by Sadie Savage
He owed Walker a lot of pain, and he was damn sure not forgetting that.
He had watched Julia occasionally over the years. She was an anomaly. She had class, plenty of it, and she was so much younger than her half siblings. It had been obvious that first night that he had met her that she had zero street smarts, and even less of an idea of just what she was doing by calling him.
He had made sure nobody had ever found out that it had been her who had called him to come get Margo, because he had never told anyone. As far as anyone knew Margo had somehow stumbled back to Brooklyn before calling him and he wanted it to stay that way.
Julia had been the only person to see him after Margo died too. The clubhouse had been empty, save for her, the rest of the crew gone down to Florida for a big run. He would have recalled that if he had not been in so much pain. The only reason he hadn’t torched the place was because he had seen her standing at a window, looking down at the street and him with an expression of sheer and total terror on her face.
She’d been all elbows and knees back then, a frizzy headed kid with thick glasses and a wilted demeanor. Now she was a gorgeous creature, and a full-grown woman. A woman he not only intended to seduce but one he wanted to seduce.
He had heard that Walker was pushing her to get with that low life scum dog Pete, the slimy asshole who had a massive connection that Walker needed to get his dope business out of the boroughs and way beyond.
Ace was no fool. He knew how much that connection was worth and it was somewhere around the tens of millions of dollars as long as the cops held off and the dope held out. Walker had a few cops in his pocket, enough to keep the ones in his borough off his case, but with the kind of money that connection could bring in he could buy as many dirty cops as he wanted.
There was the other issue in a nutshell too. With that kind of money behind him, and with cartel influence that ran all along the upper reaches of Manhattan behind him, Walker could and would declare outright war on the other crews in the NYC area. He would try to run them all to ground and then ride right over them.
Ace, if he had been so inclined and didn’t despise the drug trade so much, would have done the very same thing. Riding his own territory was not always enough, even for him. His crew was content where they were and they always fought off any rivals that tried to horn in on their turf. The last time a crew had tried there’d been mayhem for weeks. That crew, a shady bunch of dudes from right near the border between Brooklyn and Queens, had been doomed to failure from the outset. They were too close to Walker’s territory and too close to Ace’s not to piss them off. Ace had known arrests would follow if things got too dirty so he had called a meeting and they had come up with a plan that had involved pushing that crew further into Queens, just over the clearly drawn lines. Walker’s prospects had gone too far one night and some of that crew had wound up dead. The prospects that Walker had ordered to deal with the dudes had gone to jail, and more than one of them had sung their hearts out to the cops. The good cops had gone after Walker, but the dirty ones had minimized the damage as they always did. In the end Walker lost two dudes that had been riding with him for years because those guys took the fall for Walker. Of course, they had, he always took care of his own and right now those dudes’ families were enjoying a nice hunk of money every month and their very nice and mortgage free apartments to boot.
Fucking with Julia would mean open warfare. No doubt about it. Walker was touting that virginity of hers as a reward to Pete. Pete wanted the girl badly and he was holding out on the connection’s name and so forth. Walker might have tried to press, but he would not have gotten far. Pete was not a crew guy. He was a mercenary predator who liked to ride but didn’t tie his loyalty anywhere unless there was something in it for him.
Walker couldn’t just kill Pete after he found out who the connection was and how to get to him either. Pete had some serious blood ties to the connection, and that made Pete untouchable and gave him a bargaining chip the size of a delivery truck.
Ace paused in that thought. His high forehead wrinkled in thought. Was it a good idea to mess with Julia?
Hell no.
That was risky beyond risky.
But he was going to do it anyway because one she was the hottest thing he had ever seen and he wanted her, badly. Two, he owed Walker a major loss and he had been waiting for years to deliver it.
Now he had the perfect way to do it, and there was no way that he was backing down from that plan that had formed in his mind. No way in hell. Once he made up his mind about something he did it, no matter the consequences.
He pulled into the garage that was attached to the multi- family home he lived in. A garage was incredible, and the towering five story house, a former townhouse for very wealthy people who had died a hundred years or more before, was just one more sign of his success. Like Walker’s outfit most of the crew lived there, in one of the seven apartments that had been carved into the house. That his crew could afford a building, a whole building, spoke volumes about how well they did business.
The building had been in the club’s possession for many years so Ace could not lay claim to that success but the sparkling fresh limestone façade, the new heating and air conditioning units on the roof, and the purchase of that attached garage had all been his doing. Deep down Ace was an accountant, albeit a dangerous one. He had been able to take a mess of unorganized books and carelessly used cash and turn it into clean money by setting up legit businesses, something he had been doing during the time he had been in the crew. That had been what had helped him to climb the ranks so fast and now, under his guidance, the crew had several very legit and profitable businesses in the borough and they used those businesses to wash the dirty money clean before putting it into fund accounts and the like.
That he was good with money was only one of his talents. He was equally good with a gun—or the business end of a baseball bat. His enemies were wary of him for those things and he knew it, and he also knew they had good reason to be.
