Wild: Tiger's Blood MC (7 page)

“Hey, sugar,” Minnie greeted me. “What can I do you for?”

I grinned and slid into a stool. “A beer,” I said. “And I need to know if you remember this woman from last night. She was talking to me for a little while, and she had black hair and blue eyes.” I held up my hand. “About this tall.”

Minnie pursed her wide lips. “Yeah,” she said after a moment. “I remember her. Real nondescript, black clothes.”

“Did she have anything that stood out?” I pressed. “Any jewelry, any tattoos?”

Minnie crossed her arms over her generous bosom. “No,” she said softly. “Not really. Not that I can think of.” She frowned, her forehead creasing right down the center. “You know, actually, yeah, there was one little thing.” She gestured towards her shoulder. “When that girl took off her jacket, she had an Amazons tattoo right here. She tapped her bare skin that was wrinkled and saggy with age. “That’s it, though. I don’t even think she was wearing any earrings.”

I swallowed hard. Of course.
The Amazons
.

Persephone

I sulked about the result of the meeting all day. After the girls voted to call the cops on the weapons dealer for Tiger’s Blood, I felt my will begin to leave my body. It was like we were being sabotaged from the inside out, and I no longer knew how to act. I couldn’t believe Vero, of all people. Vero, who was supposed to support my decisions and be smart about what was good for the club.

Vero hadn’t exactly apologized for her little rousing outburst. After the meeting, I strode outside and lit a cigarette, letting it dangle from my lip as I stared moodily at the black asphalt. It was streaked with grime, grease, and oil, and I watched as the fading light of day made the oil sheen look like a rainbow. It smelled harsh, but I welcomed that smell: it was the smell of comfort, the smell of familiarity. It was the smell of
home
.

“Hey,” Vero’s voice punctured my silence. “What’re you doing?”

I scowled. “What the fuck does it look like I’m doing?” I twisted my neck to the side and glared up at her. “Seriously, Vero, you threw me to the fucking wolves in there!”

Vero shook her head and puffed her cheeks out. “Girl, like I’d do that to my oldest friend,” she said as she wrapped her arm around me and pulled me close. “You know I just gotta look out for the girls, you know what that feels like.”

I pushed her arm away from me and stood up, throwing my cigarette to the ground and crushing it under my toe. “You don’t understand,” I said softly. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

Vero looked at me with a pained expression on her wide face. “We’ll always be best friends,” she said. “I mean, you can trust me, can’t you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t feel like I can trust you right now,” I told her truthfully. “I can barely stand to be around you; you go against everything I say and make me look like a bad leader.”

Vero frowned again. “You ain’t getting it
.
I’m doing this for the club, I’m doing this to help you be a good president. I’m doing this for the girls, for Lydia,” she added.

Exasperation filled my lungs and I had to take a deep breath. “It doesn’t fucking work like that,” I snapped. “Either you stand with me or you make me look like an asshole in front of everyone, what about that don’t you understand?”

“Lydia was
raped
,” Vero said. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at me with sass. “Why don’t you want to help her?”

“Because if we go to the police, they’re not going to help at all!” The volume of my voice was rising and I could barely keep my anger contained. “They’re going to fucking ruin us, Vero! They’re going to tear this club apart before we even know what’s happening!”

Vero looked at me. “You really don’t care, do you?”

“Of course I care!” I roared. “I was the one who wanted Lydia in this club! I was the one who persuaded
you
!” All of a sudden, I knew that I had to get away. I had to get out. If I stayed around for any longer, I was going to start feeling like I’d begun taking crazy pills. This was more than I could handle and I didn’t want to let Vero influence me anymore. I didn’t even know why I was fighting anymore—it felt like a betrayal of the utmost kind.

Vero blew out a sharp breath. “Fuck you,” she said quietly. “You ain’t a good president, Persephone.” With that she turned on her heel and strode back inside the clubhouse.

Anger filled my body and before I knew what I was doing, I ran after her and put my hand on her shoulder. Vero turned around and looked into my eyes—her dark eyes looked like pools of black—and I saw her flared nostrils, registered how angry she was. I made my hand into a fist and swung back before making contact with her broad nose and punching her hard. Vero cried out and blood spurted from her nose. She staggered backwards but didn’t fall, her feet tangled and stumbled and eventually she regained her balance. She put a hand up to her face and held onto her nose, glaring at me with her dark brown eyes.

