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“That’s not helping, Coop,” Zach said, holding Cooper down as well.
“I don’t give a shit. I am sick to fuck of being treated like the motherfuckin’ help,” Cooper snarled. “I deserve some goddamn respect.” He took a deep breath, then another. When he spoke again, he seemed to address the whole room.
“Shit went south in the fall, yeah. The cleanup’s been hard, yeah. I’m sorry it happened at all, and I’m sorry it happened here. But we lost a brother in that mess. We buried Ben. Y’all didn’t know him, but he was our core. We lost Gargo before we could even get the fucking patches sewn on, and that’s on you, Eight, breaking our deal with the Dragons to get this charter going. We’re also the ones putting our necks out every couple months, muling weapons into Mexico. We could get dead or worse ten different ways every time, but we do the run. And in Tulsa y’all are sitting back with your fuckin’ feet up thinkin’ we make your life hard? Fuck you. All of you.”
He hadn’t yelled, exactly, but he’d spoken so passionately that he was sweating when he sat back and glared at Eight.
“He’s not wrong,” Duncan said. Until the words were loose, he hadn’t been sure if he’d meant to mutter them to the Young Guns or say them out loud, but they came out so the room heard. Eight whipped his head around—and his look was so angry, Duncan wished he’d muttered.
But Dad was looking at him with pride and interest, as were most of the men in the room, so he went on. “Nevada does take on most of the danger. Going into Mexico scares the fuck outta me. I didn’t have a patch in the Perro days, but I remember the lockdowns. I remember people I loved coming home in the back of the van. Or not at all. I would do it if I had to, but the thought of crossing the border carrying what we carry scares the fuck outta me. It means something that Nevada does it as a routine.”
Now he felt like an idiot. This was not the right place to talk about being afraid.
When he hesitated, Jay picked up the thread. “Same. And as for fuckup patches, I think there’ve been a lot over the years. Gun was one—he’ll tell you the stories himself. Over and over and over.” That got a stunted laugh from most of the men in the room—including both Eight and Cooper. Jay turned to the Tulsa president. “Eight, you know you were one, too. And I guess I can claim the most recent title myself.” That got another, fuller laugh, and Jay smiled. “Coop’s right, Prez. The hit here in the fall was a mess, but it wasn’t something anybody did wrong. Except the prospect. We do everything we can to know the people we bring close, but at some point, we gotta trust. Jordan betrayed that. He’s the fuckup, and he was handled, right?”
“Right,” said Cooper, with something like awe in his voice. Coop hadn’t been in Tulsa to see Jay’s glow-up. He probably only remembered the fresh patch who couldn’t get out of his own way. The fuckup. In Tulsa.
Duncan’s dad stepped back and gave Eight some room. “I know the pressure is intense, Eight. We’re all feeling it. We’re not looking for you to take the whole load, but we can’t dump it off on Nevada, either. We share the trouble, and we share the good. We are all a family. I know you know that.” He turned to Cooper. “And Coop, you jumped into a boiling pot when you took this gig. I know you weren’t expecting shit to go like it has, but you’re doing a good job. This is a tight charter, and you are doing hard work. But you get defensive too fast, brother. Pointing out a problem isn’t always blame, you hear?”
As a response, Cooper looked very directly at Eight. “Tell him that.”
“I just did,” Dad growled. “Now I’m telling you.”
“Stand up, both of you,” Simon ordered. Though he’d been VP himself once, he wasn’t even an officer now. Still, Eight and Cooper both stood. Dad and Zach watched them warily.
“Make it right between you. Now,” Dad said.
For an uncomfortably long time, Eight and Cooper stood and stared at each other, neither willing to be the one to make the first move. Finally, though, Eight grumbled, “Never said I wasn’t an asshole.”
Cooper chuckled harshly. “You’d be lying if you did.” As Eight threw a What the fuck? look at Dad, Coop quickly added, “And yeah, my chain slips sometimes over sitting at the head of this table, so maybe I’m defensive before I need to be.” He shored up his will with a breath and added, “It fucks with my head, taking grief from you, Eight. I sat at your table.”
Eight considered that for a moment. Then he sighed, and his posture eased out of fight readiness. “I guess I’m a control freak. Sorry.”
Cooper relaxed as well. “Okay. I’m sorry, too.”
Zach gave Cooper a little shove toward Eight. Dad did the same with Eight. The two men hugged. At first it was the most awkward, unwilling, stiff-armed thing imaginable, but then they settled in and actually hugged. They probably weren’t friends again yet, but maybe they’d remembered they were brothers.
“Mont’s right,” Sam mumbled. “This was an intervention.”
“Let’s just hope it fuckin’ worked,” Jay said. “I do not want to die in California because those two shitheads can’t get their dicks untangled.”
“Great,” Duncan said. “That’s an image I’ll be stuck with for a while. Thanks a bunch, bruh.”
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~oOo~
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Twenty-four hours later, after the most boring ride Duncan had ever experienced, through the California desert, both charters of the Brazen Bulls MC had just about taken over the clubhouse of the Night Horde SoCal, in Madrone, California.
The ride had been only about three hours long, by far the shortest leg of this run. They’d taken their time in the morning, getting some good rest and a big breakfast. Eight and Cooper had seemed fine all day. They weren’t easy with each other, but they were respectful, at least.
Now, Eight, Duncan’s dad, Dex, Cooper, Zach, and Lonnie were holed up in the SoCal chapel—the Night Horde had a big boner for Viking shit and called their chapel their ‘keep’—with Hoosier, Bart, and Connor, the SoCal president, VP, and SAA, respectively.
They hadn’t shared the topic of their private conversation, but all the Bulls, at least, figured they were in there figuring out what appetite SoCal had for crossing the road to the outlaw side again. If SoCal wanted in on this whole Volkov-Vega partnership, that could get Laughlin out of Mexico, which meant Laughlin would come east a bit for the handoffs with Tulsa, then turn around and ride it to SoCal. That would shorten Tulsa’s western runs considerably and keep all the Bulls on the safer side of the border. And SoCal would start really earning again.
Win-win-win, so far as Duncan could see.
