Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Aero
We don’t wait.
I’m fucking done waiting. I’m itching to get my hands on more of these mother fuckers. Every second we sit on our hands, these fuckers spread their rot deeper into our city, making it filthier by the hour.
The second that prospect started talking, the rage sharpened. I don’t just see red, I become it. Cold. Calculated. Merciless.
There’s no vote. No debate. Just action.
We load up like hell’s cavalry. Grizzly and Surge take point, Crank and Rancor close behind, shotguns strapped and blades tucked with the same precision surgeons use. Only we’re not coming to save lives. We’re coming to end them.
I climb onto my bike, the engine snarling like it senses the bloodlust in me. The rest of the crew fans out behind me, silent, riding tight. No chatter. No jokes. We’re past words. There’s just the hum of engines and the sound of a club ready to wage war.
We’ve already been to the location once, dragging their prospect out of the shadows of that crumbling shithole they call a clubhouse. No cameras. No alarms. Just filth and arrogance. They didn’t even notice we took one of their own. That’s how fucking stupid they are.
We hit the parking lot fast with precision strikes. Bikes roll in quiet, engines cut. They don’t hear us until it’s too late. I’m through the front door with my shotgun up and my rage clenched tight like a damn bomb ready to blow.
The first guy to notice lifts his head off the couch, mid-sip of beer and too slow to register the chaos tearing through the room. My shot takes his kneecap clean off. He screams like a dying animal, flopping across the floor and painting it red. His pain’s a beacon. It draws the others.
Rancor’s next, dragging some half-dressed asshole out of a hallway by the hair, smashing his face into the wall until bone cracks and drywall blooms like dust from a demolition site. Surge takes the back, a shadow with a blade, and reappears seconds later with blood dripping from his hands.
One tries to pull a piece and gets a knife in the throat from Padre. The man twitches like a puppet cut from its strings before he folds to the floor in a heap.
I keep moving. Toward the heart of this godforsaken place where their patches drink and fuck and brag about the shit they’ve done.
The place reeks of sweat, cheap cologne, and even cheaper liquor. Beer cans and broken glass litter the floor. The walls are stained, dented, and covered in grime that won’t wash out. Just like them.
My boots land heavy leaving a trail from the blood already slicking the floor behind me.
A big guy lumbers toward me, tattoos of spiderwebs running down both arms, and a crude skull on his neck.
He’s grinning like he thinks this is a fair fight.
I don’t give him the chance to swing. The butt of my gun meets his teeth in a spray of blood and enamel.
Blood sprays across my shirt like a badge of war.
His knees give out, and I stomp him flat, my boot connecting with his ribs hard enough to cave the fuckers in.
Another tries to run but Crank tags him mid-turn with a bullet to the spine. He falls screaming, clawing the ground as if it’ll open up and swallow him.
Gunfire bursts outside. Grizzly returns fire with short, controlled bursts. Hashtag’s voice crackles through the radio. “Two more just bolted out the back, heading for the trees. One’s big, might be Cholla.”
I bare my teeth. “Then we didn’t hit hard enough.”
Backdraft torches their bikes out back. Every last one. Gasoline and oil hiss and ignite, flames licking chrome and paint until everything they love is ash.
The survivors get dragged into the lot. Laid out like trash.
One’s crying. One’s begging. Another tries to play stoic, but the piss soaking his pants says different. Padre crouches beside him, whispers something low and cruel in Spanish, then cuts him open like a letter. Ear to ear.
The rest watch it happen and still think there’s a way out of this.
Idiots.
I crouch over another guy still breathing. His face is hamburger, broken nose, lips split, one eye already swollen shut. He’s barely conscious, but I make sure he hears me.
“Supplier and buyer. I want names.”
He hacks blood onto the pavement. “Fuck you.”
I nod once. “Wrong answer.”
I drag the edge of my knife along his ribs. Not deep. Just enough to peel skin from bone. He howls and thrashes, but his arms are pinned by two of my brothers. His eyes shine with panic now.
“Who are you working for?” I grind the question out, my voice raw.
He grits his teeth. “I don’t know names.”
His lips smirk, like he thinks the answer is enough. That I’ll let him go if he plays dumb. That I’ve got rules.
I wedge the knife under his fingernail and lift. He screams. It cuts through the night, and I feel it uncoiling in me, something darker than anger, hungrier than revenge. I jab the knife deeper.
“I don’t know who they are!” the guy wails. “Cholla gets a call when a delivery is made. We pick it up and drop it off for whatever buyers they have lined up!”
Disgust coils in my gut. This guy doesn’t know shit. I bury the blade in his thigh and stand up.
“Kill him,” I say.
Grizzly doesn’t hesitate. Just one clean shot.
I wipe the blood off my hands onto one of their cuts. My brothers move around me with the efficiency of men born for this kind of hell. Efficient. Cold. Relentless. No mercy. No hesitation.
