaws, we had a code and morals, though not a lot.

A big one was that we didn’t touch human trafficking.

That was one thing we fought against, and we went after those who did anytime we could.

That had been the stance even back when I was a prospect.

Moreover, it was a directive from Big Daddy, the president of our mother chapter.

This club would never tolerate human trafficking, forced prostitution, or raping of women and children.

Those who did stay far away from us, or we’d wipe them out.