Biker’s Collar: Property of Scrap (Rebel Barbarians MC #6)

Chapter 21 – Southpaw

Twenty-One

Southpaw

1 week later

The War Room

T he plan should be simple, but getting the club members to carry this out without vice or distraction will be another problem entirely. We are having a “truncated” spontaneous meeting. The last club meeting as rowdy and upbeat as this one was long before dad died. There are few situations that require us to meet on more than a quarterly basis. Hosting a bunch of bikers can be a fucking problem.

It’s a bigger problem now that our mothers have decided to descend on the club for this meeting. We don’t allow them into the actual war room, but it’s bad enough that they’re outside smoking, drinking… and gossiping relentlessly about us.

I’m proud of the group we assembled, but looking around at all their faces, I can’t help but worry that we’ll end up just like our fathers. They all put forth their best efforts to show up here and I’m downright surprised that some of them did.

Ruger got shot in the shoulder and from what I heard, shit got terrible over at Oske’s trailer. Another problem for another time. We have more urgent business now. He sits next to Gideon, who sits to my left with Tamiya seated on his lap.

He refuses to attend meetings without her and frankly, considering the way I’ve seen her fight, I don’t mind her being in the room. No fucking way Anna sits in on a meeting like this. Not with our second kid hopefully on the way. Tanner shares my opinion. Quin is nowhere near this meeting.

Juliette straddles Hunter in the back of the room, pushing him against the wall as she thrusts her ass back and kisses him like he has nicotine-laced Prosecco coating his lips. Ryder and Joslin must have come to a similar agreement to the one I came to with Anna, because he sits alone, casting the occasional disapproving glance at his brother.

Deacon Hollingsworth is the most surprising presence at this meeting, but considering I used his underground casino to expose key members of the Midnight SS, I shouldn’t be surprised that he wants deeper involvement in the decision making behind our warfare against these Neo-Nazi fucks.

We have a lot of ground to cover in this meeting. Ethan and Owen seem agitated with each other and I don’t know why — nor do I care to figure it out. Owen brought that girl from the bust at Deacon’s place up to Missouri, but I wouldn’t take Ethan for the type to grow jealous over a random woman. Their tension must be over something else. Gambling? I put Owen in a fucked up situation and he handled it just fine. Ethan always thought Owen should have custody of his daughter, so I doubt the situation with Waverly and Kaylee-Marie has anything to do with it. Although, that’s not a bad guess.

Ethan thinks because he’s the oldest that he is our dad. Still, he hasn’t let Owen’s dumb ass baby mama drama get him this tense in ages.

That’s not it… My mind wanders back to the woman in Owen’s care. Was her name Veronica or something? He was odd about the entire thing and my wife thinks I should investigate more.

I glance at my brother for a spare moment… Wondering if I should worry about him and this woman. Oske never mentioned any concerns over Owen and the woman. She only seems to be concerned about money and land. I don’t blame her.

The land situation is fucked up.

Owen hasn’t explained his strange request for this woman and I’m up to my nose in shit to deal with, so I don’t have time to deal with Owen’s bullshit. He’s too much of a softie to properly harm a woman. I have to keep believing that. And as for Ethan… The only thing that man loves is the sports betting app on his cell phone. It can’t be a woman getting under his skin.

We’re all here and as Juliette slides her hand inside Hunter’s pants, I take that as my cue to bring the meeting to order. I don’t know what the hell they’re getting up to back there, but considering Juliette is already pregnant with twins, I think all that kissing and clawing at each other can wait until later. I drink as much beer as possible in one sip.

“GENTLEMEN! And the ladies that forced their way in here…”

“I was invited,” Tamiya says. Gideon pinches her thigh and she slaps him across the face. Not my place to intervene.

“Let’s get this meeting to order. We’re here to discuss club matters that have become serious enough to require more urgent action.”

“Warfare,” Hunter says from the back room, remembering at the last fucking second that he was supposed to co-chair this meeting, not get his dick wet in the back of the meeting room. Alcohol had him catatonic. Juliette has him excited and happy all the time… It’s terrible.

“Yes. Warfare.”

