Chapter ten:
present
Jesse
The ride down to Atlanta was uneventful, giving me more than enough time to plan how it was all going to go down once we arrived. Every once in a while my thoughts would stray to Laney and where the fuck she was.
One thing was for certain: there would be no talking my way out of it this time. I’d made sure of that.
Couldn’t say I blamed her. Hell, that was what I’d done it for. I’d tried to scare her away the past couple of months, but nothing had worked. She’d stayed time and time again. But I knew what would do it.
Too many thoughts whirled through my head the closer we got to the meet—thoughts of death, thoughts of killing and surviving both equally, and everything in between.
And of course of Laney.
I glanced over at Casa, feeling his gaze on me, and he frowned, clearly wondering what the fuck was wrong with me. I shook my head and looked back to the road, pulling ahead of him so as not to have to look at his questioning stare anymore.
Half of me wanted to blame him for this fuckup. He’d been the one to drag me out to that bar and encourage me to fuck that barmaid. But I knew it wasn’t Casa’s fault, really; it was mine, and I was man enough to admit that. Casa wasn’t a one-woman man, never had been, and I didn’t see that ever changing, so I couldn’t blame him for my mistakes because he didn’t see what was fuckin’ wrong with them. But I also couldn’t look at him just then, knowing how glad he’d be that Laney and I were over.
I might kill him if I had to see that.
The roads were busy when we drove into Atlanta, but they grew quieter and darker as we drove toward the meet point—a large warehouse district to the north of downtown—and my muscles started getting tenser the closer we got.
“Jesse? You seeing this?” Casa asked as we slowed our bikes down.
Tall buildings rose up on either side of us, dark and ominous, but I was more focused on the road up ahead that was closed off. A couple of prospects that I recognized had pulled some old construction signs into the middle of the road to block the path ahead, and they were standing armed and waiting.
Waiting for us?I couldn’t help wonder.
I slowed my bike to a crawl. Casa, Dom, and the others did the same until we were all lined up side by side. Reverend’s prospects seemed calm under the circumstances, leading me to believe once more that us showing up like that was expected.
“You catching this, brother?” Dom asked, his voice hard as tension wrapped itself around him.
“Yeah,” I replied darkly, eyeing up the buildings on either side of us. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but right then I didn’t like our odds.
“Smells like bullshit to me,” Pipes said, calling it as it was.
I didn’t know what to say to any of them. The whole thing stunk to high heaven. Weren’t nothing right about the whole damn thing, from them cutting us out of the meet to Hardy asking me for help. And now there we were being eyeballed like candy by two of the Reverend’s fucking prospects.
The Reverend was a mean motherfucker, nicknamed because he’d been a reverend in another lifetime but had flipped his shit one night, for reasons unknown, and never looked back. Broke his vows and turned to a life of crime. The rest, as they say, is history. Yet there he was, cutting the club that helped put him on the map out of a deal. Bad fucking news for him. One thing for certain was that those boys needed to learn who the real men were around there. I took another look at the buildings on either side of us, but didn’t see any movement.
“Let’s move,” I said, finally making the call. “Be ready for anything.” I looked over at Dom, Pipes, and Max, and they all nodded in agreement.
I pulled forward toward the roadblock, the sound of our bikes echoing loudly. I kept my gaze on as many places as possible. We were one of the largest distributors of coke in and around Atlanta, so Rev must have been fucking crazy to try cutting into our profits, but stranger things had happened.
Unless,a thought came to me,the shit that went down with Butch was all leading up to this.
There’d been talk of a new player coming in, ready to take over for some time. The Reverend was ready to retire; he’d been in the game long enough to know when to get out while you still could. Still, he wasn’t about to walk away from his empire without making sure he had all his cards on the table for his upcoming withdrawal from the rat race first. Couldn’t blame a man for that, that was for damn certain.
So if this was about a takeover, who the fuck was it and why didn’t they want us involved? Why cut out your biggest supplier?
Because you’re not needed anymore.I scowled at the thought.
We came to a stop a couple of feet from the prospects, and despite the dark lighting and the front they both tried to put on, there was no denying the fear that worked its way through their bodies now that we were right in front of them. Prepare all you want, but when you have five angry-looking Devil’s Highwaymen in front of you, you’d better be prepared to die.
“Heard there’s a meet tonight, brother,” I said, taking in the older-looking prospect.
He couldn’t have been more than twenty, a fucking kid really, and the other one looked even younger. He also looked like he was about to piss himself, and I noted that he shifted uncomfortably, his gaze traveling to the building to our left every once in a while.
