Nox held his hands up defensively. “I’m with ya, boss. You know what I think of the little fucknut. You can shoot him in the head for all I care, or better still, let me do it. He had his hands on Roxanne a week ago, tryin’ to force her to give him a free private dance. I would’ve put a round in him then if Castle hadn’t stepped in.”
“Nox is right,” my VP agreed. “Junior’s becomin’ an issue.”
I nodded slowly. “You’re not wrong. He’s a loose cannon, and sooner or later, we’re gonna have to deal with him. The downside is that we’re in business with his daddy, who could make our lives difficult if he suspected for one moment we took his boy out. The upside is that those assholes have made enough enemies over the years that if we did do it, there’d be a long list of suspects.”
“You wanna put a hit out on Junior?” Rodeo asked.
“I don’t think we’ll have a choice,” I confirmed. “He’s a law unto himself, and that’s okay if you can play it smart, but he’s a stupid fuck who rules with a reign of terror.”
“He throws our club’s name around, too, boss,” Nox announced.
My eyes slid to meet his. “He does what?”
“Roxie told me somethin’ disturbin’,” he went on. “You’re not gonna like it.”
A bad feeling slid through me. “Spit it out.”
“Junior pulled Hank Young’s daughter, Gracie, over a couple of weeks ago for speedin’, except she wasn’t speedin’. Told her he’d let her off if she fucked him. She told him to give her the ticket, and that was when he got nasty. Told her to be nice to him, and if she didn’t comply, he’d make a call to us and get her daddy’s farm burned down.”
“What the fuck?” Bootneck rumbled.
Castle growled.
“How does Roxie know this?” I asked Nox
“It came from Peggy, Gracie’s mom,” he confirmed. “The intel’s good... credible. The town’s talkin’ about us, and it ain’t good.”
Castle’s stare hardened. “Don’t put a hit out. I’ll do it.”
I gave him a nod. “If you want it, you’re up.”
“Wait. How old’s Gracie?” Rodeo asked.
“Just turned eighteen,” Castle muttered. “Still a kid.”
My head swiveled back to my VP, and the wistfulness in his tone settled in me.
It seemed my VP had an interest in the girl, which meant things were about to get complicated. I got why, though. The Young girl was good and decent like Aislynn, and she was beautiful.
Gracie Young was the resident town sweetheart, and everybody loved her. She organized a program where the residents drove all the seniors who lived in Coal Creek to the community hall for coffee and bingo every week. She also delivered meals and did welfare checks on them while she cooked and helped them around the house.
Gracie was a nice girl with a good heart, definitely wifey material in the making, so I could see why my VP carried a torchfor her. The problem was, my VP was thirty-six, and although Gracie was just legal, he wouldn’t go there until she was older.
My boys were dawgs, and pretty much anything went in the bedroom with the majority of them, but they liked their women to be women and not girls. We had a strict rule for our whores and our dancers. Twenty-three and above, no exceptions. So the thought of Augustus Huntley the second—or Junior as everybody called him—coercing a barely legal sweet young girl to fuck him out of fear and intimidation wasn’t only unacceptable, it also made my gut roil.
I had no problem being a cunt and playing games when I saw fit, but not with eighteen-year-olds who were still in fucking high school.
“Could somethin’ happen to him while he's down in the cave?” Bootneck suggested.
“Too obvious,” Rodeo dismissed. “We may have to bide our time with this one. He’s an officer of the law, and his daddy’s as crooked as they come. If there’s any hint of us bein’ involved, we’ll be fucked.”
“Good news is, he’s pissed a lotta people off,” Bounty pointed out. “When he does eventually catch a bullet, the list of suspects will reach New Mexico.”
“We’ve got another problem in the meantime,” I told the brothers.
Boot’s forehead creased. “How so?”
“If Huntley, Junior, and the rest of their corrupt crew are goin’ around town tellin’ folk we’re their enforcers, all of our work in the community will have been for nothin’.” I looked at each of my men in turn. “We need to do some damage control.”
