Still a Bad Boy: A New Adult Romantic Suspense (10 page)

Jace

The Ex Machina Motorcycle Club headquarters was built like a post-apocalyptic fortress.  I let them run their drugs through the city with almost zero regulations, other than fair competition from my guys, so I knew, with the kind of money that was flowing through their hands, they could have done a lot better.

Yet, they seemed to like it like this, walls made from mismatched pieces of corrugated iron, barbed wire everywhere.  That was their style.

The only thing they’d really changed since I first made my deal with them was an upgrade of weapons.  The men manning the walls up there by the spotlights weren’t doing it with pipes, chains and second-hand six-shooters anymore.  Now they had machine guns.

Normally I wouldn’t come here, but a day like this demanded my presence.  Their availability as an on-call mobile army, separate from my own operations, was too valuable an asset to lose.

Two Ex Machina members escorted me across the courtyard.  We walked past a bonfire where a big group sat around drinking beer, barely avoiding breaking into brawls, and semi-ignoring the biker-chick getting finger-banged not quite outside its circle of light.

Some of them stared at me with open hostility.  They could fuckin’ try it if they wanted.

One building, obviously designed by the same architect responsible for the outer walls, was rattling and shaking so loudly that it was impossible to tell what kind of music was causing it.  Smoke and lights poured out of the gaps in the walls, and mingled with the night air.  Weed, grease and burning rubber.

Another building was filled with bikes in various states of being dismantled and rebuilt.  Sparks flew from grinders and welding masks stared at blindingly bright lights as they made whatever modifications they wanted.

This was what a motorcycle club did after getting caught in a surprise attack by a well-armed enemy.  My enemy.

I wasn’t being led to either of those buildings though.  I had a meeting with “Iron” Jim Morrins, the man in charge here, and I was heading towards the door with guards posted.

One of them reached back and banged on the door with his fist without saying a word to us.  Somebody on the inside unlocked it before swinging it open on hinges that screamed.  Jim had three people talking to him at once, and there was a map on his desk.  They all shut up when they saw I had arrived.

“Barlow,” he said.

His face was neutral behind that long greying beard, but he didn’t extend his hand to me, so I didn’t extend mine to him.  This would have been a lot easier without his subordinates in the room.

“Iron” Jim was looking a little less iron these days, but I knew under that gut was muscle almost hard enough to break your hand on, because he wouldn’t do business with me until we’d fought.  For a guy in his fifties, he gave a pretty fuckin’ good account of himself.

“Jim.  How much worse is it than I’ve heard on the news?”

“About ten times worse.  We got most of ours out, and three of theirs.  We left one of them, and didn’t have time to get the last six of ours before the police arrived.”

“Yeah, I thought you were supposed to keep the police away from our bar-” began one of Jim’s guys.

“Shut the fuck up, Ed, I’m talking here,” said Jim.

I answered anyway.  “I’ve kept the police away from your business for two years, but this was an open gunfight.  If police don’t show up, and fast, then we start having to deal with independent federal investigations.  We don’t need that shit.”

“Thirty-seven dead, another dozen injured.”

“The reports said it was the Picollis.  That true?” I asked.

That was the crux of the matter.  That was what made this my business, and made this visit necessary.  If this was no territory play by some other club, then the Picollis were not as scattered to the four winds as I hoped, but alive and organized.

“Yeah.  They gave us a message before all hell broke loose.  They said you couldn’t protect us.”

Inwardly I smirked in triumph.  The Picollis had played them wrong.  Saying something like that wouldn’t make Ex Machina run for the hills.  It would simply provoke a violent response, given the chance.  On the outside, I kept my poker-face on.

“You got their bodies back here?” I asked.

“Yeah, they’re in there.” He pointed at a closed door.  “We’re going to feed the motherfuckers to the dogs once you’ve had a look at them.”

Jim opened the door and held his hand out for me to go ahead.  On the floor, stacked haphazardly, were three very well-dressed and very dead mobsters.

I crouched down and pushed the suit jacket back on the top one, before ripping his shirt sleeve at the shoulder.  There it was, the Picolli family mark tattooed in dark ink.  I used to have one myself, until I added a hangman’s noose around the design, and now it was unrecognizable.

“You know ‘em?” Jim asked, standing over me while his captains crowded round the door.

