Chapter 2
Chapter Two
DEUCE
First stop, Pizza King on the corner of Atlantic and Mississippi. I order a Coke at the counter, then take a table. No, I’m not going in for a slice; I’m waiting for my former road captain, Speed, to show up.
I keep my eyes glued to the back door, assuming he’ll come in that way from the parking lot.
Ten minutes later, a guy in a red t-shirt with a gold crown on the front advertising “Best Pizza in Jersey” and a matching cap ambles up to the counter.
The woman who served me the soda shoves some paper receipts at him, and I continue to stare.
I didn’t believe it when I found out my wise-ass road captain was a pizza delivery guy, but seeing is believing.
I’m still not convinced until I see the familiar tats covering both his arms, some of which we got together after some wild nights of partying.
Somehow the goofy t-shirt and cap give off a way different vibe.
No way this is the same guy who threw fists with me side by side.
My ride-or-die daredevil road captain reduced to fast food delivery.
I suck up more Coke, then push away from the table and head for the back of the restaurant.
“Hey.”
Speed turns, does a double-take, and his mouth drops open.
I spread my arms wide. “Surprised to see me?”
“Yeah.” Speed continues to stare. “When did you get out?”
“I’ve been a free man since seven o’clock this morning.”
“And you came back to AC?”
“You sound surprised.” I wait, not sure I wanna hear what he has to say.
Instead, he just shrugs, and I’m totally fuckin’ confused. Speed was always the wiseass of the club. Quick-witted and brutally sarcastic, taking no prisoners and nothing serious. Him dressed in this uniform would’ve given us hours of jokes and comebacks.
“So, you’re delivering pizza now?”
“Not just pizza. On the weekends during the season, I deliver to all the football parties, plus all the catered parties all year long. Even houses outside Atlantic City. I’m the only one the boss trusts with the big orders.”
My lips curve into a smile, then I realize the fucker is seriously proud. “Wow, that’s . . . great.”
Speed could trick out a bike and do rebuilds better than anyone I know. His daring stunt riding on anything with two wheels was legendary. Fucker could do a wheelie while standing on the saddle, so why the hell is he delivering pizza?
“Been doin’ this for about a year. I also drive an Uber, and now I know all the best routes around the city and how to avoid the traffic on the weekends.”
“That’s pretty good.” I keep waiting for him to bust out laughing in his usual snarky way, telling me he’s spitting bullshit—but he never does.
“Hey, Rick,” the same woman stalks over and points at the receipts, “you better get going with these orders.”
I realize she’s talking to Speed using his legal name, a name he hadn’t used in years.
“We’re not paying you to bullshit with your friends,” she adds, then frowns at me.
“Yeah, sure.” Speed scoops up the slips of paper, then hefts up a thermal bag, assumedly filled with pizzas.
“I’ll see you,” Speed throws over his shoulder.
I stay rooted in place for at least two minutes trying to decipher what the hell just happened. My six-foot-one balls-to-the-wall-road-captain is a fuckin’ pizza delivery guy.
I follow him into the lot and watch him yank open the door of a beat-to-shit Toyota. No fuckin’ way that’s what he’s driving now.
I catch up to him, and he gives me a confused look. “Okay, we’re alone now, so quit the bullshit ‘cause there’s no way you’re delivering fuckin’ pizza.”
“I told you I drive an Uber too.”
“C’mon,” I point to the pizza bag, “whaddya really got in there?”
He gives me a blank look. “Pizza.”
I yank the bag out of his hands and lay it on the roof of the car, unzip it and peer inside. “Shit, it really is pizza. What gives with you?”
“Whaddya mean?”
I wave my hand over the stupid t-shirt and cap. “This.”
“Everybody who delivers has to wear it.”
“Are you sure you’re the same guy I had to drag outta Sinners ‘cause you were bangin’ strippers two at a time in the back hallway?”
His face brightens, and the corner of his mouth quirks up, then flattens. “That was a long time ago.”
I give him a once-over. “Not that long.”
“Things are different now.”
