I bent my head, pressed my finger against my left nostril and sucked up the line of coke through the right one.
“Fuck, I didn’t know anyone was in here,” I heard the new guy Stryker mumble. I had been too consumed by my thoughts to hear the door open He stared at the residue on the counter as I straightened up and glanced at him through the mirror.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” I growled, glaring at him through the glass.
Wolf had done his job, found four lost souls willing to join the mayhem, and Stryker was one of them. He was twenty-eight years old, drifting from one charter to the next, looking for his place within the club and thought he’d find it here in Brooklyn. We had just voted these guys in—watched as they cut through the stitching of the patch declaring them each a nomad, replacing it with one that declared them a brother of Brooklyn.
Now, it was time to introduce them to the fucked up shit they signed up for. It was time to introduce them to Sun Wu and the Red Dragons to give them a taste of blood. Rocco Spinelli gave us the heads up on a shipment Wu was receiving down at the docks. Jack was ready to strike—it was time to send a message back to the Chinese motherfucker who shot up Pops.
Saddle up, boys because we’re going to intercept their shipment.
“All right, but man, I gotta take a piss and we need to get our asses in gear,” Stryker argued, crossing his arms as he diverted his eyes from the coke back to my face.
“I don’t share,” I ground out.
“Not my thing,” he retorted. “Didn’t know it was yours,” he added as I bent down to rip another line but with his eyes drilling a hole into my back I couldn’t fucking do it. I grabbed the towel and put it under the water before I soaked up the remaining coke and turned back to him.
“There’s a lot you don’t know kid,” I said, twisting the towel in my hands as I stared at him. “You stick around long enough, you’ll uncover all our secrets and collect a few of your own.”
“We all got secrets man,” he replied. “Some of us hide them better than others, but every one of the Satan’s Knights has a tale to tell or we wouldn’t be brothers,” he added before he glanced down at my bare chest. “Nice tattoo,” he commented.
I looked down at the new ink that covered the left side of my chest.
“You play?” he questioned.
“Play?”
“The notes, man, you play an instrument?”
“No,” I answered, shaking my head as my hand covered the music notes that marked my chest. “Bathroom’s all yours,” I ground out before stepping around him and leaving him behind.
I grabbed the first black shirt I could find and was about to pull it over my head when I glanced at the mirror, at the tattoo I got three days after I broke Lacey’s heart.
I’ve learned as life goes on that the things we hold close to us, the memories we cherish of the people we love, they fade from our minds. We forget the moments that change us and give us purpose.
I didn’t want to forget.
I wanted to hang onto that slice of heaven I had and even when the drugs drag me down and force me to black out, I want to stare at the reminder.
A reminder of a dance I shared when I thought I’d never dance.
I wanted to remember Leather and Lace.
Take the story and the dance with me when I died.
Music notes.
To a song that reminded me of a girl who changed me.
A girl I didn’t see coming.
A girl I loved and always would.
I pulled the shirt over my head, secured the vest and slid my arms through my leather jacket, tucking my gun into my waist band and grabbing an extra magazine. My club was waiting for me outside ready to move, thirsty for blood, eager to reclaim the name our predecessors gave us.
Revenge took over our souls as we rode silently, full of determination, leaving whatever shred of decency any of us had at the clubhouse and unleashed the animals we truly were.
The Satan’s Knights were back.
We were stronger.
Harder.
We had been fucked with for too long and now it was time to brush the dirt off our shoulders, remember the criminals we were, and destiny that awaited us. Jack led us to the pier and killed his engine first. The rest of us followed suit, pulling our weapons and crouching down as we ran up the pier where the vessel was docked. Sun Wu and the Dragons were nowhere in sight, not scheduled to unload their shipment for another hour. Jack paused at the container and passed an envelope to Rienzi, Rocco Spinelli’s foreman, before he snapped the plastic seal off the doors giving us access to Wu’s merchandise.