Levee's Reckoning (Delta Destroyers MC #6)

Chapter One

The brick had left a hole the size of a dinner plate in the front window of Black Delta Ink.

Levee stood on the sidewalk for a moment, taking in the damage with the structural eye of a man who'd spent nine years assessing what held and what didn't. Spiderweb cracks radiated from the impact point.

Shards of glass glittered on the concrete like Delta diamonds.

And through the jagged opening, he could hear a woman's voice—loud, profane, and absolutely furious.

He pushed through the door.

The shop was narrow and deep, brick walls covered in flash art and photographs of finished work. A single tattoo chair dominated the center of the space, and in it sat a heavyset man getting his arm worked on by a woman whose voice carried through the room like she was addressing a stadium.

"—and I told that pencil-necked piece of shit that if he sent his boys around here one more time, I'd tattoo 'PROPERTY OF MEGAN TRASK' across his forehead while he slept.

You think I'm joking? I am not joking. I have done time in Memphis shops that would make his little construction-site goons cry for their mamas—"

Levee settled into the waiting chair near the door without announcing himself. The woman—Megan, apparently—didn't stop talking, but her eyes flicked to him for half a second. Assessed. Dismissed. Returned to her work.

"—two buildings on this block already burned.

You know that, right? Electrical fires, my ass.

Danny Moorehead's place went up three weeks after he told Brandt to shove his buyout offer, and now Danny's living with his sister in Tunica because his insurance company is dragging their feet on a payout everybody knows is never coming—"

Levee watched her hands.

They were covered in ink stains at the cuticles, the permanent mark of someone who lived their craft.

But the way they moved—steady, precise, absolutely controlled despite the fury in her voice—told him everything he needed to know.

This wasn't a woman who let emotion interfere with her work.

The needle traced clean lines across her client's skin while her mouth delivered a profanity-laced dissertation on Karl Brandt's ancestry, personal hygiene, and likely sexual inadequacies.

"—and Terrence Mosley, you remember Terrence?

Ran the barber shop on the corner for fifteen years?

He's gone. Packed up and left after somebody put sugar in his gas tank three nights running and slashed his tires twice.

Didn't even try to sell, just walked away.

That's what these assholes want. They want you to get tired. They want you to give up—"

The client in the chair—a sun-weathered man in his fifties with the look of a cotton-mill worker—was nodding along like he'd heard this sermon before. Probably had. A woman this loud didn't keep her opinions to herself.

Levee cataloged the details while she worked.

Two confirmed arsons on this block. At least one intimidation campaign successful enough to drive out a fifteen-year business.

And Megan's shop—Black Delta Ink, according to the neon sign buzzing in the window—was the last occupied storefront on a stretch that Karl Brandt apparently wanted bad enough to throw bricks through windows.

She was finishing the sleeve now, wiping down the fresh ink with practiced efficiency. The work was good. Better than good—the lines were crisp, the shading subtle, the kind of quality that explained why brothers from the compound came here instead of driving to Memphis.

"All right, Carl, you're done." She peeled off her gloves with a snap. "Keep it clean, keep it covered, don't let your wife pick at it when it starts to peel. Two hundred even."

Carl paid in cash, nodded to Levee on his way out like men do when they recognize a patch, and then it was just the two of them in the narrow shop with the Delta heat pressing against the broken window.

Megan turned to face him.

She was medium height and lean, covered in ink from the collarbones down—he could see the edges of color climbing her neck, disappearing under her tank top. Dark eyes assessed him the same way he'd assessed her: cataloging, measuring, deciding what he was made of.

"You're Levee," she said. Not a question. "The armorer. You've been in here before."

"Once. Two years ago."

"I remember. You wanted something for the scar." She nodded toward his left hand, where the pale line of the sheared cable crossed his palm. "Changed your mind."

"Wasn't ready."

"And now?"

"Now I'm here about the brick."

Her jaw tightened. For just a moment, the fury that had been pouring out of her in words shifted into something quieter and more dangerous—the specific anger of a woman who'd built something with her own hands and was watching someone try to tear it down.

"Reaper mentioned it at the compound," Levee continued. "Said Brandt's boys hit your window around two AM. Left a note."

"Left a buyout offer." She crossed to the counter and grabbed a crumpled piece of paper, smoothing it out and slapping it down in front of him.

"Sixty thousand dollars for a four-year lease and all my equipment.

That's supposed to make me pack up and disappear like Danny and Terrence.

