Naked Dirty Love

by Selene Chardou

  The Saints helped bury their current Prez and VP of the Glendale charter to appease the government before Hardy took over with Ronan underneath him. They’d moved to L.A. while everyone in Birch Tree had to adjust to the sudden changes.

  Trey settled into his new role while he and Cillian came to an understanding and although they weren’t best friends, there was camaraderie between them that hadn’t existed before. His best guess regarding the change of heart from the VP, his half-brother, had more to do with him losing his woman in Northern Ireland than anything else. Cillian had lost his first love in Belfast as well. It didn’t matter that he and Gisela were now back together, engaged, and expecting twins. The sting of the initial betrayal by their parents would never completely heal.

  Trey and Cillian had more in common than he cared to admit. While his half-brother had fallen in love with Raymond Jackson’s daughter, he’d fallen in love with Nel Decker’s illegitimate progeny. The fact that the parent in question was a crazy ass psychopath who had his own daughter murdered had no bearing on Trey. He still lost Keri in the end and she was gone forever.

  He swigged from his beer before lighting a cigarette as maudlin thoughts faded from his conscious, and he tried to concentrate on their current meeting.

  It was late autumn, a cold time in Northern Nevada. The fireplace was actually turned on and in use while the top brothers gathered at the table. It should have been a time of peace in the club but nothing was certain in their world. Violence was a way of life and couldn’t be ignored, no matter how much they wanted to keep everything as civilized as possible.

  Trey sat at the chapel table with the Lucifer’s Saints insignia inscribed in the dark oak wood, and faced one of the founding brothers. He stared at Brendan as he spoke about the threat to the brotherhood and the club as a whole.

  “Men like Carlito have no code. He won’t listen to his Prez or VP—his father or his Uncle Fernando, respectively. Now that we have solid intel he’s dealing with the White Knights, we have to ask ourselves whether the product we buy from them has been compromised. What’s his end game? Is he trying to start a war or does he want his own cartel?”

  Sean lit a Cuban cigar. “Trey, how sure are we about this intel? How did we get it? Where is it coming from?”

  Trey had no intentions of revealing his sources but decided playing coy wasn’t the best option to approach the situation either. “I gathered the intel a number of ways. Ronan had begun the preliminaries but the suspicions have been there for…a while.”

  His eyes glanced furtively at Cillian who nodded his head in his direction.

  “I’m the one who initially told Trey about my doubts when I tested some of the latest product against past samples,” the VP spoke up as he folded his hands together on the table. “The levels of methamphetamine went from trace levels in the past to thirty percent in the most recent batches.”

  Dizzy’s crystal blue eyes glared at his son. “Why am I just hearing about this now? This is horseshit. Aztecas Infierno haven’t changed the price of the product, have they? They’ve been charging the same amount for something that has become inferior. We can add meth to our own shit, thank you very much.”

  Kink cleared his throat. “Cricket and I have both spoken to Chantal. She and Marian Decker are friends. Marian has really climbed the ranks thanks to her close relationship with her cousin, Jake. The new VP trusts her implicitly and no longer goes on runs without her. She’s admitted they’ve been moving big numbers of product to Carlito—”

  “How do we know we can trust her?” Brendan questioned in his thick, Northern Irish accent.

  Kink stretched back in his seat and replied calmly, “Because we’ve spoken to Marian and she’s confirmed this herself.”

  “Since when are we so fuckin’ buddy-buddy with the Knights?” Dizzy mused, clearly irritated. “I understand Chantal is friends with Marian but how don’t we know she doesn’t have her own ulterior motives?”

  “We don’t.” Trey paused before he continued, “I’m watchin’ her ’cause I don’t trust the Knights but now that everything between us and the Bastards has gone to hell in a hand basket, our relationship with them is somewhat strained right now. We don’t have to like Knights, or their philosophy about life, but a business relationship with them right now would be invaluable. It’s not like we don’t buy from them anyway. We can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”

  “Nel is full of shite but he makes a quality product we can easily offload.” Dizzy glanced around the table before his eyes settled on the VP again. “What do you think, Cillian? Should we set up the meet?”

