“Duke,” Mikhail said with a nod, shaking the silver-haired biker’s hand. “I’m more than willing to discuss a partnership, but before we begin, I’d like a private word with you and your son.” My father and I walked a few paces away from our contingent, closer to the ring and Indigo. “Sdelayte dva shaga nazad,” he said to our men, who obediently took two large steps back toward the exit. Duke and Priest shared a look before they strode over to us and away from their men.
“Thank you, Duke. I wanted to clear the air and clarify our expectations for future behavior. You have given my niece a home and her first modicum of peace. For that, I thank you. My family owes yours a debt, and I will not forget it.” Duke nodded in acknowledgment. “However, it has also been brought to my attention that my niece has experienced bodily harm at the hands of more than one of your men.” Mikhail’s voice hardened in an instant, the atmosphere taking on a menacing chill as my father’s expression darkened.
Indigo stopped swinging her legs where she sat on the ring and straightened her spine. I was torn between wanting to watch my father rip Priest a new asshole and studying the reaction of my cousin to what Mikhail was about to say. “The traitor will be dead soon enough if his new friends haven’t tired of him yet and done the job for you. I am content with his fate, as long as he dies. Your son, however,” he said, eyeing Priest with contempt, “may not be as lucky.” Duke didn’t flinch in the face of my father’s scorn, his face an inscrutable mask. I expected Priest to bristle at my father’s threat, to puff up and become indignant athaving his mistake thrown in his face. He had a reputation as being intelligent but hot-tempered, making him a loose cannon.
To my irritation, the asshole didn’t even blink. Of course he chose today to act uncharacteristically stoic. Indigo, however, chose this moment to hop down from the ring and come to stand between us and them. “Hey, I couldn’t help but overhear you because I was eavesdropping. So yeah, Priest was already punished by Duke for what happened in the confessional. We’re even-steven. Tit-for-tat wise, that is.” Her eyes flicked between my father and Duke. “In fact,” she added in an upbeat tone, “considering the recent development of our relationship in the orgasm department, I’d say we’re better than even because so far I’m up by four. So really, he’s more than made it up to me.” She smiled and looked from Duke, who’d made an odd choking sound at my cousin’s words, to Mikhail and gave them both a thumbs-up.
My eyes narrowed on Priest, who was trying, and failing, to smother a self-satisfied smirk. “I’d never keep score with you, angel,” he said.
“Aw, Growly,” she said with a grin and a wink, placing a hand over her heart. “Such a gentleman.” She looked at Mikhail and the smile left her eyes, if not her lips. “We’re all gonna be real good friends, and let this go, rightdyadya?” she asked my father, using the Russian word for uncle.
My father chuckled. “Umnaya devochka.” Smart girl, indeed. “Of course,dorogoya. If you wish, I won’t reprimand your Crow for his…lapse in judgment.” The amusement in Mikhail’s eyes, so like mine and my cousin’s, faded just as quickly as it came, and the shift made them stormy. “Understand me now when I say to you, Axel Abbott,” my father stated calmly but firmly to Duke, “if my niece comes to harm at the hand of another Crow, I will annihilate your entire organization. It wouldn’t even register as a blip on my radar to eradicate every single chapter of your club. I will never hesitate to protect my family, and I will always do so with extreme prejudice. As long as my niece remains safe and happy in your home, I won’t make an example of you.” He turned, addressing Priest. “As for you, my niece seems to care for you, so for her sake, I will spare your life today. Prove to me you’re worthy of her, and maybe I’ll spare it tomorrow.”
My father offered Duke his hand, which Duke accepted with a nod. They shook hands briefly before my father offered the same gesture to Priest. Priest didn’t hesitate, again surprising me with his sudden willingness to deal with our bratva. They shook hands, and my father pulled Priest into him, clasping his left shoulder firmly. My father squeezed Priest’s hand and smiled as he said, “If you ever hurt my niece again, I will crucify you. Your corpse will be my lawn ornament,mal’chik,I swear by all the saints.”
“I believe you,” Priest said, returning my dad’s intense expression. “It will never happen again,” he said with such conviction that my father reluctantly released his hand, and Indigo sighed in relief. “Now that we have that out of the way,” Mikhail said, “let’s discuss the annihilation of our enemies.”
“Yes,” Indigo agreed in a perky tone, looping one of her arms with my father’s and threading the other with Duke’s. “Let’s!”
