Page 5 of Savage Temptation
If I’m getting a bullet tonight, I’d rather it be from a man I love than a man I loath.
2
STORM
Ihave every intention of killing someone tonight. I want graves filled with bodies and I will be the one to put them there.
People ask how I got the name Storm. Truth is, I didn’t choose it, my Savage brothers did, after what happened a couple of parishes over a few years back. A rival biker crew crossed into our territory looking for trouble and harassed our townspeople.
That doesn’t fly with the Savage brothers.
The air was thick with the stench of spilled beer and sex when I walked into their dive bar that night. Those bastards preyed on anyone weaker and thought they could do anything they pleased.
My mission that night was to teach them otherwise. Unlucky for them, that was also the night I lost the woman I love.
Emilia. She never showed up for the nuptials. I don’t kill for pleasure. Well, shit. I take that back. That night I did, but they had it coming. My brothers had my back, but I stormed in shotgun blazing, and I eliminated every fucker who thought they could come into our parish and hurt our women and children.I’m not interested in second chances for monsters. So I sent every last one of them to their early grave.
Since then, my brothers call me Storm.
And now it looks like my special skill set is needed again.
Detectives have the staff along one wall peppering them with questions. On the other wall are a few remaining patrons who got caught up in the mess when all they wanted was to have a good time tonight. Even a flower guy is caught up in the mess. Ain’t life full of surprises. They will no doubt tell all their friends not to come back to the Voodoo Lounge. What a PR nightmare this will be.
“Can someone please turn that shit off? We don’t need to watch it on T.V. when it’s going down right under our noses for God’s sake, man.”
Voodoo’s bartender glowers in my direction, but Bourbon juts his chin out in acknowledgement and shuts off the flatscreen near the bar. Normally it has some kind of sensual scene playing out on the forty-two inches, but tonight the front of my bar is plastered across the expanse.
Three drug overdoses in my house.
For fuck’s sake.
I scrub a hand down my face, feeling every last one of my forty-one years.
In the seven years I’ve worked this place alongside my Savage Reign brothers we’ve managed to keep drugs and prostitution out. You can’t do other shady shit if the law has you in their scopes. That’s common sense.
And now this. We’ll be lucky if law enforcement allows us to stay open after this. Reaper will want the heads of everyone who allowed deals to go down inside our walls. And I’m going to line them up for him. If I leave anyone alive long enough, that is. Our president isn’t a wildcard. None of the Savage Reign crew are. We all keep to the rules we agreed upon when we formed our brotherhood.
No drugs. No trafficking of humans. No hurting the innocent. Pretty damn simple and straightforward.
Everything else is fine as long as we stay under the radar. We are not saints by any means. We make money from a lot of shady means. Strip clubs. Yes. Gambling. Yep. Gun running…sure. It’s damn good money and we use the profits to help people who can’t help themselves. And then we have the bars and lounges like this place. There’s a good amount of people who come to this town looking for a good time and the Savage crew aim to provide safe places for people to party.
But drugs are a hard fucking no.
So how the hell did it get into our territory?
I pull a phone out and pull up Cipher’s name. He’s our in-house hacker and the one with his ear to the ground and knows whose shoulder to tap for intel. Someone knows something.
“Yo? What’s up?” Cipher picks up on the first ring.
“Turn on the news. Three overdoses. I got here after the fact, but I’m getting it under control.”
Cipher lets out a low whistle. “Tell me what you need. Reaper will be pissed.” I can hear his fingers already moving over a keyboard.
The club’s cut over my shoulders never felt so heavy. I can be pissed off at the world right now, but it doesn’t matter. This happened on my watch. This is my responsibility.
“Fact, man. He’s my next call. While I do that, I need you to talk to your guys. Let’s get some names and a list going.”
He grunts with the same level of disgust I feel burning a hole in the pit of my stomach. “You’re talking about the Vultures and what went down with Arabelle, aren’t you?”
