“Nope,” I replied. “This is business that needs to be handled man to fuckin’ man. I don’t need Killer and Hacker hovering like a couple of nursemaids. If I don’t lay the law down now then they’ll step right over it like they ain’t got a bull’s-eye right to their stupid fuckin’ meth-addicted heads.”
Talia sat her cup of tea down forcefully and turned toward me. Her pale green eyes suddenly filled with trepidation. “Surely you aren’t approaching Brad Decker on his turf . . . alone?”
I nodded in reply.
She stood, her height even in heels not coming close enough to be intimidating when I still had a good four inches on her. “You were shot in the shoulder and your lung was punctured last year. Remember that? I let you get away with a cigarette or two because I know I can’t control you but there is one thing I will not allow you to do and that is to put yourself in harm’s way over bullshit!”
“Says you and who else, Tal? I’m free, white and over twenty-one. I can do whatever the fuck I like.”
“Not with Dizzy running the show you don’t,” Cillian interrupted.
I should have known she’d had them ready and willing to be my shadows despite the Vegas charter belonging to me, and this being my city.
Every time I was convinced Talia didn’t give a rat’s ass about me, she turned around and did something to prove me wrong. I could accuse my old lady of a lacking a lot but emotional, protective and fierce, as Queen Bey, wasn’t one of them.
“Well, if it ain’t the three paddy musketeers? Where’s the free booze? I only deal meth here so I don’t have much you group of micks are gonna like.”
I shook my head at the brevity that was Brad’s ego. He was one of those people who’d aged quite well, and felt like he deserved some kind of medal for still being considered “hot” by ladies of all ages in his late forties.
He and his brother Nel were polar opposites where looks were concerned, but unfortunately, that’s the only dissimilarity they had between them.
Brad had thick brown hair that almost looked black until the sun hit it and dark cherry streaks of red could be seen throughout. He had a pale pallor for a biker but that was account on all the different drugs—heroin being the monkey he couldn’t quite ever get off his back—over the years. Even the slight dark smudges under his eyes couldn’t take away from bright, sky blue irises with gray striations around the pupils, a body that was still fit and in shape with lean muscles and a tall build that ended short of being six feet, five inches. Hell, I wasn’t gay and didn’t fancy men in the slightest but it was my business to know who the hell I was up against, especially when we had agreed to meet these fucking psychos on their own turf.
Not that I was worried. There was a van full of FBI agents just a block away, dying for me to give them a signal to end this shit show once and for all.
I shook my head at his foolishness and avoided looks from both Cillian and Trey. “Listen, you know why we’re here so why don’t you fuck off with the ‘paddy’ jokes, all right? You got two choices from where I’m sittin’, mate, and neither are gonna be all that great for you, you Jew-murdering kraut.”
Brad took a hearty swig off the bottle of Jack Daniels he held like a lover but used it as prop as he pointed our way. “Hey, now—my family’s mostly German and Norwegian but we got some Irish blood in our veins too.”
“Speaking of kraut, I’d kill for some grilled Bratwurst and sauerkraut with a side of your best German lager—your wife know how to make that shit?” Trey wondered as he relaxed in his chair with his legs spread to show his shit-kicking motorcycle boots he had laced up extra tight.
“They don’t call me Butcher for nothin’, Hacker.” Brad glared with malice at Trey. “I married old lady because she was fuckin’ hot with a flat ass and big tits—not ‘cause she could fuckin’ cook. And if we’re gonna talk about me potentially turnin’ against my brother then I would like some respect shown to me and my family—you got that?”
“Crystal,” Cillian replied as he lit a cigarette and dragged from it. “But at the same time, you gotta bring some skin into the game. We don’t need a white supremacist like you on the payroll if you ain’t gonna cooperate and tip your bro off. Kinda defeats the point, don’t it?”
