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Becca bumpedmy shoulder as we pulled into a parking spot at the Docks, over-eager party-goers already flooding the entire area.
“Come on, girl,” she said. “Let’s go get you a drink.”
I grumbled wordlessly in reply, sighing as I followed her from the Rover, the guys exiting along with us. The music rose into the night, echoing across Spirit Lake and back to us as scantily clad bodies sauntered up the long dock to the twinkle-light covered pier. Inside the wide opening, people were already dancing. White and purple light twisted and flickered over the floor in time with the beat.
This was positively the last fucking place I wanted to be right now, though I understood the need to be here. Beneath the layers of graffiti painted all over the once green warehouse, you could still see the sharp spike at the top of a spade shape. The strong triangular form of a red ‘A’ since covered over with a glowy looking Saint tag.
If the Saints didn’t hold the location, the Aces could make a play for it, though I doubted they were strong enough to do that now. I also fucking doubted something as idiotic as a pier mattered to them. Though the guys had told me when the Aces controlled the Docks the place was a fucking shit show. Young girls getting roofied. Dirty drugs causing overdoses. Less than willing participants guided, stumbling, to the Red Room.
That wasn’t how they ran this place, and it showed. Teens and younger adults alike congregated here, wary of my Crows, but respectful of their authority. They knew exactly what would happen if they broke one of the rules. If they stepped a toe out of line. So they didn’t. Mostly.
Apparently, Rook once tossed a guy over the railing out back for trying to sell blow laced with dirty fentanyl. The guy lived but barely.
As we made our way up the dock, Corvus accepted a small bag from a skinny twenty-something with messy black hair and dipped his pinkie finger in. It came out white, and he touched it to his tongue, tasting the cocaine. He nodded, indicating the larger bag the smaller one had come from, checking its contents. He lifted out a Ziplock with about thirty single pills in smaller baggies inside. “We don’t allow these here,” he told the guy, tucking the bag into the inside pocket of his jacket. “You can collect them at the end of the night.”
“But—”
“Problem?” Rook hissed at the guy, and he shook his head, pulling the drawstring on his drug bag tight.
“No. Not at all. Thanks, man.”
No one sold drugs here that didn’t first pass through inspection from the Crows. And not without them getting their cut at the end of the night.
The dealer scampered off after the crowd, slyly making inquiries as he passed through couples and groups of friends bound to split by the time the night was through.
I sighed, hearing heavy booted footsteps behind me and turning to see Axel, Crowley, and Derrik coming up the dock behind us, each carrying a heavy duffle. One of which I recognized. I lifted a brow at the badly concealed heavy artillery. “Really?” I asked Axel, indicating the sniper rifle. “Is that necessary?”
The guys and I were already armed with our regular load-outs, theirs buffed only with additional magazines. The gear the other Saints were carrying seemed hella fucking overkill to me.
Though no one else seemed to notice or care.
Axel fell into step beside me. “Orders,” he said with a shrug. “Grey knows how to use it.”
I smirked. Grey wasn’t the only one who knew how to use it anymore, but Axel didn’t need to know that. There was a quiet sort of satisfaction in keeping that fact to myself.
“So,” Axel said, dragging out the ‘o,’ his gaze sweeping up to Becca walking a few paces ahead next to Grey, the pair of them chatting while they walked. “Your friend, is she—”
“Touch her, and I’ll cut your balls off.”
Axel coughed, his eyes going wide as he stared down at his feet instead of at her ass. “Cool. Noted.”
Even if he wasn’t a healthy ten years older than her, I didn’t want Becca getting any more ingrained in this life with these people than she already had to be. With any luck, we’d get the Ace problem and my stalker dilemma resolved in the next few days and she could go back to her normal life without having to look over her shoulder, worried someone might want her dead.
Something inside of me crumpled at the realization that the only way she’d ever be truly free—really out of danger—would be for me to put distance between us, too. I was a Saint now. Like it or not and regardless of the tentative truce between Diesel and me, I doubted he was going to let me go.
Truthfully, I didn’t think I wanted to be let go. Not if it meant being separated from my Crows.
“Well, I’m going to go stuff this shit in the back office,” Axel said awkwardly, hefting the sniper bag higher on his shoulder as he took off into the pier, the other Saints following closely behind him.
“What’d you say to him?” Rook asked, rushing to catch up, tossing his finished cigarette into a sand pail by the entrance as we stepped inside.
I pursed my lips. “Not much. Just that I’d cut his balls off if he touched Becca.”
Rook tipped his head to one side. “Can’t blame the guy for trying,” Rook said with a mischievous grin, his gaze tracking to Becca, who was drawing a little mickey of Crown Royal whiskey from her black purse, her hair falling over her face like a shimmering curtain.
No. I really couldn’t.
Becca was hot as fuck.