“Fuckin’ bitch,” Vero spat, making a little puddle of blood on the ground. “You can’t just beat everyone you disagree with.”

For some reason, that comment sent me into even more of a rage. I screamed and flew at Vero with my hands out in front of me like ragged claws. We scraped and scuffled—I felt Vero’s hands lock around my shoulders and try to push me back as I lowered my head and charged into her stomach. Vero’s body was a muscular mass and she barely let out a cry as I knocked her backwards onto her ass. As she groaned with pain, I socked her again in the face, harder this time, and felt my hand connect with tooth, bone, and soft tissue. Vero’s blows on my neck and shoulders were like tiny little punches that I barely felt. Finally, she clipped me hard on the jaw and I felt myself spinning backwards, reeling with the force of her punch. As we continued to struggle, I could feel my nose bleeding and one of my bottom teeth was knocked loose. Vero groaned and twisted underneath of me, trying to get her mouth close to my arm. She sank her teeth into my flesh and I let out a wild howl—like an animal caught in a trap. Fiercely, I twisted free and smacked her hard on the cheek until I felt the air gust out of her body.

Suddenly, a pair of foreign hands was on my shoulder, pulling me away. I tried to resist but they were stronger than I anticipated and before I knew it, Vero and I were being dragged apart. I looked up to see Anya and Brienne standing above us.

“Don’t beat each other up,” Anya said in a solemn voice. “That isn’t how we handle things here.”

“We also don’t question our leader’s judgment,” I snarled, blood dripping from my mouth. The brief fight had incited a strong desire for more violence inside of me, and I hopped from one foot to the other, ready to rush Vero as soon as Anya released my shoulders. My body was aching but my adrenaline was spiking through the roof.
Let me at her
, my body seemed to be saying.
I’ll make sure we don’t have another problem!

“This dumb cunt thinks she can hit me and that I’ll shut up. What do you think about that, Brienne?” Vero said with a smirk.

I wanted to wipe it off her face. Suddenly, I
hated
her, I hated her more than I hated anyone else on earth.

Brienne was the MC’s sergeant at arms. She always listened to me, even when she knew I was wrong, and I appreciated that. Glancing between me and Vero, she settled her gaze on my face. “Vero, you need to back off,” she said in a low voice. “Seph is our leader, and even if we disagree with her, we don’t disrespect her like that.”

Vero looked so angry that I wouldn’t have been surprised if actual venom left her lips. “That’s rich, Brienne,” she snapped, wiping her mouth and nose. Her brown arm came away streaked with blood and tissue. “So much for you! You used to be loyal!”

“Not to you,” Brienne replied. “To the club, that’s where my duties are. Like Persephone, I always want what’s best for all of us, not just you. You’re too proud, Vero. You need to remember your place.”

My injured chest swelled with pride at Brienne’s words. I couldn’t tell how she felt personally, but it meant the world to have one of my girls stick up for me like this. It was like someone was finally coming to her senses. Maybe we wouldn’t have to call the cops after all. Maybe everything would be okay, maybe everything would work out.

“Fuck no,” Vero said. She swaggered over to me and stuck her hand out for a shake. “This is over, even if we disagree.” She sucked her teeth and looked at me with a prideful expression on her face. “We gotta agree to disagree, boss.”

I swallowed hard. It wasn’t the apology that I’d been hoping for, but I got the impression that it would have to do. “Fine,” I said softly. “Fine, it’s over.”

And we shook on it.

Elliot

As soon as Minnie told me that the girl was a member of the Amazons, I knew what I had to do. The Amazons were an all-female MC headquartered in LA. We’d bumped heads with them before—just like us, they ran guns—and I wasn’t looking forward to this confrontation. My stomach twisted nervously. What if the woman had been grilling me about our supplier? Were they planning to steal our business and decimate our group from the inside out? I felt nauseous: if we didn’t have buyers for our guns, our revenue would dry up and the club would be finished.

