Kade

 

I’d have to be about the dumbest man in the world not to realize what game Lana’s playing, coming in here like that and getting me all fuckin’ riled up. Like she thinks I don’t want to go in there and give it to her, like she thinks that’s not all I’ve been thinking about. But when a man’s got a crisis on his hands it can be damn difficult to find the time for lust. And by the time I get to bed with her, normally around two in the morning, I’m too damn tired to do much else but give her a touching up.

 

When she leaves, my cock is still rock-hard. It’s still rock-hard ten minutes later when I have a meet with the guys, a round-table on this Italian problem. I close my eyes and use the time-worn trick of thinking about mundane things to get her out of my head. I think about chairs, and lightbulbs, and grass—anything but the way she moaned, the heat of her lips. Finally, I calm down and go into the bar, to the table where the men sit. But that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking of her, a backing track to my thoughts, always there.

 

I’m supposed to go with Scud to the outskirts of ’green after this, but I reckon I might be skipping that.

 

I sit down at the head of the table and tell myself to focus. Scud sits to my left, where Duster would normally be sitting. Seeing Scud there instead of Duster makes me want to punch the man directly in the face. Not even his fault, or anything to do with him. It’s just that Duster should be there, dammit. Duster should be sitting there cracking some moronic joke that nobody wants to hear, or saying something sincere that nobody else would have the balls to say. Or something. Anything but this. Anything but the ashy remains in the urn in a drawer in my office desk.

 

The rest of the guys are here, too: Mountain, Earl, Glover, Barge, Noname, Fowler, and Copeland. All of them in their leathers and most of them with worried expressions on their faces. The Italians have been spotted around Evergreen and more than once our guys have gotten into fights with them. Nothing serious yet. Fistfights and shit like that. But sooner or later, there will be blood.

 

“We’re here to talk about the Italians,” I say.

 

And that sets them off. All at once, they’re shouting, talking over each other, talking about how the Italians are moving in and half of their contacts in Seattle and Portland won’t talk to them now, about how people are running scared and pretty soon it’s going to cost us more than we can take. Pretty soon the Italians are going to bleed us dry and the clubhouse and their own apartments and their bikes and their families will go to ruin.

 

“Enough,” I say, when I’ve let the yapping run on for a while. You always have to let the men have their say. Otherwise you’re just asking for them to turn on you, like the crew of a pirate ship who won’t hesitate to make their captain walk the plank if they get tired of him. That’s a motorcycle club for you. Fierce men have fierce rules and I wouldn’t have it any other way. When I say enough, the men stop at once. Right now is when Duster would say somethin’ to disarm the situation, make some kind of joke. Scud sits silently.

 

“We know this is fuckin’ bad and crying about it won’t make it any better.”

 

The men nod. Mountain looks like a giant sitting at a kid’s play-table with his shoulders hunched over and his knees pressed against the table, chair pushed back. He shakes his head slowly. “I saw him today, Boss.”

 

A hush falls over the table. I don’t much like the look of it, the way the men glance at each other, like they’re not fierce outlaws but little girls running for their lives.

 

“Him being Enrique,” I say. Enrique is Manuel’s brother, second-in-command of this branch of the Italian mafia, and a sadistic psychopath if reports can be believed. He’s as crazy as his brother but not the sort of crazy which makes a man weak. He’s the sort of crazy which makes a man deadly. Rumor has it that he’s dropped around eighty bodies, which if you account for how rumors are more often than not horseshit, is still probably around twenty. An impressive figure, but no more impressive than me and Mountain and maybe Earl.

 

But the men are worried; the men aren’t seeing clearly.

 

“I heard he’s killed one-hundred and twenty men,” Noname says. Noname is one of the younger guys, around twenty-two, with a goatee which makes him look like Disney villain and an egg-bald head. He’s capable enough, but can be skittish at times. “I heard he has connections with police commissioners all over the States, and he can get away with anything he wants. I heard he once wiped out an entire Mexican gang in one night with an MP5 sub-machine gun. I heard he just gunned them down.”

 

“Don’t be a fool, boy,” Earl says, and for a second I think thank god somebody’s going to talk sense. But then Earl mutters: “It was not an MP5 and they were not Mexican. It was an M16 assault rifle and they were Irish. A drug deal went wrong and the Irish didn’t want to pay so Enrique ambushed them with an M16 assault rifle and gunned every single one of them down. You’re right about the police, though. At least that’s what I heard. He can get away with anything he wants.”

