Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 74078 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74078 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
“Fine,” Huck said, shrugging. “Then tell me about you and yours.”
“We’re not competition to you, if that’s what you’re asking. Way I hear it, we are in different trades. With that comes different allies and different enemies. So if you don’t fuck with us, we won’t fuck with you,” Creed said.
“Why this area?” Huck asked, not completely satisfied, but everyone had relaxed a little. His guys hadn’t so much as put hands over their weapons in response to all of us having our own out.
“Imagine same reason you’re out this way. Low taxes, cops that can be coaxed to look the other way, and a lot of areas to lose bodies, if need be. Did my due diligence. Didn’t move into your turf. Didn’t move into no one’s turf. Fucking nothing around in Coral Springs. But us now, I guess.”
“What is your business?” Huck asked. “Since you already know mine,” he added before Creed could object.
“Protection,” Creed said. “In many different forms.”
That was… vague.
That could mean extortion. Forcing local businesses to pay them a monthly fee to keep anyone from fucking with said businesses. The shit the mob was known for doing.
It could be private security for events.
Or it could mean half a dozen other things.
None of which concerned us, though.
Huck seemed to be coming to the same conclusion, because he was nodding.
“Alright,” Huck said, holding out a hand toward Creed. “I have no plans of fucking with you,” he said. “If anything, I wouldn’t mind if we were friendly.”
Creed took Huck’s hand with a nod.
“Wouldn’t mind that either,” he agreed. “Maybe a meet-up one day,” he added, taking a step back.
“We would be interested in that,” Huck agreed.
“We are still… ironing out some kinks,” Creed said. “But when we get our shit handled, we’ll talk about it.”
With that, he turned and walked back to his men, then they all went to leave, giving us a view of their club logo as they went.
Ruthless Knights.
“That was unexpected,” Huck said, exhaling hard, and rubbing the back of his neck. “Someone call McCoy and Donovan and tell them to take their feet off the accelerator. Everything is fine.”
As Remy moved to do that, Seeley stepped away from me and toward Huck.
“This was on me,” Seeley said. “I was asking around since we hadn’t heard anything from Arty.”
“I expected you to,” Huck said, shrugging. “People don’t usually just show up in your backyard because you put feelers out about a new organization in town.”
“He’s direct,” Velle said, shrugging. “That’s a good quality to have in both allies and enemies. You’re never sitting around having to guess what they’re going to do.”
“That’s true,” Huck agreed.
“Are we really going to have a meet-up with them?” Che asked.
“Think we might try partying with them one night,” Huck said. “See what their men have to say after a couple of drinks. Just because I respect Creed’s bluntness doesn’t mean I completely trust him.”
We had a small circle in Golden Glades.
It was us and Booker’s private security firm. That was pretty much it. We’d made some headway with the local mafia thanks to Donovan and now York, but I wasn’t sure we could actually call them allies.
From what Huck said of our mother chapter in Navesink Bank, they had a lot of allies. Some sort of paramilitary camp, a family of loan sharks, the local cartel, all sorts of people they could go to in times of crises for help or just advice.
Even our sister chapter in Shady Valley had the local Irish mafia as allies. And even a… tentative alliance with the Bratva.
We didn’t have that down here.
But it would be nice if things shook out, and we could count Creed and his crew as allies for our club.
We could use that.
Especially until our club grew bigger, since we were still small compared to the crew in Navesink Bank. And at this rate, the guys in Shady Valley were going to surpass us.
Even if or when we had big numbers of members, though, allies were always a good thing. They had different contacts, ears to the ground in other areas than we did. If they heard of a threat to us, they would tell us. And, in turn, us them.
“Hey, why we got some pretty, dripping wet honeys in here, shivering to death?” Eddie asked, moving out of the back door, likely having just come in from work. One glance at everyone gathered around with guns in their hands had him stiffening. “Everything alright?” he asked.
“You can tell the girls to come back out,” Huck said. “We just met the president of another local club,” he explained. “They popped in for an unexpected visit,” he added, getting a nod from Eddie.
“Was it a pleasant visit?” he asked.
“It turned out better than we expected,” Huck said. “Eventually, we might have a get-together with them,” he added. “But things seem alright now.”