Page 59 of Riding Hard

Hound shakes his head. “We’re going higher up.”

“How high?”

“All the way to the top. We’re meeting with their Pakhan.”

“Holy fuck,” I hiss. “I wonder if anyone has ever met him like this before?”

This seems like a really fucking big deal or a death wish—I’m not sure which, and I don’t know if I even want to find out, but it seems like I don’t have a choice.

“The Sovietnik and Obshchak, which was explained to me, are their lawyer and their treasurer.”

“And soldiers, no doubt,” I grunt.

Hound chuckles. “Without a doubt. I would be shocked if we weren’t fucking surrounded with guns pointed at our heads for the duration. Who the fuck knows, but we want to work with them, so this is how we’re going to have to do it.”

Curling my lip, I let out a noise from the back of my throat. “Who wants to work with them?” I ask. “This shit is out of necessity and necessity only.”

“Yeah,” Hound mutters. “Necessity, but I have a good feeling about this. They were receptive and even excited about it. Especially since they liked the way we handled the last situation with them.”

“Yeah,” Wrath calls out. “My epic fuckup.”

Turning my head, I look over to him. “You did what any of us would have done. On paper, it looked fucking magical,” I reminded him of that fucked-up deal.

The epic fuckup where we burned down an event center for the promise of our cut of the insurance money, only to discover that the asshole who made the deal didn’t really own shit. His wife was married to one of the higher-ups of the Perov Bratva, playing a long con and trying to bleed that fuck dry.

Why the hell they would attempt to fuck over the Bratva, I have no goddamn clue. I guess the same kind of people who would try to fuck over a one-percent MC club. Fucking psychos is what they are.

Now I’m not sure what kind of fucking mess that shit has started. Because here we are, offering our hands with a smile and wanting to form some sort of partnership or alliance, whatever the fuck, with them.

I know it’s our only current option, but it still feels scary as fuck, and I know we’re getting in over our heads. Sure, we could call our club members from all over the country, and we might have a fighting chance with them, but the Russians are without a doubt stronger than we are, and I’ve never, not ever, wanted to get into any kind of scuffle with them.

“Well, it doesn’t change the fact that we’re in a mess, and I don’t think we’ll be able to dig ourselves out of it, not without their connections,” Wrath murmurs. “We’re fucked, and it’s true. Their shit is the only way to get out of this.”

“We really should have gone farther into Vegas, Henderson, and possibly even LA for connections over the years. We really did ourselves zero favors by sticking to Boulder City and trying to keep the jobs small.”

We kept the jobs small because we could do them consistently without many people looking into anything. Especially here, mainly because we are in contact with the police and fire. It’s the best way to keep the peace for everyone and get paid without anyone going to jail.

Money and no jail time were always priorities.

Now here we are, going to Vegas, dealing with high-profile organized crime, a bunch of shit we never even considered a year ago. Here we fucking are, ready to risk everything over something we said we would never fucking do.

But we’ve got a dying business and a club to build. We can’t grow shit burning down box houses for a couple of grand every few months. We need to think bigger, we need to think better, and these fucks have the contacts for that.

“Let me call Juliette so I can ask her to pick Cade up from school and take him home. There’s no way I’m going to make it back in time to get him.”

“We leave at noon,” Wrath says. “I want to give us some time to find it, then have a little conversation before we head in.”

Picking up my phone from the table, I find Juliette’s new number and touch the call icon. Holding the phone to my ear, I wait for her to answer. When she does, her simple hello goes straight to my fucking cock.

So damn sweet.

CHAPTER

FORTY-NINE

LOOT

Sitting on my bike in the parking lot a mile from the Russians’ fancy-as-fuck neighborhood, I close my eyes and let out a sigh. I know that if a cop drove by right now, they’d flip around and pull into this parking lot, asking us what the fuck we’re doing here.