Pitt's Protection (Steel City Outlaws #1)

Chapter 1

The strip club smelled like cheap perfume and cheaper decisions.

Pitt stood in the parking lot of The Gold Mine with three brothers at his back, watching the neon sign flicker pink and gold against the November dark.

Carson Street traffic rolled past behind them, headlights cutting through river fog that crawled up from the Monongahela two blocks south.

Nobody slowed down. Nobody looked twice at four men in leather standing outside a titty bar at eleven on a Tuesday night.

This was the South Side. People minded their business or they learned to.

"Lights are on in the office," Hollow said, breath steaming. He stood at Pitt's right shoulder like always, thick arms crossed over his chest, that manic door-gunner energy barely leashed. "Want me to knock?"

"I'll knock." Pitt rolled his neck, felt the vertebrae pop. "Gibbet, take the back. Ash, stay with the bikes. Anyone comes out that door running, let 'em get three steps."

"Just three?" Ash grinned from where he leaned against his Dyna, the burn scars on his hands catching neon light. "You're getting generous in your old age, Prez."

Pitt didn't answer. He was already walking.

The front door wasn't locked. Sloppy. Eddie Varek had gotten comfortable, three years operating under Outlaws protection without a single crew rolling up on his place, and comfortable made men stupid.

Pitt pushed through the main room—empty stage, chairs stacked on tables, the whole place smelling like industrial cleaner and regret—and straight to the office door at the back of the hall.

He didn't knock. He kicked it open.

Eddie Varek jerked upright behind a desk covered in cash stacks and receipts, his face cycling through surprise, recognition, and something close to panic in about two seconds flat.

Fifty-something, soft around the middle, gold chain catching fluorescent light.

The kind of man who'd been middle management his whole life—too smart to swing, too weak to lead.

"Pitt." Eddie's hands went flat on the desk. "Jesus Christ, you scared the—"

"Sit down, Eddie."

Eddie was already sitting, but he somehow sat harder, shoulders pulling in like he could shrink below the desk line. His eyes jumped from Pitt to Hollow filling the doorframe behind him, and whatever he saw there killed the greeting on his lips.

Pitt pulled a chair from the wall, turned it backward, and sat with his forearms across the back.

He let the silence work. Eddie's office was small—fake wood paneling, a calendar from 2024 nobody'd bothered to flip, stacks of inventory forms. A window unit AC that wasn't running. The room shrank with two Outlaws in it.

"You're short," Pitt said.

"I can explain—"

"Three months running. Hollow, what's the number?"

Hollow pulled a folded paper from his cut. "Fourteen thousand, two hundred. Three installments at roughly forty-seven hundred each. Dates, amounts, documented."

Eddie's tongue hit his lips. "Business has been slow. The construction on East Carson killed foot traffic for—"

"Eddie." Pitt's voice didn't rise. Didn't need to. "You had outside dealers working your parking lot last Friday."

The color left Eddie's face like someone pulled a drain plug.

"That's—no, those guys just showed up. I didn't—"

"Three of them. Set up shop by the dumpsters around midnight, ran product until close. Your bouncers watched it happen." Pitt let that sit. "You're shorting us tribute while letting outside crews make money off your lot. Help me understand how that works."

"I swear to God, Pitt, I didn't invite them. They just—"

"You let them." Pitt stood. The chair scraped concrete. "That's the same thing."

He crossed the small office in two steps, and Eddie flinched hard enough to knock his desk lamp sideways. Pitt grabbed the man's right hand before he could pull it back, spread it flat on the desk surface, and leaned his weight on it. Eddie made a sound like air leaving a tire.

"I like you, Eddie. You run a clean place, you pay on time—usually—and you don't cause problems. But you let dealers set up shop in territory we protect, and you short us while you're doing it.

" Pitt adjusted his grip. "So here's what happens.

You pay what you owe by Friday. All fourteen.

And if I hear about anyone running product within two blocks of this building, I'm not coming back to talk. "

He bore down on Eddie's hand until something popped—not a break, just a dislocation, the middle finger bending where fingers shouldn't bend. Eddie screamed through clenched teeth, tears jumping to his eyes. Pitt held it for three seconds, then let go.

"Friday, Eddie."

Eddie cradled his hand against his chest, nodding so fast his chin blurred. "Friday. Yeah. Friday, I swear."

Pitt walked out without looking back. Hollow fell in beside him, and they crossed the main floor to the parking lot where Ash was already straddling his bike, helmet dangling from one hand.

"Sounded productive," Ash said.

"He'll pay." Pitt swung onto his Road King, the familiar weight settling under him like a handshake. "Let's ride."

Four bikes fired in sequence—Pitt's Road King, Hollow's Street Glide, Gibbet materializing from the alley on his Fat Boy, Ash bringing up the rear on the Dyna.

The formation was automatic, Pitt at the front because that's where the President rode, always.

They pulled onto Carson Street and the South Side opened up around them—row houses stacked on hillsides, bar signs and church steeples competing for the skyline, the whole neighborhood humming with the stubborn energy of people who'd been getting knocked down and getting back up for a hundred and fifty years.

Pitt loved this city the way some men loved women—completely, violently, without apology.

Every block they rolled through was Outlaws territory, earned and held through years of exactly the kind of conversation he'd just had with Eddie Varek.

