Puck’s Property by Monique Moreau
ChapterTwenty-One
Puck emerged from the back office to tend to the bar during the afternoon lull, right before happy hour, during the turnover of shifts for the waitresses. He was behind the bar, wiping down the top, when a stranger came through the front entrance. Puck’s senses automatically went on alert. He was a big man, looked like a bouncer at a club, with a crooked nose that had obviously been busted up numerous times. But he was dressed mighty fine for a mere bouncer, sporting a cashmere coat and a silk scarf. Taking a seat on a stool, he placed his hands on the bar top. The sleeves of his coat pulled up and showed wrists decorated with curb-chain bracelets that looked made of eighteen-carat gold. Mafia, by the looks of him.
“You know where I can find a man named Puck.”
Puck looked him over, meticulously memorizing every feature of his face, from his flat steel-gray eyes to the scar crossing his left eyebrow.
“You found him,” he replied simply, putting away the clean glasses that had been washed and left to dry beneath the counter.
It was the man’s turn to inspect Puck.
“What do you want?” Puck asked. He didn’t like this stranger nor the way he was being scrutinized.
“I’m an associate of Kingpin,” he declared. He paused for a beat. “Remember him?”
“Yeah, I remember him. I remember he’s in County Jail and I’m not. I remember I left his ass behind and went back to my life.”
“Funny thing about jail. The friends you make in the pen, specially if they’re a boss…that association can follow you outta jail.”
Puck barked out a laugh. “You don’t know shit about me, son. Did what I had to do while I was holed up in there, but I’m out now. I don’t own nothin’ to nobody. Men walk out of jail every single fuckin’ day of the year.”
“Yeah? Difference is that you left a void.”
“A void that can be replaced by the next sucker who comes along. Workers are replaceable. You know that as much as I do. Hell, that’s true in the real world. Kingpin and I didn’t have a discussion, much less an understanding, that I’d continue working for him.”
“Maybe you were such a good worker that he wants to keep the job going.”
“The job’s done, yo. I’m out. I got a job right fuckin’ here. I’m not lookin’ to make extra cash, but if the need comes up, I’ll reach out to Kingpin myself. You’ve got balls, man. You come in here and don’t even introduce yourself. What’s your fuckin’ name, anyway?”
“I go by Nikki. Funny thing, but a couple weeks after you left, his life got a helluva lot harder. He thinks you might have something to do with that.”
Puck’s face hardened, and he crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I haven’t heard shit from him or about him. If his situation went south after I left, I fuckin’ guarantee you that has nothing to do with me. First you tell me I’m indebted to him in some way and I gotta continue working for him. Now, you’re fucking insinuating I was involved in fucking with his shit when I don’t know nothing about it. You know what?” Puck said as he bent over the bar top and thrust his face in the fucker’s space. “You can go fuck yourself.”
He’d kept his voice low, but Whistle appeared behind him in the blink of an eye. Yanking a bottle off the shelf, Whistle smashed it, and liquor gushed everywhere. Puck inwardly cringed, hoping it wasn’t one of the more expensive bottles. That could’ve been two hundred dollars down the fucking drain. They were both carrying, so it wasn’t a matter of actual power. It was a symbol. Wielding a jagged-edged broken bottle was a show of strength.
“What the fuck is this Russian Bratva doin’ here?” Whistle sneered.
Puck’s gaze cut to Whistle.
The man named Nikki chuckled darkly. “Little shit knows nothing. I’m not Bratva,” he snarled.
“Whatever the fuck you are doesn’t matter. I’m not in the goddamn slammer no more, so Kingpin has no power over me, you hear? I did my fucking time. Did what I had to do to survive, but I don’t owe no one nothing. Don’t know how tough he thinks he is, but I’m a member of the Demon Squad. Unless you wanna start a war, get the hell out of my bar before my associate here stabs that fucking broke-down bottle in your motherfucking eye.”
Puck backed down and spat on the floor.
Nikki gave him the evil eye. “You fuckin’ spit at me? You must not know what that means where I come from, but I fucking guarantee you it’s nothing pretty.”
