Page 28 of Ink's Devil

He’s not the only one. Christ. Were they all watching out the window? Haven’t they got better things to do on a Sunday morning?

I threaten Mace with loss of a body part if he doesn’t shut his mouth. Pal gets promised a painful death.

“What the fuck business is it of yours?” I yell at Pyro waspishly when he joins in.

Mel’s man shrugs. “Only give back to you what you like to dish out.”

I suppose he’s right. If it was any of my brothers, I’d be the one making jokes at their expense. But hey, I don’t like the tables being turned. I throw up my hands and walk off into the kitchen to get something to eat. Of course, I bump into Jayden who gives me a frosty look.

“What? No apology?” I challenge her.

“I think you should say sorry to me,” she huffs.

Pal’s come in behind me. He taps me on the shoulder and when I turn around, he leans in. “Her ass is a little sore this morning,” he explains.

I raise my fist, he bumps his against it.

His woman snorts, but when I turn back to her, she hasn’t been quick enough to hide her grin.

“Demon wants us!” comes a shout from the clubroom.

As I predicted, an emergency church is called.

His birthday passed and over, Demon’s all seriousness now and wastes no time getting down to business. “Cad, you’ve gone back over the footage from yesterday?”

“I have. There was only what I saw at the time. A couple of men talking, cash changing hands, behind Tits Up, where we installed those cameras. You know, the ones we’ve disguised.”

“That all?” Lizard asks.

Cad shoots him a look. “It’s enough, isn’t it? We’re looking for people dealing, that could have been what this was.”

“But by the time we arrived, they’d disappeared,” I observe.

“Left evidence,” says Mace, grimly. “While you were getting your dicks wet this morning, I went back and checked in daylight.”

Shit and fucks are exclaimed as Mace throws some baggies down on the table.

“They were shooting up around there?”

“There, or close by,” the enforcer confirms.

Last thing we want is people leaving used needles around our premises. We don’t deal in drugs and don’t want that reputation.

“Worse than that,” Mace nods at the bags on the table, “one of those came from Devils’ Pins which I thought I should also check out.”

Rusty draws in air through his teeth as our bowling alley is mentioned at the same time as Demon’s hand slams down on the table. “Thought we’d seen the last of this type of shit when Taser set the club up. Tits Up is one thing and we can keep an eye on it, but discarded needles where kids play? That’s just fucked up.”

“You think we’re being targeted again?” the VP asks. Beef might not have been around at the time, but it didn’t take long for him to bring himself up to speed with all matters affecting the club. The reference to Taser does indeed show where the prez’s head might be at.

“Could be,” says Thunder, “or it could just be we’ve got good locations which other people don’t use. The Wretched Soulz and Mafia are active in their own areas and know to stay out of ours.”

He’s right. Someone new dealing would easily stick out where the dealers are well known, so they’d avoid taken territory.

“We need to make sure we have a visible presence around our premises to chase anyone off and let them know their trade isn’t welcome.”

“That was my thought, Mace. Hate to put more on us but can’t see anything else for it. We keep drugs out of these areas, it makes less work for the law.”

Beef nods. One of the first things he did when he was voted in was to start a dialogue with the cops. A new police chief had arrived in Pueblo just before Beef. After checking his reputation out, Beef had gotten a meeting with him and had come to an understanding where our decisive position on drugs was made known. Might be an easy way of earning money, but there’s too much chance of a brother getting addicted or going inside. Devils have been clear of that shit for years now. Not only don’t we touch it, we don’t tolerate it in the part of town we control. Got some respect for that, can’t afford to lose that respect now.

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