I knew I had to hightail it over to their hideaway and convince them not to talk. Of course, that was easier said than done. Much like Nero and Tony had told me, the Amazons didn’t love male visitors. Half of them were dykes, and the other half of them had basically sworn off men. While I was aware of my charms and how well they worked on normal women, the Amazons weren’t normal women. They were a fierce bunch of harpies who rode like they were on their way out of hell. I knew that I was going to have to do some serious bribing in order to get them on my side—or to even be neutral.

There were tons of MCs around LA, but the Amazons and Tiger’s Blood had been at each other’s throats for years now. You wouldn’t think that the market would be so small, but it always was. It was like we couldn’t exist peacefully together, especially not since we were always doing the same line of business. I hated it, but it was a fact of life.

Back in the day, I was sure that Tiger’s Blood had no problems putting the Amazons down in…well, in ways that weren’t exactly condoned now. My predecessors would have had no trouble swaggering into their clubhouse and raping and pillaging everything in sight. But that wasn’t how we worked, and that definitely wasn’t how I wanted to take revenge. After all, the Tigers had a code. A moral code, and part of that included no rape. I’d seen too many bikers go to jail for assault on women, and I’d decided as soon as I became leader that I wouldn’t support that kind of behavior. If one of my guys acted out of turn, I’d turn him in myself. Personally. I didn’t take pleasure in punishment, but I wanted my men to behave and act like decent citizens. After all, we were already gunrunners. We didn’t need to be rapist pigs on top of that.

As the clock crawled closer and closer to midnight, I hopped on board my bike and pointed it in the direction of the Amazons’ clubhouse. They had just recently been awarded a top-charter status, and I knew they’d had cause to celebrate. Hell, that may have even been the party that Tony and Nero crashed.
Bunch of morons
, I thought.
Now I’m gonna have a real hard time because of those two fucks.
I didn’t dare tell any of the guys where I was going. I was going to have to handle this myself. I’d fucked up, now I was going to have a chance to turn everything around.

I packed my saddlebags with cash and a couple of handguns. There was a gun in the back of my jeans and another one strapped to my leg, just in case things got a little too hot to handle. The Amazons weren’t exactly known for their kindness towards men, and I wanted to be prepared. All the same, I didn’t think they’d turn down a few wads of cash—especially if they’d just hit a new status, money would be all the more important to them.

“You can’t come in,” a woman snottily informed me. She was sitting out front of the clubhouse wearing a leather vest and jeans. “No more Tiger’s Blood allowed. Persephone’s rules.”

“Persephone?” I laughed out loud. “That’s your leader’s name?” I put my hands on my gut and had a good long laugh. These bitches always want to act like they’re so tough; naming themselves after Greek mythology seemed like a good place to start.

The girl didn’t think it was funny, apparently. She glared at me as I stood there guffawing and holding my sides until I was stitched from laughing so hard. “Stop laughing,” she said in this hysterical voice after a few minutes. “It’s not that funny!”

“Oh, trust me, it’s fucking hysterical,” I told her with a grin. “Now, let me in. I wanna talk to this lover of Hades.”

The girl blinked. “What?”

I rolled my eyes. “Did you even graduate high school?” I snapped. “It’s from Greek mythology.”

“Oh,” she said, recovering and pretending to know exactly what I was talking about. “Yeah, whatever.”

“So,” I said, leaning forward and raising my eyebrow. This was exactly how I’d begin to work on women, and even though I could tell that I was an unwanted visitor, the girl seemed flushed all the same. I winked at her and she actually glanced away, showing that she wasn’t exactly immune to male charm. “What do you say about letting me inside?”

“I can’t,” she said, swallowing nervously. “I’m on guard.”

“Right,” I said, winking again. “But I’m here on business, you know?” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small stack of bills—five thousand dollars. “You know, this could be worth it to you,” I teased, waving the money in front of her face.

The girl laughed. “I have all the money I want from Persephone,” she said, crossing her arms. “You’re not going to win me over with a couple thou.”

“Five thousand,” I said, reaching into my pocket for another wad. “Hell, let’s make it ten.”

The girl’s eyes bugged out.
Bingo
.

“I don’t know,” she replied, darting her eyes around nervously as if watching for a hornet or another bug. “I’d have to ask.”

“Why don’t you do that, darlin’?” I suggested in a honeyed voice. “I’ve got lots of time to wait, you know.”

