Page 3
“How you feeling?” Brick asked.
I shrugged then tossed a shot of whiskey back. I didn’t know how I felt. I was too afraid to feel because if I did, I’d become the monster I knew resided within me. It was the same monster I’d inherited as the son of Emric “Beast” Saint. He was feared, even behind prison walls.
I didn’t want motherfuckers to only fear me. I wanted them to fear and respect me. The fact that Genevieve was in a hospital bed with second degree burns, bruised ribs, and a broken leg told me otherwise. Bitches were fucking with me. I didn’t take too kindly to being fucked with.
“Truth?”
I swiveled my head in Brick’s direction. I loved my brother, but he could be annoying as fuck. The other brothers gave me space and allowed me to breathe, but not Brick. He was clingy as fuck. I knew why, but his hovering wouldn’t change shit. Someone had done the unforeseen, the unthinkable, and touched one of ours, and the motherfucker who did would have to pay.
“I’m listening, B.”
“Genny woke up and cried out your name. I know why you won’t go see her, but maybe you should reconsider that shit.”
I felt guilty, extremely guilty. Our baby sister was hurt on my watch. I vowed after our mother’s death just after Beast went away that, that shit would never happen again.
“I’m paying for the best of care, the absolute best. When she’s released, I’ll see her because she’ll come to stay here with me.”
He laughed then poured himself a drink. Wasn’t shit funny. Even the prospects who were here at the clubhouse kept their heads down as they ran in and out, completing errands. If they did speak, they spoke with their heads down then scurried to get the fuck out of my way. I barely touched the shit but kept it around for others since we had the best cedar wood whiskey in town. This last situation had me breaking my own rules. I didn’t believe in being fucked up, medicated, any of that shit.
I ate clean, I lived in my personalized gym, and any woman I fucked had to have a clean bill of health with proof before my sheathed dick entered her body. That included any bitch that we allowed near us, except Brick.
He had a fetish for gutter bitches, but they were all rumblers to me, even the ones that officially worked for us. I respected their hustle but none of them could or would ever be my woman or carry my last damn name. For damn sure they wouldn’t carry my seeds. In fact, no one fucking would after raising my three younger siblings. They were more than enough.
“Gen ain’t gon’ like that. You spoiled her all her life, allowed her to ride with us, shoot the shit and all, even watched her handle niggas, and now, you want her holed up under your roof. Truth, man, I feel you, but keeping her close is only a temporary answer. With that being said, we have to deal with the bigger issue, and it’s more than Gen’s care.”
I poured another shot and tossed it back. All he’d done was remind me that I’d gone against my better judgment and gave her too much rope to be out there like she wasn’t fucking royalty. She was. She was a Saint by blood, our little genius, our numbers person. She was also the only woman I loved besides our mother. God rest her soul.
“Beast is also pissed,” he added, and I scoffed. “Asked where your head is.”
I was on some “fuck Beast” shit at this point. Leave it up to him to question what happened as if it wouldn’t have happened if he was here. We ran a respectable organization, and blood was only shed when it needed to be. Fuck he thought I was doing?
“I’m sure he did.”
“That’s all you have to say?” He grabbed a bottle and eased in front of me as I sat, praying my raging thoughts settled down. “They are calling us out, Truth. I’ll be damned if we sit around like pussies with our tails tucked. Genny is fucked up.”
“Say that shit again.” I slammed my fist down and gripped him by his shirt.
The fuck he wanted me to do with no answers? Unlike him, I refused to move recklessly. Someone wanted to be at war with us, but why? That was the question. It couldn’t have been those Dice Pussies. That beef should have died almost twenty years ago when Beast went to prison if Jake and Logan had to tell it. He took Cinco, their president, and the bitches took our mother. That shit still hadn’t set right with me but I had orders to stand down. I did, but my relationship with my father paid for it. Hell, we had no relationship and never would.
I released him, shoving his big ass back. I’d never allow a bitch to fuck Brick up, but I knew he wanted me to test his entire fucking jaw. That was his strategy. He wanted me riled up, unhinged, and I was damn sure close to it.
“You finished?” He chortled softly.
“Fuck you,” I muttered, waving him off.
He slid a box across the bar counter toward me.
“The fuck is this?” I frowned.
“Open it.”