We leave no one breathing. Their blood is in the floorboards, in the dirt, its scent in the smoke curling into the sky.
Grizzly starts rifling through the pockets of one of the corpses, flipping him over like dead weight.
“They have to have something,” he mutters.
Crank follows suit, dragging another by the collar and patting him down roughly. Padre yanks a thick leather wallet from the back pocket of a guy whose throat he just slit.
“Got something,” he grunts, tossing it to Hashtag. Another wallet hits the ground.
“Bingo,” Hashtag growls, thumbing through the wallets and retrieving several chipped ID badges.“These will get us through the front door without lighting the place up first.”
I snatch one of the badges from his hand, studying it closely. “Perfect,” I say. “We gut them from the inside out.”
We didn’t get all the answers tonight. But we razed their home. Stripped their power.
They’ll know now. They fucked with the wrong club and we’re coming, blade in hand, and soaked in their blood. And next time, I won’t leave any of those assholes breathing.
We ride home bloody and seething, leaving scorched earth in our wake. The wind cuts through the night like a blade. My engine roars beneath me, the only sound louder than the blood in my ears.
By the time we reach the clubhouse, the sun’s cracking the sky again, mocking me with its golden light.
Another day beginning while I’m still dragging the wreckage of the night before behind me.
Only this time Lacey’s not here. Not in my bed, not in my arms, not where I can pretend for a few damn hours that this life doesn’t hollow me out.
And after the way I treated her, she probably won’t ever be.
We park and dismount without a word. Each of us stained with blood, skin torn, knuckles split. Our adrenaline hasn’t even begun to wear off. What we did tonight, it wasn’t vengeance. Not yet. That part’s still coming. This was an execution plan and simple.
We stomp through the clubhouse doors just as the sun threatens to crest over the skyline. Inside, it’s dim with the blinds still drawn, low lights flickering. The silence hits too hard.
Midge is wiping the same spot on the bar like she’s been waiting there all night. Emery looks up from where she’s curled on the couch with a blanket around her shoulders. She sees me and her jaw tightens like she knows something inside me broke tonight and it ain’t getting fixed anytime soon.
I go straight for the bar. The whiskey bites the second it hits my throat but it’s not enough. I pour another before the first even settles. The wood creaks as I lean forward, both hands braced against it like it’s the only thing keeping me standing.
I should feel better. The Bloody Scorpions are dead, all but the few cowards who got away with their tails between their legs. But all I feel is hollow.
I swallow another shot and scrub a hand down my face. My knuckles are still raw. There’s dried blood under my fingernails. Some of it’s mine. Most of it isn’t.
Behind me, the brothers drift in. Quiet. Tired. Bloody and bruised. Padre’s got a split lip. Crank’s limping. No one complains. No one says a damn word. They just drop into chairs, kick off boots, crack beers like we didn’t just level an entire MC.
I turn, my back pressed to the bar, glass dangling from my fingertips.
“Hashtag,” I grunt.
He looks up from where he’s already sliding his laptop out of its case. “On it. I’ll check for chatter.”
He jerks a thumb toward the laptop screen without looking. “Local news caught the blaze. Cops found the bodies—well, what’s left of ’em. No IDs made yet and no mention of us.” he confirms.
Rancor crosses his arms, scowling. “Won’t stay that way long. Those fuckers that got away are gonna start squawking. We lost the element of surprise.”
“Maybe,” I mutter, my jaw clenched. “But they don’t know what we know.”
Crank grunts. “You think the buyer knows the shipment’s gone?”
I shake my head. “They might not even know the container got hit yet. And if they did, they’d be more careful. I doubt the buyer knows shit.”
Padre leans back in the chair, his voice like gravel. “We wait too long, we lose any girls they already have.”
“I know,” I snarl, sharper than I mean to.
“They can’t be dumb enough to move women during daylight,” Surge says quietly.
“I’m not betting lives on what those animals will or won’t do.” I lift the bottle again and let it burn down my throat. “Hashtag, dig into the location that prospect gave us. I want to know if there’s any movement.”
“On it.” Hashtag says peeling off toward his tech den.
I turn to the rest. “Everyone get some rest. We hit the plant tonight.”
Some of the guys shift, hesitation in their eyes like maybe they’ve got something to say. I cut them off with a look that dares them to open their mouth. No one does.
They’re pissed. Wound just as tight as I am. It goes against every instinct we’ve got to wait when there’s blood to spill and women in trouble, but they know I’m right. They need rest, and clear heads. Half-cocked gets you killed.
One by one, they file out.
I pour one last shot and down it. Tension coils in my spine. I push off the bar, pacing. My boots thud slow against the warped floorboards.
I hate this part. The waiting. It gives me too much time to think. Lacey’s gone and that’s on me. I told myself it was to protect her. That I’d rather she hate me and live than love me and die. But fuck if it doesn’t feel like a knife twisting under my ribs.