SNEAK PEEK THROTTLE’S INTENSITY
Chapter 1
The neon sign at Breakers Bar buzzed like a dying insect, throwing pink light across the row of Harleys parked nose-in along the curb.
Throttle killed his engine and sat the bike for three seconds, letting the silence settle over the parking lot like a warning.
Tuesday night on A1A, salt air thick enough to taste, and three bar owners behind on their payments.
He swung off the Road King and rolled his neck, feeling the vertebrae pop in sequence.
Gator pulled in beside him, that big Louisiana frame making his Dyna look like a bicycle, and Riptide slotted in on the other side with the quiet precision of a man who'd spent twelve years running Coast Guard enforcement ops before finding a crew that actually had teeth.
"Jennings first?" Gator asked, already grinning. The grin meant nothing good for Jennings.
"Jennings first." Throttle adjusted his cut and walked toward the door. "Keep it verbal unless I say otherwise."
"Where's the fun in that?"
"Didn't say there'd be fun."
Gator laughed, that big bayou rumble that made tourists cross the street, and fell in behind his president. Riptide took the left flank without being told, scanning the lot with eyes that never stopped moving. Three brothers, three positions, no wasted motion. The way it always worked.
Breakers smelled like spilled beer and floor wax, the kind of place that catered to spring break tourists eight months a year and locals who knew better the other four.
Dave Jennings stood behind the bar wiping glasses with a rag that needed washing worse than the glasses did, and his face went the color of old concrete when Throttle walked through the door.
"Throttle." Jennings set the glass down too hard. It cracked against the bar top. "Listen, I was gonna call—"
"You were gonna call three weeks ago." Throttle took a stool at the end of the bar, positioning himself where he could see the door and both exits. Habit. The kind you don't break because they're the reason you're still breathing at forty-two. "That's what you said last month."
"Business has been slow—"
"Business has been slow since before I was born, Dave. That's not new. What's new is you thinking the Intimidators patch on this cut is decorative."
Gator leaned against the bar beside him, arms folded, still grinning. Riptide stayed by the door where two college kids in tank tops took one look at the patches and decided they needed to be somewhere else. Smart kids.
Jennings reached under the bar and came up with an envelope that was thinner than it should have been. He slid it across the wood with fingers that trembled enough to notice. Throttle didn't touch it. He looked at the envelope, then at Jennings, then at the envelope again.
"That's light."
"It's what I've got."
"Then you've got a problem." Throttle picked up the envelope, thumbed the bills without counting them because the weight told him everything he needed to know, and tucked it inside his cut. "You're short fifteen hundred. I'll have Burnout come by Friday to collect the rest."
"And if I can't—"
"Then we have a different conversation, Dave. One where Gator here does more of the talking." Throttle stood, and the stool didn't scrape because he moved with the economy of a man who never wasted a motion. "We clear?"
Jennings nodded like his head was on a spring. "We're clear."
Outside, the ocean was a black void beyond the dunes, and the breeze coming off it carried salt and the distant thump of bass from a club down the strip. Throttle tucked the envelope into his saddlebag and mounted up.
"He'll have it Friday," Gator said, swinging a leg over his Dyna.
"He'll have it Thursday. He's scared enough to borrow from someone to pay us, which means he should've been scared enough to pay us on time.
" Throttle fired the engine. The Road King shook the ground under him, that big V-twin heartbeat he'd been addicted to since the first time he threw a leg over a Harley at nineteen. "Two more."
Salty Pete's was faster. Pete Ormond had the money in a lockbox behind the register, counted it out in front of Throttle without being asked, and threw in a case of Yuengling as an apology for being late.
Throttle took the beer because refusing a gesture cost more in goodwill than it was worth, and told Pete the next time would cost more than a case.
The Sandbar was the one that mattered. Ricky Torres ran a place that had been pouring drinks on this stretch since Throttle's grandfather was running shine, and Torres had never been late before.
Throttle walked in expecting trouble and found Torres sitting at the bar with a black eye and his left arm in a sling, drinking bourbon with his good hand.
"The hell happened to you?"
Torres looked up with the expression of a man who'd been waiting for someone to ask and dreading the answer. "Three guys came in Saturday night. Never seen them before. Suits under the casual, you know what I mean? Told me I was paying the wrong people for protection and offered me a better deal."
Throttle felt the temperature in his blood drop by ten degrees. Beside him, Riptide went very still.
"You tell them who you pay?"
"I told them I pay the Intimidators and they can take it up with you." Torres gestured at his face with the bourbon glass. "That's when the conversation got physical."
Throttle pulled a stool beside Torres and sat.
He didn't speak for a long moment, letting the information settle into the framework he kept running in the back of his mind—the map of territory, debts, obligations, and threats that he maintained with the same precision he'd once used to calculate pit stop timing down to the tenth of a second.