He watched me as his eyes lifted over the rim of the filled glass. See? He wanted me to fuck him up.
“And before you ask… Fuck yeah, that shit was necessary.”
I opened the box and shook my head. Inside were two fingers. One had the Dice Pound emblem ring on it. They specialized in running a gambling ring, but they were surrounded by wannabe gangster, low-level motherfuckers that wouldn’t pay out when they were supposed to. They stayed in their lane, but it didn’t mean shit was sweet. If they were involved, fuck that truce. The Saint Riderz were going to war.
With slitted eyes, I waved him closer. If he didn’t say some shit that made sense about the fucked up act he’d committed, I was slamming his face on this table.
We called him Brick because of his size. He stood at six foot three with solid arms, abs, and legs. I, however, was bigger, older, and wiser, which was why I needed to know why I had two damn fingers in a box in our fucking clubhouse.
“Talk.”
“What’s there to tell? The best way to bring a bitch out is to touch one of theirs.”
“Stupid as fuck.”
“Truth, man,” he drawled. “Like it or not, I did what I felt I needed to do. You had shut down, not allowing us to force the streets to come up off any intel, so I did a little research.”
He slid a drive to me. Damn, he really wanted me to spazz the fuck out.
“I was handling business, motherfucker.”
Just because I didn’t give him a play by play didn’t mean I wasn’t. Breeze, our sergeant at arms, and head of our security, had his orders. Brick, more than likely, had fucked them up. I knew the moment Breeze found out I would have to pull them off of each other. One was my brother, but the other was my best friend. Shit hadn’t changed over the years. They still liked to irritate the fuck out of each other.
“Let’s go to the office.”
Whatever he needed to show me, I needed to see it privately. That and I wasn’t speaking on shit in front of prospects or rumblers that buzzed around trying to catch one of our eyes. I’d fucked most of them over the years, but none were worth circling back around. The bar would open soon, and quite a few worked here from running the bar to the kitchen to making delivery runs.
Once we made it in my office, I booted up my computer and slid the drive in.
“Beast put you up to this?”
He sucked his teeth and clenched his fists.
“Fuck no, but if he did, Gen’s his daughter.”
“You forget that she’s my responsibility? He gave that up when he went to prison, B.”
He shook his head, refusing to admit the facts. Once I stepped up at nineteen, I ran shit differently. I wanted better for us and better was becoming more economically sound. I was naturally an old soul since I hung out with the OGs, asked questions, and listened more. I found a way to clean up dirty money by opening up legitimate businesses, and we’d been on the up and up ever since… until Beast would call in a favor. It was mostly shit for people that held him down that was released. I let him deal with Brick since my words were few.
“You plan to look at it anytime today?”
“You can leave at any time. I’m sure a rumbler or two is waiting out front to suck your dick.”
This nigga smiled, bobbing his head like that was something to be proud of. He needed to grow the fuck up.
I looked at my watch and released a frustrated breath. Before he dropped this shit on me, I was working on my next move for Alix, our younger brother. He hadn’t been back since early this morning, and I had scheduled a meeting with President Windsor at Chancellor University. I needed the plans I had in store for him to work, because unlike me and Brick, Alix had options. They were simple—go to school or go to fucking school. Like I said—simple.
“The fuck you get this from?” I asked when the footage came on.
“Pedro, the bitch that runs the smoke shop on the same street. He slid me the footage. I knew he owed us after we bailed him out from losing that place.”
He was a cool Mexican that had been good to the Saint Riderz over the years when we were younger.
“It goes back a few days and up to the day of the fire. It shows this motherfucker snooping around. He came through a few times with those bitches on their bikes. The day in question, though, he was alone and on foot. When he rounded the corner, I never saw him again. An hour later, our shit blew up.”
“Ever wonder if someone he was riding with was parked on that side?”
He was on to something, but I wanted to see what else he’d considered. Sometimes the obvious opp wasn’t the real opp. He was gullible like that, eager to leap and ask for forgiveness later. There were no apologies once you fucked with another MC. He knew that shit, but he had kicked it off. We would have to see it all the way through, depending on how shit played out.
“Look, I’m not counting any motherfucker out. That snake ass DP was lurking.”
“Neither am I, but this shit was sloppy as fuck. I call the shots, and if I wanted any DP touched, I would have called it. Now you’re adding more fucking bullshit to our plate.”