Brad slammed the bottle of JD on the same wooden table his MC used for church before he reached for his pack of Marlboro Reds and lit one. “This isn’t fuckin’ easy for me, all right?” His eyes, though unfocused on any of us had a glassy look as if tears were threatening to be shed. “Nel and I are fucking as close to twins as you can get. He was six weeks old when our mother got pregnant with me. Suffice to say we weren’t breastfed.” He smiled though it was tarnished and slightly off-white but could still charm the ladies though I wasn’t one.
“Listen, Butcher,” I began as calmly as possible before I took a seat. The cigarette smoke wafted around me and it lit my senses but since getting a slug in the lung, I kept my smoking to a minimum these days. “I know what it’s like to betray family. Obviously, that family wasn’t my brother ‘cause I’d never cross him but it was his son. That twisted little pansy son of a bitch should be boiled in hot water, chopped up and dumped in the ocean. I got a nice spot for him in Long Beach too.”
The anger of what Jaden put Talia through bubbled to the surface and it took everything in me to stay on point. “The White Knights MC—as you’ve known it—is over. I managed to save a few of you that could be saved but mind you the people who are way above my pay grade wanted the whole club to fall. They’ll settle for Nel and his bitch ol’ lady but you gotta give me something. Anything. Otherwise you all end up in the darkest bowels of hell. You can warn everyone in your family if you want but it ain’t gonna do a damn bit of good because the people coming after ya have all the advantages, and you have absolutely none. So, what’s it gonna be? You gonna save your own hide or are you going down with every fucked up loser in your family like the bloody Titanic?”
Brad held his cigarette like it was the enemy itself before he took a long drag off of it. “I can’t promise you much of anything at the moment. There are my nephews—specifically Jake—who has an old lady and two kids. We both know what happens if he goes down. He’s more like me—like a son I never had. He’s Nel’s ‘cause he fell into his net but that boy . . . he’s my son and I’ll be damned if I see my grandchildren end up in foster care and my boy go to jail.”
I couldn’t break eye contact with Brad because for the first time, he seemed human to me, and that didn’t happen much after the shit life I led. It should have surprised me but it didn’t because out of all of Nel’s sons, Jake had the most sense. He was intelligent, charismatic and just as charming as his goddamn sperm donor.
Cillian chuckled. “I didn’t realize you were dippin’ your wick into your bro’s old lady’s honeypot, Butcher.” He dragged on his cigarette. The smoke left his mouth in a lazy haze as he said, “You do realize neither one of them kids is Jake’s by birth, dontcha? One belongs to Magnolia and a secret affair she had with Kink so that son Jake holds on to is Lucifer’s Saints’ property.”
“I don’t give a fuck how he and his ol’ lady got them kids—they were raised in our family and they’ll stay in our family. That’s my only condition.” Brad put his cigarette out in a glass ashtray. “Promise me you can wrangle in Jake, his old lady and the kids and I don’t give a fuck what happens to the rest. You already stole my sweet Marion. She’s wrapped up and best friends with that half-breed, Chantal, so she’ll do just fine. Will probably end up marrying into the Saints. Wouldn’t that be somethin’?”
“Quinn seems to dig her so the chances aren’t necessarily remote.” Trey looked up from his Samsung before he continued texting. “If that’s all you want then we still have to go back to the peeps above our pay grade. What do you plan to do when the White Knights MC no longer exists?”
Brad laughed out loud. “Boy, the WK will always exist. We may be few in numbers but I don’t plan on endin’ the club just ‘cause we have massive cas
ualty along the way. I can still make meth and I make a great deal of money off my product. Once I have immunity, you know what that means? It means I can make it with impunity.
“Hell, people are always gonna get high. It just means less competition for me so since you sent our best turncoat up north. I will own fucking Clark County.” He stretched his arms out wide before he planted them on the table. “Now you go back to that cunt you report to and make sure my will gets done and I’ll sing like a fucking canary.”
I stared into those dead blue eyes for a long time before I nodded my head so subtly, only he noticed.
“That lying, two-faced son of a bitch!”
