Chapter 3
Church started at ten sharp because Pitt didn't believe in waiting and his brothers knew better than to be late.
The chapel was the old foreman's office on the ground floor—heavy oak doors that Gibbet had hung himself, brick walls that swallowed sound, a scarred table big enough for eight men who didn't like sitting close to anybody.
No windows. One way in. The kind of room where decisions got made and stayed made.
Pitt sat at the head with coffee going cold in front of him, watching his officers settle.
Hollow dropped into the chair at his right, already wired, knee bouncing under the table.
Parkway took the left side, calm as always, a manila folder and a rolled map in front of him like he'd been waiting for this meeting for weeks.
Which, knowing Parkway, he had. Gibbet filled the remaining chair with the quiet mass of a man who didn't need to announce himself—arms folded, face giving nothing, ready for whatever came next.
Ash and Shiv sat further down. Enforcers didn't speak in Church unless spoken to, but they listened with the focus of men who'd be doing the work.
"Let's have it," Pitt said.
Parkway unrolled the map. Pittsburgh's South Side spread across the table in hand-drawn detail—streets, blocks, businesses marked in different colors. Red dots clustered in a pattern that made Pitt's jaw tighten.
"Victor Petrak's operation," Parkway said, laying a finger on the red cluster. "Six weeks of observation. He runs fifteen collectors out of his check-cashing front on Eighteenth Street, rotating shifts, three-man teams. They work a grid—predictable routes, same businesses, same schedule."
"How deep?" Pitt asked.
"Three blocks past Carson on our side. Here, here, and here." Parkway tapped locations. "Laundromat on Twentieth. Two restaurants on the one-nine hundred block. Convenience store on Twenty-First. And a corner bar on the flats—Kowalski's."
The name hit Pitt in the chest. Mikey's old place.
"That's seven businesses on our side of the line," Hollow said, leaning forward to study the map. "Seven places where people think we're protecting them, and this asshole's walking through the front door."
"Eight." Parkway pulled a paper from his folder. "Added one yesterday. Dry cleaner on Tenth Street. Owner's got a split lip and a broken display case."
Silence around the table. The kind of silence that happened when men who solved problems with violence identified a problem worth solving.
"What's his crew look like?" Pitt asked.
"Fifteen muscle, give or take. Primary enforcer is Danny Strok—big, mean, likes his work.
Operations run through a guy named Raymond Hask, keeps the books and coordinates the crews.
And there's a third one, Craig Burch." Parkway paused.
"He's the one they send when they want to make a point.
Arson, mostly. The kind of guy who takes pictures. "
"Three lieutenants and fifteen soldiers," Gibbet said. First words he'd spoken. His voice sounded like gravel in a blender.
"That we've counted," Parkway confirmed.
Pitt studied the map. The red dots weren't random—they formed a line pushing south and east, block by block, exactly the kind of slow territorial creep that worked because nobody pushed back.
Petrak had been running this play for twenty years.
Bleeding the neighborhood dry one business at a time, moving carefully enough to stay below the threshold that brought attention.
Until now. Three blocks past Carson was Outlaws territory. Had been since they'd patched in and started making it clear that the South Side had new management.
"The bar," Pitt said. "Kowalski's. Who's running it?"
"Owner. Woman named Maggie Kowalski, inherited it from her father a few years back." Parkway checked his notes. "She's been Petrak's main target the last two months. He wants the property—good location for a front operation. Father apparently owed him money. She's been refusing to sign it over."
"Refusing how?"
"Telling his collectors to go fuck themselves, from what I hear." The ghost of a smile crossed Parkway's face. "Danny Strok's been there three times. She's still open."
Something moved in Pitt's chest. A woman standing alone against fifteen men and a predator with twenty years of practice, armed with nothing but stubbornness and a bar she refused to give up. The kind of fight he'd built the Outlaws to win.
"She call the cops?" Hollow asked.
"Twice. Got told it's a civil matter." Parkway folded his arms. "Nobody's coming to help her, brother. Nobody but us."
Pitt looked around the table. Hollow was practically vibrating, ready to ride the second Pitt said the word.
Gibbet sat like stone, but his eyes had gone flat in the way that meant someone was going to have a very bad day.
Parkway waited with the patience of a man who'd already planned three moves ahead.
Ash was grinning. Shiv wasn't, but then Shiv never grinned—he just got quieter, which was worse.
"Here's what we do," Pitt said. "Hollow, Gibbet—shadow Petrak's collectors for the next forty-eight hours. I want routes, patterns, numbers. Where they go, who they hit, what time they show up. Don't engage. Just watch."
"And if they start breaking bones while we're watching?" Hollow asked.
"Then you stop watching and start engaging. But I want intel first."
"Parkway—keep building this." Pitt tapped the map. "Every business he's touching, every collector on the street. I want to know this operation better than Petrak does."
"Ash, Shiv—check the safehouse in Lawrenceville. Stock it, clean it, make sure it's ready. If things move fast, I want somewhere to put people."
"People?" Ash raised an eyebrow. "Or a person?"
Pitt gave him a look that answered the question without words.
"And you?" Hollow asked.
"I'm going to check on our territory personally. Starting with the businesses he's been squeezing." Pitt pushed back from the table. "If people under our protection are getting hurt, they need to see a patch at their door, not hear about it secondhand."
"Starting where?" Parkway asked, and the way he asked it suggested he already knew.
"The bar on the flats." Pitt stood, and Church was over. "Mikey used to drink there."
Hollow caught his arm in the hallway outside the chapel, pulling him into the alcove by the stairwell where conversations happened between just two men.
"This is going to get ugly," Hollow said. Not a warning—a statement. "Petrak's been here twenty years. He's got muscle, money, and enough fear banked to keep people quiet. We roll up on him, it's not a conversation. It's a war."
"I know what it is."
"Good. Because I want in. Front line, first wave, whatever you need." Hollow's eyes had that bright, dangerous light. "This piece of shit's been bleeding our neighborhood while we looked the other way. That's done."
Pitt gripped his VP's shoulder. "It's done."
He left Hollow at the compound and rode out alone, which he didn't do often and his brothers didn't love.
But some things required a President's presence without the weight of a formation behind him—showing up at a scared business owner's door with four bikes and eight boots sent the wrong message.
Today was about listening. About seeing the damage up close.
He hit three businesses in two hours. The laundromat owner on Twentieth showed him a window patched with cardboard and told him about men who'd promised to come back with gasoline.
The restaurant couple on Nineteenth served him coffee with shaking hands and described collectors who came every Tuesday like clockwork.
The convenience store owner on Twenty-First wouldn't open the door at all, just watched him through the glass with eyes that had stopped believing in help.
Each stop tightened something in Pitt's chest. This was his territory. These were his people. And a predator had been feeding on them while the Outlaws ran patrols three blocks north and collected tribute from strip clubs.
That was on him. The failure was his, and he'd fix it the only way he knew how.
By late afternoon, he was on his bike heading for the last stop, the one he'd saved for reasons he wasn't ready to examine.
Kowalski's Corner sat on its corner lot like it had been there forever—old brick, green awning, the neon sign he remembered from years ago now missing a letter.
The K in Kowalski's flickered like a dying heartbeat.
Pitt parked at the curb, killed the engine, and sat for a moment looking at the place where his brother used to laugh. Then he pulled his phone and texted Hollow and Gibbet.
Kowalski's Corner. Twenty minutes. Beers on me.
Some things you did alone. But walking into a bar that needed protecting—that was club business.
He swung off the bike and headed for the door.