He’s testing Lane. He knows full well we weren’t the ones that shot at them. We depend on them too much for weapons to pull some shit like that.
“We ain’t got no trust in any of y’all,” Jerome said. “None. If you want to continue our gun and drug deals, then you need to earn your trust.”
“Okay, hold up just a second,” Lane said. “Jerome, you knew my father going way back. I know you don’t know me as well. But you’re fucking crazy if you think I’d ever order a hit on you guys. Today aside, you don’t encroach—"
“You just call me fucking crazy?”
Shit. We’re about to lose all control of this situation.
“Boy, do you know who I am?” Jerome said, coming up right to Lane’s chest. “I am the motherfucking king of the Hovas. You think I got this far by being fucking crazy? Huh? You think I did something stupid? Or you think I’m smart?”
Lane didn’t back down, but I could sense, like Jerome probably could, that he was feeling a bit uneasy about the situation. I didn’t like taking the place of Lane and speaking for him, especially since Jerome would probably crack a few lines about who was really in charge here, but I felt it necessary.
“Jerome.”
He turned to me, cocked an eyebrow, and then turned back to Lane.
“Let’s go talk. You and me.”
“Little Lane can’t handle his shit, can he?” Jerome said.
“Come on, Jerome.”
Jerome faked that he was going to hit Lane. To Lane’s credit, he did not flinch, but I knew he’d have a lot of steam to blow off later. Jerome walked over to me, and I took him out of earshot of everyone—Lane, his fellow Hovas, any other Reapers nearby who had been watching.
“What the fuck is going on?” I whispered. “Don’t bullshit me. I know you all hate me. Fine. But I also know that you need the relationship as badly as we do. So do yourself a favor and don’t lie to me.”
It was like I’d snapped Jerome out of a drunken stupor. Gone was the man who had threatened to hit Lane and had mocked me, and in his place was a man who looked like he sincerely wanted to work something out. It reminded me of something a commander had once told me—two people in a room will solve more in one hour than two committees will in one month.
“We keep getting potshots from the fucking Saints, man,” Jerome said. “They’re trying to claim it’s y’all. They’re pretending to be you in battle. I’m not stupid, and you know that. I know it ain’t y’all trying to do that, but some of my club members are starting to think you’re behind it somehow. They think you set something up last go around.”
As much as I wanted to consider that bullshit and ridiculous, I needed to only turn the clock back a couple weeks to remember how my own club had nearly accused me of being a rat, with only Patriot’s quick thinking preventing things from turning far uglier than this situation would ever get. Violence and confusion could make the most rational of men into the most insane of conspiracy theorists.
“I’m one man, Axle,” Jerome continued. “There’s only so much shit I can do before my club starts demanding action. So that’s why I come here. Little Lane—”
“Lane.”
I was emphatic on this point. I may have thought Lane handled the situation poorly, but to the outside world, I was the most obedient VP a President had ever had. Jerome would have a better chance of me literally shooting myself in the foot than metaphorically doing so by criticizing Lane.
“Whatever, man.”
“Listen. He may have called you crazy, but we don’t have a derisive nickname for you. So cool it.”
If there was a spot where I thought I might have lost Jerome, this was it. But he got it back together shortly after.
“Regardless of whatever the hell you wanna call your boy, I got an image to uphold, man. I can’t be sitting here and letting us take cheap shots like that. We gotta flex muscle at some point. You know what I’m saying?”
“So, you want us to come defend you?” I asked.
Jerome snorted.
“Show me—show us—that we can still work together. Show me I still mean something to you, LeCharles.”
It wasn’t often I heard my real name used around bikers. It was much rarer, in fact, that I ever heard it for Jerome.
“Show me that there’s just enough there that we didn’t come hunt your ass down for leaving us. Show me that this isn’t some long con. Understood?”
I understood well enough. Leaving one club for another was oftentimes akin to asking for a hit on your head. It had taken a lot of behind-the-scenes work to make this happen peacefully, and the existing relationship that we had played an awful large role in allowing me to leave that club in peace.
