“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Colt raged at the entire club. He’d gathered his supporters and rounded up Dom and the men and women who backed him. When they entered the clubhouse they had found Sierra just getting off an unconscious and bleeding Monica as Blu and Mayla, Skye and Vicki, grunted and strained against either other, still locked in fierce combat. All six women looked like hell, their clothes torn, their skin covered in bruises and scratches. After getting the four woman separated, the group divided into two camps. The men and women of the Death Valley Motorcycle Club glared at each other as they tended their wounded.
“We were all brothers and sisters once! Now we are fighting among ourselves like animals! Have we fallen so far?”
“Fuck you, Colt!” Dom snarled, kneeling at Monica’s side and wiping at her face with a damp cloth. “You started this! You and your little clan!”
“I’m trying to make this a better place, without all of this!” he roared as he gestured toward the members. “Is this what you want? To fight all the time?”
“We want it to go back to the way it was!” Steve called. “Nobody elected you! You have no right to just come in and change the charter of the club!”
“There was going to be an election,” Fletch said calmly. “You would have had your say then. Let the club decide.”
“But you knew you were going to lose, didn’t you?” Harrison added. “So you decided to take matters into your own hands and sent Marcus to sabotage the generator. How stupid do you have to be to do that? You need that generator as much as we do. Luckily we caught him before he could do anything.”
“There wouldn’t be anything for the club to decide, except you killed Paul!” Patch sneered.
“It had to be done,” Gunner said softly, then louder. “It had to be done! He was always turning member again member, brother against brother. He was evil and corrupt, thinking only about himself and how he benefited.” Gunner paused and stared daggers at the crowd. “Paul was skimming from the club.”
“You lie!” a voice called out.
“No. We found the cash. Almost a million dollars. It was hidden in his trailer, along with drugs.”
A rolling mutter passed through the crowd. “I don’t believe you,” Dom said.
Gunner shrugged. “Suit yourself. Doesn’t make it any less true.”
“Where is it?” Marcus asked. “Show us.”
“The drugs were destroyed, along with all the rest. The cash has been pooled with the club’s money. That brings us to about one point six million, plus our seed money. It makes the plan more likely to make it. That puts us over halfway to what I figure we need to launch the business,” Colt explained. “Most importantly, the books are in order now. Now we know where we truly stand.”
“Doesn’t matter!” Dom roared. “I didn’t join this fucking club to be some limp-dicked pencil pusher! I’m a fucking DVMC member! I fuck and fight and piss on pansy asses like Colt wants us to become!”
Colt grimaced as most of Dom’s supporters shouted their approval. “Fine. Get out. Go start your own club.”
“Fuck that! This is our club! You get out!” Dom answered, rising from Monica’s side as she slowly rose to a sitting position.
“I gave you your chance,” Colt snarled. “I was going to put it to the club, in a vote, to let the brothers and sisters decide where they wanted the DVMC to go. But you were going to lose, and you knew it. So you tried to take the club, and you lost again. No, this is our club now. You follow our rules or you turn in your colors and get the fuck out.”
“I’ll never surrender to you, you snot nosed punk,” Dom sneered.
“Fine. Turn in your colors. Nic! Harrison! Open the armory and get these assholes out of my sight.”
Nic smiled as he turned to comply. His left eye was starting to swell shut, but he could still see well enough to put a bullet in the back of somebody’s head if required.
“You can’t throw us out!” Marcus challenged. “We’re part of the club, too!”
Fletcher shook his head. “Not anymore. You lost that right the moment you violated your agreement to abide by the vote.”
Nic and Harrison chambering a round focused everyone’s attention. Dom’s lip curled in disgust. “We’ll bring in the heat. I’ll let the pigs know exactly where to find you, Colt, after I give them all the juicy details about the little theft ring you’ve been running. I think they will be interested that, don’t you?”
“You bastard,” Nic grated as he leveled his pistol at Dom’s head. “Sell out a brother to the cops? You’re no brother of mine.”
Colt raised his hand to still Nic. He had to think. Killing Paul was necessary, but he didn’t want this much blood on his hands. “You would destroy the club?”
“Not my club, if you toss us out,” Dom said simply. “But after you go to jail, it will be,” he added with a cold smile.
“Fuck!” Harrison sneered as he cocked his own weapon and leveled it at Dom’s head. “I say we grease this bastard and anyone who follows him.”
“Wait!” Colt shouted “We’re better than them.” He stared into Dom’s eyes and could see the truth in what he was saying. He was betting Colt wouldn’t kill them all in cold blood, and he was right. “Lock them in the old ore shed until we figure out what to do with them.”
“You okay?” Colt asked as he dabbed at the cut on Sierra’s head. He was in worse shape than she was, so she’d cleaned his cuts first, and now he was returning the favor.
“Yeah. I have a splitting headache, but I’ll be okay.”