Jack, his second in command, a grizzled dude with a shock of red hair and pale green eyes, met him at the door. “We got a little trouble brewing with Walker.”
Ace’s teeth flashed in between his thin lips. “When don’t we have trouble brewing with Walker?”
Jack said, “Fair enough. He hit one of our stands last night.”
Ace’s blood boiled. “Oh yeah?”
The stands were little pop up places around the borough. The Chinese set up their bootlegged bags and wallets and clothes and he and his crew provided protection from rival sellers of the same goods and kept the cops off their backs. In return they got a hefty cut of the profits and the sellers also stored a lot of other illegal goods in their little hidey holes around the borough for the crew. “Which one?”
Jack winced. “The one down on Ninth. They were on foot but the seller said he recognized one of them.”
Ace nodded. “You make good on their loss?’
Jack nodded. “Of course.”
Of course he had. If their protection failed they paid what was lost. It was how they kept goodwill. Ace asked, “The seller happy with that?”
Jack stroked his fiery beard with two fingers. “I added an extra fifteen percent to the costs and didn’t take our cut so yeah.”
Perfect. It was a hefty shot in their wallets but they needed the street sellers as much as the street sellers needed them. Ace nodded, “Good deal then. Tell the seller to lie low for a week. Keep things quiet while we work it out.”
“Already on it boss.”
Ace chuckled. “Of course you are.”
Of course Jack was. Jack was good at what he did but what made him invaluable was that he didn’t have an Alpha bone in his entire large body. Jack was happy to be second and the idea of leading the crew was not one he was fond of. In fact, he had demurred when the choice came down to him and Ace and Ace knew that when it came to loyalty Jack was the one who would ride or die all the way to the end of the roa
d with him.
Ace leaned against a door frame. “We got to do something with Walker and fast.”
Jack nodded, “A few of the guys are calling for blood here Ace, just thought you would want to know.”
Ace nodded. “Sure, can you blame them? We need a lesson for that asshole. I have a plan to keep him in check but the boys need to let off some steam now and we need to do something to let our sellers now we won’t take this shit. Get me the guys, now.”
Jack nodded and headed off toward the stairs. Ace closed the front door and stood in the foyer. There were two apartments downstairs, and most of the single guys in the crew drifted between them. On the higher floors were larger apartments and there were a few families up there as well as his own apartment, a large two-bedroom thing with massive windows that looked over the streets and that had a private entrance to the rooftop, where he often spent many hours.
He started up the stairs and to his place. The sound of footsteps on the stairs came to his ears as he unlocked the door and stepped into his living room. He had never done anything with the place after he had inherited it. It was the apartment the crew leader had always had and it was filled with the flotsam and jetsam of lives lived before he had moved in. The furniture was old and sagging and the floors needed a good refinishing. It was tidy though. Jack’s old lady kept it pin neat for Ace.
He steppe din, leaving that door opened and stood waiting as the guys filed in.
There were over three dozen in his crew, all handpicked hard cases with a real love for riding and for doing what they did. Callahan was the one who handled the drug side of the crew’s business and he kept it as far from Ace as possible, even as he let Ace in on his every move.
It was Bert that ran the street sellers and the guns. There were others and they all had jobs. The crew had their fingers in everything from developer bribes to protection and gambling rackets.
Not all of them lived there in the sprawling clubhouse. Some preferred to keep their wives and kids as far away from their crew as possible so it was a mere dozen guys that gathered there just then.
Ace surveyed them all then said, “Bert, talk to me.”
Bert shifted lightly on his feet. He was a former Golden Gloves champ and it showed. His eyes met Ace’s squarely. “They came on foot and basically tossed the stands. They took cash and goods, but we all know what they were really doing was trying to throw a scare into our sellers. And they were looking for info on the caches too.”
Ace nodded. “I bet. Anyone talk?”
Bert snorted. “They all swear they didn’t.’
That meant they hadn’t, or at least they said that they had not but scared people were liable to talk. Ace asked, “You get everything moved?
Bert nodded, “As soon as we got the call last night we were on the move. Everything’s been taken over to the house in Ditmas Park. We found one guy, walking through Prospect Park. We worked him over pretty good but he’s not a crew guy, just a brand-new prospect who didn’t count on getting his head busted.”
Ace’s eyes narrowed. “Where is he?”
“In the hospital.” Bert grinned. “He’ll live but I hear he’s also running right back home to Nyack when he gets out.”
“Good deal.”
Ace knew the guy was not just going to run home, he was likely never to return. They got a lot of Upstaters in, guys who wanted to get in on the action in the city and as soon as they got a taste of it they were out. Since most of them knew that there was no safe place for them to go after they got out, not in the city anyway, they generally did vanish back to whatever burg they had come from originally.
Callahan spoke. “I got my ears to the ground and things don’t sound so good boss. Walker’s putting out word that he’s doing a takeover. It seems old Pete may actually be coming off that connection.”
Ace’s jaw clenched. “Uh huh. Says who?”
