13. Cupid
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CUPID
Within the hour, I arrive back at Whiskey Wheelers. Both sides of the street are filled with Harleys—one side is Royal Bastards, the other is Mercy Ravens, and the road between is the great divide.
Hopefully, it’s not symbolic.
Oaks greets me as soon as I park my truck, handing me my leather cut. “Figured you’d want to show up to your own party dressed appropriately.”
“Thanks,” I say, slipping on my leather and breathing a little sigh of relief to be back in my armor.
We make our way to the front door when I ask, “What’s the mood inside?”
“It’s…interesting,” Oaks answers.
I pause outside the door, looking at my VP with a raised eyebrow. “Interesting? What the hell does that mean?”
He shakes his head. “You need to see it to understand.”
Heading inside, I halt as soon as I cross the threshold.
The Mercy Ravens aren’t acting as if they’re in enemy territory.
A few are playing darts on the far wall with some of my men.
Another handful are drinking at the bar, chatting with some of our crew members.
One guy with a shaved head, covered in tattoos, performs karaoke on the stage by the front window while members of both crews laugh at him singing Madonna’s Like a Virgin.
Confused as hell, I slowly turn back to my VP, mouthing, What the fuck?
“I told you it was interesting. You had to see it for yourself. They’re a pretty chill for a pack of mercenaries,” Oaks says, pointing ahead to a table in the middle of the restaurant where the man I recognize as Atlas sits with another from his crew, sipping bourbon and watching sport highlights from the Colorado Rockies game earlier today on the TVs above the bar. “Atlas and his VP are waiting on us.”
Squaring my shoulders, I weave between tables to reach our guests while Oaks heads to the bar to get us some drinks. Atlas senses my approach. He turns his mean mug in my direction, assessing me.
“Atlas,” I say in a stiff greeting, taking the seat across from him. “This is a surprise, having you and your crew randomly drop in.”
The giant biker sips his bourbon, setting the drink on the table in front of him. “No more surprising than finding you alone in my town without an entourage and chasing after a young woman.”
“Not chasing. More like pursuing,” I correct him, leaning back into my chair and eyeing the giant brute the way he does me.
Atlas doesn’t seem to care that I’m glaring at him as hard as he’s glaring at me. “Why were you after her?”
“Right to business, I see.”
Fine by me. I want to get this shit over with sooner rather than later.
I take my cell out of my pocket, pulling up the picture I took of me and Vanessa in her apartment earlier, and slide my cell across the table to Atlas. He picks it up, studying the picture, raising an eyebrow when he recognizes her as the same woman I was following this afternoon on his turf.
“She’s my woman,” I say, a smile creeping into my voice and unable to hide my pride for landing such a fine woman. “Her name’s Vanessa. She’s a CSU graduate student, studying to be an addiction counselor.”
Atlas shows his VP—a man whose name patch reads Gauge—the image. He nods, confirming it was the same woman from earlier in the day.
Oaks returns to the table with our drinks as Atlas hands me my cell back, his brows pulling together.
“Why was she acting like she had no clue who you were when we met today?”
I chuckle to myself, spinning my drink glass on the table as I recall my first encounter with my little baddie on wheels. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
Knowing this is the only way I can travel between here and Vanessa’s without this MC breathing down mine and my crew’s necks, I explain how I met Vanessa, the flirting, the road race, and finally connecting at her place without the private details.
Atlas and Gauge exchange a knowing look, as if they understand my circumstance all too well, before looking back at me.
“Are you claiming her, or is this temporary?” Atlas asks, his voice losing its edge of hostility. “I want to know how often I should expect you in my city.”
“She’s my ole lady,” I say breezily.
Oaks chokes on his beer, nearly spilling the frosted stein when he sets it down to catch his breath. He looks at me like I’ve grown a third head, probably brainstorming a list of questions to ask me later regarding my new relationship.
Atlas eyes Oaks before returning his attention to me. “Does Vanessa know she’s your ole lady?”
“She will soon enough,” I say honestly, not giving a shit how territorial my claim on her after one day may appear to others. “It’s the most ironclad way to keep other fuckers away from her and keep her safe.”
Atlas nods, not the slightest bit fazed by me meeting and claiming a woman in the same day. “Very well. As long as you and your crew don’t cause any issues for this woman or our turf, we’ll get along fine.”
“Good to know,” I say, raising my whiskey glass to Atlas. “To camaraderie between our clubs. Cin, cin.”
Atlas clinks his glass against mine, downing his drink. He sits back in his seat, relaxed in our company with all the bullshit set aside. “Your bar is great. Reminds me of our local back in Fort Collins, but more industrial. My wife would like the style—Josephine is an architectural engineer.”
“Your wife? You’re married?” It’s hard to believe the guy in front of me could land a bride with how intimidating he looks most of the time. He doesn’t exactly scream family man at first glance.
“Yes, and with kids,” he adds with a prideful tone, showing me a picture of his family on his phone. “This is my wife and twin boys.”
The man smiling back at me with his beautiful family in the picture is a night and day difference from the hardened man sitting in front of me. It’s funny how we change for the ones we love.
“Twins must be a lot of work,” Oaks says, shaking his head as if he couldn’t fathom raising multiple kids at once.
“Try two sets of twins. Atlas is going to have his hands full,” Gauge adds, snickering into his drink.
I gawk. “Two sets of twins? Holy shit.”
Atlas chuckles under his breath, taking his cell back to look at the image of his family once more before pocketing his phone. “We’ll manage. She’s due any day now.”
