An hour later, I was walking into the dog pound for my meeting with Jack Parrish and his MC. My head was still reeling from my conversation with Victor, not to mention my night with his daughter. I had to push Adrianna out of my head and focus on the task at hand or I’d end up back in the pen or worse in a black bag. This shit with the feds was no joke. If I was being honest, it made me doubt every choice I had ever made working for Victor. I wondered if I had turned back the clock and listened to Adrianna all those years ago, maybe I could’ve had a normal life. I don’t know why I couldn’t see the good in myself like she did. I couldn’t help feel I was nothing more than a common street thug. Maybe if I had, then I wouldn’t be sitting at the bar at the Satan’s Knights compound waiting for the president to come out and tell me the plan on how we were going to clip a fed.
“Seems like you crawled into the wrong place handsome; we’re not the kind of establishment that the likes of you come through looking to buy a beer.”
I lifted my head to the woman behind the bar with teased out hair. She was wearing a tank top that was too small with the words Property of a Knight stretched across her chest. I suppose she was someone’s old lady or whatever the fuck the term was they used. So I politely smiled at the overdone broad.
“I have a meeting with Jack.” I said. “And I’m not looking for a beer honey but I’ll take a shot of the smoothest tequila you have stashed behind there.”
“Jack.” She said skeptical. “He know a pretty boy like you is here to see him?”
“He’s expecting me,” I paused for a moment. “How ‘bout that shot?”
She held my gaze for a moment before looking down the bar at one of the bikers that was taking up space fixing me with a suspicious stare.
“Riggs why don’t you go tell the Bulldog he has a visitor,” she planted the shot glass on top of the bar in front of me, holding the bottle of tequila mid-air ready to pour. “What did you say your name was handsome?”
“I didn’t, but you can tell him that Bianci is here.”
She smiled at me and began to pour the shot. “Bianci, huh?” She winked at me, pushing the glass with her index finger towards me before looking back at the guy Riggs. “Tell him a Pastore is in the house.”
“So you know me,” I said taking hold of the glass.
“Oh, handsome I’ve been around this club a long time. I know all of Jack’s associates and their protégé’s. It’s easy to pinpoint which crew you roll with, all you grease balls look alike.”
I looked at her for a moment swallowing her derogatory slur right along with the tequila she had poured for me.
“So Vic sent me Anthony Bianci…,” Jack said from behind me, causing me to place my empty shot glass back on the bar and swivel around in my bar stool to face him.
“That a problem?” I asked, as he advanced towards me two of his men tucked on either side of him.
“When Victor Pastore sends his most valuable player to do business, you know it’s a reminder of how fucking serious shit is about to get,” Jack said, holding out his hand for me to shake.
I shook his hand looking at the men standing close to his sides scrutinizing me before looking directly into Jack’s eyes.
“We going to get down with an audience or is there somewhere you and I can talk privately?” These men might be Jack’s brothers and all that but they were no fucking brothers of mine. The less people knew about my take in all this the lesser the chance of one of them ratting me out.
Jack looked at me for a moment before looking at the men that were glued to his sides. “Down, boys.” He said, averting his eyes back to me. “Follow me.” He stated, moving towards the door where the whole crew had emerged from moments before. Jack’s road name was Bulldog, hence the MC’s compound being dubbed the dog pound. Apparently, the dog references didn’t end there and when he ordered his men, he ordered them like they were pups in training. The mafia and the MC had a lot of the same morals making our alliance an asset to both organizations. We ran on different sides of the eastern seaboard, controlled different parts of the streets but in the end, we were cut from the same cloth. For instance some of the guys in Vic’s organization had goomah’s another term for a man’s sidepiece while the MC called theirs sweet butts. We had a boss they had a president. We called one another soldiers they called themselves brothers. In the end, we were both criminals that ran the streets of New York.