Chapter Eight
A prospect paced the floor, glancing at his watch.
His eyes searched the growing darkness beyond the window.
Another picked at a beer mat at a table.
Conversations were held in hushed voices.
Whispers and murmurs filled the pub like the thick whirr of a hangover.
Only no one had drunk anywhere near enough yet to induce one.
“Time to send the women home,” Indie patted my shoulder, and I looked over at the booth closest to the bar.
Emmie, Heidi, Ciara, Suzy. Drinking and laughing.
Relaxed. Unaware of what was really happening in the background.
They’d had glimpses. Hints. But my guess was no one had prepared them for what was to come.
Apart from Suzy. She knew how this went.
She looked my way, catching my eye, her smile fading. A sadness filling her face. I didn’t miss the tiny movement of her palm across her stomach as someone at the table said something to her and stole her attention away.
Behind them, Tori sat with another woman.
I didn’t know her name. The partner of one of the new prospects.
I stopped myself shaking my head. If I’d been Pres, I would have chased her out years ago.
Long before Ste claimed her as his. She’d been trouble since she rocked up here.
A patch hunter. Worse than a fucking gold digger.
“I’ve left you some tea,” the voice to my left distracted me. “Have you eaten today, son?”
“Been busy,” I mumbled to Mamma Dot, as if she were my own mother.
“You need to look after yourself.” Her smile brightened the space, warming the charged atmosphere in the clubhouse. “Make sure they all eat too. You can’t plan for war on empty stomachs.”
Her eyes held mine for a second. She was short and stout. Much too short for the giants of children she’d popped out. Only three of them left, the others killed in the last war. Mamma Dot knew how dangerous this life could be. But the club was as much her family as her own blood. More in some ways.
“We need to get you all out of here now,” I mumbled, my voice low, as much out of respect as out of discomfort for evicting the women.
The pub was soon to fill with representatives of north east bike clubs.
Those that were left in the coalition, anyway.
Relationships between clubs had been fragile for weeks, but now that we’d taken out most of the Teesside Road Rats and the Notorious had chosen their side, the cracks between the clubs were really showing.
Indie and Fury huddled together at the end of the bar, Fury running his fingers up and down through the condensation that clung to the pint glass as our president said something to him.
I didn’t need to go over and join the conversation to feel how tense some of our officers were.
I’d watched it pull them deeper and deeper over the last few weeks.
Each time we gained some ground, it was yanked straight from underneath us.
Demon. Sicknote. Big Red. Jazz, even though she was not strictly club.
The Hand had been taking people out of the equation for months. We’d seen it all too late.
A pang of guilt pierced my chest. I’d acted out that day when I let her and the Rats enforcer go.
I’d let my heart lead where my brain should have stepped up, and if I’d got that wrong, I’d just sold our club down the river.
What I didn’t need now was Fury to get distracted trying to find his sister and take his finger off the pulse.
Or for them to find Jazz and the club to find out I’d let them go.
Fuck, I needed a pint. I glanced at the clock hanging above the bar.
Too late. Behind me, coalition club members trickled in.
Tyne Thunder MCC. Durham Heathens. Angels and Demons MC.
Others too. Smaller clubs. Faces strained.
On edge. Whilst they were here with us, they were targets too.
But if they didn’t show, they’d receive a King’s visit.
Damned if they did, damned if they didn’t.
The Vandals were the last to arrive. Tomahawk and the Reverend.
Both of them tall and dark and as fucking angry looking as ever.
The Vandals’ president glanced at the doors he’d just walked through and then at the prospects loitering either side.
Our security. When he turned to me, he rolled his eyes.
“And what’s that lot gonna do if shit kicks off?” he grumbled as he got closer.
“They’ll fucking earn their patches, that’s what.”
“Where’s Indie been finding this lot? They look like a bunch of toy soldiers,” the Reverend, the Vandals’ Sergeant-at-Arms, shook his head, the scar over his eye catching in the dull lights above our heads.
“We can get started, now you two are here.”
I stepped sideways, letting them pass me and waiting for the door at the back to close behind them.
The prospects left in the bar glanced at me.
They were nervous, all of them. One stood cracking his knuckles.
Over and over. Anyone else would be forgiven if they thought he was preparing himself for something coming.
But I watched as his eyes darted. To me.
Round the pub. Back to the door. Across to the other prospect seated on the far side.
Others stood quietly, trying to hide their tension.
“No one comes in during this meeting,” my voice rumbled low, almost echoing in the emptiness. “Understand?” Everyone nodded. “Good. Ring me if there’re any issues.”
Every seat at the table was taken by the time I joined the meeting, and others lined the walls. I shuffled to the back of the room to stand beside the twins and Magnet. Indie had already started talking, his eyes not shifting from the faces around the table.
Coalition meetings were weekly now. The war was moving fast, and everyone knew the Hand was pressing in. Every bike club still pledging allegiance had turned up. Not by choice, but because of the pressure we’d applied the last few days.
“What damage reports do we have this week?” Indie didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. The room leaned toward him, regardless.
“Arson attempt in Consett,” someone said from the far end of the table.
