Ride Steady by Kristen Ashley
“Monk,” Joker whispered.
Hank stood ready to roll before Chaos did.
“This your word or you got more?” he asked.
“Tine handled the transaction,” Valenzuela told Hank. “If you can find him, he might help you.”
Tine was Monk’s money man.
And Valenzuela had forced it out of him. So if he left him breathing, he was vapor.
Hank wasted no more time. He strode to the door.
“Hank,” Tack called. Hank looked back, still moving. “Find him before we do.”
Hank said nothing.
He walked out the door.
“I hear you’ve hung up your gloves, as it were,” Valenzuela said, and Joker looked back to him to see the asshole had eyes on him. “If you ever want to fight for me, I don’t mind having Chaos blood on my cement.”
Joker just stared at him.
But he allowed his lip to curl.
Valenzuela smiled and pushed away from the table, saying, “I think we’re done here.”
He was two steps from the table before Knight spoke. “Benito.”
Valenzuela turned back.
“You ever think of usin’ me to negotiate your bullshit again without you sharin’ with me you wanna negotiate your bullshit, rethink,” Knight warned.
“Sebring, you’re aware I don’t act out of the kindness of my heart,” Valenzuela returned.
“Seein’ as you don’t have one, yeah. That isn’t lost on me,” Knight stated. “But you told me you wanted peace and a safe place to share you weren’t involved with what happened to that woman so Chaos wouldn’t act on assumptions. You want a sit-down and me to keep that peaceful, you do not feed me a line of bullshit, or a player in this town who’s keepin’ himself to himself is gonna have to reconsider his position.”
Convinced he was made of steel, Valenzuela just smiled.
Since he wasn’t, Knight knew it, and he liked disrespect about as much as Tack did, he added, “And stop sendin’ your girls to work Chaos.”
Valenzuela stopped smiling. “Is this keeping yourself to yourself?”
“You know about the girls,” Knight said low, and Joker looked to Shy.
Shy’s lips hitched up and his eyes lit.
Fucking shit.
Knight was throwing down.
“You do business your way, I’ll do it mine,” Valenzuela retorted.
“I get word your way is a way I don’t like, we’ll be having another meeting and it won’t be as comfortable,” Knight fired back.
“You don’t wanna get involved in this,” Valenzuela warned.
“Take care of your girls,” Knight ordered.
Hop moved and Joker looked to him to see he’d again sat on the arm of the couch. He’d also dropped his head.
He did this to hide his smile.
In that moment, Joker knew.
Sebring was clearly using this meeting, and the way Valenzuela played it, as an excuse to wade in.
There were not a lot of pimps who went head to head with Knight. He might have been considering throwing his hat in the ring for a while.
But the time had come.
Joker wondered if Tack, Shy, and Hop knew before the meet, but it didn’t really matter.
Whether they wanted him or not, Sebring was on the team.
Valenzuela didn’t say another word. He and his soldier walked out.
When the door closed behind them, Joker announced, “I want Monk.”
“Joke,” Mitch said on a sigh.
“Hank’ll take care of it,” Brock put in.
Tack stood, eyes to Brock. “He’s got a day.”
Mitch looked to the ceiling.
Brock leaned forward to reach for his phone, muttering, “Best call Lee to get his ass with his brother before half our team is incarcerated, awaiting trial for homicide.”
“I take it you just etched your name on the invitation list for our little coffee klatch,” Mitch noted, now looking at Sebring.
Knight grinned. “I’ll bring the pastries.”
“Fuck me,” Mitch muttered.
Hop smiled at Shy, who smiled back.
Joker did not smile.
Handshakes, gratitude, chin lifts, and nods were given and Chaos strolled out.
Joker waited until they were standing at their bikes before he repeated, “I want Monk.”
Tack, head bent as he pulled on his gloves, sliced his eyes to Joker.
“Monk no longer exists.”
Another chill slid down Joker’s spine as he stared into Tack’s eyes, seeing a look in them he’d never seen before on any man in his life.
Tack finished yanking on his gloves and swung his leg over his bike. Joker didn’t do the same because Hop reached out a hand and wrapped his fingers around Joker’s forearm for a beat before he let him go, this telling him to hold.
He held.
Tack roared off.
Joker looked to Hop.
“Hank’ll get Monk,” Hop said.
Joker opened his mouth to speak, but Hop kept going.
“And Monk will go down inside.”
Joker shut his mouth.
“You’ll be clean. Chaos will be clean. But we’ll be one marker lighter,” Hop finished.
“That gonna work for you?” Shy asked.
Joker’s head filled with Heidi dead in an alley. She’d been pretty. Marred by a little man with a small dick who’d been shamed by bikers and used her to make them pay.
She’d had a thing for Joker. He had no idea how she’d hung her hopes on him, but he knew she’d had a thing for him.
She had never made him laugh. She annoyed him more than anything, and it had never been cute.