"How many? Descriptions."
"Three. Lead guy was thick, forties, prison ink on his forearms. Quiet voice, like he didn't need to yell. The other two were just muscle."
"They leave a name?"
"No name. Left a card." Torres pulled a business card from his shirt pocket and slid it across the bar. White card, black text. A phone number and two words: Garza Holdings.
Throttle studied the card for five seconds, memorized the number, and handed it to Riptide. "Pull everything you can on this. Tonight."
Riptide pocketed the card without a word and stepped outside, already reaching for his phone.
Throttle turned back to Torres. "You're covered. I'll have someone posted here through the week. Anyone shows up who isn't a regular, you call the compound."
"Throttle—"
"We handle this. That's what you pay for, Ricky." He put a hand on the man's good shoulder and squeezed once, firm enough to mean something. "You did right telling them who owns this stretch."
Torres nodded, and the relief in his eyes was the kind of thing that reminded Throttle why he'd built this in the first place. Not the money. Not the territory. The fact that men like Ricky Torres slept better at night because the Intimidators held the coast.
The compound sat two miles off A1A, a converted beachside motel that Throttle had turned into a fortress over fourteen years of work, money, and occasionally blood.
The main clubhouse occupied the old motel office—great room with a long bar, coastal biker memorabilia covering every wall, the smell of leather and engine oil baked into the wood.
The garage complex hummed with fluorescent light where prospects worked late on Sundown's transmission.
Bunkhouse rooms lined the east wing. The courtyard stretched between buildings with a fire pit, a tiki bar Gator had built himself, and enough parking for eighty bikes.
Throttle rolled through the gates and parked in his spot—first in the row, closest to the clubhouse door. The hierarchy was in everything, even where you parked your ride.
Inside, the usual Tuesday night. Gator had the tiki bar open despite the late hour, handing beers to Redline and Sundown while some prospect whose name Throttle hadn't bothered learning swept the great room floor.
Music from a jukebox that only played classic rock because Throttle had personally removed every disc recorded after 1989.
The sound of brothers unwinding—low voices, laughter, the crack of pool balls from the back room.
He dropped the collection envelopes on the bar and caught Gator's eye. "Torres got hit. Three men, new crew. Name Garza mean anything to you?"
Gator's grin disappeared. "Garza. Heard that name once or twice coming out of Orlando. Loan operations, property acquisition. Bad people with patient money."
"They're not patient anymore. They put hands on one of our bar owners."
Sundown drifted over from the pool table, beer dangling from two fingers, his unhurried stride making the approach look casual even though his eyes had gone sharp. "On our stretch?"
"On our stretch."
"Well." Sundown took a long pull from his beer. "That's unfortunate. For them."
Throttle left them to it—Gator and Sundown would spread the word, get the brothers thinking, start the low hum of readiness that preceded every club response.
He walked the perimeter instead, checking gates and cameras the way he did every night, the circuit that took seventeen minutes and covered every access point.
The east gate. Secure. The north camera.
Aimed right, recording. The south fence where the salt air was eating the chain link and he needed to get a prospect out here with new wire.
The west wall where the compound met the scrub and the ocean was a sound more than a sight, waves hitting sand in the dark beyond the property line.
He'd built every piece of this. Recruited every officer.
Secured every mile of territory from Flagler Beach to New Smyrna.
Negotiated the truces, eliminated the rivals, turned a crew of hard men on motorcycles into something that owned a coastline.
Fourteen years of his life poured into asphalt and chrome and loyalty, and it ran like a machine because he didn't tolerate anything less.
He finished the circuit and stood in the courtyard alone, the tiki bar lights throwing long shadows across the concrete.
The brothers' voices carried from inside—Gator's booming laugh, the crack of another break on the pool table, someone arguing about the Daytona 500 with the passion men usually saved for religion.
Everything running smooth. Every man in position. Territory held, payments collected, threats identified and queued for response.
And that silence again. The one that showed up on nights like this when the work was done and the compound was secure and there was nothing left that needed him until morning.
He'd felt it for a year now, maybe longer—a restlessness that had nothing to do with threat assessment or territory management.
A space in the architecture of his life where something should fit and didn't.
Throttle walked to his bike, ran his hand along the tank, and rode the two miles to his house on the inland side with the salt air washing over him and the stars doing what stars do over the Florida coast—hanging there, indifferent, older than anything he'd ever build.
He parked in his garage, walked through a house that was clean because he kept it clean and quiet because there was no one else in it, and stood at his kitchen counter drinking water and staring at the business card number he'd memorized.
Garza Holdings. Orlando money pushing into his territory. Someone new who thought the coast was open for business.
It wasn't.
He killed the lights and went to bed, and the house settled around him with the particular silence of a place that has room for more than one person and knows it.