Dragon (Sin City New Orleans)

1. Chapter One

Chapter One

“Hope you told your mama goodbye, asshole because you are never gonna see her again.” My voice hardened as my fist bowled into the guy’s stomach. “Fuck!” I yelled and shook my hand out, flexing my fingers.

The fucker was more in shape than he looked.

A deep chuckle came from behind the man.

“Beau, you want me to do it?” Remy asked, a mischievous smirk, which I equated to deadliness, formed on his lips.

“Hell no! And let you have all the fun? Fuck that!” I chuckled, bringing my hand back and adjusting my swing to hit his jaw instead.

We’d known for a few days from one of our clients that the guns we sold them were missing a crate or two. Crates worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. My older brother Remy and I were responsible for what came from New Orleans to the southeast for our one percenter motorcycle club, Sin City. To figure out who the hell took the guns, why they were taken—although there was nothing like money as a powerful motivator—and where the guns went landed squarely on our shoulders.

“Well, you looked like you were having problems,” Remy continued, holding the guy up to keep him from slumping.

My fist came down on the guy’s temple. “Who the fuck did you sell our guns to!” I yelled between punches.

His head lolled to one side, blood pouring from his mouth and nose. If he didn’t talk soon, he wouldn’t be able to tell us shit because I’d either knock him out or beat him to death. Then we’d be at square one again.

Although he’d worked for us for about three months, I never learned his name. He was relatively helpful but shit at customer service. We always had customer complaints about the guy.

He was also friends with Matt, one of our other runners, since we needed the help, we didn’t question when he came on board.

Now that this shit happened, we’d have to replace two damn runners because Matt’s ass was grass for this little fuck up too. He vouched for the guy, and since Matt had worked for us for over a year and had done a damn good job, he had a lot of explaining to do on this one, so we’d be having a chat really soon. But this guy was going to tell us something, or he would fucking die.

“Did we not pay you e-fucking-nough? You had to get goddamn greedy?”

I tried my luck with his stomach again, and the air whooshed out of his lungs. He coughed and gasped, trying to catch his breath. Remy held him upright again as much as he could.

But I understood how the guy was feeling. We all like money and did whatever we could to make it. That was how life was around the seedier areas of New Orleans where my brother, Remy and I grew up.

But we paid our people well, whether they worked for us in the legal world, at LeBlanc’s Gator Tours, or the illegal one. There was no reason for anyone of them to try to fuck us over.

Apparently, this guy didn’t get the memo.

If you were from the bayou, then you knew not to mess with Beau and Remy LeBlanc, the LeBlanc Brothers, as people known us in the streets If you were from New Orleans, you knew not to fuck with the Sinners. This guy had fucked up on both fronts.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He spat blood out of his mouth. “I don’t know who took them.”

The guy grunted at the impact to his temple; tears streamed down his face as Remy held on to him tightly.

“I don’t believe you.” I took a swing, this time connecting with his eye. Then I lifted his chin so I could see the fear in this fucker’s eyes. “Did you think you could steal from us and we not notice?”

He needed to see that we weren’t fucking playing with him, but I wasn’t expecting an answer. This guy was tight-lipped, which led me to believe he didn’t know anything or thought we would give up if he didn’t talk.

This was not this guy’s lucky day.

I hit his gut again, then two more quick punches to either side of his ribs, the crack echoing around the room. The guy slumped to the ground, breathing heavily.

Broken ribs.

“I,” the man started, then tried to pull air into his lungs, but groaned when he realized that deep breath he took was possibly the worst thing he could do. He spat out the blood pooling in his mouth at my feet, barely missing my mud boots. “I didn’t do it. I swear.”

“Well, what the fuck happened to our guns then you asshole!” Remy spat.

I guessed Remy had had enough, it would seem.

I smirked at my brother. There was only a modicum of restraint keeping Remy from killing the guy. And that was because we needed to find out who stole from us, but there was a reason why they called my brother Wolf. Eventually, he’d get his chance to do what he did best. Devour this asshole like a ravenous wolf.

I’d always admired my big brother’s killer instinct. It had gotten us out of tighter situations than I had cared to be in, especially when we were younger. It was an instinct I didn’t have until Remy left New Orleans. Then, I had to learn fast and grow up even quicker.