I took out my phone and took photos of each of their faces.  “No.  Just low-level soldiers, and new.  After my time.  Do you know where they came from? Where they went?”

“Nope.  One of my guys followed them for a ways, but a pissed off biker is pretty fuckin’ conspicuous.  He was lucky to get away alive.  They went ‘west’ but that don’t help us none.”

I stood, bringing myself back past Jim’s height and looked from him to the blocked exit.  They had me cornered.  If they wanted to try and extract some revenge from me, this was their best shot.  I took the time to look each one of them in the eye before gesturing out the same way Jim had gestured in.

After a tense pause, everybody headed back to Jim’s desk and he offered me a seat opposite him.  I stayed standing up.

“I’m going to arrange a payment to you of ten thousand per head for the brothers you lost today.  I’m not telling you what to do with the money, but I want it to go to their families if they had any.  Two thousand to each of the injured.  It’s not enough, but no amount of money is enough to pay this back.  So with the money comes a promise.  I will give you the opportunity to take part in a fucking massacre when the time comes.  It might involve a road trip, but you still have wheels, right?”

Jim said nothing for a while.  “We, the brothers and I, appreciate that you came down here.  That shows respect.  And balls.  This.” He waved his hand around.  “Doesn’t change anything about the agreement we have.  I didn’t start this club to recruit a bunch of pussies who thought nobody would ever shoot at us.  Did I, brothers?”

That got him a round of murmured “fuck no’s.”

“We’ll take you up on that offer,” he finished.

I paused, making sure he was done, and then slowly extended my hand out to him.  Equally slowly, he reached out and accepted it, nodding and pumping once up and down.

“Tell the dogs to enjoy their dinner,” I said, and turned to leave.

Outside, it sounded like the party was really ramping up inside the other building, but I didn’t take the time to expand my musical horizons.  I headed straight back to my car where my driver and Lorenzo were waiting, no doubt with their hands on the panic buttons in case shit hit the fan.

“Let’s go,” I said as soon as the door was closed behind me, and the car immediately started rolling towards the gates.

Lorenzo was looking out the tinted window with blatant disgust at the bikers he could see around the bonfire, the chaotic scenes everywhere.  They were unruly, but if you knew how to point them in the right direction, then they could sure deliver some blunt force trauma.

The car pulled out to the road and we headed back towards the city.  Lorenzo, sitting in one of the seats looking backwards, watched the Ex Machina headquarters fade into the distance, his distaste not abated at all.

“You look like you’re sulking,” I said.

“Back in the day we never would have stooped to making deals with animals like these,” he said.

“Well, it isn’t fuckin’ back in the day.  Besides, after the little newsflash we got today we might need them more than ever.  I didn’t think the Picollis would be able to muster up something like that.”

“What? Did you think they’d lay down and give up?”

“After losing an entire generation, all the heads, their funding and their army all at once? I didn’t think it was the end, but I thought they’d need more time to recover,” I said.

“Well, I guess they had some money you didn’t know about.”

“Probably.  Or they got some help from out of town.  Another family.  Detroit maybe, because none of the ears we’ve got on the ground heard shit about this coming.  So yeah, Ex Machina stays on the books.”

“Fuck ‘em.  Cutting in on our profits.  We could make this something great, something
pure
, but we can’t do it with them riding on our coattails,” he said.

“Fuck sake, Lorenzo.  It’s that kind of shit that made the Picollis weak enough to take down.  Last time I checked “back in the day” wasn’t so fuckin’ peachy for you.  You’re as Italian as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but they never promoted you above soldier.  This discussion is over.”

Lorenzo sat back and stewed in his own juices for a while as the city passed by outside.  His attitude was getting on my fucking nerves.

Finally he spoke up again.  “Tony said he’s got a new batch of girls at the club tonight, ready to start work tomorrow, if you wanted to help break them in.  He said one of them can practically suck a man inside out through his cock.”

Ordinarily, I’d be all over that proposition.  Some of these bitches could deep-throat a cock while yodeling the alphabet backwards and juggling three live cats, but you might want to use
two
condoms when you fucked them.

They weren’t even a shadow of a patch on what it felt like to fuck Kendall.  They could never imitate the sexy way Kendall sounded when her pussy was wrapped around my cock.

They’d never look at me the way Kendall did.  That might have been what I liked the most.  In her eyes, I was a hero.  I didn’t just fuck her so hard she couldn’t walk.  I changed her life.