“I’m here to find out what you’ve been keeping from me,” Ruger says. “That Indian bitch has complete control over you.”

“Haven’t you been staying in her house for free?” Tamiya snaps at him. She’s the only person who has ever been able to talk to Ruger like that since Doc. I feel strangely relieved that she’s here at this meeting. Ruger flips her the middle finger and Gideon shoots him a threatening glare. I hate to admit that they make an excellent team.

“Oske has absolutely no control over me. Our family and our club owe her and her family a great debt.”

“I need a fucking explanation before I put my life on the line.”

“Your life is on the line because you slept with the most psychotic piece of pussy this side of the Mississippi,” Ryder says. He rarely gets involved in conversations like this and everyone shuts the fuck up once he says that.

“What debt?” Deacon asks. “I don’t mind Oske, but… it would help to know what the big damn secret is.”

I glance nervously towards the door separating us from our mothers smoking and getting drunk on the other side. I can only hope they’re gossiping too loudly to hear what the hell is going on in this room.

“Something that would embarrass my mother.”

“We’re blood brothers,” Deacon says. “We can handle the truth.”

“To be fair,” Ethan chimes in. “We didn’t know the truth until recently.”

He’s right about that. Ethan has done most of the leg work in uncovering the truth — finding proof of the wild story Oske told us. But the proof is there. We’re family and the way our family cheated hers… it just might be why we’re all so cursed. And why that curse seems to be related to gambling. It’s awfully superstitious and the superstition feels more like folk magic than solid Christian thinking.

But life has gone a lot better for the Shaw family since we helped the Indians. And I know doing right by them will help us against the Midnight SS. Oske has helped us and considering how much she could rightfully sue us for… we’re damned lucky.

It’s finally time to tell the truth. Looking around the room, nothing feels more difficult than confessing my fathers shame to this room filled with people who grew up looking up to him. Even my mother doesn’t know the truth. She has never met Oske for more than a split second and assumed that Oske was Ethan’s girlfriend.

Everyone here is a brother to me… or a sister-in-law. I trust them. But that doesn’t stop the shame from coursing through my veins. It should be my father’s shame, but it feels like mine. I have done everything in my power to cover this up, but with the Midnight SS encroaching on the land… we have no choice but to defend ourselves. Technically, Oske’s portion of the land is the most at risk of Midnight SS incursion based on our recent discoveries.

Their human trafficking trail runs straight through the Creek land. They stole women – tons of women – and Oske wrongfully assumed we were the ones responsible at first – long before she trusted my father. She changed her mind when the crazy ass cops blew up the Rebel Barbarians club house. She saw reason after that. Unfortunately, my father’s death helped.

Oske tried to tell me the truth from the beginning, but it was so hard to believe that my father could have been involved in something so fucked up. She has proof. Lots of proof. And that crazy Indian woman has been trying to stalk and hunt bikers for years since her own escape from the religious nuts who trade human bodies with the bikers. My father stuck her and her family in the middle of a war that they could never win on their own. He must have known the club would need to intervene.

Maybe this is what he was always preparing us for…

Hundreds of acres of the land border her reservation and over fifty acres on the reservation can only belong to registered members of Oske’s Creek tribe.

If we don’t defend her side as much as ours – we both lose the land.

“My father tricked Oske’s mother into an illegal marriage and fathered a pair of twin boys who have since fucked off and are currently roaming around the country,” I say, the story weighing heavily on my chest. It doesn’t help that Juliette leans forward with her eyes fixed on me widely like she’s watching a soap opera.

This had better not end up in one of her paintings.

“How the fuck is that our problem?” Ruger says.

“You can leave the club if you have a problem with how I run it,” I snap at him. The last thing I need right now is an attitude from Ruger Blackwood. He might be family, but he’s a loose cannon.

I can’t handle him with the same ease that Doc Blackwood could. My voice vibrates with angry tension as I try to draw Ruger’s excessively independent mind into some kind of understanding. “Oske has put you up in her trailer while you kick the shit out of a pregnant woman. We have all given you plenty of room to be an unhinged piece of redneck trash. Question me one more fucking time, and I’ll drag your ass outside and remind you that the only reason I’m not in prison is because I haven’t been caught.”