A Mancunian accent, stark against the rumble of north east drawls.
One of the smaller clubs that’d been dragged into this whether they liked it or not.
“It was a garage unit. Bikes inside. Didn’t take, though. Fire service reckons it was rushed.”
“Rushed,” Indie repeated. Flat. “Message job.”
“Same in Ashington,” another cut chimed in. “Not bikes. Clubhouse doors. Petrol bomb. Middle of the night. Done a fuckload of damage to the doors. Can’t reopen the bar till it’s fucking sorted.”
A murmur rippled around the table. Low. Angry. Escalating as it rolled.
“They’re not trying to wipe us out,” Magnet muttered beside me. “They’re rattling cages.”
“They’re trying to make us look weak,” the Reverend interrupted from beside Tomahawk.
He leaned forward, elbows on the table, fingers laced like he was saying grace, the white of the dog collar peeking through at his neck, bright against the black shirt he wore under his cut.
“They want to make it seem like standing with the Kings gets you burned.”
I scanned the room while they talked. Who leaned in.
Who leaned back. Who spoke too quickly, too eagerly.
Fear wore different masks, but it always smelled the same.
Sweat and pride and the need to look harder than you felt.
But if you looked closer, you could see the little cracks.
A leg vibrating as a foot tapped the floor.
Skin picked from around fingernails. Lips pushed too tight together, trying to look stoic but not quite succeeding.
“They’re trying to break the coalition,” Indie’s voice rumbled low around the packed room. “Last time it was the only thing that stopped them…”
“And Demon…” someone muttered, but I couldn’t tell where from.
“They’ve hit supply lines,” Indie interrupted, steering the conversation away from our injured enforcer before the entire coalition realised how out of action he was.
“Three separate clubs have had businesses compromised this week. Cut off the cash. Destroy the bikes. I would do it too. But someone’s been talking. The Hand knows too much.”
That landed heavily and I felt it in my gut, that slow, sinking drag. We all did. You could blow up a garage and we’d rebuild it. You could torch a clubhouse, and we’d drink in the ashes. But a mouth? A mouth was rot.
“Talking how?” an Angels and Demons officer asked. He was younger than the rest of the club. Tall. Dark blond hair with a thick beard a shade darker. “Intercepts? Tips?” he continued. “Or someone inside?”
Indie’s jaw tightened. Just a fraction.
“Inside,” he said. “Maybe not patched. Maybe not even a member. But close enough to know too much.”
Silence stretched. Nobody liked that answer.
“The Hand have been visiting independents,” the Reverend added. “Off the books. No colours. No noise. Just pressure. Leaning on families. Businesses. Old debts.”
“Offering protection,” someone scoffed.
“Or extinction,” I said.
Eyes flicked to me. A few nodded. Others looked away.
“They’re not here to rule,” I continued. “They’re here to fracture. Divide us until there’s nothing left to hold, and you are all too frightened to fight back. That’s how they work.”
And, fuck, didn’t I know. My fingers dragged through my beard as something old and ugly shifted in the back of my mind. The same playbook. Break a man’s nerve before you ever break his bones. Indie leaned back in his chair, eyes settling on me for a second longer than anyone else noticed.
“Old tricks,” he said quietly. “Some of us remember.”
He held my gaze for a second.
“We respond together,” he said after a breath. “No club handles this alone. If one of us is hit, we all show. If one of us is tested, we answer loud.”
That was an enormous commitment. I wasn’t the only one of us in this club trying not to breathe.
“And the ones sitting on the fence?” someone asked.
Indie smiled thinly. No warmth in it.
“They won’t be sitting long.”
A chair scraped somewhere behind me. Nervous movement.
Another cut opposite me shifted his weight, knuckles whitening where his hands clasped.
I felt it then, that undercurrent beneath the bravado.
On the surface, it was business as usual.
Underneath? Everyone in that room knew the same truth.
This wasn’t posturing anymore. This was a countdown.
My mobile buzzed inside my pocket. Once. Message. Easing it out, I read the preview before opening the message.
‘There’s a car outside. Someone watching.’
‘I want to know who it is.’ I typed back.
“This is what I need from you,” Indie’s voice continued to rumble round the room, every face turned on him. “You report any sightings of the Notorious, the Aces or the Hand. I want to know if any other patch or club comes through our territory.”
“We’ve been fucking doing that for months already,” Tomahawk grumbled, rolling his eyes. One of only a few of the other clubs in here that weren’t afraid of us.
“I know,” Indie answered. “And it’s appreciated. We all do the same now. Every club. Understand?”
My phone buzzed again.
‘It’s a woman. Dunno who she is. We’ve brought her in. Says she knows you.’
‘Coming down.’
Prospects stood in a semicircle near the door of the pub. Leather cuts with a bottom rocker. That was all. No patches. No other marks. Just the bottom rocker that read Newcastle upon Tyne. They moved as I got closer, clearing space for me, creating a gap so I could see her through it.
Brown hair tied on top of her head in a ponytail. Tight curls falling from it. She looked up at me, grey eyes catching mine as I approached. Stopping me mid-stride.
Sophie.