That instinct Remy learned in the swamps did him some good when he’d been given the ultimatum of prison or military at eighteen. Remy learned how to kill and do it efficiently. We already had a fucked-up upbringing, but when Remy was discharged, he’d changed. I imagined that I’d changed too. Now all these years later, we were still fucked up, albeit for different reasons.

I was sixteen when he got caught running drugs for Sin City and charged with possession with an intent to sell, but he wasn’t selling drugs. He tried over and over again to tell the arresting officer, but he didn’t listen. Remy was a swamp rat and would always be one in that guy’s eyes.

But for some reason, the judge took pity on my brother and offered him prison or the military. I was in the courtroom when it happened. It was unconventional. Hell, I didn’t even think the man was serious. Opportunities like that just didn’t happen in real life. Guess he realized our mama wasn’t shit and felt sorry for us.

I was the only fuck from our family that gave a damn about Remy and what happened to him. Hell, our mama wasn’t even there. Piece of shit she was and still is. Eating off her kids that she didn’t raise, but she was still our mama, so we took care of her.

Remy looked back at me with wide eyes when the judge offered him a way out. I understood. Because either way he chose, he was leaving me.

But what was I supposed to do? I didn’t want to see my brother in prison. I didn’t know if he’d survive it. So, I nodded because I knew prison wasn’t where he wanted to be. Hell, neither was the military, but it was his best-case scenario.

When he nodded to the judge, it felt like stones had made a home in my stomach because it would be up to me to keep us going. We’d always been in this thing together; now, it was just me. I was the one who would have to make the money for the family and keep my ass out of the system. Make sure Mama wasn’t dead after one of her binges.

“It’s goin’ to be okay,” he said to me before they ushered him out of the courtroom.

I hadn’t cried in a long time, but when they escorted my brother out of the courtroom, tears dripped down my cheeks. Then I manned the fuck up, wiped my cheeks dry, took a deep breath, and then headed out of that courtroom to wait for my brother. I had no fucking choice in the matter.

I waited for almost an hour before he came shuffling down the hallway with his hands in his pockets. I stood when he stopped in front of me. He had his head down, and so did I. Finally, we clapped hands—our way of saying, ‘glad to see you, bro, I love you’—and left the courthouse.

For weeks, we didn’t speak about him leaving until the day before. We decided not to tell Mama Remy had left until she asked.

She didn’t ask until Remy had been gone almost five months.

With Remy gone, I was left to deal with our mother’s shitty parenting style and her abusive boyfriends. They’d hit her, and most of them tried to hit me without Remy there as my backup, but I gave just as much as I got. They were grown men, but that didn’t mean I didn’t hit back.

Instead of doing what most kids would do, like taking up sports or pushing themselves to get good grades, I took my brother’s spot running in my last few years in school. I’d learned a lot from my brother while running the streets of the Quarter and hiking in the bayou with him, feeding gators.

Remy was my only family besides our drunken, druggie mother, and not having him around prompted me to find another family—one that had my back no matter what. One that wasn’t going to leave me no matter what. The family that taught me how to bank my money until I could open LeBlanc Gator Tours . A business that served our club well.

Even though he had no choice but to leave me, I’d resented Remy for a long time. It was stupid kid shit. Really, I just missed him. I loved the brothers of Sin City, but none of them replaced my real brother. They still treated me like I belonged.

I officially became a prospect for the Sinners when I turned twenty—one of the youngest prospects during my time, and since then, I’d learned what a brotherhood really could be, but I missed Remy like hell. I realized what I was looking for in the Sinners, I also had in my brother before he left. Someone to share things with and bounce ideas off of. Even when Remy and I occasionally talked on the phone, I could tell our connection was still there. We shared the same crappy experiences growing up. Just me and Remy against the world, although now it was a very different story. We had it—the brotherhood—but I fucked up thinking we’d lost it because he’d left me.

Like I said, stupid kid stuff.

It had taken Remy and me a long while to get to the point where we were friends again. For a long time, when I called him by his real name, he’d correct me and say his name was Wolf. He’d tell me that Remy was gone.

I’d complied with his wishes for a while. I didn’t know when he’d started responding to Remy again, but he did.

That was progress. Progress toward getting through whatever he had gone through.

He’d gone through some fucked up experiences in the military with Special Forces that he didn’t talk about. I respected that. I’d done some fucked up things too. It was how I was now the Vice President of Sin City MC New Orleans.

