“Go to sleep now,Dubheasa,” he ordered softly.
I smiled to myself and murmured, “Okay. Goodnight... Aiden.”
Then I did exactly what he said and drifted off to sleep.
CHAPTER 6
PAGAN
Itapped my pen against the round table in Church, trying to keep my shit together while my men told me what bullshit went down the night before.
“The shit stain acted like a douche before he even walked in the damned place,” Rodeo, my enforcer, relayed. “He strolled up to the doors with two of his buddies and demanded to be let in without payin’ the cover charge. Now you and I both know, boss, every fucker pays the cover charge. Hell, if we’re there to socialize,wepay the cover charge. If you’re too much of a cheapskate to hand over a Benjamin to walk inside the place, then you don’t get to see some of the best titties that Wyoming has to offer. And chances are, you won’t spend at the bar or pay for a lap dance, either. We don’t want broke motherfuckers in our strip club. We want big spenders. The girls have to eat and pay their bills.”
“He’s a tight-fisted little motherfucker,” Bootneck agreed. He folded his arms across his chest and tapped the sole of his boot on the newly painted slate grey wall he was leaning on while listening to the conversation around the table. “Don’t he still owe the club a gamblin’ debt?”
“Five grand,” Bounty confirmed. “Gonna start chargin’ the little pissant interest soon. We’re the Kings of Anarchy, not the goddamned bank of Anarchy. He’s had a month to repay, but nada.”
Bootneck’s mouth thinned into a tight line. “The entitled little fuck’s takin’ the piss. We can’t let it slide.”
I shrugged. “I’d have slit the little bastard’s throat the night he started trouble with Callum O’Shea and his woman, but you assholes kept telling me we had to keep his daddy sweet.”
“Well, his dadisthe sheriff, and we pay him to turn the other cheek,” Castle pointed out. “Slittin’ his son’s throat wouldn’t do much for business relations, and do we really need the law breathin’ down our necks?”
I looked around the table where most of them sat. Every one of them was here because they were the best, they were loyal, and they were Kings through and through. I’d met most of my boys on my travels, back when I was a nomad, fresh out of the Marines, and too antsy to settle anywhere for long.
Castle, my VP, was probably the man I was least close to. Most presidents had their best buds as their second-in-command, but I wanted the opposite. I wanted a man who would challenge me and fight me on decisions that he felt weren’t in the best interest of the club.
I’d seen many presidents of outlaw clubs start to believe their own hype, and it never ended well. Men bowed down to us, women threw themselves at us, and we had authority to do shit the average man couldn’t dream of, so it was easy to let it go to your head and turn into an entitled dick.
I took my position seriously, and it started with living by the Kings of Anarchy code, in particular, the part where we put the brotherhood above all.
My club came first, and it would also come before my future wife because that was what I agreed to when I took the gavel.
The night before was the first time I’d not been around to sort club shit out, and although I knew Castle had handled it, I couldn’t ignore the uneasiness rippling through me whenever I thought about crawling back into bed with Aislynn when I should’ve been heading back to the club.
I still didn’t understand what the hell happened. One minute, I was glancing up at the sign telling me I was hitting Boulder, and the next, I was pointing my bike in the opposite direction to head back to Aislynn.
The cold had taken hold of me, and just the thought of navigating the icy roads without wiping out left me feeling exhausted. The raw need to ride back to my woman, slide under the warm sheets, and press my body against hers was overwhelming, so I did. The emotions that filled my chest as I slipped into bed beside her were unfamiliar and not entirely welcome, but still, it didn’t deter my deep-rooted desire to be close to her.
In the cold light of day, I felt like a failure because I’d broken the most sacred code—Brotherhood above all—and it wasn’t sitting right with me. Still, it was done now, and Castle had stepped up, so at least the club was no worse for wear for my neglect.
“What do you wanna do with the Huntley boy?” Bootneck asked me. “Can we play?”
“Thought you would’ve done that already,” I replied dryly. “You don’t usually hold back.”
Boot gave me a smug look. “Well now you come to mention it, my fist may have slipped last night when we dragged him down the cave, and he may have a teensy-weensy black eye.”
I snorted, and not just at the notion of my SAA landing a punch on Huntley Junior, but also at the big, burly mammoth even daring to allow the phrase ‘teensy-weensy’ to permeate his brain, let alone say the fucking words.
I caught the eye of my tech man, Wiki, who, like always, was tapping on his phone. “Huntley Senior still in the holdin’ room?”
Wiki jerked a nod. “Fabio’s with him. He’s been pacin’ like a caged tiger for twenty minutes.”
“Good,” I muttered. “We’ll leave the douche hangin’ for a while longer. That way, we can really get the asshole riled up.”
“He wasn’t happy we incarcerated his boy,” Nox, my club secretary, commented.
“So, his boyshouldn’t come to our strip club expectin’ freebies and throwin’ tantrums when he damn well knows he doesn’t get ’em, should he?” I retorted.