Eve paced the conference room as she occasionally looked our way as if we were riff-raff she pulled off the street. Even her son didn’t get a pass when those cold hazel-green eyes assessed us.
“Repeat what Decker said again,” she said as she continued to walk the floor like she planned to drill a hole in it with her expensive Yves Saint Laurent shoes hidden beneath a khaki pants suit. The only color she wore was a coral blouse, which matched the killer heels she wore.
Living with a woman like Talia had taught me a lot about women. I’d always known how to separate the trash from the finer beauties but when you constantly dealt with class covered by a few tattoos to make her look like a ‘bad girl’ though she wore the most expensive of designer threads, you learned quickly how to tell cheap from outrageously overpriced as far as I was concerned.
“He said he wants Jake’s family along for the ride and he’s not worried about Marion because she can take care of herself. Everyone else—he basically threw under the bus.” Trey shrugged at his mother before he pulled out his phone again.
“Put. That. Down.” A stare off happened between mother and son though mother won easily as Trey set the phone down on the conference table.
She placed hands on her hips and stopped pacing for a moment. Eve had lost weight. It wasn’t a secret she was under a lot of stress. Her job had basically ended her marriage, her children lived their own lives and all she had was the Domestic Terrorism task force. I wouldn’t have wanted to be her for any amount of money in the world.
I couldn’t stand her and she was a hard-riding bitch who annoyed the hell out of her whole team but no less demanded the best. She’d had to deal with scum her whole life for the greater good of the country. Informants, agents—we were all just pawns in her game but she wasn’t completely heartless. She did care about us yet we seemed to let her down time and time again.
I wondered was the job she did worth everything she had to sacrifice in the end? A part of me already knew the answer was no.
“Get him what he wants. We’ll do it before dawn—I’ll personally coordinate with Black Oak Sheriff’s Department though I won’t give them all the details. We take Jake Decker, his wife and their children. We’ll hold them somewhere Brad has no access to them and see if the Butcher sings like a goddamn canary. If he doesn’t, I order the murder of Jake’s wife. It’s as simple as that.”
“Mom, you can’t do that! All I can think of is if it were Kyra—”
“She came close to dying but she knew all the right things to say, Trey. She is an attorney for Christ’s sake and quite intelligent. I don’t need excess cargo. I’ll forgo Jake and the kids but his wife is collateral damage as far as I’m concerned and she can be replaced.”
“By who?” Cillian spoke up for the first time.
Eve pulled out her slick smart phone and spoke quietly to someone before she hung up.
A beautiful young woman could be seen walking down the hallway through the glass conference room before she entered and stopped directly in front of Eve. They spoke quietly to one another before she faced us men.
I thought Talia was the sexiest bitch alive but this one could definitely give her a run with her porcelain complexion, hazel-blue eyes that had both gray and green striations circling the pupils, a killer body with just the right amount of tits and ass to give her body curves the likes I hadn’t seen on a woman in a long time. She wore her brown hair up in a simple ponytail though she was dressed very well. Her clothes—unlike her boss’s—were more likely to come from the outlet designer stores as opposed to the upscale places Eve shopped.
“Hello, gentlemen.” She cleared her throat delicately though that deep, sexy voice she had with no accent reminded me of Talia. In fact, they shared more than a few resemblances but I hadn’t quite put it together until now. “My name is Catrin Lund, and I’ll be helping Ms. Kerrigan with the RICO investigation involving the White Knights MC.”
“And how long have you been out of the academy, cousin? A few months?” Trey laughed as he shook his head.
Cousin? Trey and this young woman were related? How? Eve only had one blood sister and she only had one child: Talia.
As if he sensed my apprehension, Trey looked over at me. “As you can see with me, the women in my mother’s family have an issue with being faithful to their husbands. Catrin is Talia’s younger half-sister. She was supposed to have died at birth but her Danish father took her as a baby and raised her in southern California. It didn’t stop her from finding her way back into the family fold. She is a bonafide FBI agent—graduated from Quantico, the whole works. Quite different from her rocker sister, wouldn’t you say?”