No cops keeping these streets safe. No politicians giving a damn about the South Side flats.

Just the club, chrome and leather and brotherhood, filling the gap because somebody had to.

They turned off Carson onto a side street, cutting through residential blocks toward the compound, and Pitt clocked a corner bar with its lights still on.

Kowalski's Corner, the sign read, old-school neon in green and white.

He knew the place. Mikey used to drink there, years ago, back when Pitt's kid brother was still alive and still pretending the pills were recreational.

Before the OD. Before Pitt came home from Fallujah to find a headstone where his brother should've been and dealers running the block where they'd grown up.

He filed the memory and kept riding.

The compound rose out of the South Side like it had grown from the concrete—three-story brick steelworks building, converted and reinforced, sitting on a corner lot behind a gated fence topped with razor wire.

The original foundry equipment was still bolted to the walls in places, rusted I-beams and pulley systems that gave the place the feel of something industrial and permanent.

The gate rolled open as they approached—prospect on duty recognized the formation—and four bikes thundered into the lot, chrome catching security lights as they lined up in the covered parking.

Pitt killed his engine and sat for a moment in the sudden quiet.

The compound courtyard spread out in front of him—firepit cold, picnic tables empty, the bar's windows glowing amber from inside where brothers on night rotation nursed beers and watched the security feeds. Home. The only real one he'd ever had.

Inside, the clubhouse smelled like hops and leather conditioner.

The bar ran along the east wall, built from reclaimed mill timber that still showed the grain of a hundred years of Pittsburgh industry.

A few brothers looked up from their drinks—nods, fist bumps, the casual acknowledgment of men who lived in each other's pockets and didn't need ceremony about it.

Pitt grabbed a beer from behind the bar and dropped into his usual spot at the corner where he could see both doors. Hollow slid onto the stool beside him, already halfway through a bottle he'd produced from somewhere.

"Eddie'll pay," Hollow said. "But he's getting squirrelly. That's twice this year."

"Noted."

"Speaking of squirrelly." Hollow leaned in, dropping his volume. "Got something you need to hear. Been picking it up the last couple weeks, wanted to confirm before I brought it to the table."

Pitt turned his beer on the bartop, waiting.

"Victor Petrak. You know the name?"

"Loan shark. Runs a check-cashing spot on Eighteenth. Been bleeding the South Side since before we patched in."

"He's pushing deeper. Three, four blocks past his usual lines, hitting businesses on our side of Carson. Parkway's been hearing it too—collectors showing up at places that are supposed to be under our umbrella, leaning on people who think we're supposed to be keeping them safe."

Pitt's jaw tightened. The beer suddenly tasted flat. "How long?"

"Month, maybe six weeks. Started small—couple visits, nothing crazy. But he's ramping up. Broke a restaurant owner's arm last week. Woman who runs the laundromat on Twentieth got her front window smashed."

"And nobody told us."

"They're scared, brother. Petrak's been here twenty years. We've been here eight. Some of these people, they've been paying him longer than they've known us. Hard to trust the new muscle when the old muscle's been breaking bones since before you showed up."

Pitt drank. Processed. Victor Petrak was exactly the kind of cancer the Outlaws existed to cut out—a predator feeding on people who couldn't fight back, operating in the gap between law and order where nobody with a badge gave enough of a damn to look.

The kind of man who made neighborhoods bleed slowly, quietly, until there was nothing left but fear and empty storefronts.

"Church tomorrow," Pitt said. "Full table. I want Parkway's maps and everything you've got on Petrak's operation—crew size, collection routes, who he's hitting and how hard."

"You want to move on him?"

"I want to know what we're looking at. Then I want to move on him."

Hollow grinned, the kind of grin that made smart men find somewhere else to be. "About damn time somebody pushed back on that prick."

Pitt finished his beer and set the bottle down with a click that sounded final.

Petrak had been operating in the shadows of Outlaws territory for years, and Pitt had let it slide because the man kept to his own blocks and didn't cause noise that demanded a response.

That calculation had just changed. Pushing into protected territory, hurting protected people—that was a declaration, whether Petrak meant it as one or not.

The Outlaws didn't make declarations. They made examples.

He pulled his phone and typed a message to Parkway: Church 10 AM. Bring everything on Petrak. Full table.

The reply came in four seconds: Already started. Been waiting for you to say go.

Pitt pocketed the phone and looked out across the clubhouse—brothers drinking, talking, living the life they'd built together in a city that had tried to grind them all to dust. Every one of them had come to the Outlaws because the world outside had failed them—military men without a mission, fighters without a ring, loyal men without anything worth being loyal to.

He'd given them that. Built it with his hands and his reputation and his willingness to bleed first and bleed most.

Now somebody was threatening the people they'd sworn to protect. The neighborhood Mikey had loved, the streets Pitt had come home to defend, the blocks where working families were just trying to survive without some predator taking everything they had.

Pitt caught Gibbet's eye across the bar and held up two fingers. Gibbet nodded once—understood. Two men on Petrak's check-cashing storefront tonight, eyes only, mapping the pattern.

Tomorrow, they'd plan. Soon after, they'd move. And Victor Petrak would learn what every bully eventually learns when someone bigger finally pays attention.