by Leah Wilde
I eyed the garage doors. I needed to lower them so we could go on the defensive from upstairs, but the hail of gunfire made it incredibly dangerous to try to get to the front of the building. I fired off a couple of rounds to try to take a few of them down and clear the air enough to make my way over to the doors to let them down. On my feet, gun in hand, I took a step and fired. I watched one of Ivan’s men crumble to the ground outside. Feeling pretty good, I took another step.
Suddenly, shots rang out behind me. Some Kings of Hell members hurried downstairs with guns in hand. Automatic assault rifles surrounded me. They were actually weapons from a shipment we had intercepted on its way to Ivan a while back. The irony was as delicious as it was deadly.
“Get the doors,” Angelo said as he walked past me.
The guys ducked down behind anything they could to shelter themselves from the bullets raining into the garage. Chase and Juarez climbed into the Suburban and shot through the back window—we had each door, including the rear, insulated with Kevlar just for situations similar to this one.
Angelo caught me watching the guys and jerked his head towards the doors, reminding me to get them down. I jumped into action, ducking as I hurried to the chain holding the doors in place. I grabbed the first one and started to let it down when a black leather gloved grabbed my wrist and a thick Russian accent interrupted me.
“No, that’s not a good idea for you,” the bear said, pulling my arm back and head-butting me onto my back on the floor. He laughed a thick, heavy laugh as he pulled up his gun and aimed it at me.
Just then, he took a hit to the head and toppled down in front of me.
“If you don’t get those doors down, Gage, you’re next,” Angelo called, but I didn’t hear his gun go off again.
“You gotta be shitting me,” I said aloud, looking around for him. I couldn’t see him anywhere. “Angelo!” He didn’t pop up anywhere.
I grabbed the bear’s assault rifle and started popping off guys standing behind the black SUV’s lining the street. They were using the cars for cover. Glass shattered, and a few of the men fell. We were doing something right, because the gunfire was quieting down. I took advantage of the lull in action and grabbed the chain again, unlatching it to let the door close rapidly. A few bullets tinged against the thick sheet metal as it lowered, but one made it in underneath the door before it closed all the way.
My leg was on fire. The pain lit me up. I grabbed my thigh and lost my balance, toppling to the floor. I couldn’t hear anything for a moment other than the rapid pumping of my pulse in my ears.
“I’ve been hit,” I mouthed, unsure if the intended shout ever left my lips.
As the rattling of the garage door and the pop-pop-popping of gunfire returned, I heard glass in the office break. Shit! Someone was coming in that way. The door opened, and another large Russian stood above me with a cruel, sadistic smile on his face. Where the fuck was Ivan getting these guys? Were they cloning these guys over there?
I reached for Cliff’s gun again.
“Don’t worry, little man, we aren’t going to kill you. We’re here to take you to your little whore girlfriend,” he said in his thick accent.
He reached down and grabbed me by my vest, pulling me up off the floor.
“She’s going to be happy to see you. Until she sees what we’re going to do to you,” he said with a satisfied smile on his face.
I put the gun under his chin. “Fuck you,” I said as I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger. We both fell to the floor.
I looked around the room. There was still no sign of Angelo. Gunshots still rang out from the Suburban, so I knew Chase and Juarez were alright. I was honestly surprised they weren’t standing in the middle of the street shooting at these guys.
I dropped through the opening in the bay, leading to the pit, where we would normally stand to reach the bottom of someone’s car. The interrogation room wasn’t the only one we had downstairs. We also had an arsenal downstairs, locked behind a cage. No one ever paid it much attention because it was behind a couple of tall tool boxes on rollers.
I shoved the tool boxes out of the way and fished out my key to the arsenal. I grabbed the tear gas and a couple of masks for anyone still downstairs. I took to the stairs again, running up with my equipment. I tossed the gas masks in the Suburban.
“Guys, put these on!” I lowered mine and lobbed a few gas canisters at the guys standing on the street. A few moments later, as I pulled down the other bay door, the gray cloud of gas filled the street, and the gunshots ceased.
Chase and Juarez cheered as they lifted the back gate of the SUV and climbed out. They put arms around each other’s shoulders and laughed.
“Yeah, we did it, man! Good thinking, Gage!”
Their celebration was cut short when they saw the two men laid out on the garage floor—Cliff, Juarez’s prospect, and Angelo, a long-time member of the Kings of Hell MC.
Juarez lifted his gas mask. “No way! No fucking way! Gage, man, we can’t let them get away with this shit.”
I stood over Angelo’s body, staring down at the man who had been like a mentor to me since the day I’d started moving up the ranks. My leg didn’t hurt anymore, the gunshot wound numbed by my anger.
“We won’t,” I assured the knuckleheads. “They won’t get away with this.”
“Guys, how’s it going down here? Holy shit!” It was Ricky, catching sight of Angelo and Cliff as he reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Yeah, that’s how it’s going down here. How about upstairs?” I started walking towards the stairs.