 

I sit back and watch as the men, tough men all of them, spout nonstop horseshit. I think about Lana. All I would have to do is walk across the bar, into the dorms, down the hallway and into her room. And I will, I tell myself. I will when this is done. But if there’s one thing a president never does, it’s leave his men at a time like this. Goddamn, but I wish Duster was here. He’d know the exact right thing to say to put everybody at ease. He’d say something about Enrique shooting lightning from his dick and everybody would laugh. I could say that, sure, but it’d sound odd coming from me. Like I was making fun of them or something.

 

“I saw him today,” Mountain repeats. “I saw him just outside ’green, sitting on the hood of a Chrysler, a black Chrysler. He was just sitting there and looking at the town. Looking at it like a man who had blood on his mind.”

 

“What did he look like?” Noname says, way too eagerly. A little kid asking what Santa Claus looks like.

 

Mountain shrugs. “Like an Italian. Slicked back hair. Grey suit. He wasn’t a big man. Well, he was shorter than me. He was tanned. He wasn’t wearing any jewelry which was strange because you know how much those mafia guys like jewelry. He just looked like a man.”

 

The men are about to start up again when I cut in: “Mountain says this Italian looked like a man and that’s ’cause he is a fucking man. Look, this man’s brother killed himself because he was looking down the barrel of a gun like a fucking idiot. Now the Italians want our blood and that’s okay with me because, just like you, the only reason they think they can take it is this Enrique fuck. They have put all their faith into this one man and when this man is dead they won’t have any faith left. Fuckin’ hell, fellas, this is one man. Don’t underestimate him, but don’t overestimate him, either. Put a bullet in his head and he will bleed, like any other man.”

 

The men begin muttering amongst themselves at this, as though they don’t believe. I keep thinking what it’d be like if Duster was here, how he’d somehow make all this make sense.

 

It makes me so goddamn angry seeing them like this that I jump to my feet and slam my fist down on the table. A few of the guys have glasses of whisky in front of them; they lurch up and clatter back down.

 

“Listen,” I say, “we’ve shown once that we can outgun these men. And now they have a new leader, we’ll show them again. This Enrique is angry because his brother is dead. Fine. I’m fuckin’ angry too ’cause you know what? You know fuckin’ what? My fuckin’ brother is dead. Duster is dead. Duster was shot to death on that fuckin’ dock because some stupid fat Italian fuck looked down the barrel of a gun. My brother—your brother—was shot dead and that’s what we need to be thinking about. Fuck Enrique and fuck the Italians. If they think we’re going to start crying like a bunch of goddamn women they’ve got another thing coming.”

 

I look each of the men in the eye, one by one, going around the whole table. I look for the iron in their faces. Look for the fight.

 

“You are Tidal Knights. Fuckin’ act like it. Go to your contacts. Tell them business needs to continue. Keep an eye out for the Italians. It isn’t war yet, but if it comes to it, we’ll go to war. We have the men, we have the weapons. All we need is the fuckin’ fire in our bellies. Enrique is a man, and so are you.”

 

I step back, chest heaving.

 

“Get to work,” I say, and then turn away.

 

Anger can turn into passion pretty damn easily, I’ve learned. As soon as my speech is over and the men go about their jobs, the anger I’m feeling transforms into passion for Lana. My blood is up and it needs an outlet and I think it’s about time I took a couple of hours just for me and Lana, a couple of hours to forget about everything. I have a blonde, sexy, petite woman waiting for me, willing, and here I am working myself too ragged I can’t even get to her properly.

 

Fuck it. Fuck it all—for the next couple of hours, at least.

 

I’m almost at the door to the dorm when Scud appears at my shoulder.

 

“Boss.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I thought we were doing that thing.”

 

“The outskirts? That can wait.”

 

I make to leave, and then the man does something strange. He steps in front of me.

 

“The fuck you doing?” I say.

 

“I just thought . . .” He bites his lip like a nervous girl. “I just thought we were busy today.” His eyes flit toward the dorm door, as though he doesn’t want me to go in there.

 

“Later,” I say. I take a step forward, forcing him out of my way.

 

Maybe he likes Lana, I reflect as I walk down the hallway. Maybe he’s jealous. Well, I can’t exactly blame him.

 

I knock on the door.

 

“Yeah?” Lana says. Even that one word has an effect on me. Fuck, she sounds sweet.

 

“It’s me.”

 

“Come in.”

 

When I walk in, she’s sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing nothing but one of my shirts, naked legs crossed, leaning back with a mischievous smile on her face.

 

“I wondered how long you’d be,” she says. “I was beginning to get bored.”