  “Do we have a choice? Besides, Trey’s not finished. There is a…coup de grâce that’s yet to be revealed, so to speak.”

  “Listen to this motherfucker over here—coup de grâce—since when the fuck did ya start speakin’ French?” Cricket questioned followed by a hail of laughter from the other brothers in the room.

  “Shut the fuck up. You’re just mad you don’t speak it. Maybe you can ask your potential old lady to help you out since she seems more of the educationally inclined.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Killer,” Cricket mumbled before he lit a cigarette.

  “Jake and Marian both insist they aren’t sellin’ to Aztecas Infierno,” Trey said as he glanced in the Prez’s direction. “They insist Carlito is the only member of the cartel they have a relationship with and well, business isn’t just good—it’s fuckin’ booming.”

  “So, if we report Carlito to the Prez and VP of the cartel, what happens? They’ll lose a lucrative client. Surely they’ll want something from us,” Brendan stated before dragging on his cigar.

  “You’re right. They’ll want us to pick up the slack and buy what they were selling to Carlito,” Trey stated, pulling from his cigarette, offering nothing further.

  “Shit. This is so fucked.” Sean sighed out loud. “I suppose we can do that…pick up the slack but what happens to Lacey? She’s Brendan’s daughter and my lass’s best friend. She’d be devastated if Lacey got caught up in all of this—”

  “Not to be cold but how is that our problem?” Bookie asked from the corner where he sat quietly. “Lacey knew what she was gettin’ into. I understand she’s a part of the family—she’s Brendan and Cricket’s blood after all, but…we can’t run the club based on what might happen to girlfriends of cartel members. She understood that motherfucker was dangerous, yet she chose to stay put. I think we should let the chips fall where they may.”

  Trey didn’t say anything. He didn’t have a daughter but if he did, no way in hell would he give her up without a fight. The thought made the acid in his stomach churn. Keri had been pregnant when she died - she hadn’t told anyone but him in fear she might jinx it.

  His girlfriend and his unborn child …someone he loved and a little person he would never have the chance to meet.

  This wasn’t the time to go down memory lane. Not in the middle of chapel—during a club meeting—when major decisions were in the middle of being decided. He needed to snap the fuck out of it and man up. Keri was gone and she wouldn’t ever come back, no matter how much he missed her.

  “Time for a club vote.” Dizzy looked around the table, his blue eyes settling on Trey. “We handle this Carlito situation by not only striking a deal with the Knights but arranging a meeting with Emilio and keeping him abreast of the situation. The man is his son…he may not want him to go to ground and to be honest, it’s not really our concern. We only want what should have been delivered in the first place.”

  Cillian shook his head. “What are the chances that Navarro is going to make up the product we were shafted on if he didn’t know what was going on? Even if he did, he’s gonna play stupid. There’s no way we’ll ever see what we’re owed. Hell, we don’t even know how long Carlito’s been dilutin’. As far as we can tell, maybe since July or August, but it might’ve been around the time I got tuned up and put on trial.”

  “Well, since we don’t kn
ow, we can only take a guess. Let’s just say since August. It’s November. That’s three months of product that’s been less than the quality we were promised. Personally, I think something has to be done about it,” Sean spoke up.

  “Agreed,” Kink said, nodding his head in solidarity with his father.

  “Time to vote then.” Dizzy looked to his right and faced Cillian. “We handle the situation with the cartel and speak to the Knights about increasing the amount we’ll buy from them. That’ll make up what they lose when their deal with Carlito goes south.”

  “Yea.”

  Brendan looked at the Prez. “Yea.”

  “Yea,” Sean said.

  Bookie nodded. “Yea.”

  “Yea,” Cricket responded.

  Kink glanced at the VP. “Yea.”

  Trey nodded his head in complete solidarity. “Yea.”