“For defending Gen?”
“Fuck no. For not bringing the shit to me first, Brick.”
I kicked the chair next to him. Its legs broke into pieces. He didn’t give a damn. It was clear when he chuckled and pointed at me. All he wanted was to feel the sweet taste of revenge. Problem with that was revenge wasn’t always sweet.
“Let me grab my damn plate and slide.”
He stomped off like he did whenever he wanted to have his way. I understood his anger. Breeze was setting up a meeting with Chief King at the fire station. After I sent a hefty check to him to gain access to the warehouse, Breeze was dusting every window, door, doorknob—you name it. Fingerprints mattered, not fucking fingers sitting in a box linked to a crime.
I zoomed in and studied each move carefully of every motherfucker that came into view. When I saw a few of those DPs driving up and down the street, I slowed it down. I huffed and shook my head. DP bitches loved to hit the slab and show off as they popped wheelies like little bitches. I did my shit, but Brick was right. Why the fuck were they on our side of town? When I saw one riding up slowly and alone, I leaned in closer. He looked around, pulled his helmet off, and walked down the sidewalk. Brick had to have missed that part.
As he did, he had a cellphone on his shoulder against his left cheek. The bitch was being coached. He even chuckled. I could tell from the way his shoulders lifted and fell he was too comfortable as he took orders from someone else. I needed more since he clearly didn’t act alone.
“You saw that nigga?” Brick asked when he returned with a plate mounted with ribs and chicken. The cooks started early around 5:00 AM and Brick was always the first one to sample shit—greedy motherfucker. This nigga behaved as if he had no home training. Our mother, if she were still alive, would beat his ass if she saw him.
“I did.”
“And?”
“Where is he at now?”
He smiled and winked. If he killed this nigga, I was sending Brick out of state. I needed to sit his ass down anyway if Beast was in his head that way. It took nothing for our father to put a battery in my brother’s back.
“Brick?”
I rolled my neck, allowing the built-up tension to travel down my shoulders. I pressed my elbows on my desk and leaned forward. If he didn’t speak in a few seconds, he’d be at the same hospital where Genevieve was.
“He’s cool. He passed out. I had Krystian and Biscuit break in his baby mama’s house. Dropped him in their bed... with a pair of underwear next to him.”
He cackled then slid the bone of a rib in his mouth. He was fucking up his shirt and vest but fuck him. If he wanted to walk around like he needed a bib, so be it. He had a baby face to match it. Outside of being a killer, he bragged he killed pussy too.
“It’ll be his word against ours about how his ass became disabled. He didn’t see my face, though. You know how I fucking move. Eriqua lured him into a nearby Harley Davidson shop while he was watching all that ass. He asked for her number to link up. She shot him a burner number, and the rest is in that fucking box. Nigga is two fingers down. I even fucked Eriqua in that nigga’s bed while he was passed out.”
Eriqua was our mechanic and crazy as hell for fucking with Brick. She had an all-female mechanic team who also gathered information as needed from other clubs who went there for services. It was mostly to collect intel, but if something they heard was of importance to the Saints, they brought it to us.
“You two are sick motherfuckers, really sick.”
“That’s my baby.”
And his murderer if he kept playing with her.
“Anyway, we still need to move like shit didn’t happen. Our annual race fundraiser is a month away, and we need that shit to happen. With people losing their jobs, the government cutting housing assistance and Medicaid, the community is hurting. I have the prospects finalizing the rides, food, and permits to clear the street. You know people come for the race, though. Don’t hurt yourself trying to keep up with me.”
He winked and slid another huge rib in his mouth.
I chuckled since he thought his ass would win. The winner had bragging rights, but all the money went back to the community. As soon as city commissioner, Derek Vaughn, gave us the nod, we were preparing our grand opening for a community center too. He wasn’t a Saint Rider, but he was down with the cause.
“First the race, and when it’s over, we land at the park to break ground for the new community center.”
“We need to up security. Let me call up Breeze.”
He scoffed, shaking his head. I wasn’t up for Brick’s shit today. I had two fucking fingers in a box, Genny in a hospital bed, and Alix was on another one of his disappearing acts. Fuck that. I needed another drink. I wish the fuck Beast would question me.