Chapter 5
Chapter Five
DEUCE
“What the—”
Ace’s other fist sinks into my gut, and before I can get it together, he uppercuts me, snapping my head back.
My brain rattles against my skull, but I stay on my feet and charge him.
Spinning around with Ace in my clutches, I land a solid shot to his jaw, knocking him into the table.
Bottles crash to the floor, and women scream as Speed and Shady keep everybody back and let us work out our shit.
“I’ve been waiting a long time to do that, motherfucker.” Ace spits blood from his cut lip.
I spread my arms wide. “Then what the fuck you waiting for? I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”
He lurches forward, and I side-step, grabbing the lapels of his security jacket, adrenaline pulsing through me like a powerful drug. Ace pushes me off, and we glare at each other. After all these years, we know each other’s moves as well as our own. A crowd forms around us, but nobody stops us.
Ace lands another punch to my gut, and I laugh in his face. “Gotta do better than that, fucker. I’ve been doin’ two hundred sit-ups a day and taking down guys bigger than you before breakfast.”
I’m shit-talking for sure, but survival in the joint meant fighting on a weekly basis just to stay alive, and I was one of the lucky ones with connections.
I get in three good body shots, but when he straightens up, he clips me across the mouth, and my lip gushes blood. I launch myself forward, giving it to him with both fists. One of the perks of being ambidextrous.
I connect with the hard bone of his jaw again, and pain radiates up to my shoulder.
Ace stumbles backwards, knocking one of the fake palm trees over along with a few chairs.
He lands a few feet from the edge of the pool, and when he tries to stand, I yank him up, then push him hard.
I grin as he fades backwards, teetering just over the water.
I’m still grinning when at the last second, he grabs a fistful of my t-shirt, and the two of us careen sideways into the pool.
We crash into, then under the water. I fight against the weight of my soggy clothes, then surface, coughing and spitting out blood and water. We stare at each other in four feet of water, dripping wet, our lungs heaving.
Ace extends his wet hand, then grabs me into a bear hug. “Welcome home, fucker.”
“What the hell is going on here?” Three guys, two of them bigger than me, glare down at us. “You know there’s no swimming allowed at night.”
Another red-faced guy joins them. “Get the fuck out of the pool.” Then he points to Ace. “You’re fired.”
“Fuck you, I quit.”
I’m back less than forty-eight hours, and already I’m the cause of two of my brothers losing their jobs.
Ace and I slosh out of the pool with a security guy flanking us on both sides, and Shady and Speed laughing their damn asses off. As we pass our table, I swipe up the bottle of Patron. Ace nabs the bottle of Jack, tilts it to his lips, then holds it up between us. “The fuckin’ Kings are back in AC”
The bouncers don’t even try to take the liquor away from us. I’m pretty sure they’re just happy to get rid of us without any further damage.
“Who the fuck ever heard of a pool party with no damn swimming?” I say in the bouncer’s face. The asshole levels me with a mug meant to scare, and I bust out laughing.
Then the four of us proceed to laugh our way through the casino, and yeah, we got plenty of eyeballs on us. Four tatted, jacked guys, six feet and over, two of them dripping wet from head to toe.
We pile into Speed’s beater and head to the Golden Palms. The plan is to change out of our wet clothes and then continue the party we started at Harrah’s without the throwing of fists or dunking in the pool.
A half hour later, we’re sitting on what the Golden Palms calls a terrace. More like a concrete slab surrounded by a rusted-out railing, but we didn’t fuckin’ care. We had the booze we swiped plus Speed’s refrigerator filled with beer. Good times.
“The bottom line is we gotta get our shit together, and we gotta do it fast, ‘cause the Rabid Dogs have been sniffing around for the last six months.” Ace pulls out his stash tin, then holds up a perfectly rolled joint.
“Rabid Dogs? What the fuck are they doin’ outside of Philly?” I ask.
“Word is they’ve been hanging around the Royal Flush.” Ace fires it up, and takes a deep drag.
My back stiffens. “That was our place.”
“Was,” Shady clarifies. “After the sweep, the DEA took everything, then resold it to the highest bidder. Same as they did to the clubhouse.”
We all exchange a look, then I nab the joint from Ace. “So, who owns the Royal Flush now?”
“Some real estate company. They got some asshole managing it for them. Easy pickin’ for the Dogs if they decide move in permanently.”
