Page 22 of No Mercy
“Christ, Painter, why do you always have to start shit?” Hawk grumbled with mock anger.
Painter shrugged, a goofy grin spreading across his face. “Can’t help it, brother. The club hasn’t seen any kind of excitement in a long time.”
“I’m not sure ‘excitement’ is the right word,” I replied, glaring at him. Painter only shrugged again.
Hawk released a heavy breath. “Getting back to the shit at hand--” The room quieted and gave him their undivided attention. “We’ve done business with Covacks for years. I don’t need to remind you of what that’s done for our club in terms of success.”
Everyone at the table was probably thinking about the million dollar payoff we’d received for finding his son’s murderer.
“But do we want to get involved with the Russian mob?”
“What’s the payoff on that?” BK asked.
“Five mill,” Hawk said with some hesitation. The room erupted with enthusiastic comments, whistles, and gung-ho eagerness.
I couldn’t blame them, five million dollars was a shit ton of money. I wouldn’t have minded having a piece of that myself. But knowing Hawk better than anyone else in the room, it wasn’t lost on me that he didn’t want to do this job. The old Hawk would have jumped on it, if not for the money than for the excitement, and because it’s what MC’s like ours did. Having a pregnant old lady and two kids hadn’t turned him soft, just more cautious with regard to decisions in the club. No one at the table would fault him for that.
“I know some of you live for this kind of shit, but I have a lot more to live for now. I’m not sure I want to place my family in the kind of position that will come from offing members of the Russian mob.”
“You want to turn this down?” Big John asked. “Won’t that jeopardize our affiliation with Covacks?”
“That’s the point, brother.” Hawk caught everyone off guard with that comment. “We’ve had a couple of good years. Some of us have started families, we have successful businesses outside of the club. We’ve been living the life clubs like ours fight for and strive for. Some of us have gotten fat and lazy.” Laughter filled the room with that comment, and all eyes shot to Ned.
“Hey, my old lady is a chef! I had no control,” he defended himself quickly, rubbing the slight paunch above his belt. “Fuck, she can cook.”
“My point is, do we need to keep doing this shit? Trouble that can get us killed, or put us in prison, threaten our families?”
“We’re a one percent club,” Big John reminded everyone. “It’s what we do.”
He was right, but I was thinking about Allie and Sam, and I was beginning to understand where Hawk was coming from. If anything went wrong with the job, if the mob found out who was involved, it would mean death for all of us.
“I don’t think anyone at this table has forgotten that, brother. But I agree with Hawk. This isn’t a run of the mill protection run or us providing muscle at one of Covacks’ clubs, this is fucking bigger than that. Anything goes wrong, or they find out we’re involved, it means we all die.”
“Won’t go well for Covacks, either,” Ned added. “They find out it’s us, they’ll make the connection that Covacks hired us.”
“Not if we do this right,” I argued, and then turned to Hawk. “What exactly does he want?”
“He wants us to hit them and hit them hard, wipe out as many of them as we can, and make them see there is nothing for them here.”
Clay snorted. “All the while making sure it doesn’t lead back to Covacks? That’s not gonna work unless we hit their top members, and I doubt they’re here trying to get in on Covacks’ fighting empire. More likely we’ll be dealing with their fucking lackeys.”
Clay had a valid point. Besides, we all knew there was no way we’d be able to wipe out the Russian mob, even if we went to Russia to do it. They were too big and powerful, and they were everywhere.
“Makes me wonder what’s really behind Covacks’ request. He’s not stupid, he has to know what this move will do to the club.”
“Maybewe’rethe ones he wants obliterated,” Big John responded to my comment.
We all grew quiet. He’d voiced a thought that hadn’t been considered before, but just as some of us were coming to our own conclusions and shaking our heads negatively.
“Nah, if he wanted us gone he’d do it himself.”
“Who knows what the bastard would do?”
“We do business with him, but that don’t mean shit.”
“Maybe Prez is right, time to cut ties with him.”
“I got a kid to think about now, too.”