  “Yea.” Dizzy banged the gavel. “We’ll catch up again later this week once we have word back from Emilio. Until then, everyone look sharp and stay tight. If we gotta go on lockdown, we will.”

  Trey stood and walked out of the chapel.

  He had his own ghosts to contend with, he didn’t need any additional demons on his conscience. Yet without fail, every time chapel ended, it seemed like another person was condemned to go to ground. The bodies kept piling up around them like dominoes.

  Right or wrong, it was club life - the path he’d chosen. He would have to deal with the good and the bad, whether it suited him or not.

  It was just another sin he would take to the Reaper when his time came.

  The clubhouse was strangely quiet with only a few people around. O’Neal—aka Cell—stood behind the bar talking to Chantal, Kink’s sister and Sean’s daughter.

  Under normal circumstances, he might have stayed for a drink but he wanted to be alone. His parents’ house in Pine Bluff had been his own for the past several weeks despite all the club members living in Birch Tree.

  Trey knew the chance of retaliation from his former club brothers was next to nil. The decision to leave the Bastards and join the Saints hadn’t been his, not when Dizzy intervened and spoke directly to Jonesy. Proverbially speaking, the jig was up, and he didn’t have a choice in the matter. Jonesy would never entirely trust him anyway, knowing he and Dizzy had the same blood flowing through their veins. His parents were dead and the only family he had left was his sister, Trista.

  Married to a rock star and living the good life in L.A., Trista was safer than she knew. Desperate times had called for desperate measures and her husband, Lennon “Linx” Carter, made the ultimate sacrifice. He would forever be grateful to his brother-in-law, even if he’d initially thought he was a chump.

  The last year had been hard, not only for him but his sister as well.

  Although he and Trista had grown up calling the same parents “Mom and Dad,” only he and their parents knew he was a Lennon by name only. Trey’s biological father was Desmond “Dizzy” Cox even though old man Lennon raised him as his own. Now that his little sister knew the truth, he could only hope it wouldn’t change their relationship.

  Their parents, brother and his fiancé were murdered the past January in a mysterious car accident. There weren’t signs of foul play but Trista remained mum about the whole situation. Trey had his doubts and assumed they could be in the Witness Protection Program—also known as Witsec—but neither his sister nor Linx would say anything to the positive or the negative.

  It made sense overall.

  His parents worked as accountants for Dizzy and if they were going to blow the lid on his entire operation to the Feds, he knew his father was cold-hearted enough to order their deaths. They would have rather faked their own demise and started over as opposed to the alternative.

  The pavement glided beneath his Harley and it took everything in his power to keep from driving faster. It hadn’t snowed in the last few days but the icy wind and bite in the air hinted of a snowstorm on the horizon. Soon, he’d have to start driving his truck until the roughest part of the winter season ended. Always one to be a little on the flashy side, he owned a pimped out Cadillac Escalade as opposed to a Ford or Chevy.

  Yes, it was considered over the top for a biker but he didn’t give a fuck. Sometimes it felt good to go against the grain.

  A strange feeling crept over him as he pulled into the silent house much too big for one person. No doubt the Feds would have frozen the property had it not been willed to Trista. She had no criminal record and had still been in their parents’ good graces when they met their untimely death. Trey, on the other hand, was not and had served time in a Nevada state penitentiary. It hadn’t been one of his proudest moments but most—if not all—the brothers eventually ended up with a record, whether it was for something petty or major.

  His wasn’t a petty crime but it hadn’t been particularly heavy. He’d done his time, kept his head down, and nose clean. Despite being a person of interest for attempted murder in the Brooklyn Decker case, he’d still come back to the States without issue.

  Dizzy had Gisela working on the case. Chances were the charges would be dropped when Brooklyn recanted his story and told the detectives he didn’t know who shot him. They’d already discussed the case with Nel Decker and he thought it was a good enough trade since Trey had already lost the love of his life. He shouldn’t have to spend time in prison too.

  Trey walked directly to the master bedroom, shed his leathers, and strode into the attached bathroom. After a quick shower, he cleared the mirror and stared at the face looking back at him.