“We got three bodies in the clubhouse, and luckily there wasn’t anyone on the third floor,” Ricky reported absently, unable to take his eyes off his fallen brother.
I was impressed we didn’t lose more. We were taken completely by surprise. I clapped a hand on Ricky shoulder, snapping him out of his trance. He looked at me, and his eyes widened when he saw my leg.
“Shit, Gage, let’s get you upstairs so we can take care of that,” he said, pulling my arm over his shoulders to help me walk.
“Sounds good. Chase, Juarez, get someone down here to help clean this up, and get someone to clean up the clubhouse,” I barked. “We also need someone to check upstairs and see if the rooms need any cleaning.”
“Already got someone on that one, Gage,” Ricky assured me. “You let the boys handle the rest. We need to get you cleaned up.”
“They have Julia,” I told him while we trudged upstairs.
“We figured that much,” he told me.
“No, I mean they have her. She didn’t escape with Dimitri. Dimitri took her. He probably tricked her into feeling sorry for him or something, and when she went to let him go, he grabbed her and took her with him to Ivan. They probably know everything by now,” I explained.
“Don’t write her off too fast, Gage. If he double-crossed her, that probably just made her more loyal to you as an alternative to being screwed over. Just keep that in mind moving forward.” He sat me down on one of the couches.
Upstairs wasn’t too bad. There were a few of the guys’ old ladies still a little jumpy from the ambush. One of the couches had been pushed up to the windows, where someone had tried to hide behind it. I saw the blood, where I assumed he’d taken a fatal hit and collapsed. There were chips in the brick walls where bullets had rained in like hail. One of the dart boards was toast. The TV was toast. Those were just things, though. Things could be replaced. They were going to pay dearly for the five guys they took from us, and for trying to use Julia as leverage.
“It’s okay, ladies,” I called out to the women cowering at the tables in the back of the bar. “They’re gone!”
Meanwhile, members of the MC swept and cleaned up. One guy pulled the couch down from the window. I could see him out of the corner of my eye, but I couldn’t tell who it was. I saw the couch clearly, though. It was riddled with holes from where it had taken quite a few shots before letting a couple get through to t
he guy who’d been hiding behind it.
Ricky came back with a knife, some bandages and gauze, and alcohol. He cut my jeans open around the wound in my leg and took a look at it. I winced as he wiped the blood away to get a better look at my leg.
“It looks like it went straight through, brother.” He reached a gloved hand around the back of my leg, and I winced again as he found the exit wound.
“That’s not too bad,” he continued. “At least I don’t have to dig that shit out, right?” He chuckled.
“Yeah, just get me cleaned up and bandaged, Ricky. Damn,” I snapped.
“On it.”
A few minutes later, with my leg wrapped up and taped together, I sat up and looked at him. He was getting his things back together to take behind the bar.
“How the hell did this happen?” I asked him.
“You already know the answer to that,” he said, giving me a straight-forward, no-nonsense look. “It’s pretty obvious that Dimitri told Ivan where we were.”
“No, that’s not what I mean.” I shook my head. “Besides, Ivan already knows where HQ is. I’m surprised he took this long to ambush us. No, how did we get to a point where our rivals are strong enough to come at us like this? How did we get to the point where we aren’t really on top anymore? Do you think I let this happen? Is it because of bad leadership?”
Ricky cocked an eyebrow. “I know better than to answer a question like that, Gage, but if you think that’s the case, brother, do something about it. This is your MC as much as it is anybody’s. If you feel like we need to make changes, now’s the time.”
I thought about his words for a minute. “Yeah, I think you’re right. We need to hold an emergency meeting with everyone who’s here. We don’t need to bring anyone else to HQ today, and we need to make sure our women get out of here safely.”
“Hey, Gage, Ricky, you guys need to come see this.” It was Jorell, standing at the window, looking down.
“More bad news,” I groaned as I got up from the couch and walked over to see what he was looking at.
I hobbled over to stand next to him. Our bikes had been trashed by Ivan’s men before they left.
“Yeah, emergency meeting. Now. Here in the clubhouse, so everyone can be part of it.”
Chapter 26
We met around the bar on the second floor. I stood against the bar and looked around at the men staring back at me, waiting to hear something positive from their president.
“It’s good to see those of us who made it. We lost a few guys today,” I started. “We lost Angelo Wilkes, a long-time member of the organization. He’d been a King of Hell for decades, before some of us were even born. One hell of a man. He was a mentor to me, and I know he reached out to a few of you standing here before me. I’m sad to see him go.”
A few faces turned to the floor. A few faces, like Chase’s and Jaurez’s, stared at me with hard eyes ready to retaliate for what happened to us.
“We lost Cliff Ross today, a prospect. He was a promising young man who had proven his loyalty to the MC a few times already before throwing himself in the line of fire today in an effort to defend us. We lost Clyde Edgars, another long-time member who’d turned down several offers of promotion within the ranks so he could help you guys work on your bikes and just ride.”