Like I'm going to take their money and pretend I didn't spend four years building this place from nothing. "

Levee looked at the paper. The letterhead was professional—Brandt Development Group, with a Clarksdale address and a logo that looked like it cost more than most people in this town made in a month. The offer was typed, formal, the kind of thing lawyers drafted to make thuggery look legitimate.

"You turned them down before," he said.

"Twice." She planted her hands on the counter, leaning forward with the intensity of a woman who'd been fighting alone for too long.

"First time was six months ago. Polite letter, reasonable offer, 'we're revitalizing the historic district' bullshit.

I said no. Second time was three months ago, less polite, higher number.

I said no again. And now—" She gestured at the shattered window.

"Now we're at the brick-through-the-window stage. "

Levee studied her face. The anger was real, but underneath it was something else—exhaustion, maybe. The specific weariness of someone who'd been holding a line alone.

"You smell gas last night?" he asked.

She went still. "What?"

"The two buildings that burned. They rigged gas leaks first. Made it look like faulty infrastructure." He watched her reaction, saw the moment she understood what he was really asking. "If they're escalating to property damage, gas is usually next."

"Jesus Christ." She ran a hand through her dark hair, ink-stained fingers catching in the tangles. "I've been checking the lines every morning since Danny's place went up. Nothing yet. But—"

"But you know it's coming."

"Yeah." The word came out hard. "I know it's coming. And I know I can't stop it by myself, which is probably why you're here instead of one of the brothers who actually talks."

Levee almost smiled. Almost.

"I talk," he said. "When I have something to say."

"Well, say it then." She crossed her arms, ink-covered forearms creating a barrier between them. "What does the great Delta Destroyers MC want with my little tattoo shop? I've been inking your boys for two years and nobody's offered to adopt me before."

He looked at her—really looked. The defensive posture.

The sharp eyes. The hands that had built something real in a town where real things didn't last. She reminded him of something, and it took him a moment to place it: the levee walls he'd spent nine years maintaining.

Built from nothing, designed to hold back forces bigger than themselves, and absolutely dependent on someone giving a damn about the structural integrity.

Karl Brandt and his contractors were the flood. Megan Trask was the wall. And Levee had spent too many years watching things he'd built with his own hands get handed to someone else's spreadsheet to let that happen again.

"Clarksdale's main street is Destroyer territory," he said.

"Has been since Cottonmouth founded the club.

Brandt's been buying up this block for two years, but he's been doing it quiet—buyouts and mysterious fires that never got investigated because the sheriff's department is as useful as tits on a boar hog. "

"Tell me something I don't know."

"Here's what you don't know." He stood, and she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.

"Brandt's got twelve to fifteen contractors on payroll.

Former military, most of them. The head of his security is a man named Craig Sutter—ex-Army MP who thinks he's still deployed.

There's a logistics officer named Pryor running the operational schedule, and a combat engineer named Tully handling the demolition work.

That's three layers between Brandt and the street-level intimidation, which is how he keeps his hands clean. "

Her eyes had sharpened. "You've been watching them."

"I've been assessing the structure." He reached out and tapped the crumpled buyout offer with one scarred finger.

"Every building they've burned, every owner they've run off—it's not random.

It's systematic. They're taking this block apart piece by piece, and your shop is the last load-bearing element.

You go down, the whole structure collapses. "

She was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was different—still blunt, still direct, but with something underneath that sounded almost like hope.

"So what are you going to do about it?"

Levee met her eyes and felt something shift in his chest. She'd built this place with her own hands, the same way he'd built levee walls for nine years before the contract got cut and everything he'd worked for belonged to strangers.

She was standing in a shop with a brick hole in the window and asking what he was going to do, and the answer was the same thing he'd wanted to do when the Corps threw him away:

Tear down the people who thought they could take what someone else had built.

"The club will handle it," he said. "Brandt's demolition crew just put a brick through the wrong window."

She stared at him for a long moment, those keen dark eyes reading something in his face that he hadn't meant to show.

"You're serious," she said.

"I don't waste words."

"No." A small smile cracked the fury on her face—just a flash, there and gone. "No, I guess you don't."

He turned toward the door, then stopped. "Check your gas lines tonight. And tomorrow. Call the compound if anything smells wrong."

"I've been handling my own problems since I was seventeen, Levee. I don't need—"

"You're not handling this one alone." He looked back at her over his shoulder. "Not anymore."

He walked out into the Delta heat before she could argue, but he heard her voice follow him through the broken window—quieter now, almost to herself:

"Stubborn son of a bitch."

Yeah. He was.

And Karl Brandt was about to find out exactly how stubborn.