Rocky took a deliberate step away from the wall. “Am I missin’ something? Did I sleep through bein’ patched in?”
Preacher raised an eyebrow. “It’s a damn good thing I didn’t patch you in, or we’d all be in fuckin’ cuffs right now.”
Grimacing, Rocky shook his head. “Who’s this we you’re so concerned about? Your men or mine? Seems to me like you’re thinkin’ mine are expendable.”
Preacher shot up out of his chair. The pen in his grip snapped in half, and ink dripped from his clenched fist onto the desk. “In case you forgot, I’ve got two dead men myself.” He stared at Rocky, hard and unblinking. “At the end of the day, we’re all fuckin’ expendable.”
Preacher didn’t bother bringing up his mother. Rocky didn’t place the same value on women as he did men and wouldn’t consider her death as any great loss to the club.
Unconsciously, Preacher’s gaze slid to the family photograph on the desk. Avoiding The Judge’s disapproving stare, he looked instead at his mother, and he couldn’t help but feel that when the club had lost Ginny, they’d lost everything.
He turned back to Rocky. “Greenpoint is gone. Your two men? Gone. Now we can sit here screamin’ about it, or we can get down to business and make sure this shit doesn’t happen again. What’s it gonna be?”
Seconds passed in silence while Preacher and Rocky stared each other down. Rocky looked away first and retreated to the wall, looking only slightly less lethal than before. Tossing the broken pen away, Preacher wiped his ink-stained hand on his jeans and took his seat.
“Good choice,” he muttered, “Now let’s fix this shit.”
“It’s like I told One-Eye over here.” Rocky jerked a thumb in Joe’s direction. “We need to get the goods outta the city. Couple of my guys got some land over in Illinois—a pumpkin farm with a barn. It’s the perfect place for long-term storage. Middle of fuckin’ nowhere.”
Preacher nodded. “That solves one problem. Now what about Greenpoint? How’re we gonna make back what we lost?”
“We jack up prices for a while,” Frank offered. “Columbians won’t ever need to know what happened.”
Joe scrubbed at his jaw. “We can do that with the metal, but it ain’t gonna fly with the drugs. We’re gonna need to cut up what we’ve got left, stretch it as far as it’ll go.” He shrugged. “Fake it ‘til we make it all back.”
Frank frowned. “That’s risky.”
What Joe was proposing was very risky. If buyers caught on to what they were doing, which someone undoubtedly would, people were going to get pissed—and when people got pissed, things had the potential to get messy. Messy and bloody.
But not nearly as messy as losing their heads at the hands of the Columbians.
“No shit, Sherlock.” Joe rolled his eyes at Frank. “But it’s either that or we start robbin’ banks.”
Frank slowly turned in his seat, his deadpan stare landing on Joe. “Your old lady likes guns, don’t she? You two gonna be the next Bonnie and Clyde?”
Snorting, Joe flipped him off.
Preacher grabbed his bottle of gin and took a long swallow. “Nobody’s robbin’ any banks. Nobody’s givin’ Sylvie any guns, either.” He pointed between Joe and Rocky. “You two, get the fuck outta my office and go tell the rest of ‘em what they need to know.”
When the door had closed behind them, Frank faced Preacher. “You’re really gonna make Rocky your sergeant?”
Sighing, Preacher eyed the office door. “For now.”
“He’s a loose cannon.”
“I know.”
“He’s gonna be trouble.”
“Not much I can do about it.”
“Yet,” Frank said.
“Yet,” Preacher agreed and took a swig.
“We got any leads on who tipped off the Feds?”
Preacher chugged another several inches of gin. “It was Debbie,” he said tightly.
“What was Debbie?”
“Greenpoint. She ratted us out to the Feds.”
A subtle flaring of his dark eyes was Frank’s only reaction.
“They scared the shit outta her… threatened her with… somethin’.” Preacher shook his head. “I don’t know specifics.”
“If she folded once, she could do it again.”
Preacher sank down further into his chair and took another swig of gin. “I’ll figure it out,” was all he said. Just not right now, he added silently.
Right now he was going to drink himself into oblivion and hopefully forget the never-ending, ever-expanding pile of problems heaped at his feet… for just a little while.
“Here.” Frank set down an unopened bottle of rum in front of Preacher. “You’re lookin’ a little low.”
Muttering his thanks, he continued to drink, hardly noticing when Frank left.
Sometime later, Preacher staggered out into the hall looked blearily toward the living room. Music was playing, and he could hear chatter and laughter. Rum in hand, he stumbled forward.
The bright colors in the living room made his head hurt, and he sat down on the first empty seat he came across. Someone called out his name, though he wasn’t quite sure who.
Eyes closed, he rested his head against the back of the sofa and continued to drink.
Feeling disoriented, sluggish, and blissfully numb, Preacher almost didn’t register the sudden extra weight on his lap. He cracked one eye open and waited until his spinning vision fell into focus.
He recognized her, or rather he recognized the ring in her nose and the safety pins dangling from her ears. She was new to the club, had been hanging around only this past month or so. Her name was Jenny or Jessica—he couldn’t remember which. With her ripped-up clothing and bleached blonde Mohawk, she looked better suited to standing outside CBGB’s, screaming about anarchy and animal rights, and flipping off anyone who didn’t look like her.
“You look sad, Mr. Preacher President,” she said, then giggled.
Preacher thought her speech might have been slurred—or maybe it was just his hearing that was slurred.
Her hand appeared on his chest and dragged slowly down the front of him. Gripping his belt, she yanked hard. Her lips split into a sly smile—a blur of bright red lipstick and gleaming white teeth. “You want me to cheer you up?”
“No.” He tried swatting her hand away—a piss-poor attempt that had her giggling.
She grabbed him again, this time below his belt. “Lemme make you feel better,” she purred, stroking him through his jeans. “I promise you, your girl ain’t ever gonna know.”
His girl. Bitter laughter lodged in his throat. His fucking girl was the reason two men were dead and a third of their goods had just been confiscated by the goddamn FBI.
But she hadn’t meant it. She hadn’t known. She was a good girl. She was his good, good girl.
And this was his fault. All of it. He’d kept her in the dark thinking he was protecting her from his world. Instead he’d ended up being the reason she’d been tossed into this sea of sharks, head first and without a lifejacket.
Are you a monster, too? Debbie’s voice echoed in his thoughts.
He lifted the bottle to his lips and chugged until his head was heavy, bobbing involuntarily, and rum was spilling from the corners of his mouth.
“I’m a monster,” he whispered brokenly to the girl on his lap.
“I like monsters,” she said, and grinned. And the next thing Preacher knew, she was nose to nose with him, licking the rum from his lips. He made a half-hearted attempt to push her head away while his own lolled backward, hitting the wall.
Giggling, she resumed tugging at his belt.
Too tired to move, too drunk to care, Preacher’s eyes began to close, and soon… everything faded to black.
Chapter 33
Present Day
Preacher released a shuddering sigh, and as the air fled his lungs, the light leached from his eyes. He slumped back against his pillows, looking shaken.
“Daddy?” I whispered. “What happened next?”