Among the Chaos: Book 2 of the Soldiers of Chaos MC Series

by A. A. Askevold

  That last little comment was meant to be the crusher. For her sake. He would do anything for her and he knew that she held that knowledge firmly in her palm with that comment.

  “I understand that it’s hard for you to do that but it is the best thing for everyone, you, me, the club, that all that shit stays right where it is and never comes up again.”

  It drove him mad not to be able to put his hands on that sick bastard and torture him. He wanted to make that asshole scream the same way Nikki had when Doc had treated her back. He could still hear her agonizing cries. The sound was burned into his memory forever.

  “You want to bury it? Fine, but I’m telling you now if I even suspect that something like this is happening again, there will be no way you can stop me from taking care of shit.”

  And he meant that shit. Nikki nodded in response.

  “Right, you two done the whole kiss and make up thing?” Trace asked as he approached them.

  “No kiss yet but there’s plenty of time for that later,” he replied, winking at Nikki, “right now I think we need to get Ace up to speed with club business.”

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  Nikki breathed a sigh of relief as Tex changed the subject. When she approached him she couldn't get a read on his mood. The minute his gaze locked with hers she knew how she needed to approach him. Sure he'd hurt her and she could see the remorse in his eyes but she could also see the hurt and anger there. She'd dragged them along on this rollercoaster right alongside her. While she didn’t expect those feelings to disappear straight away she knew that acknowledging how she wronged them was a good way to start.

  "You've been missing a lot of action Baby girl. The last few shipments have picked up tails and we've had to make some major changes to the trucking routes. They've fired a few shots but nothing successful."

  Tex took over, "They're testing us, looking for weak spots. So now we're not just putting on extra protection we're also having to scout ahead of the run and man the route itself. We don’t seem to be able to shake them."

  Issues with the shipments had started after Sheila had been killed. The brothers had been attacked by a group of men not long ago, a premature attempt without a lot of thought or success. Maybe they were trying to steal the guns for sale. Maybe they were trying to steal the Soldiers business by proving the club couldn't safely courier the goods. Whatever their reasons this was not good for the club.

  Tex lowered his voice, "Seems like every time we make a change they are on us. It's almost like they know our moves before we make 'em."

  Nikki's eyes went wide at that revelation. There was no way in hell they had a rat. The club was solid and so was every member in it.

  "I don’t like what you're suggesting," she told Tex.

  "We don’t like it either Baby girl. But the fact remains that these guys have to be getting their intel from somewhere and we sure as shit ain’t broadcasting the shit on the airwaves," Trace responded.

  This was bad.

  "That’s not the only problem we got," Tex paused a moment, "Someone's been loading the Crow's streets with scumbag dealers and they've been slowly leaking into our territory."

  That is one thing the MC would not tolerate, drugs. They didn’t traffic drugs, they didn’t deal drugs and they didn’t allow junkies as members. You had a drug habit you were out and you were out in bad standing. That was some serious shit in their world. They also didn’t allow that shit to touch their streets or infect their neighborhoods. You did not deal drugs on Soldiers turf because if you did the Reaper would greet you swiftly.

  "What are we doing about that?" Nikki asked.

  "We're trying to find out the source but we are either running into a wall of silence or these guys genuinely don’t know who they are dealing for." Trace explained.

  Now that rang alarm bells in her head. There was one man who operated like that.

  "Bridges," the name hissed out through her clenched teeth.

  The name made her blood boil. She took a few deep breaths and calmed herself. Getting crazy was not going to help anyone.

  "That's our theory."

  If he was behind the drugs then he was probably behind the attacks on the gun shipments. This shit was getting messy. She wished she had the whole picture. All she had were snippets like her mother’s death, the threat to the shipments, the drugs, Lenny and the niners. It was all connected to Bridges somehow.

  "There are too many links to Bridges now to ignore it anymore. There's a lot of questions we never asked you that we should’ve asked before. You need to tell us everything about Sheila, Lenny, Black, Bridges. The whole lot even if you think it’s insignificant."

  She would share but only if they did. She was not being kept out the loop any longer.

  "I will tell you everything but you need to do the same for me. No more hiding things."

  They boy’s body language was tense and she knew they didn’t want to give up protecting her yet. They would have to.

  "Agreed," Tex answered.

  "Everything," Nikki demanded.

  "Everything," he agreed.

  “I went in to Sheila’s and found her in the bedroom. Black and Roach were still in the house. They bailed me up in the bedroom. I grabbed my old gun and I shot Black’s brother and then I killed Roach and before he died he told me Bridges had sent them,” she ran through the event as quickly as possible.

  No need to poke the monster with a stick.

  “Did they say anything else to you? Either of them?” Trace questioned.

  Nikki thought back to the conversation. There was nothing that stood out.

  Nothing except, “When I made a move towards him I remember him saying ‘A brave little thing are we? So more like your father then.’ It made me think that it had more to do with Reaper than Sheila.”