“We used to rock those places, not stumbling in until dawn. Shit, we had our own table at Sinners.”
“Hey,” Speed jerks his chin toward the pizzeria, “this place is open till five a.m., so I pull some late nights here too.”
Was he really comparing delivering fast food to balling strippers two at a time?
He shrugs again, and I’m getting a weird sensation like body snatchers took over his mind, leaving this sorry excuse of a shell behind.
“I gotta get these delivered.” He reaches for the thermal bag.
“I don’t buy it.” I knock his hands away from the bag. “‘Cause there’s no fuckin’ way my road captain of the Kings of Anarchy is the pizza delivery guy.”
He shakes me off. “There is no Kings of Anarchy anymore.” His eyes flash. “And you wanna know why?”
I lower my eyes to the weed-infested parking lot. “I know why.”
“Right.” He thumps my shoulder. “‘Cause you fucked up.”
We stare at each other for a few tense seconds, but at least now he looks like Speed and not some Stepford robot.
“I get it, you’re pissed.” I had a feeling I’d be hearing that a lot the next couple of days. “But now I wanna make things right.”
“Too fuckin’ late, man.” He turns away from me, and just as fast, I grab his shoulder and spin him around. We’re the same height, but I got at least twenty more pounds of muscle on me thanks to daily workouts in the joint.
Speed shrugs me off, steps back, and shakes out his arms. “You wanna fuckin’ do this?” He points to himself. “C’mon, throw one, I fuckin’ dare you.”
“I’m not fighting with you in the parking lot of Pizza King like we’re back in high school.”
“Afraid?” It seems like he needs this more than me.
“Yeah, right.” I jerk my hand between us. “I’m afraid of the pizza guy. Give me a fuckin’ break.”
Quick as a rattler, his fist connects with my jaw. The jolt rattles my teeth, but not enough to keep me from laughing.
“What the fuck are you laughing at?” He winds up again, and I easily push him off. “I told you I’m not doin’ this. You got your one shot in, and that’s all you’re getting.”
Speed narrows his eyes. “You think it was easy after you got sent up? The place we all called home was ripped away from us. The cops confiscated everything, and I mean everything. The furniture, the flatscreens on the wall, even our fuckin’ clothes.
They ripped up the carpets looking for shit under the floorboards.
By the time they were done, they were down to the rafters. ”
“I know it sucks.”
“After they wrecked the place, they sold it to some realty company who sold it to a pizzeria.” Speed flicks his hand at the Pizza King building. “Our biggest competitor.”
“You’re a mad genius when it comes to bikes. Finding a job should’ve been easy.”
“Not with the cops up our asses every second. Following us around, dogging our every step. When it came out that we were infiltrated by the DEA, any non-legit business figured we were dirty too, and no legit place wanted to hire the guys who were closest to the guy sent up on federal charges. Most people take smuggling and trading of arms seriously.”
“If I could change all that shit around, I’d do it in a minute, but—”
“You got sent up, but we were all marked as dirty. People either thought we were criminals or informants. We lost our rep, our cred. We lost it all.”
I stay silent because the defeat in Speed’s eyes rips me up.
“Being in an MC was all I knew. It was all any of us knew.” Speed throws up his hands. “Believe me, you got off easy. You got to leave A.C. We had to stay.”
“Why didn’t you move?”
“Move to where? I had no money saved. None of us did. As quick as I made it, I pissed it away, and that’s on me, so I shacked up with Janel for a while.”
“Better than nothing, I guess.” I never cared for the bitch, but at least Speed had somewhere to lay his head.
“Great, until I came home early one night and saw her ballin’ the pizza delivery guy.”
“You’re shittin’ me?” I can’t help laughing.
“Beat the living piss outta him.” Speed barks out a laugh. “Then, when he was too busted up to go back to work, I took his fuckin’ job.”
“You can’t make this shit up.” I clap Speed on the shoulder. Now we’re both doubled over laughing. “Hate to tell you, man, but Janel was a whore. Bitch had more dick in her than the men’s room.”