Mostly, when he was with her, he felt nothing.
But she was someone’s daughter. She was going to give someone a child. And there was no telling who she could have been if she’d been allowed to keep breathing.
Now she was dead.
No, it didn’t work for him.
But he had a woman, a kid, a brotherhood, family.
So it had to.
He jerked up his chin.
Hop nodded.
Shy clapped him on the shoulder.
Then they got on their bikes and rode.
* * *
That night after dinner, Carissa, sitting next to him on the couch, started poking hard at the laptop on her lap with her finger, grunting “Unh! Unh! Unh!” with each poke.
She then tossed it on the coffee table, where it skidded, taking the little basket she put the remotes in with it.
The basket went down.
The laptop was still up but half of it was hanging off the table.
“It’s broken!” she cried.
“I hope so, or you poundin’ on it and tossin’ it around wouldn’t be all that smart,” Joker muttered, his eyes still on the TV.
He felt her turn to him.
She ignored his comment and asked, “Do you have a laptop I can use to put the furniture in storage on Craigslist?”
“I don’t have a storage unit, and you cleaned my room. Did you find a laptop?” he asked back.
“No,” she bit out, damned cute.
“So… no,” he answered.
“Ugh!” she grunted, also cute, so he looked her way and saw her drop her head to the back of the couch, which was again cute.
He twisted to her, wrapping an arm around her and leaning up to get in her face.
“I’ll buy you a laptop for your birthday.”
She lifted her head off the couch an inch. “That’s not going to help me sell the furniture now. Dad’s paying for that unit. He has two boxes in there. We can put the boxes in the garage and he can save that money.”
“An early birthday present.”
She rolled her eyes and dropped her head back.
He knew that wouldn’t go over.
Still.
“Butterfly, you made a date with Elvira to return eight thousand dollars’ worth of clothes and s
She lifted her head up another inch. “After I put the bedroom furniture in the front yard, tape signs up around the neighborhood, and sit out there all day waiting for someone who’ll happen by and pay me what I’m asking, making it so I don’t have to take a hit to the savings I like having to buy a laptop.”
“That’s one way to go. But how much do you want outta that shit?”
“It all cost nearly six thousand dollars, it’s seen nearly no use, and is less than three years old, so I was hoping maybe five hundred dollars.”
He sat back, still turned to her and she came up.
“Six thousand dollars?” he asked.
“His mother picked it,” she mumbled. “It includes mattresses, which are expensive, and the furniture wasn’t exactly Ikea.” Her eyes slid away. “She might break into hives if she went to Ikea. Though the maze bit scares me, I love the bottom floor where all the gadgets are.”
“How ’bout this,” he ignored her rambling on Ikea and the fact she spent six times more on a guest bedroom set than he did on rent his first year away from his dad. “I take the laptop in and see if Cherry’s got a fix on someone who looks at computers. She’s got one in the office, it can’t work all the time, and the woman is a lot of things, but an IT geek isn’t one of them. We also pass it around you got that shit available. But you don’t take anything less than three K for it, Carrie. If it’s near-new and quality, you do not take that hit. You sell for as much as you can, get a laptop that’s dependable, and bank the rest.”
“That sounds like a plan,” she said.
That was easy.
Now for the last.
“You’re worried about your dad payin’ for that unit, we’ll shift crap around at the Compound or the stockroom at the store. We put it there.”
She grinned. “My manly man biker. He has an answer for everything.”
“My goofball Butterfly. She’s got a knack for makin’ me hard even when she’s bein’ a total goof,” he shot back.
Her eyes fired and her hand came up to hit his chest.
“Little high, baby,” he muttered.
Her gaze heated further, but as she slid her hand down, she asked, “Is this much sex natural?”
That said her ex not only didn’t have talent, but it would seem he also didn’t have stamina.
“Natural to what?” he asked back, going in, aiming for her jaw.
“Natural to a body’s health. I mean, I wouldn’t want you to have a heart attack in your twenties with all the effort you put in to pleasuring me.”
Pleasuring me.
And the woman didn’t think she was a goofball.
He grinned, finished running his lips down her jaw, lifted up, and pressed closer.
“I think my body can hack it,” he told her.
“Well that’s good,” she mumbled, eyes on his mouth, which he felt on his mouth and also in his dick.
“What you want, Carrie?” he whispered.
She lifted her gaze to his and whispered back, “You can start by kissing me, sweetie.”
He started there.
Some time later, he finished a fuckuva lot differently.
Tack
Tack stood on the deck of his house, his eyes to the silent dark of the woods on his mountain.
He had his phone to his ear and it was ringing.
“Tack,” Knight greeted.
“Yo, you hear?” Tack asked.
“Not yet,” Knight answered.
“Lee found Tine. He sang for Hank. They’re booking Monk right now for conspiracy to commit murder,” Tack told him.
Knight was silent.