“How is Talia?” Catrin spoke up and as I glanced at her I realized she was talking to me. “I’ve tried to get in touch—well, that may be stretching the truth. I didn’t think she wanted to see me.”
“Well, she’s wildly successful and pregnant with my child. I think she would like to know you so if you are interested in getting to know her better, I say go for it. She could use more family around her.”
Catrin’s cat-like eyes grew wide. “Are you sure? I mean, after I was born, our mom faced a lot of flak from her father and . . . I always thought it was my fault she grew up in such a dysfunctional environment.”
“She’s fine, Catrin. Go see your outrageously famous sister in Lake Las Vegas.” Trey stood and strode over to her before he embraced her. He said a few words to her in French, and she responded back in a Nordic language I could only assume was Danish.
“I told you I’d know enough before you graduated. I’m intermediate by the way so don’t think you’ll escape with telling me off in your daddy’s language.”
Catrin laughed out loud and as they parted, she shook her head. “Trey, you were always the one who could keep up with me. Without you, who would I have had to talk to on my mother’s side of the family? By the way, I will never forgive you for installing that stupid app on my phone to find you.”
“What? Pokemon Go? It’s gonna be huge this summer I am tellin’ you! Soon, I won’t be the only person you’ll have to worry about findin’—”
“All right, you two, you’ve had your fun. Let’s finish this whole discussion so I can go home and relax with a bottle of Pinot Noir, some jazz and an order from one of Gordon Ramsay’s steak restaurants.”
I looked at Trey with a strange new fascination as he sat down between Cillian and me.
“Like I said, we actually need something to happen to Jake’s wife because that’s the only way Catrin will have an ‘in.’ I don’t trust Brad as far as I can throw him, and whether Jake knows of his true parentage or not, he’s going to protect Nel and his brothers with all he’s got. An example has to be made that he was spared due to Brad’s generosity and turncoat behavior but no one else will be granted that mercy, not even the person he loves.” Eve turned toward Catrin and she nodded her head though I could tell even she didn’t agree with this plan whole-heartedly.
Unlike Talia, she wore her heart on her sleeve. She was the softer side of my old lady that I had been dying to expose though she wanted no part of it. How I wished at that moment she could be more like her half-sister. Everyone had a weakness and I’d yet to find hers yet but I vowed before the end of the year, she would belong to me.
Heart, mind, body and soul.
Although it wasn’t the best atmosphere for a child, I always kept Kaelan close. He was at the moment being walked around the venue with Gisela, who had immediately taken to him as if he were one of her own children but I could see him in the distance enjoying himself while I sang my lyrics of venom not fit for a child or anyone under the age of consent.
You needed me,
Yet you cheated me,
With every word you say,
How could you?
Why would you,
Treat me this way?
I love you but I hate you.
And you’re in my way,
So fuck off please!
‘Cause I’m tired of your charade.
Kris crooned his lead guitar like it was a mistress while Seth did his thing with his rhythm guitar, and Linx played his bass like an old lover. They complimented the fierce beat of Niko’s heavy-handed fondling of the drums. My angry words formed a chorus meant to nail how I felt home.
I don’t want anything from you,
Not when you threw it all away.
So stop saying you’re sorry,
We both know who got in the way.
I can’t blame all this on you,
‘Cause baby we both wanted to play.
So stop saying you’re sorry
I don’t care what you have to say anyway.
It’s over, and I’m glad I don’t have to wake up to your face.
Yeah, you were damn good but the one I have now could never be replaced.
You’re just a little boy,
Pretendin’ to be a man.
Why can’t you understand?
I’m over us!
The song ended with a crazy riff, steady rhythm guitar and bass play with heavy drumbeats before it faded away. I could still feel the emotions pulling me in two different directions as the little one kicked me in the ribs for good measure.
Ride To The Edge (Lucifer's Saints MC) (Rough Riders MC Series Book 4) Page 4
