Ridge: Great Wolves Motorcycle Romance

by Blue, Jayne

  Ridge didn’t say anything. He let me cry. After a while, I wiped my tears. I’d cried it all out. So, we decided it was time to go to Dziadzia’s. We rode on Ridge’s bike and as we went, I looked—really looked—at the neighborhood.

  Every house had a story of generations. I loved these streets; I loved the people that lived in the houses. I loved the neighbors who braved whatever it took to go on: Annie Zbornak’s Salon, Bob Novak’s Barber Shop, Joe Jefferson’s Dry Cleaners, and Kaminski’s Bar. I put my head on Ridge’s shoulder. I closed my eyes hard for a moment as we rolled over the streets I loved.

  And then I opened my eyes.

  I wasn’t done yet. Not by a long shot. They’d tried to stop me, repeatedly. But I was my Dziadzia’s granddaughter. And I wasn’t going anywhere.

  Seventeen

  Ridge

  Frankie held on, barely, as I drove her to her Dziadzia’s.

  I didn’t talk or make her try to.

  I knew how to act because this wasn’t the first time, I’d seen someone go through trauma. Frankie didn’t need conversation. She needed a strong shoulder to lean on but also to trust her own footing.

  I stayed with her, I held her, and finally, when she slept, I watched over her.

  Dziadzia’s house was old. It reminded me of my own grandparents, who I’d barely known. There was a memory, back from when I was a little kid, of a candy dish, of holding onto an apron. It was like that here: you could see the generations of the family that had called this place home.

  It was stuck in time, in a way, and you could see why some of Frankie’s family had left, moved on, moved away, but also why Frankie had stayed.

  As Frankie slept, I planned. I reached out to the Wolves.

  Right before dawn, I got a few hours’ shut eye, sitting in the hall outside Frankie’s room. If she cried out, I’d be there. But she didn’t.

  She did, however, sneak past me. I woke up, more rested than I’d expected to be, to the smell of bacon, eggs, and coffee. I woke up to a freshly showered Frankie, at the stove. She walked up to me and kissed me, hard, on the lips.

  “Why didn’t you wake me up?” I asked. The smell was amazing. I was starving.

  “You were up later than I was, I know that. There’s a shower over there, in that bathroom off the kitchen. Give me your clothes. I’ll wash ‘em.”

  I put my own arm to my nose and realized that I smelled like smoke, and so did what I was wearing.

  “Your bag’s in there too.”

  Frankie Kaminski was not someone who stayed down. She had been gut punched repeatedly the last few days, she’d fallen to the canvas, but she was getting up. Hell, she had gotten up.

  I showered off and put on fresh clothes. It was good to get the smoke out.

  When I came back to the kitchen, it was empty. Instead, I heard a lot of conversation, all coming from the large dining room in Dziadzia’s house.

  I poured coffee and walked in to find Bob Novak, the barber, Joe Jefferson, Anne Zbornak, and Char from the bank. Lamont was there too, all crowded in around Dzia’s old fashioned dining room table.

  “Are you sure?” Bob Novak said, with significant negativity in his voice.

  “I have never been surer of anything in my entire life,” Frankie said.

  I didn’t know what she was sure of, but okay. I also didn’t want to interrupt the meeting.

  “The festival will go on as planned, cancel it and they win. I am not going to let them win,” Frankie declared.

  And it all became clear. She was rallying her neighborhood. Not one night had gone by and she was leading the charge, again, stronger.

  Her eyes, which had been filled with tears and red with smoke last night, were now clear. And there was fire in them this time. It was burning brighter than anything I’d ever seen.

  “It is clear the cops can’t spare people to deal with security. And your little neighborhood watch? Yeah, no one’s doing that since you nearly got shot on the first night.”

  Bob had a point.

  “Ugh, yeah, I know, I know,” Frankie replied. “But we HAVE to. I mean, it’s a chance for us to show that we are more than that asshole Crank and—what his he calling it again?”

  Frankie looked in my direction.