“You think I didn’t know that?” He waggles his eyebrows. “But she sucked dick like a Hoover.” He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a joint, plugs it between his lips and lights up. “I haven’t laughed that hard in a long fuckin’ time.”
He passes the shit to me, and I suck it in deep, enjoying the burn, holding it, then I let it seep out slowly. “Good shit, man,” I say around a thick cloud of smoke, then pass it back to Speed.
“Hey, I told you to get those pizzas delivered,” the bitch yells from the back door of the pizzeria. “Not stand around the parking lot getting high with that loser. The last thing I need is—”
“You want these fuckin’ pizzas delivered?” Speed puts the joint between his lips, yanks the thermal bag off the roof of the car, and heaves them across the parking lot. “Then fuckin’ do it yourself.”
“You’re fired,” she screams back.
“Nah, bitch, I quit.” Speed turns to me, still laughing.
Three hours later, me and Speed are sitting at a corner booth at Sinners. Not our usual table up front by the stage, but good enough to get blackout drunk while having the finest women in town shake their asses in our faces.
The table is littered with half-empty bottles of Belvedere and Jack Daniels. I’m fisting the Hennessy bottle with a brunette grinding her ass over my cock while the redhead tucked under my arm has her tongue halfway down my throat.
Speed is on the other side of the booth having his own party with a dark-skinned beauty on one side and a blonde on the other.
My dick is about to bust—seriously, I don’t know how I latest this long—so I come up for air and grin at the two females. “Let’s make this a private party.”
Their eyes light up ‘cause the champagne rooms come with a high price, of which they’ll get a percentage, and since the management doesn’t give a fuck what goes on once the door closes, I’d be paying them out of my own pocket for services rendered.
I push out of the booth, catch Speed’s eye, and nod toward the back of the club.
“Hey, ladies, take good care of my friend.” Speed barks out a laugh. “He just got out of the joint.”
The redhead squeals. “Wow, we love guys who’ve been locked up.”
I tuck a woman under each arm and stumble my way to the private rooms. The bouncer at the door stares. “Deuce, is that you?”
I narrow my bleary alcohol-soaked eyes and try to focus on the bouncer’s face. “Holy fuck, Shady?”
The big bear of a guy opens his arms and grabs me into a bro-hug. “Fuck, when did you get out?” Shady, my Enforcer, stands about six-foot-six, but he has a gentle nature that defies his gigantic size.
“This morning.” I jerk my thumb to the front of the club. “Speed is with me.”
“No shit. I heard he’s delivering pizzas.”
“Not anymore.” I laugh.
The brunette grabs my arm. “C’mon, baby, aren’t we gonna have a party?”
I flick my eyes from Shady to the women, and my dick pulses harder. “Let me bust a nut, then we catch up.”
He claps his big paw on my shoulder. “Absolutely, get that dick wet, then we talk.”
I didn’t know if it was the booze, but unlike Speed, Shady seemed pretty all right with me being back in AC.
The brunette pulls me into the room with the redhead close behind. I pull out my money wrapped in a rubber band, peel off six hundreds, and lay them on the table. “That’s three for each of you, now get to work, ‘cause it’s been a long fuckin’ time.”
They push me onto the couch, then put on a little show, kissing and fingering each other. Fuck, my dick is pulsing in my jeans. This is way better than my fist any day, but I could only hold out so long.
The beauties in front of me do a little shimmy of their perfect bodies, but I reach out to them.
“Don’t need any more dancing.” I point to the redhead.
“I want you riding my dick doggy style.” Then I point to the brunette.
“And I want you facing me so I can suck on those beautiful tits while her pussy works me.”
“I like a man who knows what he wants,” the redhead coos while the brunette makes fast work of the tab and zipper of my jeans.
In less than a minute, I’ve got them straddling me ass-to-ass. The redhead rides my dick to glory while the brunette offers up her enormous tits to my waiting lips.
Now, this is a celebration. Almost worth being locked up.
After that, it’s all ass, tits, and pussy. Sucking, fucking, and everything in between. I lost track how many times I shot my load before I finally passed out. Best homecoming ever.