I’d seen lots of people who were scared of me.  I’d seen professional respect.  I’d seen bitches cumming so hard that they passed out, but I hadn’t seen anything like the way Kendall looked at me in over two decades.  I wondered if it was a coincidence that she was the one asking me so many questions about that time in my life too.

What was the point of fucking a girl who wasn’t Kendall? Her pussy was made of magic or something, she had it all.  She even made me laugh once she got over her shyness and started talking freely.

“No, I’ve got a lot to think about.  I’m going to have an early night.” I said.

“What? The ever-fucking Jace Barlow, is sleepy? That reporter’s been hanging around a lot.  She the one that tired you out? She looks like she’s got a tight pussy on her.  Mind if I have a turn with that little slut?”

I saw red.  Leaning forward, I held up one finger.  “Look at me.  Look at me, motherfucker. 
You
do not talk about her like that.  You don’t
look
at her.  You do, we’ve got problems.  Understand?”

Lorenzo was caught off guard and didn’t even try to be a tough guy.  “OK.  Yes, I understand.”

We rode the rest of the way in silence, with him looking like a million thoughts were going through his mind and me ignoring the fuck out of him.  After we arrived at Tony’s club, he stepped out and leaned in again.

“That chick is in your mind, man.  I ain’t telling you your business, but mark my words.  Nothing good will come of that.  You’ve been distracted lately, and she’s the reason.”

“Noted.  Now, go fuck those bitches and we’ll be back to business in the morning, OK?”

Lorenzo patted the roof of the car and nodded before closing the door.  My driver pulled out and I sat back in my seat.

As hard as I tried to convince myself otherwise, he’d hit the nail on the head.  The only thing I should have been thinking about was the only thing I’d
ever
thought about, the Picollis and how to end them.

Instead, I was thinking about Kendall too.  And what the fuck was that shit I’d said to Lorenzo? Since when did I care if he wanted me to pass a chick around?

I thought about that asshole at
Luc Monette’s
, that cunt of a boss she had and what Lorenzo had just said about her.  It felt like any offence against Kendall was an offence against me.  She was
mine
.

Kendall

This was the best time of my life.  Nothing else was even worth comparing.

Every time Jace had a spare moment during the working day, I was at his office.  As far as Mr.  Kinsley or anybody else knew, I was there to get more information for my article, but in reality I was getting fucked in every way imaginable.

Bent over his desk, on the floor, against the wall, on the couch.  I was even hiding under his desk sucking his dick when somebody came in and talked to him for a few minutes.  Jace ended up cumming in my mouth while he was on a phone call.

He held his hand over the mouthpiece, I assume, and told me to swallow every drop like a good little girl.  You bet I did.

I licked my lips just thinking about it.  This was what life was
supposed
to be like.  This was the fantasy that the movies, the commercials, the schools, the
everything,
sold to you.

The contrast from that colorless existence was like night and day.  Every time I saw Jace, I saw his expression shift.  He went from cold and calculating, to warm and hungry… for
me
.

It was a crazy feeling.  It wasn’t just that he had my back and would stand up for me if I needed it, it was like my happiness mattered to him.  My presence made
him
happier.  For the first time in my life I felt like, no matter what the rest of the world might think of me, I mattered to somebody.

It certainly didn’t hurt that that somebody was sexy enough to make my panties break the sound barrier as they dropped.  Literally temporarily losing the power of vision because of the intensity of the orgasms? That didn’t hurt either.  It always came back.

I laughed at that thought, and then held my hand over my mouth, looking around the office to see if anybody had overheard and thought I was being a weirdo.  Nobody seemed to be paying any attention, so I shook my head to clear it and went back to trying to outline my article on Jace Barlow, the man behind the millions.

With all the time I’d spent with Jace, I had so much material that had never even been hinted at in anything written about him before.  Easily the most fascinating stuff was his early life.  Even with his memories faded and incomplete due to the passage of time, it was an extraordinary start for an extraordinary man.

Before that car crash it was all so normal.  Mom, Dad and little Jace could have been any family in the country, but then everything changed.

He was in the car when it crashed.  He remembered his dad was driving, his mom was in the front passenger seat and he was in the back.  He remembered the way they looked back at him and that his mom had a big swollen belly.

He can’t remember for sure, but he had this vague idea that he was going to have a baby brother or sister that day.  Instead… pain, loud noises, blackness and more loud noises.  Then the group home, and instead of growing to four, his family shrunk to one.