Tack gave him that for a few beats before he said low, “We need to deal.”
“He stands trial,” Knight returned quickly. “He goes down. I want him to squirm.”
“Agreed,” Tack replied.
“He’ll be taken care of after he goes down.”
Tack drew breath in through his nose.
Then he stated, “You got a Chaos marker.”
“No,” Knight said quietly. “No marker from Chaos. I do this for a woman I didn’t know named Heidi.”
Tack heard the disconnect.
He didn’t smile at his phone.
He dropped his hand and stared at the quiet peace of his mountain.
Then he turned and went inside to his woman and their boys.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
My Place
Carissa
THE NEXT EVENING, I was at the stove making dinner. Joker was still at Ride. There was a meeting of the brothers. Therefore, for the first time when we’d both worked during the day, he was going to be home later than me.
This meant I got my house all to myself, another first.
I didn’t mind solitude. I liked it.
But I wasn’t a woman who wanted a big family just because.
I preferred company.
So I was looking forward to him being home.
On that thought, my phone rang.
I turned down the water that would eventually be boiling the broccoli and went to the counter where my phone was.
I saw the name on the screen and sighed.
Then I took the call and put it to my ear.
“Hello, Aaron. Is Travis okay?” I greeted.
“Hey, Riss. He’s fine,” he replied. “Listen, I have some interns working on things for me at the office and that means I have a break. I thought I could bring Travis over and we could all go out to dinner.”
I wouldn’t mind him bringing Travis over but only if Aaron left him and he could have dinner with Joker and me.
I didn’t say this to Aaron because I didn’t think he’d be big on that idea.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I mumbled.
“I’ll bring your boxes.”
Darn.
I wanted those boxes.
“Did you get them out of the attic?” I asked cautiously.
“Yes, Riss. I can just load them up, grab Travis, and we could be over there in fifteen minutes.”
He had the boxes down and he was bringing them.
Maybe he hadn’t looked inside.
“How about if you bring them when you return Travis to me on Monday?” I suggested.
“Would like to see you sooner, honey,” he said softly.
“Aaron—” I started.
“We shouldn’t be apart,” he declared, a declaration that seriously concerned me. “This isn’t good for us. For Travis. For you, having to stand on your feet behind a cash register at a fucking grocery store all day. Travis being with people who aren’t his parents while we both work.”
He was such a jerk.
He knew that’d get to me. He knew I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.
But things had changed. Big Petey was awesome. And as much as I hated to admit it, Tory loved Travis. She watched him during the day for Aaron, and as far as I knew, she liked doing it. It wasn’t optimal, but any child should have as many people love him (or her) as they could get.
Further, I liked my job. LeLane’s was great. They took me on when I was pregnant, knowing I’d have to take a maternity leave imminently, but they’d still done it. Sharon managed everyone’s schedules as best she could to fit their lives. They employed nice people. They were family owned, and as such, they treated their employees as if they were family.
Scanning groceries might not be very challenging, but I liked people. I liked gabbing with the folks who came through my line. I liked making the ones I’d become familiar with feel a part of the LeLane family.
It didn’t pay a lot but it was good work.
I didn’t like the way he’d started knocking it.
I also didn’t think I should tell him that.
“I’m thinking we should start to talk only through our attorneys,” I told him instead.
“Don’t do that, Riss. Not to Travis.”
Emotional blackmail.
Another something not new from Aaron.
But I was in a pickle.
I needed those boxes. I needed to stay in his good graces so he didn’t get angry and do something ugly, not only with those boxes but to me and through me to our son.
But I also needed him to stop doing this.
Treading carefully, I said, “Aaron, if you’ve been thinking on things, I’d like to ask you to think more. Think about all the water that’s under the bridge. Think about what’s happened and where we are now and the fact that leads to us moving on but doing it in a way where we can take care of our son, just separately.”
“It’s always been you,” he whispered.
I closed my eyes, feeling the heat of anger hit my cheeks.
He did this too, telling me these things, trying to make me feel special after he tore me apart.
And anyway, what about Tory?
I didn’t get the chance to ask that.
“You know that, Riss,” he continued. “No matter what we’ve been through, you know it’s always been you. It’ll always be you.”
“No matter what you put me through,” I hissed, unable to stop it from coming out of my mouth.
“I know,” he agreed immediately. “I know I fucked up. I know I did it repeatedly. And I know this is the biggest fuck-up of them all.”
I could take no more, but more importantly, I didn’t want to.
“I can’t do this,” I told him. “I don’t want to do it ever, but if you feel you must, I can’t do it now. I also don’t want to do it over the phone.”
“Then let me bring our son over.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I told him firmly. “It goes without saying I want to see Travis, but Joker will be here soon. If you’re fine with him being here then okay. Joker can look after Travis while we talk. He’d like that. But if you come, I want you to bring the boxes, and before you come, I need to talk to Joker to ask if he’s okay with that.”