ONE

Hooch

Numbers were never my thing. The day the gavel passed to me after my old man’s death, I appointed Digits as my treasurer for a reason: he likes equations, problems, and solving the riddles they present. He thirsts for the challenge.

I just get thirsty.

As it is, I’ve downed half a bottle of Jack during the course of his latest financial report in an effort to keep myself from crawling back to bed. I don’t get up for much these days; the fact I’m here now should be an honor to the fuckers sitting around me.

I pour another two fingers of whiskey and swirl their amber beauty in the tumbler as I listen to Digits wrap up our profits and losses for the month from his spot at the far end of the table.

“Overall, if we carry on down this path then I think we’ll be looking at the Wingmen making a move sooner rather than later.” Digits presses his index finger to the bridge of his glasses and pushes them higher on his nose. Fucker looks like Clark Kent with those things on. “Decline in sales versus increase in what’s comin’ in from across the border confirms that somebody else is pickin’ up the slack, which also means we’ll be seen as weak and vulnerable if word gets out that we’re on the losing end of these figures.”

“Who you think it is?” my road captain, Murphy, asks. “Last we had anything to do with the Wingmen they were involved with the Koreans, but coke’s never been their style.”

“You’re right,” I say before tossing back the drink in my hand. “Koreans don’t deal with anythin’ but ice. Those vigilante Wingmen fuckers are probably onto a new alliance.”

The Wingmen. The enemy every gang and club in the greater states loves to hate. A ruthless group of mercenaries hashed together out of the men too smart to get imprisoned for the crimes they commit. The elite. The best of the best, and the men you want on your speed dial, even though they might be the next to take you out in exchange for the right price paid by your foe.

The Wingmen come to visit, you’d better hope it was because you called them.

“Only Carlos and Eddie distributed coke around here,” Murphy says. “We took both those assholes out.”

“Exactly.” I shove the tumbler further along the table before I pour myself another and fall off the fucking chair. “We’ve got new competition, men. Some cockroach who’s crawled out of the wreckage after the fire.”

Grumbles ripple around the table like the incoming tide, growing louder as they return back to where I sit at the head.

“Crackers, you and Digits better head down to San Antonio for the night and see what you can get out of our mule friends out at Floresville. If there’s somebody sniffin’ around the border, they should have heard about it.”

“Sure thing.”

“King’s going to want details, and I want us to have the answer to any question he might have.” I bang the gavel down and lean back as my VP collects Digits on the way out of the chapel.

The room clears out, all but Murphy, the stocky Irishman sitting hunched over the table as his hands lay clasped before him. He avoids my pointed stare, choosing instead to run his eye over the lacquered emblem in the center of the table made from three different types of wood.

“Somethin’ you need to talk about?” I swivel to face him dead on, reading the unsaid concern in the curve of his spine, the stiffness in his shoulders.

“You think we can pull this off?” He turns to face me.

I sigh, looking him in the eye. Murphy’s been with the club as long as my father. The two of them started the Fort Worth chapter together, recruiting from jaded ex-servicemen and wayward teenagers lined up outside the welfare office. The time stateside has dulled Murphy’s accent, but it’s done nothing to his ability to read a situation for what it really is.

If a meet is about to turn south, Murphy’s the first to pick it. A member isn’t quite acting himself? Murphy will call it before they can be coerced to flip by opportunistic law enforcers. Hell, you’re about to have a bad day? Yeah, Murphy will let you know before it even hints at turning to shit.

Which is why his concern over our plan to eliminate the coke in Fort Worth has me worried. Not that I’ll let him know that.

“King’s managed to reduce usage in Lincoln while chasing out the competition. Don’t see why we can’t do it as well.”

A slight twitch to Murphy’s jaw is the only indication he’s not buying my false confidence.

“You think they’ll find anything by diggin’ around San Antonio?”

“A man’s got to try.”

“Whoever’s taking up the slack, if they’ve got the wherewithal’s to hire the Wingmen, then they’re not the kind to take it lightly if they hear we’re sniffin’ around.”

“Well aware of that, brother.”

He heaves out a laden breath and leans back, fists still clenched on the timber before him. “You and I might be flyin’ solo, but most of these men have family in the area. We start a conflict, it’s more than just us we need to worry about.”

“You got a point to this?” I snap. I mean, I love the guy, but talk about stating the obvious. Does he think I lie awake at night for fun?

“My point,” he says, pushing his chair out and standing, “is that we need to tread carefully. Every decision leads us down a very different path. The people we’re dealin’ with, the Wingmen, they ain’t as forgivin’ as our petty crime pals.”

“I know.” Everyone thought Carlos was dangerous when the fucker was still alive. Thing is, one madman can be contained. Two can be controlled. But when you have a dozen or more crazy bastards who, although they’re not quite at Carlos’s level of insanity yet, are dangerous in their own right working a dozen separate agendas, it’s kind of like facing down a bullet versus a spray of shrapnel; there’s shit flying at you from all directions. Takes one hell of a man to keep that sort of mess under control. A man like my father was, like King’s becoming, and like I sure as hell ain’t.

Murphy offers me a tight nod in reply to my apparent silence on the matter, and leaves the room, closing the doors behind him. I drag a hand over my face, pulling the snakebite piercings down as I do. My lip snaps back into position with an audible pop as I let go of my beard and look down to where my phone rests in my lap.

One unread message.

I tap in my passcode and swipe through to the simple sentence.

One week.

Yeah, this club’s got more to worry about than a fucking bunch of wannabe gangsters taking over the coke distribution in Texas—one that gets around in a black suit, brandishing a business card bearing three simple letters: D, E, and A.

Donovan motherfucking Jessup.

A.K.A. Satan’s bitch-boy.