Page 14 of Jagger
“Just one, as far as we can tell. Velvet. One of the guys was her boyfriend, apparently.”
“How did Ace find out?” I asked. Ace, King’s half-brother, ran the strip joint for the club.
King sighed heavily and didn’t look happy. “He didn’t. Bodhi heard some rumors and got suspicious. He ended up searching her locker & found some pills in baggies, no marks on ‘em. Oxy, X, Hydros, not sure what else. Couple of loaded needles, too, that I’m guessing is H, but that seemed to be her own personal works. Caught both of the assholes when they came to see her last night to drop off more product for her to push.”
“What happened to Velvet and the rats?”
“She’s been fired and strongly advised to get her scrawny ass out of Indy for a while for her own good. Bodhi and Skid grabbed up the assholes before they made it inside. They called Trick, and it was dealt with in-house.”
In-house. Code for club justice, no cops. It rarely happened within our club, since we ran a pretty clean outfit, but occasionally, someone crossed a line and justice had to be meted out. Trick was our Sergeant-at-Arms, so he was in charge of dealing with all internal infractions, as well as threats against the club from outsiders. He also ran our MMA gym, and occasionally fought in our underground fight ring along with Hawk and a couple of the other brothers. That was a piece of business I hadn’t mentioned to Angel since it wasn’t strictly legal – the fights or the betting that took place on them. It was a piece of business we shared with La Famiglia Rossi, also another connection I’d kept to myself. Some parts of club business were just that – club business – and even the Old Ladies weren’t told everything, for their protection as much as ours.
“Are they still breathing?” I asked, not altogether joking.
King snorted and nodded his head. “Yeah, they’re still breathing, at least when Trick got done with them last night, don’t know about this morning. They’ll both walk with a limp from now on though. He’s been practicing at the batting cages lately, so they both took a Louisville Slugger to the kneecap.”
“Ouch,” I winced.
“I’m betting K-Dog did worse once they got dropped back on his doorstep. They were part of his crew, and the shit was part of his stash that they had liberated and repackaged for their own side hustle. Word has it that he was not impressed by their entrepreneurial spirit.”
I just shook my head at the stupidity of the motherfuckers who decided it was a good idea to rip off one of the meanest gangbangers in the city, and then invade our territory to sell the stolen shit on top of it.
“K-dog called me to let me know he had one more guy missing, who went rogue along with a trunk full of pills and hardcore shit – meth, crack, and enough H for the entire block. He’s offering a nice chunk of change if we happen to stumble across the guy. He also offered us a marker if we find and return any of his shit, too. Keep your eyes and ears open in case the dipshit tries to move his business over to Inferno.”
“Will do, but do we really want a marker from K-dog?” I asked, not liking the idea of accepting an offer for a future favor from that guy.
“Nope, no way in hell we’re gettin’ in bed with him and his crew. He’s not my type,” King flashed me a smart-ass grin. “If we do find anything, we’ll turn it over to him, then turn down the money and the marker, and just tell him we consider it part of cleaning up our territory. We’ll call it a professional courtesy, so we don’t offend the fucker, and be done with it. Builds up goodwill from him toward the club but keeps us at a distance.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said with a satisfied nod, hoping that we were done, and I was going to be able to avoid the father-son chat I’d thought I was in for.
“Now for the second order of business. Just wanted to give you a heads up, your mother may come nosing around, looking for money. She hit me up first thing this morning.”
I rolled my eyes and barked out a disgusted laugh. “Too late. She got me for two hundred Saturday night.”
His eyes narrowed on me. “Is that what was wrong with you last night?”
“Nah, just…some shit happened that pissed me off. No big deal,” I told him, hoping he would drop the subject.
“Anything I need to be aware of? Did she say what she needed the money for?” he asked sharply.
“No, you know Christy. She whined, she cried, I paid her, she left,” I stated the facts without emotion. I’d stopped letting her get to me, for the most part, a long time ago.
King sighed heavily, and I saw the look of regret on his face. It’s the same look I’d seen for years, and I knew it’s because he felt like he let us down when it came to our mom. They’d gotten married when Christy got pregnant with Rome and me when they were eighteen and had split up for good when we were seven. Shortly after that, she’d hooked up with a man who didn’t want to raise another man’s brats – his words. Christy had dropped us off for our regular weekend visitation with our dad and hadn’t come back for six months. By that time, he’d gone to court and gotten full custody on the grounds of abandonment, and he’d settled down to raise us, with help from his parents, Sinner, and Grandma Frankie.
“Just send her to me next time, Jagger.”
I nodded and took another sip of my coffee. “I mean it, Jag. You shouldn’t have to put up with her shit. Just call me and I’ll deal with her next time.”
“I got it. I will,” I promised as I nodded again and downed the last of my coffee. I could feel my brain cells starting to fully come back online, and it felt good to be firing on all synapses again. My thoughts turned to Angel for a moment, and I forced them away. I needed to focus on business, not on a woman who clearly had me fooled.
I noticed him looking at me closely again and had to bite back a groan. He wasn’t done with theDad Talk, I could tell.
“You ready to tell me what’s been chewing at your ass since last night?” he asked, arching a brow as if he was just daring me to deny anything was wrong again.
I started to shake my head, and he put up his hand to stop me. “Jag, you’re my son. I know when something’s bothering you.” He paused, giving me a chance to come clean, then shook his head and smirked at me when I kept quiet.
“I heard that you brought a woman to the bar Saturday night. Not a club girl. Viking described her a sweet little thing, pretty, a real lady, in fact, and that was a direct quote from the old fucker.”
I snorted a laugh. Viking was in his late sixties, an old friend of my grandpa’s, and one of the founding members of the club. He ran the fabrication part of our custom bike shop. He was also the biggest damned gossip in the club. I’d wondered if he had noticed Angel at the bar that night. He hadn’t been one of the brothers who’d just happened to stop by the table, forcing me to introduce her to all the nosy bastards.