  “The Bane?” I said and shrugged. I wasn’t going to give it more mystique and power. I wanted them to know that I thought The Bane—led by Crank and his crew—was ridiculous.

  “Yeah, The Bane. I mean, we cannot fight this type of crime or destruction,” Joe Jefferson chimed in.

  “We can, we have to.”

  Frankie was trying hard to convince them to save her neighborhood. She’d been hit the most; she’d been targeted over all the rest of them. She’s also stood up to bullying in the most public way. She was out in front of everything. The neighborhood watch, this festival, and the idea that they could take back Stickney Forest.

  But she couldn’t do it alone.

  “I’m sorry, but we’ll certainly be next. They’re going to burn us out. They’re going to keep mugging me for protection they don’t give,” Anne Zbornak said.

  “I can help with that,” I spoke up.

  I had spent part of the night making sure my guys knew what I had in mind for them. And now it was time to put it out there.

  “You have me, and my guys.”

  “Great, more gangs,” Bob Novak said.

  “This Bane or whatever, they’re violent, they’re destructive, they’re dangerous, and your police force is stretched to the max. But The Bane isn’t the biggest, baddest wolf in the forest. I am, and so is the GWMC.”

  “The same club they came from? How is that any better?” Joe asked.

  “Fair question, but you’ll see. I have a dozen men. They’re going to take over the watch. And I’ve got the corner store building. You can do what you need to do there: meet, make food, whatever you need.”

  “Really?” Frankie’s mouth had dropped open when I made the announcement. Now she crossed the room and kissed me on the cheek. For the first time in my life, I was the one who may have blushed at this public display of affection.

  “Whoa whoa whoa, what do you charge for your guys and all this protection?” Bob Novak, the human wet blanket, demanded.

  “Nothing. We live here too, so we don’t want this neighborhood to fail. And we owe it. Those assholes were using our club name and dragging it through the mud. We want the chance to show you what the Great Wolves stand for.”

  There was valid skepticism in the room. I felt it and understood it.

  “If the rest of the GWMC is like you, we can’t lose.” This time it was Dziadzia who spoke up.

  “They are, and thanks. We’re going to be doing this whether you approve or not. This is what we owe,” I said and then I walked out. They needed to decide, plan, whatever.

  I heard Frankie’s voice.

  “So, back to planning the festival. Lamont, it looks like our kitchen problem is solved!”

  Frankie had a million things on her list. I smiled to myself hearing her list them off to the meeting. She was going to pull them along, on her back if she had to. I could see that.

  Eventually, her meeting dispersed, her Dziadzia went up to his room to nap, and I had her alone, with me, for a moment.

  “How did you pull out of it, the way you felt last night?”

  I thought I would be the one to have to give her a pep talk. That I would have to make a million promises to get the spark back in her eyes. But I didn’t. She’d woken up and charged ahead.

  “Ridge, I’m just not ready to call it. I know there’s a way out of this. I know there are good people here. And we’re not going to be forced out by a few bad apples.”

  She was so damn beautiful, and strong. I was in awe of her.

  “Yeah, all you need is a few hours of sleep and you’re good to go saving a neighborhood?” I asked.

  “You’re one to talk. I think you got less sleep than I did and you’re ready to do the same thing.”
>
  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  She stepped into my arms. I kissed her and felt the heat between us.

  “I’m hoping your new place has a room for us because I’m not sure Dziadzia could handle my, uh, well, the sound of, you know?”

  Frankie giggled and I was a fucking goner. Like, if I hadn’t been before, I was now completely under her spell. She wasn’t a giggler, that much I’d seen. There hadn’t been much to laugh about since I’d met her, but right then, in the kitchen, with a neighborhood meeting having just ended in her grandpa’s dining room, she giggled.

  And it was music, man. It was light. It was enough to power me through whatever came next. And I knew the tenor of what came next: I had a hunch about the playbook of people like Crank. I’d seen it before. I did not know exactly what they’d do, but I also now knew they didn’t care who got hurt.

