Page 11 of Bullet

Jazzy, with her lips pursed, rolled a lollipop in her mouth. “Care to make a side bet?” she asked Rogue, the VP of our club.

Sully, her dad, wore the Sergeant at Arms patch. “Ah, not this shit again.” He tossed his cards on the table. “I’m out.”

Blade laughed. Our president was young, but he was solid. The kid had a shit life growing up, but then who didn’t? His mom was clean now. She gave up the pipe after her old man gave up the ghost with a lethal dose of heroin.

Rogue slammed his shot of whiskey with Steele, one of the new members of the MC. “Another round.”

I’d sponsored Steele and two of his Crawler brothers. They weren’t pussies or patch poachers. They wanted to belong to something real, a brotherhood that wasn’t laced with lies.

A few months ago, I’d infiltrated the Crawlers to bring them down. I’d nearly been exposed because I wouldn’t shoot their pharmaceutical shit into my veins, but Steele, Kodiak, and Vega had protected my identity.

They weren’t the only Crawlers wanting to patch over after the two clubs had gone to war. Wrench, their president was dead, and the Crawlers were done.

Heller’s had their own brand of justice. We took care of our own.

Kodiak and Vega worked behind the club’s bar, The Altar. Friday nights were always busy. Tonight, at church, we’d taken the vote. Three Crawlers finally understood what it meant to be part of the Heller Raiders. They were good guys who had watched their club become toxic under shit leadership. I’d buried several of their former patches in the woods of my property.

The days of menace and mayhem were in the club’s past. But I’d never be on the right side of the law. I was never giving up my girls. But we weren’t fencing parts, muling for the cartel, and girls like Kiss weren’t overdosing on H in our bathroom anymore.

I didn’t want to think about Kiss. She was a slave to black. Nothing any of us had tried had kept her off heroin.

The song changed. Hana tossed back her drink and pulled her best friend Pippa into the center of the room, and they started dancing.

“Can you stop her?” Vance, we called him Torch because of his golden arm with a welder, pointed to his sister. When Blade started fucking Torch’s little sister, the once angry asshole patched back into the MC. This was where he belonged.

Blade laughed. “You can’t tell her shit.”

Torch leaned his head back and groaned. “She’s a menace.”

Hana wore aProperty of Bladepatch on the back of her cut. The girl was a hundred pounds wet, but she was all fire. She’d ride or die for Blade and the MC.

Steele pulled a chair up to the table. “I need to talk to you about a room,” he said to Blade.

The MC used to be a church. The nave became the main room for our gatherings. Scarred and chipped tables scattered around the room surrounded by ladder-back chairs. The hardwood floor was original to the church, and the altar had become the club’s bar.

We fought in the basement, and classrooms had been converted to bedrooms and offices. Rents and the bar made money for the club.

I shook my head. “Your finger is still bloody from sewing on your patch.”

“I’m living in a trailer out at my brother-in-law’s jobsite.” Steele was in the middle of an ugly divorce, fighting for time with his kid.

Blade nodded to Romeo. “He’ll get you settled in.”

Romeo was the club’s treasurer. Reformed bad boy, he’d gotten with the little prude, Levi, and put a bean in her belly. How that pint-sized princess was going to push out a Heller baby was a mystery. But then she’d been riding Romeo. He’d earned his road name. They’d moved into Rogue’s room in the MC, and Rogue was living in Jazzy’s loft.

“What’s the bet?” Rogue asked Jazzy.

She popped her sucker out of her mouth. “If I win, you work my shift down at Crew Custom Cycle. I already know what you want, and you don’t have to win the bet to get it.”

Sully scooted his chair back and stood. “I don’t need to hear this shit.”

She’d always be a club princess to her old man. What the fuck did he expect? He raised her in the MC.

“I’ll go with you.” I tossed my cards on the table.

“Awe, are you jealous?” Jazzy asked me.

I grabbed my crotch. “Nah. I still have my balls.”

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