Page 69 of Dirty Like Jude
“So tonight, I’m here to educate you, Tyler Murphy, on who you are, and who the fuck Iam.”
I squatted down in front of him. His eyes met mine, and yeah, he was definitelyscared.
Good.
He needed to know, if he didn’t already—if he’d really managed to kid himself fucking otherwise—that an attack on me was an attack on every King. I threat against Lex was a threat against the entire club. Didn’t matter that he and his brothers took off their Sinners shit and tried to make itpersonal.
Wasn’tpersonal.
But he was damn lucky it was me he’d forced behind that gasstation.
If it had been any other King, fact was, he might be in the groundalready.
Retaliation for that kind of shit would be fast, and it would befurious.
So I started hiseducation.
“I’m the guy whocouldget on my phone right now and call up my brother,” I told him. “You know my brother. Piper. VP of the West Coast Kings. Maybe I tell my brother what happened the other night. You remember. You and your brothers and your tire iron. And Piper… he gets pretty upset. He gets on the phone to our President, who gets on the phone to your President, and fills him in. What do you think happensnext?”
He stared at me, but he couldn’t answer me, of course, so I keptgoing.
“I’ll tell you what happens. Because you… are nobody. You’re a fucking thug. Your MC cuts you the fuck loose, strips your patch for moving on a King without sanction, and my brother swings around and picks you up. And I gotta tell you, Tyler, my big brother’s got some big love for me. How do you think your alone time with him is gonna go down foryou?”
I let him think about the answer to that as I stood up and walked slowly around theshed.
“But maybe I’m not that guy,” I said, once I was standing in the shadows behind him. “Maybe I don’t tell my brother a thing. Maybe instead I tell my brothers outside.” I paused; the sounds of my guys outside could be heard, the shuffling of boots in the dirt, a muttered comment. “Those guys are not the VP of the West Coast Kings. They’re foot soldiers, like you. Soldiers who do whatever the fuck I ask. Who scoopedyouup off the street, threw your ass in a van and dragged you… way… out…here.”
I got close behind him, just off to the side, and croucheddown.
“How do you think they’ll take hearing about what happened the other night? Maybe I leave them in here with you a while, they can let you know how they feel aboutit.”
I let that sink in. Then I got to my feetagain.
“So, which of those two guys do you think I am?” I moved to stand in front of him again. “Tell my brother…? Tell my brothersoutside…?”
Here was the beautiful problem with that question: the answer didn’tmatter.
Either way, this ended the same forhim.
And Taze knewit.
Basically, I was the guy standing in-between him and a very bad ending, and he was definitely starting to realize it. By now, he’d sweat right through his shirt. I could hear his raspy breathing gettingshallow.
“I know. Tough choice when you really don’t know shit about me and you’re really not all that fucking smart, Tyler. But let me help you out. Personally, I always look at it like this: when you’re deciding between two options, even two good options… even two terrible-as-shit options… there’s always athird.”
I paused again, and I heard his dumbass voice, threatening me, in myhead.
Forget. About.Her.
“So let me tell you who Iam.”
I crouched down real low, getting eye-level with him. This time, he didn’t quite meet my eyes, looking somewhere near mychin.
“I’m the guy who doesn’t tell my brother a thing. I don’t tell my brothers outside a thing, either. I’m the guy who lets you walk out of here. Lets you go back to your sinkhole of a clubhouse. And you’re the guy who forgets about RoniWebber.”
I let him chew on that for a long moment before I spoke again. Eventually, his eyes metmine.
“You don’t go anywhere the fuck near her. You don’t make any attempt to communicate with her. You delete her contact from your phone. You unfriend her on fuckin’ Facebook, you left swipe her on fuckin’ Tinder, whatever the fuck you’ve gotta do to wipe her existence from your brain. You stay the fuck away from me. You stay the fuck away from Lex. And the second that changes, the second I hear you forgot to forget about Roni or Lex, you’re sniffing around Roni or causing trouble of any kind for any of my boys, I become a different guy, Tyler. A guy who tells my brother and my Prez exactly what you and your boys did, how you threatened Lex and your brother clubbed me in the back with a tire iron. All because you were trying to stake some bullshit claim over a woman who isn’t yours to claim.” His eyes widened a bit, and I leaned in real close to drive home my point. “She’s.Mine.”