  I had to be sure that no one else did.

  * * *

  “Wow, we’re really okay to use this place?”

  Frankie’s eyes were big with possibilities. She hadn’t heard official word from the fire department on what was next with her building. But my building had given her options. It was space that she could use right now to keep her dreams and plans of saving Stickney Forest alive.

  She hadn’t missed a step and, luckily, I was there to help her when she needed a boost.

  “Yep.”

  Lamont and Frankie were checking out the building.

  I set them loose and told them I’d invest in whatever equipment they needed. They were working, planning, and plotting how they would cater from the kitchen of the Great Wolves Chicago HQ.

  “Shoot, this already has a bay for two commercial ovens?”

  The old Woolworths, like many across the country, had a large lunch counter right inside the store. The kitchen, from what I gathered by their reactions, was huge.

  Thorn had helped me bring in crews to turn on the power and water. I had also found out A.C., one of my new Great Wolves, was nicknamed that because he was literally HVAC certified.

  Damned convenient.

  Among the twelve, we also had a contractor and a mechanic. I’d asked Sawyer to send me specs from a few of the MMA gyms we ran, and I showed them to A.C. and the former contractor, MitchRob.

  “Shit, this isn’t going to be too tough,” MitchRob commented. “We need to move a wall or two, sure, and configure it a little differently, but if you put lockers here, and the kitchen area here, plumbing’s already ready for it.”

  I listened to what he thought we needed to do.

  “We can start tear down and wall construction today,” he added.

  I nodded and hoped it was as workable as he said. I opened my checkbook and paid for whatever we needed.

  The Polish Festival was only a week away and the amount of work that needed done was daunting. But I found the GWMC guys who’d come with me were more than ready for the task.

  About half the crew was working on stuff to turn the building into what we needed, and the other half was on their bikes—literally—patrolling. I wanted to be sure everyone walking on the streets of Stickney Forest knew that it was Great Wolves territory.

  I wanted the neighbors to feel good about that and the fucking criminals to be scared shitless.

  We were also on high alert for fucking Crank.

  With all the activity we had going on, Brogan’s main job was surveillance. He had followed a couple of Crank’s Bane buddies out of the SMH. They were in and out of some shitty vacant home.

  I checked in with him a couple times a day and made sure he had back up. There was no sign of Crank. If he was smart, and I wasn’t convinced he fucking was, he’d leave Chicago. He’d get the hell out of here as fast as he could.

  “Yeah, they’re just waiting for him.”

  Brogan was becoming as important to this operation as Thorn. And it was a crying shame they ever had Crank to deal with at all.

  They were good men; they were going to help me build this club.

  The days flew by.

  It gave me some piece of mind knowing that Frankie was with me, in the same building. She flitted around like a bee, handling fifty projects at once, but she was mostly around.

  There was a curiosity from some old timers, who wanted to see the inside of the old Woolworths’ and there was an energy from the younger neighbors that reminded me of a million little Frankies. They wanted her vision to work. So, the building I’d bought on impulse had become a hub in no time.

  The only one I hadn’t seen was Baby Paul. He’d vanished and I was sad about that. I feared the worst.

  But worry was part of my job as Prez, which I did as best as I could.

  I had Brogan switch out with Kase to relieve him from watching the Bane members. Brogan reported to me that he had seen a kid that matched Baby Paul’s description, in and out of the house I had him watching. Brogan couldn’t be sure it was the kid since I had them watching from a distance, but I feared the worst.

  And then there was getting business up and running in the building we bought. I paid the contractors we’d hired double, so this building could be set up quick.

  It wasn’t ready to be open as an MMA Gym, but at least as a home base for whatever the neighborhood, my guys, or Frankie needed. There was air, water, electric, and a sturdy roof. I’d paid extra to also get security cameras on every fucking square inch. As much as Frankie was buzzing, so were people doing the shit I hired them to do.