“You really fucked Monica up this time. What the hell happened?”
She hissed as the alcohol stung then recounted her story. Colt listened in silence until she finished. “Dom and Monica, those two are nothing but trouble. Always have been.”
“What are you going to do?”
He placed a Band-Aid over the cut then kissed it. “The only thing we can do. The question is, how?”
“How’s everyone else?”
Colt grimaced. “Nothing that won’t heal. But we beat the shit out of each other, all of us. Chains is going to be sore as hell for weeks. They really worked him over. If Harrison and Nic hadn’t arrived when they did, they would’ve probably killed him. Bobbi is stitching him up now and they may have wrecked his knee.”
“She okay?”
“Yeah. She can take care of herself. Perri and McKenzie are, too. Fletcher told them stay in their trailer when the shit hit the fan. Which is what you should have done. What’s wrong with you? Taking on Skye and Mayla both? You could have gotten your ass kicked!”
“I didn’t.”
“But you could have! Look, I know you have been working with Bobbi, but you still have a lot to learn before you start wading into brawls like that.”
“And what about Vicki? Should I have just stood there and done nothing? You expect me to stand by and let them beat up another member of the club and do nothing?”
“No,” he said softly. “Just be careful, okay?”
Sierra smiled. “That’s sweet. You’re worried.”
“This is a bad time,” he said seriously. “Shit is going down and I want you to watch your back.”
She smiled and kissed him softly. “Come on, everyone will be waiting.
“The way I see it,” Colt said after all those in support of him gathered around. “We have three choices. We can force them out and hope they don’t go to the cops, we can kill them all, or we can leave ourselves. Thoughts?” He looked around the room at the twenty-nine people who had sided with him.
The brothers and sisters looked at each other solemnly. “All of them?” Blu asked softly after a moment of silence.
“Any that don’t join us,” Colt replied. “If they follow Dom, they will follow his lead. I won’t let them destroy the club.”
“That’s twenty-two people, Colt. They were our brothers and sisters once,” Vicki said.
“Not anymore,” Perri answered. “The moment they threatened to go to the cops, they stopped being my brothers and sisters. They are dead to me.” A murmur of agreement rippled through the gathering.
“Twenty-two people…” Blu murmured softly. “So much killing. Fighting is one thing, but killing them all, that’s something else.”
“Are you suggesting we let them go and take our chances?” Derrik asked.
“No…” Blu said softly. “But there has to be another way.”
“I’m open for suggestions,” Colt said, spinning his shot glass on the table in front of him. He didn’t like any of the options either.
“Why couldn’t we leave?” Sierra asked. “Start our own club? What’s so important about this club? Isn’t it about the members?” She waited but nobody said anything. “What?” she asked into the growing silence.
“These colors mean something,” Colt explained. “Once you earn them, you don’t give them up lightly.”
“So keep the colors, and the name, but let Dom have the compound.”
Colt shook his head. “No. It doesn’t work that way. If we leave, we turn in the colors. Anyone else want to do as Sierra suggests and leave to start a new club?” When nobody said anything, Colt smiled. “I didn’t think so. So that option is off the table. That leaves us with two. Strip them of their colors and force them out, or kill them.”
Sierra thought furiously. There had to be another way.
“I say we grease every last one of those fucks,” Nic said, tossing back his drink and snarling as it burned its way down. “We gave them their chance, offered to put it to a vote, which is more than they would have done for us, but they couldn’t give up the old ways.”
“Wait!” Sierra said, Nic’s words giving her an idea. “What if you fought for the club?” she asked Colt. “The last hurrah of the old ways? Winner takes all.”
Colt frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, as the leader of the club you take on their champion, probably Dom. One on one. Winner gets the club, the loser leaves. Isn’t that what this is all about? They don’t want to give up the old ways, the fighting for position and all that shit? So, make them put their ass on the line. One on one.”
Colt chuckled. “And you’re volunteering me? Thanks.”
“Think about it! You said yourself that you have already out fought and out fucked every man and woman in the club. You’ve already kicked Dom’s ass at least once, right? So, do it again.”
“You’re awfully quick to want to get the shit kicked out of me. Was it something I said?”
Sierra waited for the chuckles to die down. “No, but this is what they want, right? So give it to them.”
Colt glanced around the room. It seemed like a viable plan, one that might prevent the destruction of the club and the spilling of blood. “What do you think?” he asked the room.
“It might work. But what if you win and then they still go to the cops?” Chains asked.
“Then we kill them,” Blu said firmly. “Sierra’s right. This is what they want. If they can’t live by their own rules, then we owe them nothing. Fuck ‘em.”
Colt watched as the rest of his brothers and sisters began to nod in agreement. “What if I lose?”
Fletch snorted. “You’re almost twenty-years younger than Dom, bigger, and with a longer reach. If you lose, then we deserve to lose the club, and he’s the best they’ve got.”
