Chapter 5
Aiden
“We’re not a middleman for the mob. Ramsey can suck my fucking dick,” I bite out.
My threat hangs in the heavy silence around the table in our clubhouse meeting room, our church, but I don’t think twice about anyone questioning me.
Everything said here is sacred, even when I casually mention that the don of the biggest Mafia in the south can get down on his knees and choke on my cock.
The mood in the room is as somber as the space itself.
It has an almost medieval feel. The walls are a dark, stained wood, and an antler chandelier, made from bucks my grandfather killed, hangs low over the twenty-four-foot-long table.
A table that bears only our club insignia, burned into the wood.
The skull-faced, cloaked reaper on the back of a Harley.
Every single man seated around this table knows that I run a very different club than my predecessor. If betrayal of any kind ever happened on my watch, the culprit would have his throat slit before he even knew I was standing behind him.
“Tell us how you really feel, boss?” Stone, my sergeant at arms chuckles, lightening the mood.
“Aye, but it’s worth consideration for the future, no?
” Archer, my uncle for all intents and purposes as well as my vice president, pipes up to my left.
His accent is thick even though he came to America from Wales when he was twenty, and after many weathered years as my mentor, he’s my most trusted counsel.
I lean onto my forearms at the head of the table.
“Maybe. But not now,” I say clearly. Atlanta has become like a warehouse for the Mafia that’s hounding us to work with them.
“The ATF, the DEA, they’re set up around the ports like fucking summer camp.
I want nothing to do with it. Money or no money.
It’s too much of a risk. We’re Disciples, not street poppers.
” I’m not afraid of the mob or ill prepared to work with them.
I carry so many sins on my back, it may kill me if I turn around too quickly, but we only deal with other clubs.
The Titans and even the Hounds have our back now.
We wash for them, we get booze and guns to the dry counties.
That’s how we make our money. On our own terms.
“We aren’t the mob’s little bitches.” I look around the table at Stone, my sergeant at arms, Dean and Davis, my road gunner and treasurer at the end of the table, and Raef, my enforcer. They all know I’m right.
“Every one of you motherfuckers makes enough money.” I point to them.
“We get in bed with Angus Ramsey, we never get out,” I say.
They all know it’s the truth. Even still, after Raef brought it to the table, some of these guys wanted the figures we could earn.
Raef was just bringing the opportunity. He has ties to a mob contact from his stint in prison, but that kind of greed will get a man killed, buried beneath the Cyprus trees where this crime family is known for hiding its enemies.
It’s my job to protect the members and the future of this club.
“Call to add the Cyprus mob to our distribution list, all in favor?” I ask, looking to Stone at my right.
“Nay.”
Good man.
We’ve finally got a good thing going. It’s taken more than two years since the day I took over this broken, beaten, and bloody club to get it to the level it is now.
It has respect again, and that respect has been hard earned.
My stepbrother, Marco, drove this club straight into the fucking ground for eight years before he was gutted like the pig he was by the leader of the Hounds of Hell, Gabriel Wolfe. If Wolfe hadn’t done it, I would have.
I sit and wait while the other nays come from around the table. Even Raef looks up at me and then gives, “Nay. You know best, Prez.”
“Aye. Brenin, we trust you,” Archer adds, patting my shoulder and calling me the slang word for king in Welsh. The funny thing is, he’s called me that since I was a teen, long before I was president of this club.
I snap the gavel down and look around the table.
“I’m not saying never. I’m saying not while there’s so much heat in Atlanta. It’s the quickest way to get caught up in some sort of fucked-up RICO case, and I for one like living free on the back of my bike.”
“Hear, hear,” Raef says from his place as he lights a smoke.
“All right, enough business for today. I have to call Roz back,” I tell the table.
“Did you invite her to come tonight?” Archer asks as I stand. “Tally likes to have average-age pussy around so she doesn’t feel old.” He air quotes his words and smirks.
I chuckle. Tally is Archer’s wife, and although she’s only forty and far from old, she always complains about being the grandmother in the group, since the majority of sweetbutts that hang around the club are closer to twenty-five.
“Tally could never be old, bud. She just keeps getting better with age.” I grin down at him. “You need me to tell her?”
“You stay the fuck away from her. The last thing I need is a fucking Brad Pitt look-alike sweet-talking my ol’ lady,” he bites out.
I chuckle.
“If you’re calling me that, you better mean Fight Club Pitt.” I knock back the rest of the bourbon in my glass.
“Aye, is there any other?” He chuckles with me. I pat him on the shoulder.
It’s a lot to balance, being at the helm of this club.
My father, Gregor Foxx, did it well when he was the president prior to Marco.
Marco was always looking for a quick fuck or a quick high.
I was only twenty-four when my father died.
Marco was eight years older than me, and he was a smooth talker.
He always said what everyone wanted to hear.
He’d smile while he stabbed you in the back, and he’d do anything for money.
But he had the table’s vote, a bunch of fucking shitheads in his back pocket.
Had I been just a bit older or been around more—hell, even if I had more men than Archer in my corner—I could’ve taken over from my father.
Instead, I stayed as close as I could to keep an eye on Marco—I was his VP.
I had to stand by and watch him take everything my father had built and practically burn it to the fucking ground.
I push the history from my head, because none of it matters now. I’m finally rebuilding. I’m getting the deadweight weeded out, and my nightclubs are legitimate businesses that offer women respect and protection no other club offers them.
I make it out to the bar area of our clubhouse with Archer close behind. In another hour, this place will be packed.
“Drink?” he asks.
“Nah.” I shake my head. I’m keeping my head clear, because I must admit, I’m interested to see if my new employee will actually show up tonight.
Or if she’ll run as far away as she can.
It might be better for both of us if she does.
It’s been a long fucking time since I’ve even cared to speak to a woman in my club, and I can almost smell the storm someone like her could unleash.
Archer reaches behind the bar and pours himself a shot of whiskey.
We sit and I light a smoke, taking a minute to think about the way Mia eyed me suspiciously earlier.
There’s something off about her, something simmering beneath all that false confidence I sensed right away.
As a SEAL, my job was to watch and learn everything there was to know about my team’s threats so I could take the threat out.
Because of that, I know when someone is hiding something, and if that little minx was sent here to spy on us, namely by Georgia’s most notorious mob, I’m gonna find out who sent her and why.
And then I’ll be sending her pretty blond head back to them in a box.