Ride Steady(71)

Allowing his lip to curl, he did it wondering if he would have been better off if his mother had sold him to some couple who was desperate for a baby.

The answer to that was probably.

“Doin’ you a solid by givin’ you a heads-up,” she told him.

“You couldn’t’ve shared this with Hop?”

“I only talk to you.”

She did. He had no clue why. Except she’d tried it on with him a couple of times, looking to replace Brent, who had zero balls and a meth habit, with a man whose cock she hoped to suck to get her out from under the thumb of a lunatic.

Her problem was, Joker might f*ck empty *, but he didn’t f*ck greedy *.

“Got a lock on another girl we can turn?” he asked.

“Maybe, for one large.”

Yep.

Greedy *.

“You give a name, she gets us solid info, you’ll get your bonus.”

She nodded.

“Now, you’re here, I’m here, you got anything for me?”

“I think Benito is saving the best for last. He’s still concentrating on the Ruiz patch.”

This, they knew.

Benito Valenzuela was a pathological drug-dealing, porn-producing pimp who saw an opportunity when a couple of major players in Denver shifted out of the felonious into something that increased their life expectancy.

He went with it, claimed turf, did it easy, and got himself a complex that he was unstoppable.

He also got himself a mission.

Take over Denver.

All of it.

Including Chaos, the five-mile area surrounding Ride that Chaos decreed was free of drugs and whores. They decreed it but they also made it so by patrolling—brothers going out every night to keep their patch clean.

They’d been scuffling with Valenzuela for a while. Chaos attention turned to other issues. Valenzuela’s attention turned to other turf. But they’d had skirmishes, including invading a porn set to free Tabby’s junkie best friend who was paying her debt to Valenzuela by making her film debut.

Valenzuela did not take this kindly.

Since then, he’d been dormant where Chaos was concerned, doing his usual, sending dealers and whores into Chaos, causing headaches, but nothing extreme.

But the extreme was coming. Every member of the Club made it their purpose to know everything they could know about Valenzuela through every means available.

He hadn’t forgotten Chaos.

Their problem wasn’t just him. It was that with each move he made, he got more money, which meant more firepower.

No one was unstoppable.

But part of the past and future Joker had learned about his Club included learning that Valenzuela had once been a nuisance.

He was now a viable threat.

There was a day when Chaos would have moved at any time during the past few years to neutralize this threat.

But Tack had guided the Club from hostile negotiations that led to aggressive takedowns that could get bloody for all concerned to defensive maneuvers that centered solely on their patch.

If Valenzuela threatened them directly, the Club would move to take him down.

Until then, they kept their shit clean and their families safe from blowback.

This was the beef Rush had with his father. Because even if Tack had pulled the Club out of maneuvers that started antagonistic and led to violent, Tack was still set on doing whatever they had to do to keep their territory clean.

Rush felt the Club should leave the policing to the police.

Until that moment, Joker hadn’t given a shit what the Club did. Whatever it was, he was all in.

But standing in an alley with a whore instead of exploring the many ways he wanted to make Carissa Teodoro whimper on her couch, he now had an opinion.

And until that moment, Joker didn’t understand why Tack didn’t work out his beef with his son.

But standing in that alley the day after he made the decision he should have made years ago in a car park outside a hospital, he got it.

Because Joker was standing in an alley with a whore. What he was not doing was exploring the ways he could make Carissa whimper, something he didn’t know where it would lead, he just knew where he wanted it to go.

And Tack had led his Club away from a dark path through blood then vengeance to clean.

He’d earned his scars.

Now his newer brothers, who had not walked through fire to turn Chaos around, were the future of the Club. They needed to prove their grit and earn their scars.