Callahan sighed. “Pete’s connection is family, that’s why Walker can’t just kick the info out of him. If he touches a strand of Pete’s greasy ass hair the connection will hit back and the bad news is, a connection with that kind of cash and dope, well they have the firepower to hit back hard enough to slap the crew to earth, if you catch my drift.”
Ace already knew all of that. “I do but what’s with this shit Walker is spreading?”
Callahan sighed. “That sister of his? That’s Pete’s price.’
“I’m going to make sure he doesn’t get paid.”
The words dropped into the room. Callahan blinked. “What are we talking here Ace?’
Ace gave him a wicked grin. “Kidnapping.’
Bert whistled. “You’re going to bring Walker right down on our heads and possibly Pete’s connection too.”
Ace said, “I don’t think Pete’s connection gives a shit about whether or not Pete gets that girl. What I do think is they won’t like Pete being promised something and then Walker not making good on the deal.’
Bert asked, “How you going to…”
Ace cut in. “If Walker doesn’t know where she is, and Pete has no idea we’re the ones who took her who’s to say that Walker didn’t get the connection and double cross Pete?”
Bert frowned. “That would be out of character for Walker he gives zero shits about any of his sisters, and especially that one.”
Ace said, “I know that and you know that too. You know who doesn’t know that? Pete’s connection. Besides I’m betting that Pete loses his mind after the girl gets ghost on him and runs to his connection to holler about Walker not giving him what he was supposed to hand over.”
“Cut his legs off from the jump,” Jack said, “That makes sense.”
“Even if they know it is us it won’t matter,” Ace added, “Think about it. She’s Walker’s bargaining chip. If we can get her and hide her for enough time to set Pete against Walker we might be able to reel Pete in ourselves.”
Jack chortled. “You’re saying we take her and use her as a chip?” Offer her if he gives us the connection?”
Ace nodded. “That is exactly what I am saying. I don’t care about the dope side of this. You know how I feel about that. What I do care about is making sure that Walker does not get a connection that will give him the funds that could see us all having to pull stakes just to survive his having that cash and power.”
The guys all nodded. This was their borough and no way were they fleeing it and o way would they let Walker rip the ground out from under their wheels.
Jack said, “We’ll back you.”
“Ride or die,” Bert added.
“All in,” Callahan said.
The others all added their agreements. Then Jack asked, “the question is, ow do we get her?’
“Leave that to me. I already have a plan.” Ace chuckled. “And the best part is, I am going to kidnap her without actually kidnapping her. She’s going to be happy to climb aboard my bike.”
Chapter 4
Julia didn’t go home. She was nervous and scared. The sight of Ace walking through the doors of the store had made her feel even more anxious than usual. Not only that she knew that Pete was there and she also knew that his demands for her to be his old lady were ongoing, and that Walker would give her to him any minute now.
The only reason Walker had not yet just picked her up and hurled her into a room she could not get out of and a room that was not only a cell but that contained Pete as well was because he knew she had some friends in some high places. Or thought she did. That modeling work of hers had put her in touch with some very rich people and so she had used that to build a shield around herself that kept Walker from knowing, for sure, whether she would be able to get him and Pete locked up for what would amount to rape, pure and simple.
Her modeling career was fading though and she was scared. Terrified in fact. Walker was getting more antsy buy the day. Pete was willing to wait but for how long was Walker willing to wait for her to decide to bend to his order to be Pete’s old lady? Given what was at stake
she was betting it would not be much longer.
Taking the job in Brooklyn had been anxiety inducing in the first place. She knew that if Walker found out she was over there he would beat her. It would not have been the first time though he was always careful not leave marks. He would accuse her of being a traitor and tell her that she thought she was too good for Queens.
It was not that. She loved Queens. It was him that she was too good for, him and that terrible life that held promise of nothing but jail and death and the slow and horrible leaching away of all her dreams and plans and the life she could see in the distance waiting for her.
Fashion design. That was what she wanted.
She took the train to Manhattan instead of going to Queens She had exactly sixty-one dollars and nowhere to go. The hostels would not let her stay since she had a NY ID and she knew that all the hotels were out of her reach but she went anyway because she had no idea of what else to do.
The train was crowded and slow. The L was always that way though so she stood pressed among the throngs of humanity, trying to think of a plan. She had to get out of there and fast but the depressing truth was that without some form of protection she was stuck always worrying that at any minute Walker would drag her back, screaming and kicking if necessary. The cops either could not or would not help her. There were too many of them that were in Walker’s pockets and the ones who were in Pete’s connections pockets were just as useless to her.
So what could she do to stay out of Pete’s bed and to get away from Walker?
The train lurched to a halt. She got off and started walking. The avenues were packed and crowded with people. The crowds made her feel slightly safer. No way would Walker just snatch her off the street in full view of everyone but even that was not a given. There were too many alleys and the crew in Manhattan had their own grudge against Walker. So far she had managed to avoid them, and to get back and forth to school and her occasional modeling gig without getting harmed but how long could she keep that up?
