Page 1 of Venom's Sting
Chapter 1
Venom
Today is starting out well. I’m in church, side-by-side with most of my club brothers. This is where I belong, I was always a bit of a loner when I was a kid, and I used to wonder what was wrong with me. But then I realized I just hadn’t met my people. I grab a seat beside Rage, we both joined the Savage Legion MC around the same time and have become pretty good buddies. He’s a medic and has this no-nonsense attitude and always says what’s on his mind, which means I never have to wonder what he’s thinking about.
He jerks his chin at me. “Mornin’, brother. How’s it hangin’?”
“Barely still attached.” I respond wryly. “The wedding reception for Haze and his old lady was wild. That club girl who had a thing for him, hate-fucked all those feelings out on me before moving onto the prospects.”
Rage glances towards the still-open door to the bar area. “Be careful of that one, Ven. Brittany’s the type who can get a man’s head all twisted around and fuck up his life before he even realizes what’s happening to him.”
“Yeah, noted, Grandpa.”
“I’m being serious, Ven,” he says in a stern tone.
“Sometimes you just gotta loosen up. But I’m hearing you loud and clear, brother—now that Haze’s off the market, she’s gonna be looking for her next victim. No matter how good the sex is, I ain’t stepping into that honey trap.”
“You don’t want her for an old lady. Trust me on this.”
Rage still doesn’t get it. I wave one hand through the air in a dismissive gesture. “You’re preachin’ to the choir, Rage. The last thing in the world I need is an old lady tellin’ me what to do.”
He finally gives me a genuine smile. “There are too many beautiful women hanging around this clubhouse who are eager to please to put all your chips on just the one.”
“Agreed. We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us. Plenty of time to play the field. No fucking brother should give up his freedom before he’s damn good and ready,” I say.
“Besides that, I doubt you’d find yourself an old lady who’d put up with your roommate and all the drone innards littering your suite. Unless she’s got a kink for scrapyards and serpentariums.”
Before I can answer, Siege drops the gavel and calls our club meeting to order.
“Quieten down and listen up. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover today. Let’s start with old business and then we’ll have reports from our club officers. First off Haze has something to say.”
Haze gets to his feet and looks around at everyone. I can’t help but smile at him because he’s a righteous brother who with our help, managed to save his old lady from desperate circumstances.
“I just wanna thank you all for the wedding gifts, you really shouldn’t have. Yeah Tank, I’m lookin’ at you bro. Youreallyshouldn’t have,” he pauses and Tank, our VP, starts laughing. I’m guessing it must be an in-joke. Haze continues, “We’regonna take a few days off to sail down to Santa Catalina Island—that’s in Anna’s father’s yacht, not in the fucking My Little Pony pool float, fuck you very much Tank,” his speech is drowned out by the sound of me and my club brothers laughing at the mental image. “Anyway, we had a ton of food left over, so Anna and Trix are dropping by later this morning with the sides, and the prospects are setting up the grill now.”
A ripple of excitement moves through the room, because every brother loves a cookout.
Siege turns to Haze and says, “We were glad to be there for you and your old lady when things were bad. That’s what the brotherhood is all about.”
When Haze drops back down into his seat, Siege continues, “Next, Dutch has a few words to say about what we recovered at Rick’s hideout.”
Dutch stands up and glances down at his tablet as he gives the report. “It took a while to secure Mr. Tyler’s property. Turns out, as well as his assets, there was quite a stash of loot.”
Impressed murmurs run around the room as my club brothers whisper their approval. Most of our jobs involved helping out for the sake of doing the right thing, and therefore operated at a net negative. It was good to find that one finally paid off.
He continues, “The shipping container beside his cabin was sold for four grand, however, in the outbuilding we found a false floor hiding a safe. We recovered nearly a hundred grand and some gold bars.”
My mouth drops open. But before anyone can ask, Dutch explains. “We suspect he was a prolific hit man and what we recovered from his property was a small percentage of his overall wealth. We’re still debating whether or not to track down more information on this man or let sleeping dogs lie.”
Glancing at Siege he announces, “The total haul is around a quarter of a million dollars. We’ll take thirty percent off the top for the club coffers and the rest will be evenly distributed amongst all the brothers who participated in the raid.”
Reward follows risk. This is standard operating procedure for our club, so they aren’t gonna get any pushback from the brothers about how they handled dividing the money. I can’t remember the last time we ended up with a bonus from doing a job. Mostly, we all work individual jobs and pay our dues. I suppose outlaw clubs earned more through their club than working outside jobs, but that wasn’t the way with non one-percent clubs.
Dutch wraps it up by talking about the weapons we confiscated. “There were several trunks holding weapons and a couple full of ammo. We’re adding most of that to our armory. You never know when extra weapons will come in handy. The killer was a professional. That means the weapons were well maintained, wiped clean of fingerprints, and had the serial numbers filed off.”
There’s a cough from the back of the room, Dutch asks, “You got something to add Smoke?”
Our club attorney shakes his head, “Not really, just remember what happened the last time we got caught with illegal guns on our property, if it wasn’t for Serena’s quick thinking, Rigs might still be doing time.”