“I love to watch you squirm.” Maggie barks out a laugh. “C’mon inside and have a beer.”
“Sounds good.”
We settle at her kitchen table, and I take a long swig of the much-needed beer. Way better than the piss water they smuggled into prison. “So, I guess you know what I have planned.”
“I can pretty much guess, but I think it’s a shit-poor idea.”
“Why?”
“You’re asking me why?”
“Yeah, might as well hear what you have to say.”
“Look, nobody loved the outlaw life better than me, but sometimes you have to know when to fold.”
“That’s your advice. Fold?”
“You just spent five years in the joint. You in a rush to go back in?”
“Five years, three months and sixteen days,” I correct with a smirk.
“Whatever.” She shakes her head. “Get a straight job, and stay outta trouble. That’s my advice.”
“You sound like my CO.”
I appreciate Maggie’s opinion, but she’s older now, and without Storm, it’s hard for her to be objective.
“Anyway, what makes you think any of the others are even interested?”
“Only one way to find out.” I pull at the label on the beer bottle. “You ever see any of them?”
“Every once in a while. You know how it is, Atlantic City is a small town, but we don’t talk about the old days much. Nobody’s interested in rehashing all the bad shit that went down.”
“Because of me.”
“It’s never just one person.” Maggie tries to give me an out.
“Except I fucked up big.”
Turned out the leggy blond was with the DEA and set me up big time. I could twist it any way I wanted, but it was me who let her into the clubhouse. It was me who shared some club secrets while I was balls deep in her snatch, and it was also me who got drunk and high, then passed out, giving her full access to the laptop in my room. The same laptop containing all the spreadsheets on every piece of contraband and where we housed it, plus our large supply of counterfeit bills mainly used for andwith our underground gambling warehouse. And, yeah, they did a sweep of that too.
“I guess you could say that.”
“But I’m gonna change that all around. I plan on bringing the Kings back stronger than ever.”
All in all, it was a major fuck-up, and feeling like a piece of shit for letting this all happen ‘cause of my raging dick, I cut a deal with the DA. I took the hit, owned up to all of it, pleaded guilty, and my brothers got off with a few months of probation, but that didn’t soften the blow. To all of them, including me, the club was home—and I’d lost it.
“But you paid the price.”
Would’ve been nice if one of them came to visit me in all those years, but I get it. I knew plenty of guys who got sent up, and once they’re gone, they’re gone. Nobody gives a shit. Most times, they’re just happy it’s not them behind bars.
“Storm always said it sucks for guys like you and him to be locked up.” She rolls her eyes toward the ceiling. “Fuck knows he knew about getting locked up.”
“It sucked, but I was one of the lucky ones with connections to other clubs and a bad-ass rep.”
I basically picked my cellie, had my choice of jobs, and waited out my time trying not to fuck up. Don’t get me wrong, the place was a shit-hole, but I wrangled a job in the prison library, and by a stroke of luck, I caught one of the guards screwing an inmate in said library.
Keeping my mouth shut earned me unlimited access to the computers any time I wanted. A huge perk since I was able to keep track of my brothers and what they were doing since I got sent up.