My cousin started talking animatedly about creating a softball league so the Crows and the Bratva Bros (her words) could have something to do on the weekends. Priest and I followed a few paces behind to the section of seating where the Crows gathered, our men following at a respectful but watchful distance. “Nothing to add?” Priest asked as he fished a lollipop out of his cut pocket.
“No, my father is very succinct. I think he covered it all.” I shrugged. “If you make my cousin happy, I see nothing to gain from making redundant threats. I don’t like to waste my time.” A few beats passed before I added with a slight smirk. “Plus, my father’s plans would probably become irrelevant if it ever came down to it. He’s operating on the assumption that if you hurt her, he’d get to you beforeshewould.”
Priest barked out a laugh and slapped me on the back. “Of that I have no doubt.” He chuckled a bit more as we approached our fathers, who were already starting to lay out the framework for our newfound alliance. Indigo sat back on the row above the biker prez andpakhan, a smug smile of satisfaction on her face at helping to orchestrate the collaboration. Soon, the Callahans and the Iron Raiders will be nothing but a memory, and my family will have avenged the death of Tatiana and the abuse of her daughter.Soon.
Priest
Whether or not you liked the arrogant Russian prick, it was impossible not to admire Mikhail Petrov. The man had a reputation for being utterly ruthless and calculating, which was enough to gain him more than a measure of respect in circles like ours. At first, I’d assumed that his protectiveness of Indigo was purely for show, a testament to his own vanity. Any insult or harm done to her would be answered in kind because to hurt one of his family members would be seen as disrespect for his position and authority, not necessarily because he loved Indigo. How could he? He barely knew her and had only spent one evening with her. However, after seeing the passion in his eyes when he told me he’d crucify me if I ever lifted a finger against his niece again, I admit that I may have been wrong about Mikhail.
I’d seen those eyes before, every day in the mirror. They were the eyes of a brother, who knew without a shadow of a doubt that he failed to protect his sister, and was desperate not to let the same mistake happen again. That was when I’d finally begun to come to terms with our newfound alliance with the bratva. The fact that they’d gotten out of the skin trade, cut ties with The Consortium, and seemed to have a sincere desire to get to know Indigo as a family were logical reasons to agree to work with the Russians, but I’d still been on the fence, personally. Mikhail threatening to literally crucify me if I hurt his niece tipped the scales for me, satisfying some personal need I felt to understand that they were in this just as deep as we were.
If all the other reasons existed, but the Petrovs didn’t give a shit about Indigo, I’d refuse their help with the Iron Raiders and the Callahans. Ineeded to know if theirpakhanwas still in possession of his soul. Now, after a few moments of terse conversation and threats, I was reassured to know that Mikhail Petrov wasn’t as morally misaligned with the Crows as I had initially thought. He still had his soul, and it was crying out in grief for vengeance and blood drawn in retribution. The same drum beat in my heart for two years, the Russian mobster had been suffering through its rhythm for over twodecades. Together, with their nationwide connections and our ally clubs…Roark Callahan wasn’t going to know what fucking hit him.
Before we came to Savage Delights to outline an official alliance with the Petrov bratva, my father had called another Scold. The other chapter presidents had reviewed the data compiled by Clover and debated the merits of allying with an organization like the bratva. There was a lot of back and forth, especially between Hyde and Omen, but in the end, given the overwhelming evidence she’d dug up, the other presidents agreed to the alliance. If you’d told me before Indigo burst into our lives that our regional MC would soon be allied with the king of the Russian mob in the US, I’d have laughed my ass off. I wasn’t sure what this would mean for our club in the long term, but that was a problem for another day. The Iron Raiders and the Callahans had to be dealt with immediately and permanently.
My father and Mikhail spoke at length, while Riordan and I kept one eye and ear on their machinations, the others firmly fixed on Indigo as she harassed our men into signing up for her inter-criminal organization softball league. So far, she only had one volunteer(Riordan had signed Ivan up for the Bratva Bros team with a smirk on his face),but she was having a great time needling my brothers and Riordan’s guards to join. I suppressed the urge to sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose, where a headache was threatening to form, knowing full well that I was going to have to sign up to play softball with a bunch of surly bikers and stoic Russians. To a man, we were either worried about hurting her feelings, or afraid of pissing her off in case her notoriously vicious family were more than willing to spill blood over recreational sports. Granted, none of us would ever admit that out loud. Let’s face it. Some of us really did need a hobby, and a little exercise never hurt anyone. Plus, I’d get to throw a ball at Ivan’s smug fucking face, and no one would be able to say a thing.
