I swear to fuck, the second I opened the door and stepped inside, the stereo system started blasting "Another One Bites the Dust."
"You got jokes?" I asked, zeroing in on West who was pretending to innocently put the iPod down. "You think that's smart given my position and yours?" I asked, shaking my head, wondering what kind of disgusting, ass-breaking job I could throw at him.
"I picked the song," Sug announced, moving out from the kitchen with a coffee mug. "Can't be too pissed at him for being the only one with it on his iPod. So... this thing with that girl, you still trying to tell me it's casual?" he asked, taking a pointed look at my clothes from the night before.
"Why is Reign here so early?" I asked instead of answering, something that made Sugar's lips twitch.
"Roan scoped Third Street over on our side of town last night."
"Selling?" I asked, feeling myself stiffening, wondering if I was going to get chewed out for not being around.
"Looked like it from up in the box," Repo chimed in. "But you know Reign. He wants to be sure before he starts shit. Third Street has always minded its business, stayed on their turf, obeyed an unwritten rule around here."
"Too much turnover lately," Cash agreed, coming in out of the hall. "It was easier when it was Paine or Enzo, back when there was a definite leader for some span of time. They got a new boss every other week the past few years. Some not even from the area. Either don't know how shit works, or don't care."
"Well, whatever leader they got now, apparently, needs to be reminded how shit works in Navesink Bank," Reign pitched in, coming in from the basement which was the backward way of getting up to the glass box. "It went down too fast for Roan to snag a picture and Lo's guys just didn't have a good enough angle to see it, but he was sure he saw a deal. And that fuck has eagle eyes. I don't think he's mistaken. But I don't want to act until one of us sees it up close."
"You want us casually strolling the streets at night?" Repo asked.
"Everyone'll have to take turns. They'll get suspicious if they see the same people over and over. But, yeah, I want someone to see the deal go down."
"And then?" Sugar asked.
Reign's look was all the answer we needed.
It wasn't a pretty part of the lifestyle, but a necessary one nonetheless. You couldn't keep an organization going if other organizations thought they could walk all over you, could get away with whatever they wanted on your turf.
So whoever saw the deal go down would wait till the buyer was gone, check for cops, then drag the bastard in for a beatdown.
After that, I imagined we'd all get on bikes, drive on down to Third Street, and drop their man at their doorstep as a warning.
"And if that doesn't cut it?" I asked.
"Then Third Street will need to be looking for a new leader," Reign declared, shrugging.
I wondered, not for the first time, how much blood was on his hands. My old presidents had been delegators, rarely down in the real muck of it, letting everyone else do the dirty work in case shit went down, and the law got involved.
Reign wasn't a hands-off kind of leader. And his club had endured more than its fair share of ups and downs, interference from outside influences. Hell, there was the war alone he had raged after his men were gunned down in their own clubhouse. We'd only heard it secondhand from Edison, but he'd described the bloodbath, the beaten and prone bodies of men on the floor he'd needed to step over as they dragged him out of the place, the savage look on Reign's face, the blood and brain matter all over his body.
I'd been there to witness how hard he went at Abruzzo when his daughter went missing.
Reign was someone who kept his cool, collected information, ruled with a level head. But when he needed to have business handled, it was raw, brutal, unapologetic. It was easy, at times, to forget that. You saw him with his kids, with his wife, saw him being a family man, and you forget that he was a man who had beaten faces in, shot men dead, tortured answers out of tight-lipped people.
He was calm now, seemingly, but as soon as he had the kind of proof he wanted, he would take a hold of every neck in Third Street until they remembered that he was the big dog in town, and that he fought when you rattled his fucking cage.
"I know it might be hard to fit a patrol into your new relationship," Reign went on, eyes dancing, lips quirking up. "But you're gonna have to pen it in."