Blackheart didn’t answer him, instead he took out his phone and pulled up a photo. He handed it to Le Pirate who carried it, guns all trained on him, over to Lear. He held it out and Blackheart watched Lear’s face when he looked at it, and the other man didn’t so much as flinch. Instead he looked at Blackheart and said, “A picture can tell a thousand different stories.”
“I’ll tell you the true one,” Blackheart said. “This young lady got off her shift at the club and was on her way home, to her babies. One of your asshole men, the one called Pinky, had come on to her earlier in the evening and she’d turned him down. Him and three of his friends, Gregor, Sam, and Gouda, were waiting for her and tried to follow her home. This young lady is smart, and she realized she was being followed before she led them to her house where another young lady was babysitting her two eight-year-old children. She stopped at the end of the street and sent a text to her boyfriend, one of my guys. He was over an hour away. By the time he got there, she’d all but crawled up the street to her home and he found her on the front porch, like that,” he said, nodding at the phone with the picture on it again. It was a pitiful sight: Sharon, bloody and beaten, her clothes torn nearly completely off, and her hair matted to her head with blood. She’d been the one who had made Chance take it. Sharon was a sweet, almost meek little thing, but she wanted the men that did that to her dead. She remembered the names on each one of their kuttes and she could even give a description of their “ugly faces and tiny dicks.” “She’d been beaten and raped all in the space of about twenty minutes...” Blackheart went on, “My boy let that fucker Pinky live, and the other two got off easy the night they were arrested. But this monster, he’s coming with us, and if you’re smart, you won’t come looking for him.”
“You don’t believe...” Gregor started. Lear put his hand up, and the other man stopped talking.
“I ain’t seen Pinky in weeks,” Lear said.
“Good, hope he died where they left him,” Blackheart said, and meant it.
Lear’s eye twitched but he kept the impassive face as he asked, “If Pinky started all this, why let him live and come in here after Gregor, guns blazing?”
“This piece of shit raped her, and last night he had another girl, out at Manchac. You might want to ask around if any of your sweet butts are missing because there’s no telling what happened to her before this asshole used a pipe to beat this young lady’s boyfriend in the head and leave him for dead.” Blackheart wasn’t about to tell these fuckers that Gregor had also gotten Sharon pregnant. That was for her and Chance to figure out, and she had enough problems without one of these fuckers thinking they had some kind of rights to that baby. Lear looked at Gregor again and he said:
“I was with Luna, and she’s fine, boss, you can ask her. That fucker, little preppy-looking blond kid followed me. He was going to attack me, I just defended myself. I could have shot the little pussy, but I didn’t. It was a fair fight...”
“Fucking bullshit,” Blackheart said. “The cops there when the ambulance picked him up said he’d been hit across the back of his head first. Once he was down, he got hit again, two or three times in the face. It was a blitz attack and he didn’t have any chance to defend himself.”
“Pretty boy won’t go looking for a fight alone again, will he?” Gregor said, with a smile. Blackheart had had a glimpse of what that pipe must have felt like, landing up against Chance’s skull. Last time he’d spoken to someone at the hospital, he hadn’t regained consciousness yet and they weren’t even sure he ever would. As much as Blackheart wanted to pull the trigger on his .45 at that moment and watch the asshole’s head explode, he knew how to be patient.
However, he might have thought through bringing one of his newest prospects, a kid that Chance had brought in, taken off the streets and given a place to live and three hot meals a day...something Blackheart doubted the kid had in a long time, if ever. His name was Brian but they called him “Brain” because despite his life on the streets, the kid was a mathematical genius. He also seemed like a pacifist and sometimes Blackheart worried that he wasn’t going to be cut out for their life. Now Brain changed that opinion and started one hell of a fight in the span of about two seconds. The smile that spread across Gregor’s face was suddenly replaced by one of horror when the pool ball that came flying across the room hit him in the back of the head. His eyes bulged out and he let out something between a grunt and a scream before falling forward into the bar. One of the Mad Men lunged for Brain and Lowlife struck him in the back with a pool stick...and the fight was on. The men who had their guns out kept them leveled on the pile of bodies, but no one from either side seemed to know who to aim at. The rest of them, excluding Blackheart, Lear, and Newton, were using their fists, pool balls, alcohol bottles, and whatever else lay close by to pummel each other. Blood and sweat soaked the floor before Lear finally took out his own pistol, aimed it at the roof, and pulled the trigger. At the sound of the gunshot everyone froze. Men with bloody noses and swollen lips, cut eyes and bloody knuckles all stopped what they were doing and for a few seconds you could have heard a pin drop in the room before Lear said:
“Take him, but hear me, Blackheart, when I say that I don’t want to see a Joker kutte anywhere near my club in the future.”
Blackheart chuckled. “You keep your boys on your own side of the border. You know if it comes down to a war, you won’t survive us.”
“I’m doing you a favor here,” Lear said. “Take him.” The looks on the faces of some of his men were shocked that he’d just let the Jokers come in and demand Gregor, and he’d give him up, without a fight. Blackheart would never let that happen. He dealt with what needed to be dealt with himself when it came to his men. But he had known Lear wouldn’t sacrifice the rest of his club for one man, especially a man who would beat and rape a woman. If he did that, and lived through it, he’d have his own old lady to answer to because for all her faults, Love was a fierce protector of the young women who came through that club, and Blackheart could only guess that was why men like Gregor came across the border and looked elsewhere for the women they thought they could abuse, and get away with it.
11
“I think there’s some guy following me,” Patrice said, ducking into Gabe’s room. He’d been in the hospital for over twenty-four hours. They hadn’t let him see Chance and the last Patrice had told him, his friend was still unconscious. He’d gotten a call from Blackheart, checking on him, but he hadn’t seen any of his brothers, which was strange. When he had gotten shot, Blackheart had someone at the hospital watching him 24/7. He wondered what they were so busy with, and he was so afraid they were taking care of the man who had done this to Chance without him that if he could get up and walk, he would have left by now.
He pushed up in the bed and tried to throw his legs over the side. Suppressing a groan he said, “Someone’s following you?”
“Don’t try to get up. It’s okay...I think it’s one of you...I mean, a Joker. I mean, I know it is, but I’m not positive he’s following me...shit, lie back down, I’m fine. I just keep seeing this guy. Yesterday he was here in the hospital and on my way home last night I’m pretty sure I saw a Harley following me. Then first thing this morning I stopped at my usual coffee place and when I came out, he was sitting there on his bike across the street. It’s a little creepy, but I don’t think he wants to hurt me. He’s had plenty of opportunity if he did.”