If the Black Reapers pulled some shit and tried to force us under their wing when King was dead, there was going to be a whole new war. And I wouldn’t hesitate to kill any of the fuckers in this room, no matter how polite or courteous they may have been.
“Yes,” Lane said.
“Yep,” Brock said.
“From now until King’s death,” Cole said.
“Let’s shake on it,” Satan said, but he still looked pissed at his son.
We all met in the middle, and all three of us shook hands with the other three. And so it was.
Finally, after all this time, the alliance was born. No coloring up, but no being independent. It felt as happy a medium as possible.
Although “happy” wasn’t really a word I’d use to describe anyone in the room.
“Now, let me tell you what I’ve learned,” Sonny said. “It seems that there about ten King’s Men in the area. King seems hell-bent on destroying us without drawing blood if he can help it.”
“Shit, I only learned about his existence in the last couple years, and my father fought his minions for fucking forever,” Lane said, shaking his head. “He’s not going to come out Rambo-style with a machine gun. He’s going to hide in the shadows, find opportunities to strike like a viper, and then recoil back into the darkness.”
“Or taunt us from a fucking hotel room,” Satan growled. “Do you guys have any idea how big his army is?”
Cole shrugged.
“I know he’s got the King’s Men MC. He also might have mafia, police, organized crime—”
“I’m not asking about might; I’m asking about hard numbers,” Satan said. “Come on. We all got guys that served. We know how to do recon. Do we have any fucking idea how many men this man has under his belt?”
There were blank glances around the room.
“Well, that’s problem fucking one. We don’t know the size of his army. If it’s that much bigger, are we going to have to get even more MCs under your wing?”
“It’s pretty much you down here,” Lane said. “We’ve looked around. There are some out in Utah, but we’d have to go past Las Vegas and make a long way out. King’s going to know if we’re even trying to reach out that far, and it’s not worth the risk of getting my men killed.”
“Fuck.”
Satan’s question concerned me. Even if we allied together, if we didn’t have the manpower to do shit about it…what then?
Would we have to play his game? Would we have to learn how to fight without lifting a gun? It wasn’t how we normally worked, but there sure as shit wasn’t a goddamn thing “normal” about any of this.
“So we have an enemy that will taunt us from a hotel, has about ten men in the area, might have hundreds more back in Vegas, including cops, and we’re supposed to take him down with just us.”
“Yes,” Cole said.
Well, at least they were honest about the goals.
“We could—”
But before Sonny had a chance to add anything, we heard gunfire outside.
Something as deadly as bullets always got one’s attention, and to react otherwise was akin to laughing in the face of a hungry lion coming for you. But by now, we knew the game that the King’s Men were playing. Make noises, get attention, leave something damning, repeat.
“I’ll take care of this shit,” I said.
I stepped out into the lobby with a couple other prospects and members. I went for the door, carefully took cover, waited for a prospect to open it, and turned.
A bullet justbarelymissed me.
It was so close that it was most certainly not done to draw attention. It was done to kill—and I’d gotten extraordinarily lucky that it hadn’t killed me.