  “That fits with Reaper’s story as to why they struck,” Tex replied.

  “Maybe, but I don’t get why they’d pick Sheila as retribution. She didn’t have anything to do with the club anymore and the club wasn’t exactly hurt by it.”

  “We think there’s more to it than that but we’ll get to that later,” he explained, “Anything else?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What about Lenny?”

  That was a subject that was intertwined with Cole. How was she gonna divulge everything without divulging everything?

  “Lenny said nothing to me about Black, Bridges or the niners. This thing with him was personal, not business.”

  “C’mon Ace there’s more to it than that,” Tex coaxed.

  “You already know about the niners links. He also had links to Black. Alex placed a tracker on Black’s car the night we were at the Crows meet,” her comment left the pair of them focusing on her intently.

  Yeah she may have forgotten to divulge that info.

  “I know Black made a stop on the way home from that meet and it was Roach’s house.”

  Trace nodded his head, “Yeah he turned up at Lenny’s house while Tex and I were scoping it out.”

  That was news to her. They scoped out Lenny’s house? There had been no mention of a house in the info Cole had given her.

  “Didn’t know he had a house.”

  “Big waterfront joint in a group of properties Black owns,” Trace answered.

  “So wait, Alex has Black under surveillance?” It was Tex who asked the question.

  “Yeah, kind of. He’s watching him from a distance. Black’s too smart and a tail would be way too obvious to him so he installed a tracking device.”

  “Jesus Christ we could’ve been tracking this asshole from day dot,” Tex complained.

  “Do you think he could’ve been the ninja?” Trace asked.

  “Nah don’t think so. That guy moved with way too much precision,” Tex answered.

  “What Ninja?” Nikki asked confused.

  “When we were at Lenny’s this guy all dressed in black was sneaking around inside. The guy was a pro. He moved so silently and st
ealthily that I barely noticed him. We spotted him again as he was leaving,” Tex paused a moment, “It was weird because he spotted us but showed no reaction. It was like he was almost expecting us to be there.”

  Nikki got the feeling that was about Cole. The more she thought about it the more it made sense. Lenny had that video of the two of them with Lucy and there’s no way Cole would’ve sent Lenny to his grave without that evidence back in his pocket. So Roger had probably snuck in there to find it.

  “Weird,” was all Nikki said.

  “You’re sure there’s nothing else?” Trace prompted quietly.

  Nothing else? There was plenty more. But how much did she say.

  “I think Black knows I had something to do with his brother disappearing.”

  Tex raised an eyebrow at her.

  “The way he touched my scar and asked about it and the way he showed too much interest in me at the meet,” she paused.

  Could she mention Lenny’s words without implicating Cole?

  “And now that I think about it Lenny said something about how bringing me down would be a bonus for his friends,” she added quickly.

  Tex scrubbed a hand through his hair. It was an anxious habit he’d had all his life.

  “Jesus Ace. This is shit we needed to know.”

  Did he think she didn’t know that?

  “That’s all I’ve got Tex, I swear. Everything I know, you know. That’s all of it,” she reassured him.

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  Tex didn’t want to question her word so, even though his gut told him there was more he kept his mouth shut.

  "We know that Lenny is intertwined with Black. It’s the why I don’t get?"

  He couldn’t figure out how these two came to have a relationship or what that relationship was.

  "They have a common enemy," Nikki stated.

  "Who? You?"

  Nikki nodded at him, "Let's assume that Black somehow knows I killed his brother. Lenny wants me dead. Lenny tells his brother, his brother's a niner and the niners work for Bridges. Jason Black obviously works for Bridges."

  He couldn’t deny the logic although there was no way Black could know that Nikki killed his brother.

  "Let's take his brother out of the equation. If we assume it's Bridges behind these attacks on the shipments and the drugs leaking onto our streets, you've still got a common thread between Lenny and Black. Who would make the best target for a definitive declaration if war?"

  Tex could definitely see the logic there too. Nikki was the daughter of their man-at-arms, the surrogate daughter of their president and the darling of their club. Plus it didn’t hurt that she was also a woman and also the only woman their VP had ever loved. They would not be going to war with Bridges, they would be bringing hell itself down on the man's head.

  "You would."

  "Exactly."

  "What did you find out while you were snooping around Lenny's place?"

  "We didn’t get a chance to get inside so not much. Except there's no way Lenny could afford the digs he was living in. The houses in the estate belong to Black so we know Black was paying Lenny's way for some reason," he answered her question, "Black rocked up while we were there but we had to cut out, the boss was calling."

  Trace broke his silent contemplation, "I still don’t see why Black would need Lenny to kill you. Surely if Bridges wanted to start a war, then Black would want us to know it was him. He wouldn’t need to hide behind Lenny. If it was revenge for his brother, maybe he wouldn’t want to draw attention to Bridges, but he'd have no way of knowing it was you that killed him. No way."

  They were going round in circles here.

  "Look none of this is concrete and none of it fits quite right. We're just going round in circles," Tex stated.