Clyde’s name got a few smiles and laughs out of the guys.
“Yeah,” I joined in with a little laugh of my own, “I think we all have funny memories of Clyde telling us ridiculous stories while working on our motorcycles or on someone’s car. We lost Terrell McCoy and Johnny Britton as well, both of whom were getting their colors soon.” I glanced over at Ricky. “Ricky, we need to deliver their colors to their families.”
Ricky nodded. He stood next to Jorell Winston, the member who had drawn the ruined bikes to our attention. Jorell stood to move up to fill the hole left by Angelo’s death. I wasn’t sure if he was fully aware of that yet, but we’d already talked about promoting him several times. If not with us, then we were preparing to offer him a position in another chapter.
Jorell was ripped. Beneath his broad shoulders, his arms bulged with thick, powerful muscles. His chest pushed against his shirts as if it wanted to break out. He always wore sleeveless t-shirts to show off the ink covering both arms. He sported a shaved head and full beard. He was an impressive specimen of biker, and he took club business very seriously whenever he was involved. He stood with his arms crossed and watched me to see what my next order would be.
“The point is we lost some great people today, but I also think it’s a testament to the caliber of everyone standing here now that we didn’t lose more. I want to commend everyone for their response today. We returned fire pretty quickly despite being ambushed. That being said, I think we’ve grown too lax, too soft, too damn comfortable here,” I continued.
Voices murmured as the group certainly felt like I was calling them out.
“Now, I can’t remember anything like this ever happening to us before, so I don’t really have any fair points of comparison, but what I will tell you is that I’ve failed you. I’ve gone soft, and because of that, I feel like the MC as a whole has started to go soft. Well, not again. We’re in too deep, and the stakes are too high for us to go soft now. If anything, we need to harden up. We’re the damn Kings of Hell, for crying out loud. If someone attacks us, they need to be put on the defensive quick. We need security.”
I looked at Chase, Juarez, and Ricky. I could see that we were all on the same page. They nodded, each of them already seeing where I was going.
“Jorell, come here.” I held up my arm for Jorell to come up in front of everyone else. “You all know Jorell, right? He’s going to be our new head of security.”
Jorell gave a hearty laugh.
“You think you’re up to it?” I joked with him in front of the rest of the group.
“You know I am.” He took my hand and shook it. “Thank you for the opportunity, Gage.”
“Alright, guys, that’s the good news,” I said, killing the applause.
I felt the mood drop around me instantly.
“What’s the bad news?” Juarez asked cautiously.
“The bad news is that we still have a lot of work to do to clean up and contact the families of the men we lost today. The bad news is that gunfire like that doesn’t occur without some sort of law enforcement response, so they’ll probably be here soon. Ricky, I need you to handle them when they get here.” I was honestly pretty surprised they hadn’t already shown up, but they were probably on Ivan’s payroll, which meant there was a good chance they would never show up.
“So, all this talk,” Chase piped up suddenly, “but what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to make sure that after we ambush the deal they’ve got coming up, they aren’t able to do anything else. We’re going to eliminate Ivan and his men so that they no longer pose any kind of threat,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster. I still wasn’t sure of what we were going to do, myself.
“We need to have a private meeting with just the kings,” Jorell said in my ear. “We need to leave the princes out of this one until we’re ready to make a move.”
It struck me as odd that Jorell was so eager to assume his position that he’d try to tell me what we needed to do. I agreed with him completely, but it seemed a little early for him to be asserting himself.
“Look, right now, we need everyone to focus on cleaning up the mess from today. We need to replace the back window on the Suburban and fix the bikes. I also want everyone armed, just in case. In the meantime, I need to see Chase, Juarez, Ricky, and Jorell in the boardroom. The rest of you are dismissed.” I waved the group away and hobbled immediately into the boardroom with the other Kings.
Once the heavy double doors were closed, we took our seats around the table.
“So, how’s it going down?” Chase asked almost immediately.
I looked between his face and Juarez’s. Neither of them held any
humor. There were no more jokes to be shared. Their faces had hardened in the course of the evening.
“Might I make a suggestion?” Jorell spoke up before I could answer, raising his hand like he was still in school.
“Sure.” I sat back in my chair and gave him the floor, eyeing Ricky the whole time. Something suddenly didn’t feel right about Jorell. He was too eager to take charge, it seemed, but I figured I’d hear him out. He’d been a great asset to the MC so far. Maybe his eagerness was just a reflection of how long he’d waited to get to where he was now.
“Whatever we decide to do, let’s hold off on it and take time to plan. Let’s not jump into anything. We need to prepare,” Jorell suggested to everyone. Before sitting back down, he added, “I’m only saying that because emotions are running high right now, and I don’t want to see us lose more men by acting on those emotions and doing something stupid.”