But Remy knew he could talk to me about anything. And I could see him making improvements. Especially when he told me to call him Remy with that fucking mischievous smirk on his face and that devious glint in his eye that I hadn’t seen in the eighteen years he was gone, nor the three years since he’d been back in New Orleans. What he’d been doing all that time before he came back home, I didn’t know. Within that time, I’d sponsored Remy's ambitions to become a prospect for the Sinners. He eventually became a full member.

Hearing coughing brings me back to the problem in front of me. This thief. I can’t stand a motherfucking thief.

“I don’t know.” The man sniffled. “I swear. Matt, Jason, and I packed everything up like we were supposed to. I didn’t know something was missing until I weighed it to put it on the truck. I swear.”

“And you didn’t think to report it?” I looked at my brother, who shook his head. “Good help is fucking hard to find.”

I pulled my fist back and swung as hard as I could, knocking the guy out cold. Remy let him slump to the ground.

“You think he’s telling the truth?” Remy asked, glowering and inclining his head at the guy we left lying on the floor of our boathouse.

I sighed. “Unfortunately, I think he’s the low man on the totem pole. I don’t think he’s the ringleader; however, I do think he told someone. We just gotta find who that someone is. That someone should lead us to who’s behind this.”

“And in the meantime?”

“In the meantime, we feed the gators.” My mouth quirked with the start of my smirk.

A grin formed on Remy's face because he knew exactly what I was talking about. “A boat ride?” he asked.

I turned to my brother, my face mirroring his, “A motherfucking boat ride.”

We walked back along the pier to the back of the official lobby of the building to the boat hangers. The first shed was big enough to hold three Aquanaut boats we used for the tours.

We never carried more than five people on each boat at a time, and some days were filled with people coming in, especially during the summer when all three boats were out. Shed number two consisted of a small fishing boat and two speedboats. We headed to one of the speedboats.

“Let’s hurry this shit up.” I pulled on the rope that tied the boat to the moor so it wouldn’t float down the waterway. “I’ve got a meeting with the Russians in the Quarter.”

“Since when the fuck do we have Russians in our city?” Remy asked, his voice hardening ruthlessly.

My gaze snapped to Remy at the distaste in his voice. The Sinners never dealt with the Russians. Maybe he had an experience with them when with the Special Forces.

“Not until now,” I answered him. “Ace from the Oakland Chapter called to give us a heads up on what they deal in. Said they are the go-to for whatever type of drug we want to dabble in. Loki wants this alliance.”

“New Orleans, though? That’s gonna be a problem. I hate fucking with the Russians.”

Remy’s mouth was set in annoyance, but I certainly didn’t blame him.

I wasn’t a friend to the Russians either. The fuckers dealt in flesh, one of the few things Sinners frowned upon and didn’t touch. We’d taken in a few girls who’d been trafficked. Hell, from what I’d heard, Ace, a brother from the Oakland Chapter and a friend’s, wife had been sold into trafficking by her ex-boyfriend, who owed money to the Russians.

Fucked up, definitely.

“Nah, won’t be a problem,” I told Remy. “I’m laying out our expectations for an even exchange. The Bratva gets to operate in our territory, and we get a new supplier of drugs.”

I shrugged because no matter my feelings or thoughts about the Russians, it was a good deal. And Remy just hates everyone.

“Alexei Volkov, the guy I’m meeting, his girlfriend has an office in New Orleans. I’m meeting him there,” I finished, standing back and letting Remy climb into the boat.

Although I needed to get going, I climbed in after him. I couldn’t let Remy have all the fun.

“Volkov? That name sounds familiar.” Remy started the boat, and we eased out of the shed and into the main waterway. Then, it was full throttle as we returned to the pier where our friend was left.

“Supposed to be the heir apparent or some shit. The Pahkan’s son,” I said flippantly.

Didn’t matter to me, one way or the other, as long as what he was selling benefited the club.

“Ahh,” Remy said in recognition.

I glanced at him, waiting on him to say more because it was obvious he’d remembered something, but Remy remained mute.

The guy I’d hit still lay prone on the pier, out cold. Remy slowly maneuvered the boat alongside the dock, then stepped onto the pier. I waded closer to the edge while Remy picked up the guy like a sack of potatoes. I held the boat steady while he unceremoniously dumped him in the bottom. If the guy was awake, he’d be hurting now.

“You ready?” I settled behind the wheel and steered it away from the rocking jetty.

