29. Preference
Chapter 29
Preference
Steel
Outside the Sheriff’s Office, Torque leaned against an electric pole, waiting for me. A light drizzle fell as I crossed the street toward him. I walked past him and in a few feet, he fell in step with me.
“New firm work out, okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, might even like that lawyer better. How did you know when I’d be done?”
“I didn’t.”
I shot him a quick glance. “You’re a little conspicuous standing across the street in the rain.”
He chuckled. “Just started drizzling when you came out. I like overcast days.”
“Besides checking in on the new law firm, is there a reason you’re here?”
“Shark couldn’t get a hold of you. He spent all of last night being questioned about the Corrupt Chrome clubhouse fire.”
“And?”
“They believe his story. Vegas Metro brought in a drug dealer that had double-crossed Corrupt Chrome a few months back.”
Shark had told me about that dealer. The plan was to set him up to take the fall.
“Have we heard from the other chapters?” I asked.
He jerked his head toward a small sandwich shop and I followed him inside. “The other cities are good, but Raleigh and Miami have some issues.”
I nodded. “Heard about those this morning. Axe and Link shared their plans to resolve the issues.”
“Did Axe mention anything about cleaning up?” Torque asked in a low voice, while we stood in line to place our orders.
Axe, the president of the Raleigh chapter, had wanted us to get out of drugs five years ago. At the time, he couldn’t convince anyone else to get on board with giving up drug-running.
The man in front of us paid for his order and moved aside. I ordered bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches and coffee for me and Torque, paid, and we wandered to a booth.
When Torque sat down, I said, “Yeah, I heard from Axe. Seems Link wants to clean things up in Miami, too. I almost wonder if they spoke to one another, but as messy as shit was in Florida, I can see Link changing his mind.”
Torque’s face twisted with a strange look. Our order number was called and he slid out of the booth to grab our food.
He returned, unwrapped his sandwich, and locked eyes with me. “Why do you sound like you want to clean things up?”
I lifted a shoulder. “We’ve made money in drugs, but… it’s the riskiest thing we do. The smart thing would be to take that money and bankroll something else. Ideally, something legal.”
Torque swallowed his food. “Jesus, I think the hang-around rubbed off on you.”
I sipped my coffee. “We aren’t getting any younger, Tor. This shit’s getting old. I give it nine months, tops, before another club or a street gang fights us for the same turf.”
“Right.”
I shook my head. “I’m not doing any more time. Finally have something good and sweet to live for. If the last twenty-four hours have shown me anything, it’s that I didn’t give a damn about dangerous situations. I wanted the danger to feel alive. Now, I don’t need that. Being with Jade has changed everything.”
“So… you really want to clean the whole club? Top down?”
I shrugged. “Of the drugs, yeah.”
He narrowed an eye at me. “That’s gonna be a tough sell.”
“Got two chapters that want to clean up, and one of those is our best market for drugs. Then there’s Jacksonville, which isn’t doing well in terms of sales. Even if that’s because their membership is low, they didn’t do well ten years ago either.”
Torque gave a small nod. “Yeah, but what about our other seventeen chapters?”
I twisted my hands up. “I’m not sure. It’ll take time and a decent plan, but we won’t know until we float the idea to the members.”
He crumpled up his sandwich wrapper, tossed it on the tray, and sat back in his seat, blowing out a sigh.
I stared at him. “What? After last night, you really want to stick with it?”
His eyes slid to the side while he mulled it over. “You got a point. Last night was pretty brutal.”
I walked into the kitchen at eleven-thirty and found Simone and Rafferty sitting at the breakfast bar with bowls of cereal in front of them.
“Where’s everybody else? And why are you eating cereal? It’s nearly lunchtime.”
Simone tilted her head up as I approached her side. “Mom and Dad got on the road early. Blood and Abby followed suit, and Uncle Cal left about an hour ago.”
I tipped my head at her bowl. “And the cereal?”
She shot a quick grin at Rafferty. “After Uncle Cal left, he decided to sleep a little longer in a real bed. So, I guess this is breakfast for him, and I never know what I want to eat, but cereal hasn’t steered me wrong yet.”
My woman was gorgeous, but the dark circles under her eyes told the tale. Yesterday had taken a lot out of her and she was still tired. “Once you’re done, go grab a nap.”
Her eyes widened and I anticipated an argument. Then she reluctantly said, “I will.”
It didn’t take long for Simone to finish her food and leave the room.
Rafferty had nearly finished his bowl.
I pulled out the chair next to his. “I want you to prospect with us, but that won’t work if you decide mid-way to cut bait to join the Riot MC.”
He kept his eyes locked on the fridge. “I know.”
“The only way you get out of prospecting as a Devil Lancer is if you don’t make the cut… and you’ve shown you have what it takes.”
He shook his head and looked at me. “But I don’t have it, since I was knocked out when it really matters.”
His self-loathing tone hit me hard.
