Page 31 of Brother to Brother

“Jesus Fucking Christ! What would he go and do a damn fool thing like that for?”

“Perceived disrespect, she told him to turn his music down in a less than polite way. What’s worse, he was gonna do it in front of Noah.”

“Shit, they okay?”

“Shook up, scared as fuck, I got Rush and Nox there watching ‘em but we need to get ahead of this before all hell breaks loose.”

“You on your way here?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I shouted above the road noise. “Be there in like ten more.”

“Noted, I’ll get us a sitdown with their shotcaller,” he said.

“Be there soon,” I said to the empty air, Dragon had already hung up on me.

***

Something like an hour later; Dragon, me, Reaver, Duracell, and Blue were riding up on neutral territory. The man of the hour, the shotcaller for the Fiddy Street Crew, waited with some of his street soldiers outside a couple of tricked out black Escalades.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” he called out when we’d shut off the bikes.

“Seems to me you might want to tug on a leash or two before me an’ mine get a mite upset,” Dragon said dispassionately.

I stood in my appointed place and tuned out the conversation. The last thing I wanted was for the club to get in another war, and the last thing I needed was to get pissed off and shove us headlong in that direction. I’d called Dragon for a reason, because if anyone could get us out of this using diplomacy it was him. Additionally, if there was anyone who could get me the other thing I wanted, it was him… and what I really,reallywanted was that motherfucker’s head on a pike.

“So you’re telling me that if you don’t get this cat’s head that it’s gonna be war?” I heard the shotcaller say.

“That’s about the size of it, yeah.”

Go Dragon,I thought. Color me impressed, I didn’t expect him to be that direct. The shotcaller looked skeptically at us for a full minute, taking our measure as to how serious he thought we were being.

“Man you must be some kind of crazy,” he said, the scepticism in his eyes coloring his voice. It was Reaver who beat me to saying it…

“Tell that to the Suicide Kings,” he said and I tried not to smirk and failed. So did the rest of the guys on our side of the proverbial line in the sand.

The shotcaller called back over his shoulder to one of his men something that sounded like ‘groan main’ which was the weirdest fuckin’ name I’d ever heard, and with our road names, I’d heard some fuckin’ doozies. I didn’t comment, I wanted to see what was what.

“Yeah, Boss?”

“Who runs out of the apartments on twenty-sixth and Vine?” he asked.

“That’d be Shorty Mac, Boss.”

“Uh huh,” he said and licked his bottom lip, head back, lookin’ down his nose at all of us. I gritted my teeth and I could see Duracell doin’ the same.

“Alright, y’all do you. You disappear this one man with no interference from me an’ mine we cool?”

“Oh yeah, we’d be cool,” Dragon said.

The shotcaller nodded slowly, considering, “Y’all some badass motherfuckers, we want no beef wit’ you. You want him, you can have him. Rapin’ girls in front of their kids is bad for business as is evidenced by this little party we’re havin’ right here.”

“I don’t disagree,” Dragon said.

“Cool, we cool then?”

“No interference from you and yours, we’ll be cool as soon as the job is done.”

“So be it.”

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