Smoke and Steel (Wild West MC #2)(25)

And then there were things that really set Resurrection apart from other clubs.

For instance, most men sought out MCs because of the culture, the brotherhood, the order, but also because the life was a good life and not a lot of questions were asked. There were rules and boundaries. There were also parties and women, booze and drugs, and outside those rules and boundaries, anything went. The club, brotherhood and your bike were more important than anything, in some cases more important than your woman or even your kids.

The ROs, or Resurrection Originals, had voted unanimously that wasn’t the way they were going to roll.

Not exactly.

You cheated on your woman, that was yours to own and yours to deal with. If it ended up requiring legal fees, you paid that. The club didn’t take your back.

And if you didn’t pay child support, that was another reason your patch would be stripped.

You started to drink too much, and it became a habit, you could count on Web or Spartan sitting you down to talk about what was fucking you up. If that didn’t work, the whole club would take you up to their woods in the mountains. Then all the brothers would be pitching tents and starting a campfire, and they wouldn’t come back down until your shit was right, and you were committed to doing what you needed to do to keep it that way.

They partied. They got rowdy. But they did not fight. Not physically. Not among themselves, not out in the world.

It showed a lack of control, a lack of focus, a lack of honor, all things they’d suffered from in the past. Doing it might not get you cast out, but you’d face your brothers and need to explain yourself, and if you didn’t have a good explanation, things in the club would get dicey for you.

Further, their clubhouse and club activities were not open to all. Any biker bunny who was looking for a good time wasn’t allowed to wander in when she heard a party was happening at Resurrection. If they were at a rally, their campsite was closed to people they didn’t know. You had an invite from a brother, or his old lady, one who’d been accepted as an extension of their family by the men, you were in.

Otherwise, you got yourself an invitation, or you were out.

They weren’t strictly insular, women came and went, brothers had friends outside the brotherhood who were welcome, allies were too, extended family was considered Resurrection family.

But they weren’t sociable, and if they didn’t know you, they weren’t welcoming.

Last, most clubs proudly wore their cuts, or the leather jackets or vests that had their patches sewn on them, and they wore them everywhere.

The overriding mission of Resurrection needed to be covert. Because of that, unless it was an organized ride or a rally with other clubs, they never wore their cuts outside the meet room.

Resurrection was known to their own: The MC community.

They did not advertise themselves beyond that.

But they put their cuts on for meetings.

And yeah, all of this was written down and if you pledged, you memorized that shit, demonstrated while you were prospect that you could live it, and only then were you let in as a member.

Once that happened, you wrote your name in your own blood on their charter.

People not in the life didn’t understand that most motorcycle clubs were highly ordered, from full charter down through the local clubs. They had rules. They had elections. They had officers. They were democratically run. They had missions. And punishments were doled out when a member fucked up.

Resurrection took that to extremes.

Beck’s club was so organized, they even had assigned seating at the table.

Beck, as president, at the head. And incidentally, he’d earned the name “Washington” or for short “Wash” because he’d disavowed his old club name, and since he was the first president of Resurrection, that was what he’d earned. That said, due to history, all the ROs called him Beck.

Web, as chaplain, sat at the foot.

Core, as vice president, was at Beck’s right. Muzzle, as sergeant at arms, at his left.

Eightball, their enforcer, was at Web’s right, Spartan, their secretary at his left, and Rainman, their treasurer, next to Spartan.

This was the original crew, the ROs, or the men that were in Bounty when Core joined. They lost Griller supporting Chaos in a war Chaos eventually won, but Griller bit it on the path to that victory. And they scraped off Pacino and Digger because they were pieces of shit.

Since then, they got two new members, Shimmy and Brain, who sat in the only remaining seats.

Not in the room were their prospects, Speed and Linus.

But all the full members were there, so Beck called them to order.

He then looked at Core and announced, “Core brought you here, he’s got shit to say.”

Core looked down the shiny, kickass table that they’d spent a small fortune on, and took in his brothers.

He then laid it out about the scam going down with Hellen’s friend, and after that, shared that Nails might have gone to Hellen’s father, and was using that angle to fuck with Archie’s family, and as such, Jagger and Chaos.

He finished with, “We promised Chaos we’d be on the lookout for her, and we need to be thorough in doing that, so we gotta look into the dad and that branch of the family. And I wanna call a vote to investigate this scam these assholes are pulling, and if we agree, put it down.”

“We got Chaos’s back on the Nails situation, so Muzzle, Shimmy, rope in Speed and Linus, look into that,” Beck ordered and turned to Core. “Can you get us details on them?”