20. Ronan

Chapter 20

Ronan

T he beautiful thing about bikers is, they aren’t fucking subtle.

Harleys grunt and snort down the back roads toward Chicago. Their engines growl and announce them long before they arrive, and it’s not hard for my men to follow them at a safe distance. All they need to do is keep their fucking ears peeled.

Another beautiful thing: they tend to use their own product. Which means these bikers are a bunch of meth-head morons with few brain cells and even fewer teeth.

But the downside to that is, they’re absolutely psychotic. Gregory, despite being a grade-A piece of shit, is actually calmer and more subdued than other bike MCs I’ve come across.

The Bullethole Boys are on the opposite end of that spectrum, from what I’ve heard.

Corn fields spread out in all directions. It’s late in the day and the sun’s low in the sky. It’ll be dark in the next half hour, which is exactly what the Boys want—they’re aiming to do this deal at night with as few problems as possible, probably because they want to make sure their patch over into the Righteous Servants goes as planned. Though how the fuck Gregory thinks he’s going to tame these wild assholes, I genuinely don’t know.

“Two minutes,” Niall says from his position further out in the field. We’re on foot along with several dozen more guys scattered all over. Three trucks are idling nearby, empty save for their drivers. “Everyone in position?”

“Everyone’s ready,” I confirm. The squad leaders already sent in their confirmation texts, and I have to trust my guys to know their business. We’ve gone over this plan half a dozen times already, but in the heat of the moment, there are always a thousand different ways something like this can go wrong.

Stealing meth isn’t our normal business. The Hayes Group thrives on imports from Ireland. Our drugs are good and they’re inexpensive, and we have a very solid smuggling network established already, which makes us one of the more reliable sources for drugs in the country. We don’t bring in too much, and we don’t mess with the really bad shit like fentanyl. Mostly, the money’s in cocaine.

The sound of motorcycles gets louder as they approach. “Got to love these country fucking roads,” I murmur as I take out my phone and ready the signal. “Perfect for ambushes.”

“Now I know what my grandfather must’ve felt like during the Irish Rebellion.”

“More like your great-grandfather, you ass, and yeah, probably. Except instead of killing British, we’re stealing drugs from a bunch of idiots.”

“Taking candy from babies?”

“If babies had guns and a lust for killing, that’d be very apt.” I hit the send button and the message goes out through our encrypted chat. As the bikes come around the corner, the trucks jump into action.

Three big, black vehicles block the street as the motorcycle gang approaches. They’re riding deep this evening: twelve of them surround a truck with a tarp covering the bed. Not exactly subtle.

At first, they don’t know what to do. The whole squad slows as they approach. Instead of the smart thing, which would be to turn the fuck around and get out of there, one of the guys in the lead starts shouting and gesturing like he’s going to try to ram his way through.

I send another message. Niall nods at me, draws his gun, and we move forward through the stalks.

The bikers start to realize something’s going down when twenty armed men appear on the edges of the road, materializing from their hiding places in the corn. One of them starts shouting about turning around, but it’s way too late for that. Ten more of my soldiers are standing in formation behind them with AR-15 rifles aimed in their direction. My scouts arrive in their SUVs and add in six more bodies aiming pistols and using their doors as makeshift barricades.

The bikers don’t know what the fuck to do, and this is the moment when everything can go to shit. They’re cursing and shouting and waving their guns in the air, but they aren’t organized yet.

This might break down into bloodshed if I don’t defuse the tension right now. I step forward, gun held up, barrel aimed at the sky. “Where’s Rotgut?” I almost grimace, saying that stupid name.

The truck in the middle of the biker formation goes quiet as the engine shuts down. A man steps out, tall and lean, with a slouchy frame and blond hair cut short. He’s got blue eyes and a lopsided grin, and he walks toward me wearing a Hawaiian shirt, beat-up jeans, heavy boots, and a chain from pocket to pocket.

“I’m Larry Blood,” he grunts at me with a strangely deep voice. He’s shouting over the sound of his crew’s bikes. “Who the fuck are you?”

Larry Blood? Seriously ? These guys have the absolute worst fucking names I’ve ever heard in my life.