I shake my head, laughing at myself. “Here I was thinking one kid would be fine, and you’re growing an army.”
Again, Oaks chokes on his beer, coughing and sputtering. “What fucking Twilight Zone did I walk into? A kid, Cupid? You just met the woman—today.”
I roll my eyes at my VP. “Were you not busting my balls this morning, insisting I find a woman?”
“To fuck,” Oaks clarifies, his voice sounding alarmed, “not wife up and family plan with. Geez. How do you know she’s the one after a single day?”
Before I can answer, Gauge says, “When you know, you know.”
Atlas nods, agreeing and acting like he knows far too well what I’m experiencing with Vanessa before they change the subject back to the Rockies baseball game highlights on the television, complaining about the umpire’s calls during the seventh inning.
The conversation flows and the drinks go down easily, our crews meshing well. Considering how our first encounter went earlier today, we seem to get along great.
“I know the situation we found ourselves in today was not cool, but are we good now?” I ask Atlas, wanting to bed any lingering differences.
“Yeah, we’re good,” Atlas says, like it’s water under the bridge. “Sorry if we came on strong. We don’t trust outsiders, especially with recent events happening on our turf. I’m sure you’ve heard about the students being abducted from our city around the campus.”
“I have,” I say grimly. “Seven students since January. One is bad enough, but seven is a damn epidemic.”
“It is,” Atlas says, agreeing, his tone flat. “I hate to ask it, but I wouldn’t be doing my due diligence without enquiring what your club is affiliated with.”
“Not that,” I say tersely, offended he asked but understanding why he did at the same time. “What’s happening has nothing to do with me or my crew. Human trafficking goes against our creed.”
Atlas nods, his face hardening again. “It’s a damn nightmare for those young women and their families.
And those are the ones we know of. Don’t think for a second that traffickers stick to the same demographic of victims. The students are women, but traffickers will target men and children as well.
We’ve been checking in with our unhoused community, making sure they’re aware of what’s happening in the city and to stay extra vigilant.
They are an easy minority population to target.
Unfortunately, when one of the unhoused goes missing, it’s often not reported, or not taken seriously by local police.
They would rather assume they’ve moved on to another city than to invest resources into tracking them down.
The same goes for immigrants coming here to find a better life than the one they left behind.
If they’re here illegally, their disappearances often go unreported by family who fear the authorities.
It’s all to the benefit of the culprits and the detriment of the victims.”
“Damn,” I mutter, realizing the situation is more problematic than I realized. “I didn’t know it went that deep within a community.”
“Abducting adults is horrendous—don’t get me wrong.
But children…” Atlas says nothing for a moment, his jaw ticking.
“There are families who sell their kids—babies even—into these trafficking rings. Being a mercenary MC specializing in people recovery, we see the aftermath. It makes us look like saints for killing the predators quickly.”
Children? My stomach turns sour, and I push away my drink, unable to stomach it with the vile revelation Atlas shared.
The bar has grown quiet around us, aside from the music from the surround-sound speakers.
Our crews move in, listening to the horrors happening right up the highway from us.
Everyone senses the tension rising. Not between us, but with the concept there are monsters lurking the streets, searching for victims to profit off of.
“You don’t suppose these traffickers are plucking people from Loveland, too, do you?” Ruger, our Sergeant at Arms, asks in a tight voice and looking like he’s ready to go to war.
“It would be unwise to assume they aren’t already scouting here in your city,” Gauge responds bluntly. “The flesh trade is a disease, and diseases spread when not eradicated.”
“Who the fuck is running the operation?” Drift, our road captain, asks in a demanding tone.
“If we knew, they wouldn’t be a problem anymore,” a Mercy Raven named Reaper states darkly.
“We were hoping your crew might have an idea who’s behind it,” Atlas says, addressing me.
Oaks and I exchange a glance, silently agreeing to share what we knew.
“For the record, we have no concrete proof who’s behind the abductions. However, other Royal Bastard chapters have had run-ins with the Black Market Railroad.”
Collectively, the Mercy Ravens groan and curse.
“You’ve heard of them, I presume?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“Fucking hell,” Gauge spits between his teeth. “We clean up the Italians and the Irish only for the goddamn Russians to infiltrate our territory.”
“All alleged, mind you,” I stress, but sensing it’s far more likely to be true.
“Why aren’t the police all over this?” Oaks asks heatedly. “You’d think the Feds would be involved by now.”
“The Fort Collins police are overwhelmed. They’re not used to dealing with this many missing person cases in a small window of time,” Atlas explains.
“Our crew’s specialty is finding missing people, but we’d rather cut off the head of the snake responsible for all these abductions than continually searching for more missing students.
We’ve taken it upon ourselves to increase security around campus, questioning anyone who comes across as suspicious.
Hence, running into you today at the railroad crossing had us on high alert.
We couldn’t trust you’d come to us for questioning, so we came to you instead. ”
“Understandable. It’s your home, and it’s under attack. We may be a highway apart from each other, but I need your community to be safe—my woman lives there. Is there anything we can do to help?”
“Stay vigilant here in Loveland,” Atlas warns. “When we tighten the belt around Fort Collins, it’s not uncommon for traffickers to move on to the next town, looking for breathing room to continue business. It’s happened before. It will happen again. If you hear anything, reach out to us.”
“You have my word.” I hold my hand out to the biker.
Atlas takes my hand, shaking it with the promise that we will have each other’s backs regarding this matter.