When I asked him about the group home, it was always a bit of a stumbling block.  He’d start sentences, only to cut himself off and go off on a random tangent.  Inevitably, he’d end up with a far-away look in his eyes and his fists bunched up as if ready to beat the hell out of something.

There was so much anger in him, it flared up sometimes like when that couple made that big scene at
Luc Monette’s
.  Jace could be downright terrifying, there was no denying it.  Nobody who seemed to have known him for any length of time dared to push his buttons.

I knew that was the kind of thing Mr.  Kinsley would have wanted me to dig deeper on, but when Jace was with me and I saw that other side of him, I couldn’t bring myself to aim for an article that made him out to be the bad guy.  That side of him was like
me
, although it had known pain more intimately than I had.  To write
that
article would be like hurting
myself
.

That’s why I wanted to concentrate on what made him the man he was.  That was the story I wanted to tell.  That was what Mr.  Kinsley had asked about in the first place anyway.  Where does he come from?

I already had a feeling that this article I was writing would give the paper, and me, national attention.  Mr.  Kinsley seemed to have that feeling too, which was why I thought he was tolerating how little information I extracted out of each meeting with Jace.

It was also why, at long last, Mr.  Kinsley had agreed to pay me something.  It wasn’t a salary per se, but a couple thousand dollars for ‘expenses’ went a long way.  At least now I wouldn’t have to sell the earrings Jace had bought me just to make rent.

My case for payment was strengthened by the fact that I thought I had just about everything I needed to write out the first full draft of my article.  The last time I met with Jace, I asked if we could visit the group home where he grew up, and he had reluctantly agreed.  Mr.  Kinsley thought that was a great idea, that it would give me the chance to add a lot of tone to the piece.

Looking at the clock on my computer screen, I saw that Jace would be waiting for me downstairs in a car in exactly fifteen minutes.  Unlike everybody else in the world, he was always on time, so there was no point in even texting to confirm.

I needed to get as much of this outlining done in the next few minutes as I could.  After today, I’d have the last piece of my puzzle, and I’d be able to build the whole thing a lot quicker if I knew my structure.  Somebody cleared their throat behind me.

I turned to see Lucile standing there with a wad of papers in her hand.  “Hey, I need you to photocopy these and get Dan in research to sign both copies, then bring them to my desk.  I need them in twenty minutes,” she said, dropping the documents on my desk without waiting for an answer.

My heart sank.  Ever since I’d started here, Lucile had taken it upon herself to delegate to me various things she couldn’t be bothered doing, things that weren’t part of my job description as far as I understood it.  I was the bottom of the food chain, sure, but I wasn’t supposed to be her PA.

She’d been even worse than usual since the shootout at that biker bar that was being attributed to the Picolli Crime Family, because it contradicted more or less everything her article about the police had said.  Everything is looking good in the city, and the Picollis are long gone… except for that bloodbath they orchestrated.  She’d been through the wringer on that one.

“Wait,” I called out and she stopped and turned to look at me.  “I can’t do this right now, I’ve got-”

“Are you kidding me? You’re here to follow instructions.  Get on it, you fucking wannabe.”

That old familiar fear gripped me when Lucile raised her voice, like freezing fingers around my lungs.  People were starting to look up from their desks, and I wanted to hide under mine.  Who was I to say no to a senior reporter? When did a confrontation between myself and a beautiful woman like her ever end up with me on top?

Then I thought about Jace and what
he
thought about me.  I remembered what
he’d
said to Lucile and stood as tall as I could.  I still would have got a face full of her breasts if she walked into me, but that didn’t matter.

“If you want to go tell Mr.  Kinsley why photocopies of your fuck up are more important than the exclusive article on Jace Barlow, then be my guest.  Otherwise, I believe a wise man once said, get the
fuck
out of my face.”

I pointed back in the direction of her desk and glared at her.  Lucile changed color between bright red and pale at least as fast as a chameleon for a few seconds, but then stormed off.

As soon as her back was turned, I collapsed into my chair and took deep breaths while I waited for my heart to stop threatening me with a cardiac arrest.  My hands were still shaking by the time I was able to start messing around with my outline again, but deep down there was this river of exhilaration running through me.  Maybe that would be the last time Lucile ever spoke down to me, who knew?