Until now.
Until the fuckin’ Gray Dragons gang decided to get greedy. Now, he had to tell Copper that some two-bit gangbanger and his band of merry assholes was coming for the club. They wanted to steal the Handler’s business, sure, but mostly it was a power play. Show of force. Flexing muscles.
Drive out the local outlaw MC and become top dog.
The Gray Dragons had been around for over a decade. Small time gang nonsense, mostly. At least, in the beginning. Selling weed, pimping girls, petty robberies. They operated about thirty miles out of Townsend and had mostly kept to their side of the proverbial tracks. Apparently, they’d grown over the years. Gotten their dicks hard over a little extra cash and, suddenly, they wanted a larger piece of the pie.
Namely heroin. And since the MC stopped dealing in that shit before Zach prospected, the Gray Dragons didn’t view them as competition. But, apparently, they did view Hell’s Handlers’ territory fair game to distribute their garbage.
It was a problem.
A big, fucking problem.
Heroin could bring cops, Feds, and all sorts of shit to Townsend. Beyond that, it was Hell’s Handlers’ town and that should have been enough to keep the Dragons out. They wouldn’t stop at peddling heroin through Townsend. In fact, that was the really bad news he had for Copper. The Dragons were slowly buying up debts owed to the Handlers. A way to gain support and cut the MC off at the knees. And they’d been the ones responsible for the attack on some of the girls who worked at the club-owned strip joint.
Worry tightened Zach’s worn out muscles. A turf war between the Handlers and the Dragons wouldn’t end well. He could feel it in his bones.
“Fuuuck,” he yelled as he clenched the edge of the counter until his fatigued joints screamed in protest. He needed a distraction, something to take his mind off the fact his MC’s world was about to be blown to bits. Maybe he should wander next door and introduce himself to the pretty little lady who’d inherited his neighbor’s house. Staring at her lush hips and tits should take care of distracting him.
Zach lifted his head and stared out the kitchen window which had a straight-shot view of the neighbor’s house. Sure enough, she was out on the porch with the twiggy suit who was staying with her.
Boyfriend? Husband? Didn’t matter. All he wanted was to ogle her for a few moments, maybe make a few suggestive comments and find out if she was a blusher or not. Pissing off the walking, talking stick in a suit would just be icing on the cake.
Decision made, Zach jogged to his room and tossed on a plain black T-shirt. Sweat still coated his body, making the cotton stick to his chest and back. After stripping his workout shorts off, he found a pair of jeans on the floor and slid them on. As he left, he grabbed his cut from a hook by the front door and shrugged into it.
No member of the Hell’s Handlers went without their cuts unless they were riding in a cage or through another MC’s territory. As a sign of respect. And they never tossed them on the floor in heap, no matter how tired, how wasted, or how hot the pussy they were about to dive into was. Respect for the club was number one. Each man worked their ass off to earn it and that leather represented the club and everything that was important to him and his brothers.
Thirty seconds later, Zach’s large stride had eaten up more than half the yard separating the two houses. The suit noticed him before the neighbor’s daughter. The man looked like someone had kicked him in the nuts, and the tension surrounding the couple was so thick he could almost see it part as he walked up to them. When Zach reached the steps leading to the porch, the suit straightened and stepped out in front of the neighbor, blocking her from Zach’s view. Like he could somehow keep Zach from getting to her if harming her was his end goal.
He almost laughed out loud. Zach ate guys like him for a snack.
“Chris, what are you doing?” she asked, sidestepping around him. “Hey.” She lifted a hand and sent Zach a wave.
The suit, Chris, apparently, sputtered and tried to wrangle her behind him once again, but she resisted. Jesus, the man couldn’t even wrestle one slip of a woman. He’d be no match for Zach even on his worst day.
“We don’t want any trouble. Why don’t you head back to your side of the property line, man?” Chris kept his hand around the woman’s upper arm despite her frown and attempts to wriggle away.
“Chris, seriously? He’s not doing anything wrong. He’s my neighbor. And not to be mean, but he could probably kick both our asses in his sleep.”