“Not my fault you dropped the ball, Cash,” I said, shaking my head at him as he moved toward me, slapping a hand on my back.
“I get the next one with freckles,” he demanded. “You here for a drink?”
“He’s here for Mo,” Reign clarified.
“What’d he do now?” Cash asked, rolling his eyes.
“The kind of thing that requires a crowbar-wielding visit from a Mallick.”
“Right,” Cash sighed. “I’ll go get him for you. Shed?” he asked his brother, who nodded.
With that, I was led through the clubhouse, stopped two or three times for Reign to say something to his men, before I was led out the back door and across the yard. By the time we got to the shed, Cash was standing outside the door looking resigned.
“Do what you got to do,” Reign said, waving a hand. “We’ll be out here.”
I nodded, reaching for the door and going in. I couldn’t exactly say that I enjoyed my work. It wasn’t that kind of job. You didn’t do it with a smile and a light heart. You did it because you understood the necessity of it. It wasn’t my place to feel empathy for a gambling addict. No one forced these guys to beg money from people they knew could break their knees if they welshed. Loan sharking was a necessary part of the criminal underbelly and I figured, at least my family had scruples. We didn’t do shit to fuck with your family. We never touched women. And we gave you at least two shots to make good before we spilled your blood.
It was, for all intents and purposes, fair.
And we were raised from a young age to view violence differently than others. I don’t think there was a week of my life from five on that passed where I wasn’t covered in mine, or someone else’s, blood. All that bullshit about violence not solving anything, yeah, that’s some politically correct new age crap. Violence is one of the only things that permanently fucking solves anything. I’d never seen a bully at school who kept that shit up when they got their nose, eye socket, and ribs broken by the kids they used to pick on. And, well, a wife beater couldn’t go on beating his woman if she suddenly cut off his fucking hands, now could he?
“I just need another day,” Mo said before I even closed the door. There was almost a trace of relief in his tone, like he was worried the reason he was in the shed was about Henchmen business, not the money he owed us business. Mo was a small, sniveling imitation of a real biker. While he was tall, he was gaunt, with greasy brown hair and a nasal voice.
“Why, so you can go lose more money at the tracks? This doesn’t work that way and you know it. Pops talked to you; so did two of my brothers. It’s time to stop talking.”
“No, man. You don’t understand…”
Oh, the excuses. The whining. The woe-is-me-ing.
That was the worst part of the job.
“I understand that you made a deal and you backed out of it. That’s what I understand. Now I’m telling you to be a man and take what’s coming to you without whining like a bitch about it.”
I moved in on him as he backed away, curling my lip at the cowardice of that. I swung out, my fist colliding with his jaw hard, making his head snap to the side. Before he could even register that, my fists went to his center, my blood getting charged with adrenaline. It was easy once you started to get into it, deaf to the screams, somehow fueled by the sight of blood.
“Stop! Stop!” Mo screamed, wiping his bleeding nose with his forearm, holding his hands out to me. “I’ll trade you information.”
I stiffened at that, a swirling feeling churning in my stomach, having a feeling things had just taken a turn for the worse for sorry ole Mo. “Information?” I prompted, curling my hands to fists at my sides.
“Yeah, yeah. Anything you want, man. Forget about the eight thousand and I can… I dunno. I’ll tell you where the gun vault is. Or where the next drop is going down. It will easily be worth twice that. Maybe three times.”
Oh, fuck.
I exhaled hard, knowing what had to be done. See, I didn’t condone what was bound to follow, but I understood one thing about our lifestyle: nothing mattered more than loyalty. Our organizations depended on it. It kept us alive. It kept us all out of jail. And snitches didn’t get stitches as the saying went. I didn’t know where the fuck that pansy ass shit came from. No criminal empire worth its salt would let a snitch get away with breath still in their lungs. And The Henchmen, yeah, they were worth their salt. What’s more, biker clubs understood that nothing, not even family, was more important than brotherhood.