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“Shut the fuck up, junior. Dad’s talking now, and you need to listen. You could have been on the wrong side of a deal with our Northside friends. Up on 11th, you could have been mixing up in Hounds business. You sure the fuck were playing their game on their turf, and you could have pulled the club into all kinds of nastiness. You’re too young to remember the war in the Nineties, but people died, kid. People diedin this goddamn clubhouseover all that, and the peace was hard won. You could have blown twenty-plus years of goodwill right up in our faces.”
“But none of that happened! The club’s fine! I took two bullets and lost a fucking kidney. Isn’t that enough?”
“I told you to shut up and listen. Another word out your mouth before I say you can talk, and you’ll be eating through a straw. Clear?”
JJ nodded, but he looked like he wanted to do murder.Oh, give me an opening, kid. Please, Eight thought.
What he said was, “Do you understand why none of that happened? Because the club took care of your mess. Your brother ended the assholes that jacked you. We handed their bodies over to the assholes on the other side of your asshole deal and made sure your slate was clean with them. Maverick and I sat down with Gary Samms and made sure we’re still good with the Hounds. Which was not free, by the way.Andwe fucking figured all that out becauseyouhad no goddamn idea who you were dealing with. So while you’re ‘not disrespecting the club’”—Eight made air quotes to drive the sarcasm home—“the club was saving your ass six ways from Sunday. And then, despite the fact that you didn’t justdisrespectthe club, you fuckingbetrayedit, we let you keep your patch, because your brother stood up for you. Now you’ve got the swollen balls to sit here in my office and tell me you think the penalty we voted on, which allows you to keep your patch and earn some money, isn’tfair? Talk to Apollo about the kind of penalty the club could have put on you for going against club interests. See how fair twenty percent of your take is then, you piece of shit.”
The expression on JJ’s face had slackened. But Eight wasn’t done.
He leaned close. “Here’s how it’s gonna go. You’re gonna figure out how to make your dues, on time, every month, with the take you get. You’re gonna work extra shifts at the station if you have to. You’re gonna keep your fucking mouth shut about what’s fair and be fucking grateful you’re sill wearing that kutte. You are on a short leash and a choke chain, Jacob. And I swear, motherfucker, if you step out on the club again, if you even talk to anybody aboutconsideringit, I will know, and I won’t put it to a vote before I deal with you. Painfully and permanently. Does that sound fuckingfairto you?”
~oOo~
JJ left his office a few minutes later, after mumbling a decidedly reluctantYes, sir. Eight sat at his desk and stewed, then decided to use the energy rage had injected into his bloodstream to power through some bullshit paperwork.
He’d been working a while when a knock on his door pulled him out of the jungle of numbers. “Yeah,” he grunted.
The door swung open, and Maverick leaned in. “Got a minute?”
Eight closed his laptop and turned. “Yeah, sure. How’d the job go?” It was a low-pro, low-risk, legit security job, just escorting a two-truck convoy to Oklahoma City, but in Eight’s experience, shit could go wrong anywhere.
“Smooth. Only trouble was a wreck on 44 on the way out. Slowed us down a little, but we made it up.”
“Big wreck?”
“Nah. Fender bender. Three cars. They were on the shoulder fast, but the rubberneckers slowed everybody down.”
So it wasn’t the job that had his VP in the office. “Something else wrong?”
Maverick sat down on the plaid couch against the far wall. “Just wanted to talk. I saw JJ peeling off the station lot in Zach’s truck, and Zach’s throwing tools around in the bay. Coop says Jay talked to you and came out loaded for bear. Anything I need to know?”
“Shithead had the balls to gripe about the levy. I set him straight.”
Maverick laughed.
“It’s not funny, Mav. That kid’s patch is still fucking stiff. He’s only had it a few months, and he’s already wading through shit up to his dick. I do not know how a guy like Rad raised up a kid like that.”
“First, Jay’s young and raw, and yeah, he’s a little entitled, because he’s Rad’s kid and Zach’s brother. He grew up in this clubhouse, and there’s privilege in the legacy, but there’s a lot of pressure on him, too. Rad left some big boot prints to follow, and Zach’s already showing real strength and savvy at the table. Jay’s been struggling to measure up. I bet the thought his patch was on the line scared the shit out of him. When his back’s up against the wall, he fights stupid. Like somebody else I know.”
Eight knew what Maverick meant with that last bit. “Fuck you. I never felt entitled to a damn thing in my whole fucking life.”
“Yeah, okay. Fair. But you fought stupid for a lot of years, Eight. You know it. There were a few times you kept your patch only because somebody vouched. Usually Becker.” When Eight wanted to protest again, Mav put his hand up and smiled. “I’m not trying to piss you off. I’m just sayin’, you were a raging asshole, and that got you in plenty of trouble, but you’ve always been a good patch. Even when I could hardly stand to be in the same room with you, I’d admit that. But you grew into it. Jay will, too.”
Eight crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, offended but trying to think it through. There might be some merit in Maverick’s opinion.
“As for Rad having a kid like Jay … well, fathers and sons are hard, Eight. There’s so much you want to teach your boy, so many ways you want to prepare him to be the right kind of man, but damn if they don’t throw all you want to teach them right back in your face.” He sat forward and looked intent, and Eight knew they weren’t talking about JJ and Rad anymore. “All you can do is tell them what the world is, what’s important about how they fill their place in it, who and what matters and who and what doesn’t. They’ll take all that and make their own way, and you just have to hope you gave them the tools they need. It’s hard as fuck to let go and let that happen.” He sat back and stretched an arm across the back of the sofa. “You knocked everybody back yesterday, you know that.”
Eight nodded. It had occurred to him before that Maverick might be a good person to talk to about Ajax and fatherhood and all of it. He, too, was an ex-con. He, too, had left an angry woman to raise his child alone, albeit for different and more forgivable reasons, and he, too, had had to work his way back into his own family. But right now, Eight was pissed—still pissed at JJ and now pissed at Maverick for suggesting JJ was like him.
It was Duncan, Mav’s son, in whom Eight saw a bit of himself.
“Yeah, I know,” was all he said now.
“Can I ask what that’s about? Where’ve you been hiding a ten-year-old kid?”
“Not hiding. I just connected with him and his mom a couple months ago.”