  "You think it's Bridges hitting the shipments right?" Nikki asked, "And you think he's behind the drugs? So why hasn’t he approached us? He sent Black out to talk to Bull yet here we sit none the wiser."

  That’s something Tex had considered. Why hadn’t Bridges approached the club? Instead he was attempting to poison their streets and take their business from them without so much as a warning or an ultimatum.

  “I don’t know why he hasn’t come to us,” he replied.

  “Because he doesn’t want to work with us. He wants to destroys us slowly, piece by piece. The question is why?” Nikki frowned, “It feels personal Tex.”

  She was right. If he wanted to take over the business why not just do what he did with the Crows and offer a deal? It felt like a level above and beyond business.

  “What about the hits on the shipments? Any clear indication it is him? Any messages? Anything?” Nikki was clearly as frustrated as Tex was.

  “That first hit. We managed to get hold of one of the guy’s. He said he worked for someone and no one,” Trace explained.

  “That fits Bridges,” Nikki nodded.

  What was that other thing he said? Tex wracked his brain trying to remember the phrase.

  “What did he say when you asked him how he knew about the shipment?”

  Trace shrugged in reply to Tex’s question.

  “Et tu Brutus or something like that.”

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  Nikki knew that phrase. He meant et tu Brute. William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar. They were the last words of a dying man to his traitorous best friend. Was he trying to say that someone had betrayed them? That a club member would turn on them like that was just beyond belief for Nikki. She knew that explaining what it meant would only support the boy’s traitor theory. She said nothing.

  "So you've been keeping me out of the loop on a lot of things?" She asked.

  She wasn't angry about it. The boys were only doing what they thought was best.

  "We were waiting for you to come back from that place you were in," Trace explained quietly.

  Nikki nodded her head. She was back from that place and she needed back into her life.

  "Well I'm back now and I want in on everything."

  Tex and Trace both nodded in agreement.

  "We're with you on that one Baby girl but it's not going to be easy. Some of the old boys are saying you're a liability."

  She should’ve known that was coming. It wasn't the first time she'd experienced resistance to her being an active member of the club.

  Her first steps in were through a cracked window, a back door, the shadows of a dirty alley. The boys refused to let her in so she would sneak in. After saving their asses a few times they stopped shutting the door in her face and just left it wide open. The brothers loved her and they respected her, so they didn’t protest. Instead they put her on protection for the girls and they let the boys take her along wherever they saw fit.

  Her patch on the other hand had been harder won. The boys put her in that prospect vest after much debate. She’d had to work three times as hard as any other prospect. She ‘manned up’ and did the crappy jobs, she still worked the garage in between everything else, she turned a blind eye to all the shit that went on at the clubhouse and she’d learnt to hold her drink better than most men. She copped things the other prospects didn’t, like sexual passes from some of the brothers. She blew them off with some witty reply and if someone took it too far she used her MMA training to secure a hold on them or drop them to the floor. After a couple of those they gave up.

  Even then she wore that vest twice as long as some of the other prospects. Trying to get chauvinistic bikers to patch a woman was like trying to pull teeth. She had to get them all on side one by one. In the end she’d received her patch though she had known some of the brothers had voted it under pressure from the boys and King. She knew she’d been called into question again when Alex came on the scene. He was a cop and she was a crim. She’d already proven she could keep her mouth shut but a lot of that was conveniently forgotten when he was around.

  So now they were at it again and she could understand why. Her personal shit had leaked so far over
into club shit even she would be calling herself into question.

  “It’s not the first time and it probably won’t be the last time. Put me back in the mix and I’ll prove to them I have my shit locked up tight,” she stated.

  “We got no doubt Ace,” Tex’s words held nothing but confidence.

  She had no doubt either.

  Chapter 5

  Nikki woke up to the sound of knocking. She rolled over and glanced at the clock. Four pm. She cursed out loud. She really shouldn’t have slept that long. Hopefully he hadn’t already. The knocking at the door sounded again and Nikki could hear the boys stirring. She dragged herself out of bed to the front door.

  Nikki peered through the peephole. All she could make out was a large bunch of flowers and what looked like a delivery guy’s shorts. Nikki frowned. This dude clearly had the wrong address. She opened the door.

  "Hi. I'm looking for a Nikki Jones," the delivery guy said.

  "Um, I'm Nikki," she replied.

  Who the hell would’ve brought her flowers?

  "Right can you sign here please?" He asked wiggling his clipboard at her.

  She signed the paper then took the giant mass of roses from the delivery guy. She placed the flowers on her kitchen table and plucked the card from its little holder.

  “Who bought you flowers?” Trace asked as he wandered passed her to the coffee machine.

  “It obviously wasn’t you then?”

  Trace shook his head. Nikki glanced down the hall to Tex’s room where he slept soundly. It definitely wouldn’t have been him. Tex was a lot of things but he definitely was not the flowers type. She slid the little card out of the envelope and flipped it over. There was no name just a web address.