  No one would ever accuse him of not being good looking with his lightly tanned skin, distinctly Irish features inherited from his father, and bright hazel-green eyes, courtesy of his mother. His sable brown hair could use a cut; it was too long in the back for his taste since he preferred his hair tapered.

  Like all his brothers, he was a tall drink of water, a few inches over six feet, and possessed a natural athletic build with defined pecs and abs, strong arms and legs. He often drank like a fish, smoked too much bud, and snorted more than the odd line of coke after Keri’s death. Since he’d come home, all his drug use had stopped but he still went through about a pack of smokes per day. In spite of his bad habits, he weight-lifted daily and ran at least five miles on the treadmill. It was enough for him not to feel completely guilty about the kind of lifestyle he lived.

  Various tattoos, which covered his arms, chest and back, all had great significance and a story behind each and every one. The only one he regretted was the Bastards’ insignia on his left shoulder. Loire, his half-sister and club tattoo artist, visited him in Northern Ireland. She’d transformed it into a detailed skull’s head, and spent the rest of the week tattooing the Saints insignia on his back.

  Trey walked back into the master bedroom, grabbed a pair of gray sweats and slid them on commando-style. After contemplating whether he wanted to go straight to bed or stay up for a while, sleep lost when he found himself walking toward the kitchen. With a bottle of beer in one hand and a pack of smokes in the other, he sat down in the sitting room and turned on the sixty-inch television.

  Although it was extremely cheesy, he found himself watching the sixth season of Sons of Anarchy. It was a guilty pleasure, merely because he could suspend disbelief and enjoy the show for what it was: great entertainment with suspenseful plotlines and talented actors.

  Halfway into a pivotal episode from the season, the doorbell rang.

  Trey sure as fuck wasn’t expecting company and the idea someone was on the other side of the front door sent nervous chills down his spine. He stood and walked toward the door, stopping briefly to grab a nine-millimeter Glock he kept in an innocuous wool coat hanging a few steps from the door.

  His movements were stealth, quiet and extremely calculated. If someone was there to do him harm, they’d most certainly meet the Grim Reaper along with him.

  As he reached for the doorknob, a familiar male voice on the other side yelled, “I know you’re
in there, Trey. If I wanted to hurt you, believe me, you’d already be dead.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief.

  Cillian.

  What the fuck was he doing there?

  Trey opened the door quickly and his brother pushed past him, walking toward the kitchen without preamble. He closed and locked the door before he strode toward the sitting room. Cillian knew the layout and would meet him in there soon enough. He didn’t need to follow him around the house like a fucking nursemaid.

  He sat down on the sofa and continued to drink his beer in silence.

  Cillian strolled into the room, his shit kickers making a distinctive sound on the hardwood floor. He sat down cater corner to Trey and swigged from his beer but remained silent, ever watchful.

  Trey stared at the VP. “What brings you out here tonight?”

  His brother smiled. “I’m on my way home but…I gotta talk to you about somethin’. You know how you told the brothers Keri was pregnant when she died?”

  “Yeah, what about it?” he questioned nonchalantly. It was easier to act like losing a baby he’d never known didn’t mean much to him rather than caring at all.

  “Well, all of us know how you fucked my ex-old lady when you were a Bastard. Do you remember that?” Cillian’s crystal blue eyes shone hard and brittle.

  “Yeah, ‘course I do. My memory’s not that fuckin’ short. In fact, it’s pretty long, brother.”

  “I know.” He washed down the remainder of his beer in several large gulps. “Listen, I’m not gonna presume to know what went down between you two but I do know you were dumb enough not to use a condom. It never occurred to you—social diseases and all with the way she was giving her pussy away?”

  “It did but I was drunk and horny—I didn’t give a fuck,” Trey replied. “Figured she couldn’t have anything worse than the clap or maybe Chlamydia. I saw my GP a few days later and he gave me the all clear. After that, I didn’t really dwell on it, know what I mean?”