Page 3 of Bad Like Me

2

Crow

“Diablo,I gotta be somewhere, so can we please move this shit along?” I loudly muttered over the rattling of the chain as he cut it in two, and I ran my rough fingertips over my beard. He glared at me, catching the lock in his palm as it released from the chain.

“Fucking man up, Crow. We have to get this shit done. They crossed the line this time. These motherfuckers owe us these guns, even if they don’t think they do. They’re ours. They should have kept up their end of the deal, and we wouldn’t be taking the whole lot. Oh well, c’est la vie.” Diablo smiled, pulling a rag from his pocket and rubbing his prints off the silver metal before tossing it into the grass.

“I know. The fuckers screwed us over. These are our guns, no question. But if your slow ass doesn’t hurry up, this is about to be a solo mission,” I snapped out of frustration, questioning Ghoul’s decision for sending me on such an important trip with a careless shit like Diablo. He was my brother, and I trusted him with my life as I did with any of our other brothers, but Diablo wasn’t my first choice for an accomplice. Hell, he wasn’t even my second in line for the job. I would have taken any other brother from the Royal Bastards MC. He was too impulsive and unpredictable for my liking. I heard Jameson was headed back to New Orleans, I’d give my left nut to have him by my side or the right for Koyn from our Tulsa Chapter to be here. Fuck, Sleeper and Sledge would have been perfect for this job, but they were on the road somewhere between here and West Virginia moving Roane’s Old Lady’s shit.

Diablo was notorious for being loud as fuck and couldn’t diffuse a situation to save his life, hence his road name. He hadn’t gotten it for being the best in situations such as this. More often than not, he went into things with guns blazing and always left a fucking mess behind him. He was the type to shoot first and ask questions later. Maybe that was why Ghoul chose him as my second for this; Diablo was a sharpshooter, spook veteran from the army. It could have been we were the perfect combination of reason and chaos, but in my opinion, the two of us gave the very definition of disaster to the dictionary.

Our now rival MC, The Dogs of Chaos, had taken the guns we were supposed to split fifty/fifty and ignorantly stored them all at the same location we’d agreed to do so in the first place. The problem was, it was their warehouse, not ours.

The plan had been that after Sledge, Flashman, and Circuit headed the truck off at the West Virginia/Ohio line, The Dogs were to grab the goods and meet up with us later. The problem was, they never showed. After the whole debacle went down, it came to light that their state boss decided to keep the guns for their brothers and cut our club out of the deal. That didn’t go over well with any of us Bastards, so here I was with the loudest mother fucker on the planet doing a B&E to take what was owed to us, trying to keep his ass in check so I could go to a funeral I wouldn’t be very welcomed at.

“Remember what Ghoul said, grab what we can and then get the fuck out of dodge,” I quietly reminded Diablo as he slowly stepped into the warehouse behind me. Flipping a switch to his right, he waited for something to happen. Clearly, he hadn’t been paying too much attention when we met with The Dogs since they told us the switch didn’t work; therefore, I didn’t stand around like a dumbass or look up expecting lights to brighten.

“Yeah, Crow. I got this shit. Quit trying to be my mom and pull the truck up.” He laughed, plucking his keys from his pocket and adjusting his fresh cut. It hadn’t been too long ago that he was patched into the Bastards, so he took every chance given to bring attention to his leather. It might have impressed the club whores and even the prospects, but it did nothing for me. I had almost three years on him in the club, and my cut was so worn, it didn’t even smell like leather anymore. It had more of a lingering scent of exhaust and booze to it. It was seasoned, unlike him or the leather strapped over his torso.

“I’ll get the truck but remember your place, Diablo,” I barked, instantly pissed that he had the balls to call me his mom, even if I knew damn well his point was more than valid. I was over hesitant and filled with anxiety. None of it was related to what we were doing, though. We would get the guns and not run into a problem, and if we did, we would handle it. I didn’t give a shit how many motherfuckers had to die, the job was finished when I left.

Hell, the reason I was on edge had nothing to do with our club. If I was being honest with myself, it had everything to do with my past I was willingly throwing myself into the damn middle of after working so hard to get away from it.

Ray was back in town. Of course, she was. Her dad had died, and it was his funeral I was in a rush to get to. I didn’t know if I was nervous about seeing her or her dad’s lifeless body, but I refused to face that dilemma right now. I had to stay on point for our mission. When a dumbass wasn’t focused, that was when mother fuckers wound up dead. I planned to wreak havoc on this world for at least a couple more years, so I cleared my head of everything apart from the here and now. I would deal with the rest of it when I had to, but until then, it was an out of sight out of mind type of thing. It had to be.

“I know. I know. You’re the VP, and I’m just a peon, but we’re brothers all the same. I’m in this shit with you, brother.” He clapped me on the back and smiled. “Fuck the world, right?”

“Yep. Fuck. The. World.” I tried to stop the smirk as it crept onto my lips, but I couldn’t. He was right. Fuck the rest. I was here with my brother and the remainder of the world and its occurrences didn’t matter at the moment. We had a job to do, and we would get it done. It was as cut and dry as that, regardless if I was nervous as fuck to see her. The fact I had counted the days that had passed since we’d last spoken wasn’t important right now. What I had to focus on was keeping my brother and me alive and bringing back the goods that rightfully belonged to the Bastards. The rest of the world would just have to fall to the wayside because first and foremost, I was a Royal Bastard, and then I was Logan Williams. Even though my legal name was rarely spoken anymore, it didn’t matter, there was still a past, and a long story that came along with it—one I didn’t revisit often because it wasn’t exactly who I was anymore. There was a thing about a person’s past, it didn’t matter what amazing or shitty things you did to create a future, there would always be someone from your past to tug you back into it. Some people easily forgot yesterday, and some still lived in the days most had forgotten.

“You get the cage.” I chuckled, dropping his key ring into his open hand and pulled a crowbar out of the exposed toolbox beside me. “You’re right. I am the vice, and if anyone is taking lead on this one, it’s me.”

“There he is,” Diablo admired, turning to leave me and get the vehicle.

* * *

“What dowe do with this place?” Diablo asked, loading the last crate into the back and closing the doors behind it.

“Board up the windows and torch that mother fucker!” I shouted. “No one fucks with the Royal Bastards. This will make them remember that!” I grabbed a gas can, flipping the lid open, and doused everything surrounding me.

“Damn straight, brother. Damn straight,” he repeated, pulling a matchbook from his pocket, and a deep sadistic laugh left his body. “Nobody fucks with the Royal Bastards.”

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