Chapter 21
Cricket
After the meeting between Duke and Mikhail to finalize the alliance between the Russians and the Crows, we’d left Savage Delights and gone straight back to the clubhouse so we could go over our plan to hit the Raiders. It had been too long since I’d let my darker side out to play, and quite frankly, I was itching for the chance to kick the shit out of some arsehole. I was usually a pretty laid-back guy, but every once in a while, I had to bleed the anger out of my system. Fucking up an enemy club was exactly what the doctor ordered.
Rook and Bear had been gone the past several days, scouting the Iron Raiders’ clubhouse in California and their known places of business while we met with the Petrovs and got things organized on our end. Duke had called us all into church so we could get a game plan together, and the energy thrumming in the room was palpable. The Raiders hadbeen a thorn in our side since their inception, making a name for themselves in the ’70s in LA and up the West Coast and into Canada. They held parts of California, Oregon, and Washington state. The last time they’d tried to expand into Nevada in the early ’80s, our two clubs went to war, with loss of life and livelihood suffered on both sides.
While the Iron Raiders were a regional club like Los Cuervos, that was where the similarities ended between our MCs. They ran guns, drugs, and people through our northern and southern borders, laundered money, ran protection details, and were looking to expand their influence with help from the Callahans. I knew that none of us were saints, but there were some lines I believe you just couldn’t cross without compromising your soul. The Raiders had no problem obliterating any line standing between them and their greed for money and power.
“From past intelligence, we knew that the Iron Raiders moved their main clubhouse out of LA in the late ’90s,” Bear rumbled in his deep bass voice. He was across the table from me in church, and Rook was at his side with a laptop. Apparently, he was good with tech, even better than me, which admittedly wasn’t that hard. I could forge a few basic documents and knew how to run our security system. Rook was no Clover, hacker extraordinaire, but he was better than we’d known. “Currently, their main clubhouse in California is now located in Fairview, a small city outside Bakersfield. They’ve got three clubhouses in Cali, two in Oregon, and three in Washington. They recently attempted to branch into Idaho, but I haven’t been able to get concrete information on what they’re doing there and whether they’ve met with local clubs in the area.”
Rook clicked something on his laptop and projected a map onto the wall behind him. “The red dots are clubhouses, and the smaller blue dots indicate MC businesses.” The Iron Raider territory featured bars, strip clubs, pawn shops, and used car dealerships. “They are in business with the Barrera Cartel south of the border, and the Turkish Mafia outfit from Vancouver,” Bear detailed. “Murat Demir, the Turkish boss, is a relatively new ally, and rumor has it he’s not thrilled with the way the Raiders do business.” Rook clicked again, and new images spread across the wall.
“These are the Iron Raider chapter presidents.” He gestured to the eight largest photographs. “And the rest are high-ranking Raiders.” Four of the smaller pictures already had bold red X’s across their faces. Two of them belonged to the bastards that Indigo and Bones had killed the night our home was attacked. I’d had to help Tank get their bodies ready for Georgia, and I’d never forget their ugly faces. The other two must have belonged to the men Indigo had left dead inDante’s Dairy Queen,as she called it.
Rook had found a way to access tons of personal information for us on the Raiders' numbers, feuds, allies, and potential weaknesses. I never noticed that the guy was a complete data dork. Although Rook was a few years younger than the rest of us, he always projected a very chill, relaxed attitude. Right now, Rook seemed like another person, deeply entrenched in his element. If left alone long enough, he would probably compile a cost-risk analysis of our attack on the Iron Raiders and likelyindulge himselfwhile examining a bar graph or something.
Curious if anyone else noticed the shift in our new brother, I scanned the room and caught Bones eyeing Rook warily while Duke and Priest lifted identically shaped brows over equally bright blue eyes. We four definitely noticed, but the rest of my brothers didn’t seem to. Duke and Rook would be discussing any other marketable skills that Rook might be hiding, but now wasn’t the time for modesty. We needed to have every weapon at our disposal and ready to protect what was ours.
Rook and Bear finished going over their recon, and a hush came over the room as Duke leaned forward on his elbows, hands clasped and fingers laced together. “I spoke with the other presidents and Petrov. Given our history with the Raiders and the loss of civilian lives that occurred in the last war between our MCs, we’ve decided to launch a coordinated strike. We’re gonna hit every single Raider clubhouse and business at the same time, and wipe ’em off the map once and for all.” Duke’s blue eyes took on a steely quality as he continued.