“Tell your boys to turn off their engines.”

Larry’s mouth pulls into a snarl. “I said— who the fuck are you ?”

I lower my gun and aim it at his face. Larry’s clearly not a bright guy, but at least he’s got a bit of common sense. He cringes back, hands coming up in the air, before he shouts at his men to shut down. The grunts and growls of the bikers slowly come to a halt as their riders kill the engines.

“That’s better,” I say, not lowering the gun. “All right, Larry. We can do this easy, or I can leave your corpses for the farmers to clean up. Your call.”

“Guess that’s not much of a choice,” he says, glancing back at my line of high-powered rifles. The twenty men with pistols are one thing, but those AR-15s will tear his men into pieces. “Not gonna tell me a name, huh?”

“You’ll hear it soon enough. Tell your guys to get off their bikes. I want them over in the ditch on the side of the road and on their knees. Do it now.”

Larry hesitates. He doesn’t think I’m serious about killing them all. He’s doing meth head math in his drug-addled brain, weighing pros and cons, trying to figure out the risks and the likely outcomes, and I can tell the numbers are skewed in the wrong direction. The dumb asshole’s thinking I won’t risk a slaughter.

I walk closer to Larry. I keep my gun trained on him. “Last chance.”

“I don’t know,” he says, showing his teeth again. “You really wanna risk all that heat? Why don’t we come to a reasonable solution here, yeah? Make some agreement?”

“Off the bikes. On their knees in the ditch. That’s the agreement. Tell them to move, or I’m going to shoot you in the knee on the count of three. If you still don’t do it after I maim you, I’ll blow your brains out and tell my men to go to town. I don’t need you people alive to take your fucking drugs.”

“Who the fuck are you?” he snarls.

“One,” I say, staring into his eyes.

“God damn it, wait a second. We can negotiate here, we can?—”

“Two.” I lower my aim to his leg.

“Larry,” one of the bikers nearby says, sounding panicked. “I think you should?—”

“Three.” I pull the trigger. The shot’s loud, but not louder than Larry’s scream as he drops to the ground. Right in the kneecap —an impressive piece of work. He rolls from side to side, and a few of the bikers start reaching for weapons, but my men are on them already, screaming at them to keep their hands up.

Larry’s out of commission. I gesture at Niall, and he moves in with his troops. The soldiers start stripping the bikers off their hogs and patting them down for guns, knives, anything that might be an issue. They have a nice pile of goodies going as each member of the Bullethole Boys gets shoved onto his knees and zip-tied in a ditch. It takes a few minutes, and in the meantime, I walk around Larry’s whimpering body, and head straight to the truck.

“Not bad,” I say, staring under the tarp. Wrapped in nice, neat bricks and portioned out for easy distribution are pound blocks of meth.

“Think that’s all of it?” Niall asks, making an impressed face.

“Probably not. They cook the stuff, so I’m sure they have a supply back at their hideout. Unfortunately, I don’t think poor Larry Blood is going to be making any sales runs anytime soon.”

“Your girlfriend’s going to be happy.”

I turn to him. “She’s not my—” But I stop myself. He’s grinning ear to ear. The fucker’s trying to get a reaction. “I’m sure Valentina will be very happy.”

A part of me wants to tell him that she’s back at my place right now waiting for word of how this job went. Niall’s the only person I really trust, aside from my mother. Except what she said keeps running through my head on a fucking loop, digging little claws into my guts each time I linger on it. Don’t tell anyone . She wants it to be a secret—since she and I are all business.

Which is right, I know it’s right, but it didn’t feel like business when I came in her mouth and held her against me as we both fell asleep.

“What should we do with the boys?” Niall gestures for Seamus to get in the truck. The other soldiers clear the motorcycles off the road, dumping them into the grass beside the pissed-off bikers.

“Leave them.” I walk over to where Larry’s rocking from side to side and begging for help. “Should’ve just listened, asshole,” I say to him and put a bullet in his head.

The Bullethole Boys stare at me in horror. I look back at them with my usual smirk and tuck my gun away. “I hope whoever takes over is smarter than this asshole.”