SNEAK PEEK PATRIOT’S RAGE
Chapter 1
The strip club smelled like cheap perfume and cheaper decisions.
Patriot killed the engine on his Harley and swung off, boots hitting cracked asphalt while three of his brothers did the same behind him. Gunner. Bayonet. Pounder. Enough muscle to make a point without starting a war—assuming the man inside had any sense left in that greedy skull of his.
"Lights are on in the back office," Turnpike said through the earpiece. He was parked two blocks out, watching the security feeds he'd hacked three days ago. "Two girls on the floor, bartender, and your boy Tony. No muscle I can see."
"Tony got smart and sent his guys home," Gunner said, cracking his neck. "Or Tony got stupid and thinks we won't touch him without witnesses."
Patriot didn't answer. He was already moving toward the entrance, leather cut catching the orange glow of the parking lot lights. The Sons of Liberty patch across his back—thirteen stars circling crossed pistols over a cracked liberty bell—announced exactly who was about to walk through that door.
The bouncer stationed out front took one look and stepped aside without a word. Smart man. He'd probably seen the news about what happened to the last crew that tried to muscle into Sons territory.
Inside, the club was half-dead for a Tuesday night. Two dancers worked the poles with the enthusiasm of women counting down minutes until shift change. The bartender—young guy, maybe twenty-five—went pale when Patriot walked in, already reaching for his phone.
"Don't." Patriot's voice carried without volume. "Tell Tony he's got company. Then find somewhere else to be for the next fifteen minutes."
The bartender practically ran for the back office.
Patriot posted up at the bar, not sitting, just waiting.
Gunner flanked his right. Bayonet drifted toward the back exit with that silent predator walk of his, cutting off any ideas Tony might have about running.
Pounder stayed by the front door, cheerful as always, like they'd stopped by for beers instead of a reckoning.
The dancers had stopped dancing. One of them—older, experienced enough to read a room—was already grabbing her things.
"Show's over, sweetheart," Patriot told her. "Take your friend. Come back tomorrow."
They didn't need to be told twice.
The back office door opened, and Tony Barrese walked out like a man approaching his own execution. Which, depending on how the next few minutes went, wasn't far from the truth.
Tony was fifty-three, soft in the middle, with the kind of tan that came from vacation homes and the kind of sweat that came from knowing you'd fucked up.
He'd been running this club for twelve years, paying tribute to the Sons for eight of them.
Fair arrangement. Sons kept outside crews from muscling in, kept the cops disinterested, kept Tony's operation running smooth.
In exchange, Tony paid his monthly and kept his nose out of club business.
Simple. Until it wasn't.
"Patriot." Tony's voice cracked on the second syllable. "Listen, I can explain—"
"You're three months behind." Patriot kept his tone conversational. Almost friendly. "That's fifteen grand you owe. Plus the dealers you've been letting work your parking lot. Outside product in Sons territory."
"Those guys, they just showed up, I didn't—"
"You let them stay. You took a cut." Patriot tilted his head, studying Tony the way a wolf studies a deer that's wandered too far from the herd. "Thought maybe we wouldn't notice? Thought maybe you'd found better protection?"
"No, no, it's not like that—"
"Then what's it like, Tony?"
The silence stretched. Tony's eyes darted to the exits, found Bayonet blocking the back, Pounder covering the front. No way out except through Patriot, and nobody went through Patriot without losing pieces of themselves.
"I got behind," Tony finally said, desperation bleeding into his voice. "The economy, the pandemic—business dropped sixty percent. I'm barely keeping the lights on. Those dealers, they offered me cash, quick money, I thought I could catch up on payments and—"
"And you thought wrong."
Patriot moved. Fast. One moment he was standing at the bar, the next he had Tony's right hand pinned to the nearest table, fingers splayed.
"Fifteen grand," Patriot said. "Plus five for the insult of letting outside crews work our territory. Plus another five for making me come down here personally instead of handling this like a man."
"Twenty-five?" Tony's voice shot up an octave. "I don't have twenty-five thousand dollars!"
"Then we've got a problem."
Patriot pulled a folding knife from his cut—nothing fancy, just a well-worn blade that had done this kind of work before. He set the edge against Tony's pinkie finger, right at the second knuckle.
"First knuckle buys you a week," Patriot said, his voice utterly calm. "Second knuckle buys you two. Full finger buys you a month. How much time do you need, Tony?"
"Jesus Christ, please—"
"Clock's ticking."
"A month! I need a month, I can get the money in a month, I swear to God—"
Patriot considered. Tony was a weasel, but he'd been reliable for years before this. More importantly, he wasn't worth the headache of finding someone new to run this shithole.
"One month." Patriot folded the knife and tucked it away. "Twenty-five grand, not a dollar less. And those dealers?"
"Gone. I'll tell them tonight—"
"You'll tell them nothing." Patriot's hand shot out, grabbing Tony's right wrist and wrenching it up at an angle that made the older man cry out. "They're our problem now. What you're going to do is go home, put together my money, and pray I don't find out you've been lying about anything else."
Then he twisted.
The snap of Tony's wrist echoed through the empty club like a gunshot. Tony screamed—high and raw and genuine—and collapsed against the table, cradling his arm against his chest.
Patriot leaned in close.
