AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Me, give me a natural beauty any day.
Specifically, a natural beauty like that brunette.
But what I liked even more was her sass. She’d been eyeing me on the down-low the entire time I was in the joint, which I liked. But whereas most women would have fallen all over themselves when I laid down the law on the trucker, she was cool and distant.
Thank you. But I could have handled it.
The most interesting thing about her?
I believed she could have.
More than that, I liked that she hadn’t kowtowed to me. No deference at all.
Which led me to believe that she was new in town and hadn’t heard about me yet.
I was sure one of the waitresses was schooling her even now.
Which would make our next meeting even more interesting.
I was hoping she wouldn’t change a single bit.
Kade interrupted my thoughts. “You’re not thinking about that chick, are you?”
I grinned at him. “So what if I am?”
Kade just sighed and shook his head. Like he was an old, old man who had seen too much foolishness from youngsters, but knew better than to try to interfere. Which was hilarious, since he was almost ten years younger than me.
Lots of people see Kade from the outside and totally read him wrong. Most think he’s cold as a stone, totally devoid of feeling. The chicks don’t seem to mind too much since he looks like a pretty boy fashion model, and most of ‘em seem to take his apparent lack of interest as a challenge.
What they don’t see is what’s buried beneath the surface: unbending loyalty. Razor-sharp smarts. And astounding courage in the face of overwhelming odds – especially when something’s violated his sense of right and wrong.
He’s an old soul. One who made peace with his own mortality a long time ago, and having done that, fears nothing.
Buried even deeper than that, though, is a lava-hot vein of emotion – sleeping at the moment, but liable to turn into a volcano with the right provocation.
Assholes who provoke him live to regret it.
I like doing it just for the hell of it, though.
“You should get yourself an old lady, Kade. Settle down, have a bunch of blond-haired babies just as stoic as you.”
“Hm,” was all he replied before he was back onto business. “What about that other issue?”
‘That other issue’ was the thing we’d been discussing right before the greasy trucker decided to go to 11 on the asshole meter.
Louis Shaw was the Vice President of the Midnight Riders – my second-in-command, though in name only. Kade was my real right-hand man. As the Sergeant-At-Arms, I depended on Kade to get his hands dirty in those situations where I couldn’t.
Lou didn’t particularly like that. At 41, he was older than me, and sported a kind of friendly antagonism about being passed over as President. He’d been the Sergeant-At-Arms under the former regime, and was far more inclined towards the old-timers’ views on what constituted acceptable forms of revenue for the club.
After the old guard had been swept away – either gunned down by cops or opposing gangs, or sent to the Federal penitentiary – I’d seen the writing on the wall. I was an upstart three years ago when I’d campaigned on getting us out of the illegal bullshit the club had been steeped in for the last two decades. But I persuaded 51% of the Riders and won. In the three years since, I’d made good on my promises: we got out of gun running, we were out of hard drugs like meth and heroin, and we’d cleaned up our act in virtually every other regard. Except for weed – which was legal in California, though it was still illegal at the federal level.
Other than that, we were 99% legit.
Okay, maybe 95% legit. But we’re bikers, not angels.
Lou, on the other hand, preferred the bad old days when we were 95% outlaws. He’d pushed back against my changes, but eventually went along with it – not because he was on board, but because he was smart. He knew which way the wind was blowing. Didn’t mean he wasn’t ready to tack back in the opposite direction the instant it shifted, though.
He was a charming son of a bitch, I’ll give him that. And a hell of an actor. He’d smile to your face and give you a hug while he figured out the best place to stab you. Lou’s enemies didn’t always know they were on his shit list – not until the knife was in their back, anyway.
