Some of the guys chuckled, but most of us just waited.
“Russians have been havin’ a hard time of it these past three weeks. Lots of their boys been picked up. Not just their soldiers. Men in charge. We got Rock to thank for most a’that.”
The crowd grumbled a little. It didn’t sit well with any of us that we were using cops to clean up for us. None of us cared if an enemy was picked up, not unless it affected us, but we sure as fuck didn’t want to be helping put them away. We took care of our own shit, or at least we had before. If people in our line of work started snitching, no one on the planet would fucking trust us. The Aces were walking a very fine line.
“Know none a’you like this shit. I’m not likin’ it either,” my dad said, making the crowd quiet. “But we’ll still get ours. Got men in most of the pens, if we don’t we got allies who do. We’ll take care a’business inside. Haven’t given the Feds any news ’cept a list of names Rock had at his wedding. Nobody’s testifyin’. Nobody’s snitchin’… at least on our end. Can’t say what those Russians are doin’.”
“What now?” Homer asked.
“The Russian’s are limpin’,” Casper replied. He looked at my dad then back at the crowd. “Can’t say that they’ll be backin’ off. We gotta keep our eyes up and our backs covered. But I don’t see any indication that they’ll be messin’ with us in the near future. They’re scramblin’ to save their own asses.”
My uncle was a genius. Not just smart, but a literal genius. He saw patterns where everyone else saw a mess of information that didn’t make any sense. I was pretty sure he’d barely slept in the past few weeks as he’d tried to keep his finger on the pulse of what was happening outside our gates. Most of the officers had left at one point or another, meeting up with our contacts and gathering information, but Casper had stayed in the clubhouse. He’d locked himself inside the war room we called church and poured over the information everyone was bringing back.
They’d only given us the bare bones of what Casper had found, but I knew there was so much more they weren’t sharing. It drove me fucking crazy, but there wasn’t shit I could do about that. I wasn’t even a patched in member yet. The fact that the other prospects and I were in the garage was a courtesy, nothing more.
“Lockdown’s over,” Dragon said with a sigh. “Thank Christ. But no big gatherings outside the gates.” Everyone was silent as he let that sink in. “And you need to be on your women. They need to be keepin’ their eyes open. Lettin’ you know where they’re at. You know the drill. And for fuck’s sake, they make a new goddamn friend at the grocery store, you shut that shit down. These motherfuckers have tried over and over again to get us through our women and kids. That shit ends now.”
We threw the garage doors back open, and I stepped outside with everyone else to get a breath of fresh air. The longer we’d been inside with it all closed up, the more it had felt like the walls were pushing in on us. It wasn’t even a small space, but I’d been claustrophobic as fuck. Any discussion about the Russians made me jittery.
I grimaced as I walked toward a picnic table. When our barbecue had been shot up, we’d fought back. Well, the other men had fought back. I’d been tackled to the ground. I shook my head to dislodge the memory. They’d killed the men responsible. They’d even tracked down the fucker we’d thought planned the whole thing and had him brought back from where he’d hidden in Montana. We’d thought it was over. That they’d gotten all of them.
It wasn’t until three weeks ago that we’d found out those fuckers were soldiers. Not planners. They hadn’t been the brains, they’d just been taking orders from the fucking Russians.
I still didn’t know how the officers had missed that when they’d interrogated the douchebag one of our allies had served to us on a silver platter, but I had a feeling I’d never know. Even after I patched in, I was pretty sure there was shit I was never going to be told.
My hands started to shake, so I got up and started pacing. Memories of the shooting seemed to come at me from all angles, and I was trying my damnedest to keep it all locked down. I couldn’t lose it, not with the club still full of old ladies and little kids.
“You wanna go?” my older brother asked, startling me as he came up beside me. I hadn’t even noticed he was still outside. I’d just assumed he would’ve gone in to tell his woman the good news and start packing up their shit.