“I’ve been waiting a long time to do that, motherfucker.” Ace spits blood from his cut lip.
I spread my arms wide. “Then what the fuck you waiting for? I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”
He lurches forward, and I side-step, grabbing the lapels of his security jacket, adrenaline pulsing through me like a powerful drug. Ace pushes me off, and we glare at each other. After all these years, we know each other’s moves as well as our own. A crowd forms around us, but nobody stops us.
Ace lands another punch to my gut, and I laugh in his face. “Gotta do better than that, fucker. I’ve been doin’ two hundredsit-ups a day and taking down guys bigger than you before breakfast.”
I’m shit-talking for sure, but survival in the joint meant fighting on a weekly basis just to stay alive, and I was one of the lucky ones with connections.
I get in three good body shots, but when he straightens up, he clips me across the mouth, and my lip gushes blood. I launch myself forward, giving it to him with both fists. One of the perks of being ambidextrous.
I connect with the hard bone of his jaw again, and pain radiates up to my shoulder. Ace stumbles backwards, knocking one of the fake palm trees over along with a few chairs. He lands a few feet from the edge of the pool, and when he tries to stand, I yank him up, then push him hard. I grin as he fades backwards, teetering just over the water. I’m still grinning when at the last second, he grabs a fistful of my t-shirt, and the two of us careen sideways into the pool.
We crash into, then under the water. I fight against the weight of my soggy clothes, then surface, coughing and spitting out blood and water. We stare at each other in four feet of water, dripping wet, our lungs heaving.
Ace extends his wet hand, then grabs me into a bear hug. “Welcome home, fucker.”
“What the hell is going on here?” Three guys, two of them bigger than me, glare down at us. “You know there’s no swimming allowed at night.”
Another red-faced guy joins them. “Get the fuck out of the pool.” Then he points to Ace. “You’re fired.”
“Fuck you, I quit.”
I’m back less than forty-eight hours, and already I’m the cause of two of my brothers losing their jobs.
Ace and I slosh out of the pool with a security guy flanking us on both sides, and Shady and Speed laughing their damnasses off. As we pass our table, I swipe up the bottle of Patron. Ace nabs the bottle of Jack, tilts it to his lips, then holds it up between us. “The fuckin’ Kings are back in AC”
The bouncers don’t even try to take the liquor away from us. I’m pretty sure they’re just happy to get rid of us without any further damage.
“Who the fuck ever heard of a pool party with no damn swimming?” I say in the bouncer’s face. The asshole levels me with a mug meant to scare, and I bust out laughing.
Then the four of us proceed to laugh our way through the casino, and yeah, we got plenty of eyeballs on us. Four tatted, jacked guys, six feet and over, two of them dripping wet from head to toe.
We pile into Speed’s beater and head to the Golden Palms. The plan is to change out of our wet clothes and then continue the party we started at Harrah’s without the throwing of fists or dunking in the pool.
A half hour later, we’re sitting on what the Golden Palms calls a terrace. More like a concrete slab surrounded by a rusted-out railing, but we didn’t fuckin’ care. We had the booze we swiped plus Speed’s refrigerator filled with beer. Good times.
“The bottom line is we gotta get our shit together, and we gotta do it fast, ‘cause the Rabid Dogs have been sniffing around for the last six months.” Ace pulls out his stash tin, then holds up a perfectly rolled joint.
“Rabid Dogs? What the fuck are they doin’ outside of Philly?” I ask.
“Word is they’ve been hanging around the Royal Flush.” Ace fires it up, and takes a deep drag.
My back stiffens. “That was our place.”
“Was,” Shady clarifies. “After the sweep, the DEA took everything, then resold it to the highest bidder. Same as they did to the clubhouse.”
We all exchange a look, then I nab the joint from Ace. “So, who owns the Royal Flush now?”
“Some real estate company. They got some asshole managing it for them. Easy pickin’ for the Dogs if they decide move in permanently.”
“Fuck that.” I just added another stop to my to-do list tomorrow. I pull in the thick smoke, then slowly exhale. “Good shit, man. Where you getting it these days?”
“I got this old dude in the Pine Barrens. Grows it in his house. Fuckin’ unbelievable. He’s like a hippie from the old days. Wears dirty overalls and a bandana. Don’t think the guy ever showers, but he can grow shit like crazy.”
“Nice little side business.” I take another drag and hand it off to Shady. “But I thought this shit was legal now.”
“It is, but in order to sell it legally, you gotta have a license, and in order to get a license, you gotta be vetted,” Shady adds. “And none of our thug asses would qualify.”