Remy’s infectious grin set the tone of how this thing would go down. His bluish-green eyes sparkled with anticipation. We were playing with the gators today. They hadn’t been fed in almost a week. They’d be ravenous and dangerous.

Once we cleared the dock, we headed out at full speed. The gators were conditioned to our boats on the bayou so they would follow. They knew it would lead to them getting fed.

I continued to the spot we usually hid the bodies and killed the engine while Remy dropped anchor. I stripped our guest. The clothes would be burned later.

“Wake him or dump him?” Remy asked, squatting down on his hunches.

“Wake him. I think the gators would like to say hey.” I peeked over the side of the boat. So far, two alligators floated effortlessly, waiting. Expecting.

Remy retrieved smelling salts in the first-aid kit from the wheelhouse and waved them under the guy’s nose. He groaned, his head swaying back and forth, trying to dispel the cobwebs. He sat up, ran his hand through his hair, and rested his forearm on his knees.

“Ahhh, there’s sleeping beauty,” Remy crooned. “Time to feed the gators, bitch.”

He snatched the guy underneath his arms and dragged him to the railing I was leaning against.

The guy’s eyes widened as if realizing his ending was near. “Wait! No, what are you doing? Wait! Wait! I’ll tell you what you want to know!” he screamed, digging his heels into the deck but sliding instead, making it so Remy had to grab him by his arm instead.

“Too late for that one,” I said with my arms folded across my chest. “You should’ve told us when you had the chance.”

“No, I’m serious. It was your mom’s boyfriend. He said she’d been talking to him about the things you ship out and complaining to him about her own children not taking care of her. He came to me and Matt, but Matt didn’t want anything to do with his plan when the guy wanted in,” he rambled, pitting his heels against the side of the boat, lodging them so Remy couldn’t throw him overboard.

More gators gathered, getting antsy, snapping at one another while jockeying for position because they knew they were about to get fed.

I quirked my eyebrows, wondering if my brother believed any of this bullshit.

Remy grunted, but I didn’t know if that meant he believed it or not.

“So, you’re telling me that my mama’s deadbeat boyfriend is behind our missing crates, and you expect us to believe it?”

“It’s the truth,” he said, his voice raising an octave.

“I believe you.” I clapped him on the shoulder and squeezed. “My brother doesn’t, but I do.”

“Thank you,” he breathed out, his body visibly relaxed. “Thank you. I’m sorry.”

“Too bad you didn’t come to me when that asshole Jeff first approached you,” I commiserated—but not really. Pulling my Damascus blade from the holster at my side, I sliced through his gut. He bowled over, his mouth hanging open in surprise. His wide eyes filled with tears as he stared at me. “We’ll make sure your mama knows about your unfortunate accident,” I whispered in his ear.

Remy hefted him up and then pushed him over the side, where the gators fought one another for their turn to feast.

“Damn, that’s a way to go,” Remy stated, picking up the guy’s clothes and wiping the blood up from the deck.

“So, what do you think?” I turned to Remy as I walked back to the steering wheel. “You know anything about this guy Mama’s dating?”

“Nah, not much,” Remy confirmed, settling on the seat behind the captain’s area. “Asshole just like the rest of them, I’m sure. He must be younger than her if he’s hanging out with this guy and Matt.”

“Agreed.” I looked at my watch. If I didn’t head out soon, I was going to be late for my meeting with Volkov. “Call Loki and let him know we have a lead.”

“Yep, and you be careful with the Russian,” Remy grunted as I maneuvered the boat around and headed back to the boat shed.

Once we secured the boat, we walked to the back of the farm's main building. We never parked in the front parking lot. The cops drove by here every once in a while, because they knew two Sinners owned the joint. They even executed a search warrant, but the fuckers didn’t find anything.

The smile that grew on my face was pure joy when I laid eyes on my baby. When I stopped in front of it, I ran my hand across the paint, loving the shine it reflected from the sun.

I cast my leg over the red powder coat and chrome Indian Scout Classic, then turned the ignition. The sound of the chrome pipes was like music to my ears. It was loud and boisterous, just like me.

I revved the engine just because, and Remy shook his head then grabbed the back of his neck.

He threw up a two-fingered salute at me, “Let me know if you need some help,” he called out over his shoulder as he walked back the way we came.

I didn’t answer him as I pulled out of my space and headed to the address Loki had sent me for the meeting. As much as I wanted to go for a long ride to clear my head of the conspiracy my brother and I uncovered, this meeting was more important.