"That's for wasting my time. Consider it a reminder of what happens when you forget who keeps you breathing. One month, Tony. Don't make me come back."
He straightened, nodded to his brothers, and walked out into the Philadelphia night.
The ride back through South Philly hit different at this hour.
Past midnight, the streets belonged to the Sons and the shadows.
Row houses lined up like soldiers, brick facades that had seen two hundred years of history and weren't impressed by any of it.
Neon signs flickered over corner bars. Streetlights caught the chrome of four Harleys rolling in formation, engines growling a warning that carried for blocks.
Patriot breathed in the city—exhaust and river fog and the distant ghost of cheesesteaks from some all-night joint.
This was his territory. His responsibility.
Every block they passed, every business with lights on, every family sleeping safe behind locked doors—they existed because the Sons held the line.
No kings. No masters. Liberty or death.
They cut through the Italian Market district, past shuttered stalls that would explode with noise in a few hours. Turned down a side street Patriot had known since childhood, back when he was just Dominic Callahan, back before Fallujah, before the patch, before everything.
That's when he saw it.
Malone's Tap House. Corner building, old brick, neon sign that had probably been there since Reagan. The kind of neighborhood bar that served working men and didn't water down the whiskey.
Patriot's chest tightened.
He hadn't thought about this place in years. Hadn't let himself. But rolling past now, something caught—a flash of memory so sharp it felt like taking a round to the vest.
Mikey, grinning across a scarred wooden table. Mikey, three years younger and a lifetime more innocent, raising a glass to his big brother's latest homecoming. "To Dominic, who survived another tour just to come back and babysit my ass."
That was the last time they'd been here together.
Six months before the overdose. Six months before Patriot came home to find his baby brother blue-lipped and cold on a bathroom floor, needle still in his arm, pushed by dealers who'd moved into the neighborhood while Dominic was overseas playing hero in someone else's country.
He could have stopped it. Should have been here. Should have protected what mattered instead of fighting wars that weren't his.
Some failures never stopped burning.
Patriot filed the memory away—not gone, never gone, just locked down where it couldn't interfere with the job. He noted the bar was still open, lights on inside, someone still fighting to keep that piece of the neighborhood alive.
Good for them.
He opened the throttle and led his brothers home.
The Sons of Liberty compound rose out of South Philly like a middle finger aimed at authority.
Three stories of converted brewery, brick and iron and defiance. The gate rolled open as they approached—prospect on security recognizing the formation—and they rumbled into the lot, parking their bikes in the row of chrome that gleamed under floodlights.
Inside, the clubhouse was quiet for this hour.
A few brothers playing cards in the corner.
Someone's old lady wiping down the bar built from reclaimed colonial wood.
The Revolutionary War reproductions on the walls—crossed muskets, Betsy Ross flag, framed Declaration of Independence—weren't just decoration. They were a statement.
This country was founded by outlaws and rebels. The Sons just carried on the tradition.
Patriot grabbed a beer from the cooler and dropped into a chair by the fireplace, rolling the tension out of his shoulders. Tony Barrese's scream was still echoing in his skull, satisfying in the way these things were. Clean work. Problem handled. One less loose end in their territory.
Gunner sprawled in the chair across from him, cracking open his own bottle.
"Tony's gonna pay?"
"Tony's gonna pay." Patriot took a long pull of cold beer. "Scared enough to scrape the money together, not stupid enough to try running."
"And the dealers?"
"Bayonet and Pounder are handling it." A thin smile crossed Patriot's face. "By morning, they won't be a problem anymore."
Gunner nodded, satisfied. Then his expression shifted—something darker, more serious sliding behind his eyes.
"Got some intel while you were breaking wrists."
Patriot waited.
"Victor Yellen." Gunner said the name like it tasted bad. "His boys have been pushing deeper into the neighborhood. Three blocks past his usual territory in the last two weeks. Leaning on businesses we consider under our umbrella."
Victor Yellen. The name triggered immediate recognition—twenty years bleeding South Philly dry through predatory loans and systematic intimidation. A parasite who'd outlasted crews and competitors by being too connected to bother, too careful to catch, too embedded to dig out without effort.
"Which businesses?"
"Hardware store on Passyunk. That bodega near the church. Maybe others we haven't heard about yet."
Patriot's jaw tightened. Those were Sons-protected blocks. Not officially, maybe—no tribute agreements, no formal arrangements—but everyone in the neighborhood knew that territory fell under their shadow. Victor pushing there wasn't expansion.
It was a challenge.
"Keep ears open," Patriot said, voice gone cold. "I want to know everywhere his collectors have been, everyone they've leaned on. Names, dates, amounts. Everything."
Gunner raised an eyebrow. "We moving on him?"
"Not yet." Patriot finished his beer, set the bottle down with deliberate precision. "Victor's been here for twenty years because he's smart and connected. We don't hit him without knowing exactly what we're hitting. But if he's pushing into our territory..."
He let the sentence hang.
Gunner's smile was all teeth.
"Then we remind him why nobody pushes the Sons."
Patriot stared into the fireplace, flames dancing over artificial logs. Somewhere out there, Victor Yellen was squeezing the neighborhood, thinking he'd found soft targets, thinking no one would push back.
He was about to learn different.