My heart races, even more fury boiling just beneath the surface as Ruger barely seems affected by my frustration – which he can clearly observe.

“So people can’t ask questions?” Ruger grumbles. Gideon throws him a sharp, disapproving look. That shuts everyone up again.

“It’s our problem. These people know that some of the land belongs to club members and they also know that Oske’s brothers are roaming around the country. If we don’t get rid of the Midnight SS… they’re going to hurt them and they’re going to take more control. We can’t have that.”

“We’ve done a good job so far,” Deacon says eagerly. “Who else do we need to take out?”

I glance at Tamiya, who was invited to this meeting. She might not be the licensed private investigator, but she’s the only one I can trust involved with that entire nosy woman organization.

“I have a list,” she says. “The remaining Midnight SS bikers. I don’t know what you want to do with it.”

“I can’t assassinate anyone,” Ryder says calmly. “Joslin wants me to start attending a new church with her.”

Hunter snickers from the back of the room. “Careful. You might turn to ash in the doorway.”

“Hunter, be nice,” Juliette hisses.

“You won’t be necessary,” Tamiya says, handing me the list for review. I memorized the names on this piece of paper before the meeting, but it helps to have them handy so I can pass the list around. I nod and pass the paper back to Gideon on my left.

Those are the names.

“Ryder, I won’t assign you an assassination, but I need you and Joslin to take the time and do some research about Oske’s brothers. She has no clue where they are.”

“Great.”

“Your job will be shutting the fuck up and staying out of trouble,” I tell Ruger flatly as the list makes its way around the room.

“I can’t kill anybody else,” Ruger says. “I got my hands full.”

Again. We’re quiet.

“What the fuck do you mean by ‘anyone else’?” Gideon asks.

Tanner and Ruger exchange glances. Heat rushes around my neck. I told these fucking idiots to keep this to themselves until after the meeting. But Ruger has the IQ of a goddamn armadillo. If I could rip his throat out with my glare, I would.

“I mean…” Ruger says. “I might have killed someone.”

“Are you fucking stupid?” I snap at him.

Ruger keeps going. I swear, the Blackwood boys are some of the messiest motherfuckers on the planet.

“I killed Darlene after making her give birth to the baby. I looked it up on YouTube ‘cause I got tired of dealing with her.”

“Right,” Ryder says. “You used the internet to research how to commit your highly specific murder? I need to call Joslin.”

“Sit down,” Hunter commands him. “He didn’t do that shit.”

“I did,” Ruger said. “I’m a father now.”

Everyone in the room struggles not to have a reaction to Ruger’s announcement. We all know the situation. That baby has nothing to do with Ruger. His old lady lay down with some Midnight SS biker and ran off on him after he was sending her money. Everybody understands Ruger’s anger but… killing Darlene will clearly bring more problems than we fucking need right now.

“Fatherhood. Now is certainly the perfect time,” Ryder says. “It’s exactly what you need in your situation.”

“He’s not alone out there,” Tanner says, stepping in oddly defensively. “He has somebody with him.”

They exchange a strange, secretive glance that I hope I don’t have to investigate later. I have very little interest in staying involved in the personal lives of club members as long as they manage their shit according to club values without my involvement.

“Even if I was alone,” Ruger says. “It’s my property to do what I want with.”

The streaks of sadism in Ruger have always made me deeply uneasy. Fortunately, his brutality has a purpose for the club for the next few months.

“Good. Let’s button it up then,” I growl. “Our plan for warfare is simple. We engage them on multiple fronts to sow confusion.”

“I don’t get it,” Ruger says.

“You don’t need to get it,” Gideon reminds him. “You need to wait for your orders and carry them out.”

“How can I do that with a newborn?”

“I don’t care how the fuck you get it done,” I growl. “Now let me finish or I swear, I’ll keep us locked in here all night.”

Again, silence. My temper has always been able to command a room without much effort and I don’t feel particularly guilty about the fear that I inspire. Their silence and their respect for me places a great weight on my shoulders — the only thing that gives me a similar obsessive drive to playing dice or betting on sports games.

