“Kev.”
“I don’t wanna talk about it.”
Aidan glanced toward Carter, ten yards away, face flushed in a mature, self-satisfied way that was uncharacteristic. He felt on top of the world, and thanks to a club groupie who’d done every unspeakable thing with almost every member of the club.
“You could–”
“No.”
Aidan shrugged. “Whatever.” It wasn’t like he didn’t have his own problems, not the least of which was telling that beautiful, smiling girl inside that he was having a baby with another woman.
~*~
“I want my coke back.” Don Ellison had a bad case of aging-footballer-face, and his heavy brow creased as he scowled at them. He could buy an expensive suit – and he had – but he couldn’t disguise the fact that he was an ex-con thug with bad breeding.
Not an altogether scary picture, in Aidan’s opinion.
And not too impressive a turnout, Ellison and his four thugs, when the Dogs were rolling twenty-something deep.
Their meeting place was an empty weed-choked lot between a closed-up restaurant and a struggling laundromat at the outskirts of town. A row of bikes faced off from an Escalade, and the two warring factions stood on either side of the invisible fuse running between them.
“You’ll get your coke back,” Ghost said, “minus the cut I take as repayment for what you stole from me. Minus a little bit more because you killed my dealers.”
Phillip stood beside Ghost, the two presidents shoulder-to-shoulder. “You’ll notice we didn’t kill any of your boys,” he said, flicking ash off his cigarette with a bored expression. “We didn’t even rough ‘em up too bad. And we sent the one back.”
“He’s got a real pretty singing voice, by the way,” Ghost said with a grin. “You might wanna put him in your thug choir.”
Ellison made a face. There was no doubt what would happened to the squealer.
“So, like I said,” Ghost continued. “You’ll get your coke back, but it’ll be on our terms, and our timetable. If you think you can come into Dog territory and do whatever the fuck you want, you’ve got another thing coming.”
Ellison’s thick jaw tightened. “You think I’m going to recognizeyour territory?”
“I do, yeah, because let’s face facts, Don. You are one guy, in one state, with a big head. Me? I’m a part of an international organization that makes you and your boys look like kids playing mob boss at recess.”
“You mess with one chapter, you mess with every chapter, mate,” Phillip said. “So if you want to keep breathing, you’ll go away and be very quiet.”
“Why not just kill me? Wipe me out?” Ellison asked. “That’s what you did last night, yeah? Sent me the message that you can take me out whenever you want.” It should have been said with embarrassment, but somehow sounded like a taunt to Aidan’s ears.
“Because I’m a reasonable man,” Ghost said, which was a damnjoke. “And because it’d be stupid to have another war. Knoxville doesn’t need it, and I don’t want it. We’re grownups, Don, let’s handle this as such.”
Don Ellison’s face slowly began to purple, even though he nodded stiffly and stepped forward to talk things over one-on-one with Ghost.
Aidan felt a quick twist in his gut. This meeting had gone well – too well, in his opinion. And he well knew the look of a man who was burning with hatred on the inside, boiling with barely checked violence. In this scenario, that man was Ellison, and he wondered if his father saw that.
~*~
The next day, Ellison’s coke was returned, minus what he owed the Dogs, and a tentative peace was set up. Handshakes were swapped. The world took a deep breath and settled. And the citizens of Knoxville had no idea they had been at the edge of another war, the Lean Dogs held in their usual awe-inspiring contempt as the cowboys of the city.
Everything was fine.
Until it wasn’t.
November
Twenty-Two
Two days after the big party, Emmie came downstairs as dawn was breaking, surprised to find her house full of male voices. Worry grabbed at her for a second – some new club drama? – but they didn’t sound concerned. Quite the opposite: someone laughed, and she thought it was Shane.