Colt licked his lips. He was confident he could take Dom, but doubt was nagging him. It seemed too simple, too easy, and it made him nervous. “This has to be a group decision. Anyone else have another idea?”
“This is it,” Gunner said after a moment of silence. “Mano a mano. Our best against theirs.”
“Anyone one want to take my place?” Colt asked and the group snickered.
“This is between you and Dom. It has to be,” Fletch added.
“You’ve been the leader of the club in all but name for the last year,” Bobbi pointed out. “I say we make it official.”
“Good idea,” Gunner said. “All in favor of Colt McKinnon being our next President, say aye!”
“Aye!” all the voices rang out.
“Any opposed?” Gunner asked again. After a moment of silence Gunner turned to Colt and offered his hand. “What do you need done…Mr. President?”
Colt grinned. “First, I need you to cut that shit out. Somebody get those assholes in here and let’s give them their options.”
Colt was still talking with the well-wishers as eight of his supporters escorted the sweaty and red-faced group into the clubhouse. Colt smiled nastily, drawing a perverse pleasure in having stuck his enemies into what amounted to an oven for a couple of hours.
“What are you going to do to us?” Dom demanded as the group stopped.
“We’re going to give you a chance to keep the club,” Colt replied.
Dom’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch. You and me, Dom, winner takes all. If you lose, you and anyone who can’t support the DVMC leaves. You’ll be free to go and start your own club and we won’t interfere. If I lose, same thing. We leave and you get the club. No cops, no do overs and no bullshit. The loser just packs up their shit and gets out.”
“If we don’t agree?”
“Then we kill you, right here, right now. Same thing if you go to the cops. This is the best deal you’re going to get. I suggest you take it.”
“How do we know you won’t kill us if you lose?”
“You don’t, but I promise you I will have you killed if you don’t take the deal. If I wanted you dead, you would be dead already.”
Dom looked around and licked his lips. Harrison made a gun from his fingers, pointed it at Dom, and mouthed pow as his fingers recoiled from the imaginary shot. Dom licked his lips again and ran his hand over his bald head. “Give us a minute to talk it over.”
“Go ahead, but don’t take too long. This is limited time offer.”
Dom’s group moved off and huddled together in the corner, whispering harshly. There was clearly some disagreement among the group.
“Do you think they will go for it?” Fletch asked Colt softly.
“They don’t have any choice. They shit their own bed when they threatened to go to the cops.”
“Maybe Nic was right and we should have just killed them.”
“We’re not murderers, Fletch.”
“They may not leave us any choice.”
“No, they may not, but I think we should let them decide their own fate.”
Fletch nodded and Sierra agreed, though she kept her mouth shut. Colt was giving them a fair chance. It was up to them to take it.
After a moment more, the group broke and Dom and Monica strode quickly forward. “You don’t leave us any choice, so we accept. But…” Dom continued before Colt could speak, “not just you and I.”
“What?” Colt asked slowly, a cold lump forming in the pit of his stomach.
“A free for all,” Monica said with a nasty leer, the bruising and swelling forming on her face making her crooked smile even less appealing. “You and Sierra versus me and Dom in a no holds barred fuck fight. You remember those don’t—”
“No!” Colt snarled. “No way in hell!”
“What’s the matter, Colt,” Monica sneered. “Afraid to put it all on the line?”
“This is between Dom and me! It has nothing to do with you.”
“It has everything to do with me!” Monica shrieked. “I brought you into this fucking club and drove you to the top. You would still be some little shit stealing purses if it weren’t for me! I fucking made you! I was here in the beginning and I am not going to let you throw me away for some wetback bitch! I worked too hard and sucked to many cocks to let you take this away from me!”
“That’s the deal,” Dom said firmly. “The four of us, no holds barred, or you’ll have to kill us all.” Dom grinned at Colt, his smile cold. “What’s the matter? Don’t think she can take it?”
“No!” Colt growled.
“I accept!” Sierra replied at the same time.
“No!” Colt snarled again, louder this time. “She isn’t doing it!”
Sierra ground her teeth in annoyance a moment before she took Colt’s arm and turned him so his back was to Dom. “This is the only way, and you know it!” she hissed.
“No! We agreed to end this kind of shit! All of us!”
“I know, but what choice do you have? Are you prepared to kill them all? That’s your only other option. I can do this!”
“You don’t know what you are getting into! You remember the first day, Skye and Monica? That fucking Monica gets off on hurting people. It turns her on. Is that what you want?”
Sierra felt a chill pass over her, but they were committed. “I’ve fucked her up twice already. I’ll do it again.” She turned before Colt could reply. “We accept.” She stared daggers at Monica. “And this time, I’m going to fucking kill you.”
Monica smiled. “You’re going to try, but, honey, you’re playing my game this time.”