“How many bar fights have you been in?”
His eyes held a hint of irritation. “Two.”
“That’s not enough. I think you know that. Takes a hell of a lot of guts to go up against an enforcer for another MC.”
He stared at me with that neutral expression. Then, I realized maybe I was seeing through it because there was something else working in his eyes.
“You made a decision.”
“I wouldn’t say that yet.”
In the whirl of events from last night, I vaguely recalled how he’d nearly been sick at the sight of Mug and Sledge lying on the floor.
“Killing people isn’t something that happens often.”
He nodded. “Yeah, killing Mug and Sledge didn’t bother me. It’s sending someone after Josie. I thought women were off-limits.”
“Normally, yes. However, Josie would rat us out. Hell, she led Mug right to my woman. She had no kids, had recently lost her job, and none of that justifies her death, but I’ll never let anyone get away with harming Simone.”
“And what about Farah?”
“We didn’t kill her.”
He arched a brow. “I don’t believe that.”
“She isn’t dead. She left town.”
Rafferty narrowed his eyes. “She owns a house.”
My lips tipped up. “A house that is in foreclosure. So the hundred grand we offered to get her to leave was enticing.”
His lip curled. “You blew money on her?”
I shot him a pointed look. “Knuckles had money to give his contact. Technically, he paid her.”
“That’s convenient.”
“No, it’s smart.”
He picked up his coffee cup and held it near his lips. “But it won’t always work out that way.”
“No, probably not. And no matter how much time you take to plan and strategize, when shit’s going down you gotta have faith it’s going to work out. And typically, it does.”
“How often does this shit happen?”
I tilted my head side to side. “To this degree, not often. But we deal with assholes trying to take our turf almost every day. It’s unusual for another MC to target all of our cities at one time. The day-to-day shit gets handled by the individual chapters as they see fit. ”
He kept quiet.
“Not usually with murder,” I added.
“Right,” he whispered.
I stood and put the barstool under the breakfast bar. “You’ve been active with us. You hang around for another two months. Then you have to shit or get off the pot.”
Rafferty nodded. “Got it.”
“Jordan is on his way here,” I told Simone when she came out to the deck where I was grilling steaks – the one culinary thing I could do well, as long as I wasn’t distracted.
“So I have time to leave,” she muttered.
I gave her a sideways glance. “Sweetheart, he offered to approach Josie to help find you.”
“That wouldn’t have worked.”
I flipped the T-bones. “No, but he wanted to help, and he said he—”
“Wanted you to give me up.”
I stared into her deep brown eyes – lamenting how thin the walls were at my end of the clubhouse. “I didn’t know you heard that. He changed his tune when you went missing.”
“Okay.”
“He could see how much I care for you. Made it clear he may not understand it, but he was opening his eyes. That’s why he’s coming to dinner.”
She settled on the outdoor sofa. “I hesitate to ask this… is he bringing Debra?”
I barked out a laugh. “No.”
“Good. Here’s hoping three isn’t a crowd.”
The doorbell rang.
The anxious expression on her face had me handing her the tongs. “You flip the steaks. I’ll get the door.”
I let Jordan inside, but didn’t let him go very far. “Are you going to be cool?”
He met my hard stare. “Yeah, Dad.”
Hearing him call me that never got old. I reached out and gave him a quick, fierce hug and led him to the deck.
“Want a beer?” I asked.
“Maybe with dinner.”
Twenty minutes later, I smiled while Simone and Jordan laughed at a story I told about changing Jordan’s first diaper. Her concerns about this being awkward were for naught.
Simone sighed. “I forgot about that with boys. Mom let me change Bobby’s diaper once or twice when I was little, but I don’t remember it at all.”
Jordan grinned at her. “Do you know what you’re having yet? Do you have a preference?”
Simone glanced at me, and back to Jordan. “At this point, my only preference is healthy. Though, Mom wants me to have a girl so I get a taste of my own medicine.”
I swallowed a bite of steak. “Pretty sure she wants a healthy baby and doesn’t care.”
Simone nodded and looked at Jordan. “Will you graduate in May?”
He sipped his beer. “August. I’m starting an internship June first.”
“That’s awesome. The one you wanted last fall?”
I’d never seen it before, but Jordan’s cheeks held a hint of pink.
He shook his head. “One that a friend told me about. It’s in southwest Florida.”
Simone sipped her water. “Tennyson’s from there, right?”
That caught him off guard. “Why would you think she told me about it?”
She aimed a closed-lip smile at him. “The way she looked at you that night in December. And I recalled her living in the same complex as Chet.”
This conversation could have had an awkward overtone, but Simone was relaxed and matter-of-fact about it.
Jordan nodded. “She's from there, but it was Chet who told me about the internship. Tennyson’s gone to New York City with an old boyfriend.”
She did a slow nod. “Ah. Sorry to hear that.”
He smiled. “It’s all good. I’m not as ready to settle down as I thought I was.”