Page 4 of Havoc

Slater looked all kinds of pleased with himself. One of his buddies yelled, “Hands up until we tell you otherwise.”

What the fuck?

I did as he said. When my hands went up, Slater started smirking all over the place. At that point, I really hated this man.

I watched as they hauled the owner of the bar out from the back. When they got him to the front door, they announced loudly, “Bruno Romano, you’re being arrested for the distribution of narcotics. That’s a Class A felony in this state.” Bruno was visibly shocked by this latest turn of events. He kept looking at Slater, like he expected him to put a stop to all this. Slater didn’t stop anything, in fact, he threw more fuel on the fire. He directed his buddies right where to go to find Bruno’s drugs.

The officer then turned to the rest of us and announced, “We’re going to perform a search of every patron in this bar, and anyone found with drugs will be charged with possession of illicit substances.”

I didn’t have drugs, nor did my friends. But I had to wonder if Slater had it in his mind to plant some on me as payback for rejecting him. I was beginning to think he was a dirty cop.

Fortunately, they didn’t get a chance to search or arrest any of us because that group of bikers we’d seen earlier had grown in numbers. Now, there were over a dozen of them, and they started turning over tables and messing the place up. One of them set off the fire alarm, and the cops were forced to let us all leave the building. Once the night air hit us in the face, my friends and I ran for our vehicles and made a clean getaway.

Chapter 2

Havoc

The evening was rocking along at the Dark Slayer’s clubhouse. Most of the brothers were in the bar area, sucking down cold beers, playing poker, and shooting pool. A few were lucky enough to be making out with a hot old lady or club girl in the sex club downstairs. That night, prospects were behind the bar and the front gate, so the brothers were free to kick back and relax. It was just any given Saturday because that was just how we rolled.

After a few rounds of poker and a game of pool, I was at a loss as to what to do with myself. I remembered the light fixture in the meeting room had been flickering. I thought it had a loose wire, and it seemed like an easy fix. We were having church bright and early in the morning, which was why I was spending the night at the club. This was something that was totally within my wheelhouse, and a good deed I could do for my club.

I happily grabbed the toolbox from our storage closet and pulled the ladder out. As I was heading to the meeting room, I passed Mace. His eyebrows flew up in surprise. “What the fuck are you doing, Havoc?”

“Not much. I thought I’d have a look at that flickering light in the back room.”

“Are you sure you should be risking that? Things have a habit of going wrong on your watch.”

I grinned at him. “Yeah, but not this time. Trust me, I know what I’m doing now.”

Mace grinned, telling me ruefully, “Didn’t you say that last time, when you nearly flooded the kitchen?”

I insisted, “This time is different. You’ll see.”

“Alright, man. Call me if you need me.”

When we parted ways, I couldn’t have been more confident in my ability to make this small repair. I knew I’d made my fair share of mistakes in the past, but it still stung that my club brothers doubted my ability to get things done. I wished they trusted me more. I was always in the background, because of my fuckups I was rarely asked to go on club business. I really wanted to show them that they hadn’t made a mistake patching me into the club.

I set up the ladder and took out a handful of choice tools climbing up to take a look at the light. When I took the cover off, the light flickered. I carefully pulled out the light socket and wiggled the wiring, testing each wire to see if there were any weak connections. Surprisingly, all the wires were securely connected. That meant there was likely a short somewhere deeper in the system.

Truth be told, I was holding too many tools to really dig around inside the socket. So, I fumbled around trying to lay the tools on top of the ladder and mistakenly dropped the socket. In my attempt to grab it, I accidentally yanked out a bunch of the wires.

The next thing I knew, the sprinklers popped on and doused me. I’d somehow managed to trigger the fire alarm as well as the sprinkler system. The high-pitched, ear-splitting screech of the fire alarm reverberated in my head, making it difficult to think my way through the situation.

The one thing I knew was that the building’s wiring did have a short somewhere, and some dumbass had connected the lights, sprinklers, fire alarm, and God only knew what else to the same breaker. No matter what I did, the water kept raining down from above—an endless, unrelenting deluge that I couldn’t seem to stop. I was arm-deep in the ceiling, feeling around, and I ended up getting shocked so strongly that I lost my balance and fell off the ladder.

I could hear women screaming and my club brothers’ boots hitting the floor as they ran around. I imagined there was lots of leather and lace getting drenched downstairs. Thunder shouted for everyone to clear the clubhouse. Storm shouted to Grit, “Shut the water off for the whole fucking building until we can get this sorted!”

“You got it, boss.” I heard his footsteps racing away towards the back door.

I cringed, thinking that should have been my first move too.

Suddenly, I was surrounded by my club brothers.

Storm spat out, “I should have fucking known it was you, Havoc.” He stood above me, bare-chested and dripping wet. His ice-blue eyes were glistening with anger as he gazed down at me. At that moment, my Prez looked downright terrifying.

I tried to push myself up with one arm, groaning at the pain in my shoulder blade.

Breaker reached down and hauled me up by my other arm. “What in the ever-lovin’ fuck did you do this time, Havoc?”

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