Sugar (The Henchmen MC 12)

"For couples who like to keep it interesting," she agreed. "Or girlfriends to give as gag gifts to each other I guess."

"Keep that in mind," I said as we were let through the gates. I waited for Kennedy to get inside before I made my way around the building where I knew Virgin would be waiting for me next to our bikes.

"What? They didn't talk you into a nice manicure?" he asked as I snatched my key out of the air when he threw it.

I ignored that, reaching to check my phone, as I had been doing somewhat compulsively all day. Though there hadn't been anything new. "Have you gotten anything?" I asked, knowing that, so far, I was the only one with texts from a dead man in his inbox.

"Nah. Guess whoever they are must figure we are together," he mused as he climbed on his bike.

It wouldn't be a wrong assumption. Ever since we were biting ankles, we had been friends. Mostly because our old men had been buddies, and we had been the only two kids literally growing up inside outlaw MC clubs. The only times we ever were apart was when there was a big run that involved all the bikers... or if one of our old men got locked up. I got tossed on my mother's doorstep - whether she wanted me or not - and Virgin had been put on a train to go stay over with an old, only half-lucid grandmother for those time periods.

And after most of our MC got pinched a few years back, anyone who knew us knew we didn't go our separate ways, that wherever we ended up, we would be together.

"What did you tell Cash?" I asked, knowing he was the one in charge that particular morning as Reign, Wolf, and Repo were spending time with their women and kids.

"Going to check out the bike store to see about you getting something that won't keep crapping out on you," he told me, even though Repo had managed to get my bike working before he headed out for the day.

It was a believable enough excuse, and with that, we hit the road.

We drove the hour or so up to Staten Island, parking our bikes in the lot, and taking the ferry over into lower Manhattan. In doing so, I squashed a small bit of guilt for being in the area and not checking in on my Ma and half-brother, but knew that if I bothered, it would be an all-day event, and we really didn't have time to spare right now. Especially when we were doing this shit without club permission.

"Tish said something about him hanging out in a dive bar or tat shop down on Spring off of Bowery," Virgin supplied as the silence hung heavy around us, neither of us being big communicators almost as a rule.

"Why Manhattan? Why not stay in Staten? Or head out like us?" I wondered out loud. A dive bar and tattoo shop in the city was not where you expected to find someone like him, someone whose road name was Heavy D and looked like - since he was - a lifelong biker.

"Figure some of the guys decided to stay loyal."

"Loyal to what? An organization that doesn't exist anymore? And even if they did, would have next to no pull on the streets these days?"

It hadn't taken a lot of thought for us to decide to shrug off one cut for another. Especially after it was clear there was no chance for the club to be what it once was. We simply weren't meant for the civilian life. Our skill sets were deeply seated in crime and evading the law. That was how we were raised. It was the code we had learned to live by as men.

Neither of us was keen to get a nine-to-five and ride on weekends.

No fucking way.

"D didn't know another MC," Virgin reasoned, eyes on the shoreline as it got closer. "Different than us."

Again, true.

We had always gone where our fathers had dragged us. Which meant from a heroin-slinging MC in upstate New York as kids to a cocaine-dealing one in Staten Island, then finally settling into an enforcing one on the cusp of Jersey and New York state. When you had been raised to know that loyalty was absolute, but only to the life of the organization itself. When the heroin-dealing MC fell apart among internal fighting and drug addiction among some devastating arrests to upper management, well, it was time to move on and give your loyalty to someone else.

Until we arrived in Navesink Bank, we hadn't known a club that operated quite like The Henchmen did. It was always a brotherhood, sure, but never really a family. It was the first time I really understood why you might be a lifer. Why The Henchmen cut might be the only - or the last - cut you would be willing to wear.