Perversion (Perversion Trilogy #1)

“Either works,” Sandy says with a shrug. “You pick.”

I turn my wrench and fasten the final bolt which should do a better job than the duct tape Sandy has been using to hold his sorry excuse for an engine together.

“I mean, why the fuck do they think we’re a gang? We don’t even have hand signals.” He waves his hands in the air in what I’m guessing are his version of gang signs. “We don’t wear the same colors or jump people in like Los Muertos or The Immortals.” Sandy turns around and leans against the bumper as if he still sees the car that’s long gone. “I don’t even own a fucking bandana. I mean, by process of elimination, we aren’t a gang.” Sandy pauses, his eyes grow large with excitement. “Or, maybe…do you think that THEY think we’re an MC?”

I roll my eyes. “Two people in this house own bikes, and that’s me and Belly. Only a half dozen or so of our other guys have ‘em.” I point out. I slam the hood shut. “I think that eliminates an MC.”

We might not be a street gang in a traditional sense, but we are a ruthless organization of degenerates. Sandy may come off as ridiculous, but that’s only because he’s easily bored. Truth is that he’s brilliant, even though I won’t ever tell him that. By the age of fourteen, he’d created an underground sports betting operation pulling in thousands of dollars a week until he got shut down after his middle school principal caught him taking bets in the boys’ room.

Then, he burnt down his foster home.

And then the school.

Well, half of it, by the time the firefighters showed.

Haze was brought in because he was a fighter. Brute force was always his method of getting what he wanted, and it still is. The man fought before he could walk. Still does. Street fights. Bar fights. Even ones that aren’t any of his business, he makes his business simply for the jaw of knocking another man’s teeth out.

That’s why he rarely ever comes out of his room. If let him off his leash, I’m pretty sure he’d wrestle a bridesmaid at a wedding over the fuckin’ bouquet and probably end up beating her to death with it. He also has a thing for weapons. The contents of the safe hidden in the drywall in his closet ceiling could arm a small nation, and that’s not even all of it. He’s got shit buried in various unmarked locations throughout three counties.

Digger was brought in because he was a good soldier. A listener. He was the calm and the reason while the rest of us allowed rage to be our guide.

WAS.

Digger was killed last year during a random drive-by, which is one of the reasons we decided to take part in the truce. We all needed time to grieve his loss.

Sandy rounds the van and gets back in the driver's seat. He turns the key and starts the engine. The sound it makes is atrocious, like someone shaking a paper bag full of nails close to your ear. I can fix any car you put in front of me, but Sandy’s van doesn’t need to be resuscitated, it needs to be put out of its fucking misery.

Sandy grins anyway. “I knew you could fix her,” he says, stroking the cracked wheel lovingly. I imagine he’s just happy it’s making any noise at all. “I knew you weren’t gone, Cher. You’d never leave me, baby.”

“Next time, don’t fix it with fucking duct tape,” I say, wiping my hands and tossing the rag onto my toolbox, not bothering to comment on the fact that he named his van Cher, of all fucking things.

“Next time, be around when I need you to fix it, and I won’t have to resort to Nature’s cure-all, the beauty that is duct tape. At least, I didn’t use Liquid Nails this time. I mean, I was going to, but last time, I accidentally gave myself a webbed hand. It took, like, a month for the shit to wear off. I mean, a webbed hand is only a good conversation starter until the skin starts to fall off.” Sandy kills the engine.

The man needs an excuse to start a conversation like an addict needs access to free heroin.

I pull a beer from the fridge in the garage. The cold, crisp carbonation on my tongue feels like heaven, so I kill the bottle, toss it in the trash and reach for two more. Without looking, I throw one over my shoulder to Sandy, who catches it easily. I could toss a beer out into the yard, and there’s no doubt in my mind that Sandy would be there to catch it.

It's one of his many weird quirks.

“I’m just confused as to why the task force is so focused on us.” Sandy leans against the van and cracks open the beer with the crook of his arm. He takes a long pull. “I’m sure Los Muertos would keep them busier.”

“Really?” I raise an eyebrow. “You have no idea why they’d have their sights set on us?”

Sandy’s eyes widen. He shrugs his shoulders. “Well…didn’t we just agree that we’re not a gang?”

“That’s not exactly what I said.”

I sigh and reach for my phone, pulling up Google. I find what I’m looking for and turn the screen to show Sandy. He snatches the phone from my hand. His lips move, but no words come out as he silently reads.

“No shit,” he says, looking up from the screen. “This can’t be right.” Sandy scratches the side of his head with his beer bottle.

I chug down another half a beer. “It’s right there. That’s the reason why we are on those gang-fuck's radar. Can’t control them like the local cops, so we are going to have to be extra careful moving forward.”

Sandy looks down to the screen again, waving off my concerns. “So, the definition of a gang, according to Google dictionary anyway, defines a gang as an organization of criminals. That’s us. WE are an organization of criminals!” he gasps.

“For someone so smart, the fact that you’re just figuring this shit out now makes me want to give you another IQ test.”

“Marci gave me one last week. As it turns out, I’m still a genius.”

I pluck my phone from his hands and shove it into my back pocket.

“But it still doesn’t make sense to me,” Sandy says, looking downright perplexed with his nose scrunched and his forehead wrinkled.

I try another tactic. Walking over to his van, I pop the trunk hatch and point to the body rolled up in garbage bags. A member of our security team who we found out was really a member of Los Muertos, spying on us so they could steal our trucks. Taking him out wasn’t technically breaking the ceasefire since for all Marco knew, we believed he was one of our own.

“What exactly doesn’t make sense to you?” I ask, looking from the body to Sandy.

Sandy salutes me with his beer. “Touché.”

I close the hatch, then turn to go inside to take a much-needed shower. I have a meeting on the reservation with Chief David at midnight and don’t want to show up smelling like the questionable contents of Cher.

“Go take care of your cargo while that van of yours is still capable. Next time, don’t tow that shit to the fucking house. You breakdown with an unbreathing passenger inside, you call me or one of the boys, and we’ll come to you. Belly would be pissed if he knew there was a corpse in his driveway…again.”

“So moody today,” Sandy says, following me inside. “Where are you going? I have questions. Concerns. Don’t tell me you’re going to lock yourself in your room with your hand on your cock while I’m digging a hole somewhere and mentally suffering over our conversation.”

“Mentally suffering?” I scoff.

“Yes. My mind is already racing. We’re a gang. We need hand signs. Or symbols. Or whatever you call them. There’s a lot to discuss. I mean, should we be jumping people in now? Like, if we do, I think we should start with Haze. That fucker should see what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a good ass kicking every now and again.”

I shake my head and continue walking while Sandy rattles on. “Maybe, we can learn how to be a real gang online. There’s this YouTube channel called Cholos Try. The entire thing is these guys with face tattoos trying things like eating sushi for the first time. I’m sure they’ve made a ‘How to be a real gang’ video at some point. Imma look it up.”