I might relapse, but after — I remember. I have a family to live for. Anna. Junior. Our second baby on the way. And the Barbarians.

“Each of you will have a crew and an assignment. If we can’t fill all the spots with club members, we’ll get recruits looking to prove themselves. Each crew will have war patches so that we can identify each other easily…”

War. It shouldn’t have come to this. But I always promised Anna and everyone else that I would do whatever I needed to keep us all safe. I force myself to stomach what those patches mean. That we could lose more members. Risk losing more than we already have…

“Mom and Karen are getting the patches done. These are the crews…”

Ryder Sinclair won’t do anything that could land his ass in prison, so his job is pretty simple — establishing an outpost on the old Route 66 highway near Conway, Missouri and defending it from the inevitable spillage of Midnight SS bikers when word gets out we’re massacring anyone stupid enough to wear that patch and those tattoos on our land.

I don’t want to stop at sending a message. Right after I met and married Anna, my heart softened to the work the club needed to carry out. I wanted to be a good man for her. The deeper and more troubling the violence around us has become, the easier it is for me to access my ruthlessness.

It’s all in the service of protection — keeping Anna, Junior, and my family safe.

“Hunter, I need you to take your team and hunt down a man named Eldon Barlow. He’s from Texas, and has the club name ‘SCOURGE’. All these assholes should be easy to find. They don’t go anywhere without starting trouble and they stick to known biker friendly towns.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you can get this done with Wade, and any other Sinclair or Shaw looking to get patched in who needs money.”

Hunter nods. Simple plan and pulling men from our families will make building a loyal team much easier.

Juliette turns around and kisses him. I avert my eyes respectfully, although the way she kisses her husband is extremely disrespectful. Some of us can’t have our wives in seedy war rooms…

“Gideon, Tamiya, your job is to track down the Midnight SS full roster membership. You’re the most likely to survive working with Oske, so after this meeting, I’ll send her your way.”

“I love that bitch,” Tamiya says.

Gideon scowls. “Do you remember that Oske convinced Tamiya to commit a kidnapping? I don’t like a woman who has undue influence on my wife hanging around.”

His hand reaches around to grip Tamiya’s thighs. I almost regret not leaving Anna at a nearby motel so I could access her faster at the end of this meeting. Waiting hurts.

Tamiya plants an affectionate kiss on Gideon’s cheek that turns him red.

“I’m pregnant. I’m not going to do anything crazy,” Tamiya says, prompting him to give her thighs another aggressive squeeze. I grimace as I look at her bulging baby bump.

I felt guilty enough inviting a pregnant woman to this meeting. Gideon doesn’t need to make it worse. Oske will be good luck for a pregnant woman because of her Native American stuff. Maybe.

“Oske won’t mess up. She cares about this stuff and she’s trustworthy.”

“She’s a psycho bitch,” Ruger chimes in. “She stole my cigarettes.”

“Is that enough to diagnose her?” Tamiya mutters.

I keep assigning jobs because if I stop for every moment of distracting conversation, I’ll have a full head of grey hair before I get back to Anna.

“Ethan, your job is killing a blond bastard named Dusty Haas. His family lives ten miles away from the Creek reservation, and we have good reason to believe he’s kicking around those parts. I need you to take the patched-in Hollingsworth members without a team. That is… Reed and Mason.”

Ethan grunts and salutes me. He likes any business that keeps him close to the reservation casino. I’m not entirely ungenerous with him.

“And Tanner? I need you to lead a team out West to handle the Kiefer twins, since we have it on safe authority they’re in Texas working out some type of oil deal where they shouldn’t be conducting business at all.”

“Yes, sir,” Tanner says.

Everyone has their assignment except Owen. I’m nervous about what I need to ask my brother to do but… I have to trust him with this.

“Owen? I have an assignment for you, but it’s best we handle this in private.”

Nobody bristles. We have enough trust in each other and in the club.

“With your drinks or your seltzer… let’s pledge to come together and get this done. Shall we?”