“Fuck that.” I just added another stop to my to-do list tomorrow. I pull in the thick smoke, then slowly exhale. “Good shit, man. Where you getting it these days?”
“I got this old dude in the Pine Barrens. Grows it in his house. Fuckin’ unbelievable. He’s like a hippie from the old days. Wears dirty overalls and a bandana. Don’t think the guy ever showers, but he can grow shit like crazy.”
“Nice little side business.” I take another drag and hand it off to Shady. “But I thought this shit was legal now.”
“It is, but in order to sell it legally, you gotta have a license, and in order to get a license, you gotta be vetted,” Shady adds. “And none of our thug asses would qualify.”
“Which makes it a nice tidy business to rake in some cash. Increase the old dude’s product, get one of us to help him out, then undercut the price and sell it ourselves.”
Ace shakes his head. “Gotta love the way your mind thinks.”
“We gotta start building back up, and that might be one way to do it,” Speed agrees.
“Tell Ace about The End,” Shady prompts me between puffs.
“The End?” Ace asks. “That place’s been shut up for over a year.”
“I got a line on buying it cheap from my cellie in the joint. Went over there yesterday to look at it. It’s a shit-hole now, but it’d make a perfect clubhouse. Just enough outside of AC and set way back off the road.”
Ace narrows his eyes. “But?”
This fucker knew me way too well.
“Some chick owns it, and she’s a little flaky.”
“Big tits flaky?” Speed waggles his eyebrows.
“Nah, like really flaky. When I got there, she was trying to open a piece-of-shit safe by whacking it with a hammer.”
“There’s gotta be more to that story.” Speed passes the weed back to me.
“I made a deal with her.” I take a hit.
Shady shakes his head. “Ahhh, shit. You’ve already had your dick in her.”
“How do you get that from what I said?” I ask.
They all laugh way too loud, then Ace says, “‘Cause most deals you make with women center around slipping your dick in their pussy, mouth, ass or all three.”
I screw up my face. “That was the old days, man. From now on, I’m all about business and getting the Kings back to where they belong.”
They all exchange an annoying look, but I ignore them. I’d fuckin’ show them when I came back with the deed for The End, soon to be the Kings of Anarchy clubhouse, in my pocket.
“Tomorrow we hook up with Fist and Scratch. Let them know what’s going on, then we get those cuts on our backs and start riding again.” I look at each of them, my eyes landing on Speed. “Plus, we gotta get your bike back.” I look at Ace and Shady. “How about you guys? Still riding?”
“Mine needs work.” Ace sucks the last of the smoke and pitches the ember onto the concrete. “But I got it all covered up in a rented garage.”
“Same,” Shady agrees.
Ace leans back in the chair and eyeballs me. “Don’t give us that look. After everything that went down, none of us wanted to ride or do anything related to our old life.”
“Too fuckin’ painful, man,” Shady adds. “After all the shit went down, being tagged as a King was not good, even potentially hazardous to our health.”
Again, I’m hit with the guilts, so I take a swig from the bottle of beer next to me. It was gonna take a long-ass time for those feelings to evaporate, which made getting The End and regaining my brothers’ trust my first priority.
“All that’s behind us now, and the Rabid Dogs better watch their mangy asses, ‘cause no fuckin’ way are they coming into AC. No fuckin’ way are they coming into Kings territory.”
They all nod, and we tap fists in solidarity. For the second time tonight, I feel like I’m finally home.
The next day I had another amazing breakfast at the diner. I forgot how much I missed Taylor Ham and any food not made for five hundred other guys.
“You going over to The End again today?” Speed asks.
“Nah, I’m gonna lay low for a few days, then head over there with some tools I stored in Maggie’s garage. The place needs a shit-ton of work, so maybe if I offer to help her out, it’ll soften her to the idea of selling.”
“Not a bad plan, except she’s a woman, which always ends badly for you.”
“Not this time, brother. I learned my lesson.”
Speed slowly nods, but I know what he’s thinking. Makes me want to prove him wrong even more.
We push out of the booth and head for the door. “I’m gonna head over to Home Depot, price some shit out. Get an idea of what we’ll need to make the place livable.”
“Sounds good, but don’t you think you ought to settle the deal first?”
“Have faith, brother, I’m gonna make this work.” My smile is more confident than I feel.
I head for my Harley, throw my leg over the saddle, and wheel out of the lot. Somehow, some way, I would get that feisty female to come around to my way of thinking.