“Persephone got in a fight today,” the girl said. She blushed and squeaked and then put a hand over her mouth. “Oh god,” she said, looking down. “Please don’t tell anyone that. I wasn’t supposed to say anything.”

I chuckled. She was easier than I’d thought; maybe this whole thing would really be a piece of cake. “I won’t,” I said, winking. “I promise. Just let me in, okay?”

The girl bit her lip. “Fine,” she said. “Come with me.” She got up from her chair and swaggered into the clubhouse, trying to put on confident airs that I knew for a fact didn’t exist. “Persephone’s in here.”

“Of course she is,” I muttered. “Of fucking course she is.”

I recognized her instantly. Even with a black eye and a few bruises on her cheek, she was the woman from the night before. Her raven black hair fell over her shoulders and her piercing blue eyes stared at me, making me feel like she could see right through me.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Persephone said, pushing through the crowd of women around her. “Who the fuck let you in?” She made a fist with her hand and swung her arm back, preparing to hit me right in the face. I ducked but another one of the girls grabbed her arm before she could get any closer.

“Persephone,” a warning voice said. The voice belonged to a big girl with dark skin, dark hair, and dark eyes. She looked both evil and venomous. “Don’t hit him,” she said in a silky tone. “We decided we’re letting the cops deal with that.”

The sound of the word cops sent a shiver of fear through my body and I squinted hard. “Wait,” I said, holding up my hands in the air. “What the fuck are you talking about? Why the fuck would you be calling the cops? We have a fucking
agreement
,” I snapped. “You know that!”

Persephone looked at me with a tired look in her blue eyes. “Come on,” she said softly. “Let’s talk back here.”

The other girls clustered together and waited in a hushed silence as their leader led me across the concrete floor and into a back room. My head was swimming with horrible thoughts. What was going to happen? Were they
really
to breach protocol and call the cops? What the fuck was going on here? And furthermore, I had to make this chick think that I had the upper hand or else she was going to walk all over me!

Persephone closed the door with a soft click and lowered herself into a black leather office chair. She had a great body, but it was practically all covered. She looked tough with the bruises on her face but I could tell that beneath, her features were fine and if she cleaned up, she’d be a hell of a looker. There was a weird energy between us, pulling us together—I didn’t like it. It reminded me of Grace, that was it.
Just ignore it, just ignore her
, I told myself.
This doesn’t matter, this is just a fucking game. It’s not even real life
.

“So,” Persephone said. She crossed her legs at the ankle and stared so boldly at me that I felt my chest tighten. “Why the fuck are you here, and how did you get into my clubhouse?”

I laughed.

Persephone looked indignant. “I asked you a fucking question, scum. You oughta feel lucky that my girls didn’t kill you on sight!”

I frowned and crossed my arms. “And why would they do that?”

Persephone rolled her eyes. “I asked you a question first, dickweed. Why the fuck are you in my club?”

“Because I walked up to the door and gave that cute little girl about ten grand,” I snapped. “I had to fucking talk to you. You have to come with me,” I said, pointing towards the floor. “The business we have to take care of doesn’t need to be within earshot of your club.”

That got Persephone’s attention. Her eyes bulged slightly and her hands slipped out of her lap. I could tell I’d said something that really struck a nerve, but she wasn’t the easiest person to read. Even from where I sat, I could tell she was carefully guarded, closed off, the kind of person who wouldn’t give in without a fight.

“So,” Persephone said. She swallowed hard and I watched the bulge travel down her skinny, delicious-looking throat. “What are you doing here again?”

I stood up. “You’ve gotta come with me,” I told her again. “We ain’t talking about it here.”

“And just what do I tell the club?”

I smirked. “Tell them you’re doing more recon for when you call the cops on me,” I snapped. “By the way, anyone ever tell you that you’re breaking MC code by ratting us out?”

Persephone opened her mouth to speak, then thought the better of it and closed her thin lips.

“Come on,” I cajoled. “You know it’s a bad fucking idea to rat us out.” I stepped closer and stroked a finger down her bare arm. Just as Minnie had said, there was a tattoo of an Amazon on her shoulder. “You know you’ll pay for that,” I said in a silky-soft voice. “You know that I can destroy your MC from the inside out if you even try anything like that.”

Persephone pursed her lips. “Fine,” she said in a dark voice. “I’ll come with you.”