Page 40 of Brutal for It
Because they’re right.
She’s my heart. My soul. My everything.
And if I’m gonna drag her back from the edge, I’ll need every one of them at my side.
Still, the rage simmers. The guilt burns.
And I swear to God, if I find the motherfuckers who put her there, I’ll show them what it means when you take something that belongs to Tommy Boy Oleander.
They tell you there’s a change before any storm, a way the air gets heavy, like a room that hasn't breathed in a while. I feel that in my chest. It’s the whole house gone quiet, like somebody pulled the plug on the world and left me standing with my hands out.
Crunch called sermon. The whole lot showed up. We heard the truth in the room and the world tilted. Jami out there, deep in someone else’s teeth. Selling herself to feed a habit that wasn’t hers to keep. Ezra Rivera marked her from childhood and even dead the man still fucks with her. The thought of it makes bile burn the back of my throat the way cheap whiskey did when I was younger and thought anything could fix me.
We don’t go into territory to roam around. We don’t throw our weight around unless it’s neat, planned, and the club says so. But the club is my family and she’s mine, and the way those two things collided tonight — Crunch standing there, telling the room she was out on the street — I felt a part of me die slowly. Not because I don’t trust them to take care of her, but because this is mine to handle. I’ve been so caught up in letting her go because she asked me to, I failed to keep watch on her.
I failed her.
Now we’re in the lead-up. The pause before we move. It’s the worst part, because my head does what my hands can’t, it paints scenarios. I sit in the lot and watch the brothers come in. Red with that same heavy stride, Tripp calm like he’s already cataloging the pros and cons, Tank’s shadow across the gravel like a warning. Karma shows up too, quiet as a threat, and when the man with that name speaks, even the hardest of us keep our mouths closed.
“You boys ready?” Karma asks, not bothering to look at me first. He looks at Crunch, who looks back like a man who’s seen the worst and keeps walking anyway.
“We go together,” Crunch says. No dramatic flourish. Just a statement like a nail through two boards. “We don’t separate. We get in. We pull her out. We get out. We don’t play hero.”
There’s talk then. Rules to call. Votes to take.
I sit in the back of the room, fingers counting the grain in the table until my nails hurt. Idle time. It’s useless. Everything’s useless without her. But useless isn’t a way to live, and it’s not the way for a man who made promises.
“Tommy,” Red says finally, voice like gravel. “You good to not go in half-cocked?”
“You know me,” I answer. My voice is smaller than I mean it to be. “I don’t half-step. But I’ll listen.”
Tank folds his arms. “This isn’t about whether you’re violent or not. It’s about making sure the fallout doesn’t eat the club. If there’s a tie to another crew that runs deeper than Pamlico,” He motions toward Karma. “Then we need to know before we move.”
Karma’s face doesn’t change. “We got chatter. Boys handling shit are small time, but they came from old money. Times have changed and rather than get real jobs, they invested what they had from some dead great granddaddy into pussy and drugs. Link looked into it, looks like just a street crew, how deep things run with a supplier, maybe someone who launders things through legit fronts, that is where I think our problem lies. Could be a snake with a dozen heads.”
I want to punch something. Preferably a wall, preferably the nearest liar who decides he can put words between me and what I have to do. But anger wants results, and results demand more planning than a fist.
Crunch meets my eyes. He knows I’m going to blow. He’s been the one to catch me before I leap for years. He’s earned the right to. “We’ll do the reconnaissance first. Get the facts. If she’s with kids who don’t play fair, we bring more cover. We bring legal pathways. We bring family.”
“Family?” I scoff, meaning it as a knife. “I’m family. I don’t need a vote.”
“You’ll need your brothers,” Crunch says, and his tone stops me the way a muzzle stops a horse that wants to graze. “Karma’s right. This looks like more than a street crew. He’s called in Link and Draven, his cousins. You know, Tommy Boy, they’re the best at digging up shit on anything. We do this right. But we don’t go in like clowns with batons swinging. That’s how men die alone.”
I see it then. The picture he’s painting is ugly but true. If I go in gun hot, and if one guy gets whacked in front of Jami because he thought he was saving her, the aftermath will be an avalanche. I could get popped. She could get hurt worse. The club could get a target painted on its back, and the entire Hellions Motorcycle Club could be tangled in my mess.
“No one’s gonna say she’s fair game because she messed up,” I spit. “But you got to understand—if someone says a single word to her while I’m breathing, I will?—”
“—kill them,” Red finishes for me.
“—kill them,” I repeat. It’s not a threat. It’s a fact I’m capable of proving.
Tank hums low. “We make a plan that keeps the club intact and her safe. We don’t unnecessarily escalate. We don’t go in with names raised. We thread a needle nice and slow before we sew the whole situation shut.”
It sounds bureaucratic. It sounds like someone’s measuring human lives in ledger columns. But it’s the only way some men survive. You measure the cost. Then you decide if you’re prepared to pay.
“Alright,” Crunch continues taking charge, voice slicing through the talk. “Recon. Get the locations. Name the people. We find out if she’s with an organized crew, a runner, a feeder. Karma, you got your boys, keep them on watch?”
Karma leans forward like a viper preparing to strike. “This is what I got so far. There’s a front, some run down motel, looks legit on paper. Supposedly used as a stash point and for moving people. The street-level boys are puppets. Pull one thread, you pull a whole damn sweater. The name that keeps popping up isn’t tied to the Pamilco area directly. Hell, they aren’t even from North Carolina. It’s an entire organization out of Jersey. They supply the boys here. Mason is the man running the show here. Outside of the supply though, ties seem very thin. He buys from Caputo, but the gangster doesn’t seem to be backing him in any capacity. But Caputo is serious with deep pockets if these guys are working under him.”