  I thought back to when Sawyer came to Grand City. We had beefs with each other, with him, with our town, but we didn’t have a fucking building to put up. The Wolf Den was in one piece during all that.

  Getting this all done would be nice. And at the rate things were going, it would be fast. Still in the middle of it, it was a shit ton of work. I looked forward to the day when I wasn’t a general contractor and could just focus on the MC.

  I told Sawyer that in one of his check-in calls.

  “Yeah, tell me when that happens. I’d like to know what that’s like.”

  “Ah, yeah, right, so never.”

  I had a new appreciation for the millions of things he had going.

  “You’re doing it right, all of it. Now, when’s this festival thing?”

  Sawyer was key for my little surprise for the festival.

  After a long day, finally, it quieted down in the GWHQ, as Frankie had started to call it.

  I looked around and there were a few brothers, zero contractors, and no power tools blaring.

  “Okay, I’ll get the paper products, and you’re sure you don’t need help with the ingredients for Friday?”

  “Honey, now that we’re not running a bar and grill while I’m getting ready for the festival, I’m open wide.”

  “Okay.”

  I heard her fretting about her bartender Kevin and her waitresses.

  “I heard Sherry and Terry were trying to get in at Denny’s at Orlands Square?”

  “Yeah, well, that’s something. I told them both you’d pay them for working the festival, but after that, it’s all up in the air. They have bills to pay.”

  “I know, but what if I can’t get them back? What if they make me tear down Kaminski’s?”

  The word wasn’t in on that from city engineers. Just like the police, they were backed up with work, and re-opening a bar in the South Side wasn’t on the priority list.

  “One crisis at a time, boss lady.”

  Lamont looked at me and we commiserated. Keeping up with Frankie was a job, a great job, but you didn’t get a lot of smoke breaks with that smoke show.

  Lamont called it a night, and then my brothers took off to their respective pads. After a day of fucking craziness, good craziness, Frankie and I were the last ones left at GWHQ.

  “Come on,” I said and took her hand. The second floor of the GWHQ was going to be an office or two, and an apartment or six. Right now, it was under construction. But MitchRob had put a little place aside for me. There was a place to shave and
shower, and a place to lay down my head.

  I was taking zero chances and staying on site. By some miracle, I had Frankie next to me every night.

  She’d had to buy emergency clothes, after the fire, so she had a few t-shirts and jeans, some basic sexy as hell white panties and was traveling about as light as a woman could, in terms of wardrobe.

  It was like we were urban camping or something.

  I’d rolled out the sleeping bag that I’d brought with me from Grand City, and she’d made herself at home with me.

  We were barely upstairs when I pulled her to me, kissing her lips and tearing off that t-shirt. It was somehow sexier on her than any t-shirt I’d ever seen.

  “Careful, I have exactly three outfits in my life, don’t rip this one.”

  I chucked it and worked on the button of her jeans. I peeled them down and climbed back up her gorgeous body.

  “You’re fucking beautiful,” I said and was shocked by the fact of it. She put her arms around me, and I lifted her up. I carried her over to our urban camp site and set her down on the bed roll.

  “Shirt,” she said and leaned up and gave my shirt the same treatment I’d given hers.

  I leaned down and kissed her again, hard. I didn’t know what I’d done to get this woman, but I was going to do everything I could to give her everything she needed and wanted.

  Her mission, to save Stickney Forest, was my mission. What she loved, I loved. What she wanted to protect; I would protect.

  She was naked against my skin and it felt fucking awesome. I let my hands find the places I loved. I let my mouth taste her nipples; they were sweet, and hard, and so was I. I was so fucking ready for her.

  Watching Frankie’s energy, seeing her do what she did, was a turn on. Getting to be inside that energy, that swirl of passion and purpose and straight up hot, made me feel lucky has hell.

  “Ridge, harder, oh, yes.”

  She was also my little dirty talker.

  I felt my control over this moment slip, and I pushed into her, harder and faster than I had before. She put her hands up and braced herself against the wall behind her.