Puck almost laughed in his face. He wasn’t going to be intimidated by some two-bit mafioso criminal. Once a fucker thinks he’s a Made Man, he likes to go Soprano on people, but he wasn’t living out a fucking HBO special. “Unless you’ve got something else to say, I suggest you turn your ass around and get the fuck outta here.”
The man didn’t move. Puck arched an eyebrow while Whistle snapped his gum behind him, waving the bottle around a little. With one last vicious look thrown his way, the asshole stomped out of the bar and slammed the door behind him.
“What the fuck was that about?” inquired Whistle. “Been in and out of Duchess County half a dozen times, and no one’s come after me on the outside.”
Puck grunted as he marched over the broken glass that crunched under his boots. He skirted the bar and checked which direction the man had gone, but there was no trace of him. Luckily, the waitresses were gabbing in the backroom and had missed the drama. Coming back around the bar, he explained, “Had to do some things when I was in Duchess County that I wouldn’t normally do. For Ava.”
Whistle’s eyebrows jumped up. “No shit.”
“Yeah, and I don’t know if he wants more of me or if he’s onto the fact that I snitched on him.”
“Fuckin’ hell,” Whistle muttered.
“Had to help my woman, Whistle. One day you’ll understand what that means. Kingpin is a bad mofo, and he had to be put down. He might suspect me, but that bastard could be shaking down any number of men. I wasn’t the only one working for him, and he’s a rat, so he has enemies. After I left, he got caught with contraband. Don’t know exactly what Kingpin wants, but if he’s associating with mobsters, that could be a problem in itself. I wasn’t aware of every one of his contacts.”
“Christ, Puck.”
“I had no choice. Ava wanted something bad, and I did what I had to do to get it for her. I knew the risks, and I was willing to take them. True, I didn’t expect them to follow me out of jail, but he’s a coldhearted piss-ass pussy. He’ll be on trial soon, and there’s no doubt he’ll be convicted. Then he’s off to Green Haven maximum-security prison, where he’ll have to start over, build new contacts, and find creative ways to smuggle his drugs into prison. There’s no stopping a man like that. All we did was keep him off the streets.”
“Does Kingdom know about this?”
“Yeah,” Puck replied wearily. It hadn’t been an easy conversation to have, but in the end, he got Kingdom to admit he would’ve done the same thing in Puck’s shoes. “I’m not naïve, but I didn’t expect that fuckwad to sic some dirty mafioso on my ass. You thought he was Russian?”
“He’s not be Russian, but he’s from the old country. I can tell by the way he speaks, the way he moves.” He blew out a breath. “Not good, brother. Take it from me, those fuckers are animals. Think he’ll be back?”
“No fuckin’ idea, brah. No fuckin’ idea,” Puck answered, his eyes glued to the empty street outside the bar.
※※※
After his visitor the other day, Puck wasn’t especially surprised to find the bar’s front door busted open, swinging wide in the gusty wind. Didn’t make the bitter pill any easier to swallow when he surveyed the extent of the damage.
“Motherfucker,” he cursed aloud. The place had been trashed. Some of it was legit destruction for the sake of destruction. Besides the splintered pieces of broken stools strewn all over the ground, the cushions of the booth seats were slashed, stuffing spilling out like disemboweled carcasses. Half the liquor bottles on the shelves behind the bar were gone. He guessed they were lying broken on the floor beneath. TV screens had been pried off the walls and thrown across the space. It was like a tornado had passed through.
His fists instinctively balled at his sides. Fucking hell. Rage and an excruciating sense of helplessness battled for dominance in his chest. The bar had just started to turn around and make a profit. All gone to hell. The financial hit of the attack was going to be felt by the club, but it was the hit to their pride that stung the most.
Gently nudging pieces of a broken table with his boot to pave the path ahead, Puck made his way to the back rooms. The storeroom had been emptied of everything that wasn’t bolted down to the ground. They’d had a delivery the day before, so this attack was meant to hit them where it’d hurt the most. Either it was an inside job, or there was a lookout casing the bar, but either way, it was a professional job. Chances were high that it was Kingpin, but the Squad couldn’t start a war with a dealer and the mob without proof.
There were cameras, but he doubted they’d find anything worthwhile. He’d get Flicker to comb through the footage. For real proof, though, he’d need Cutter. Cutter was the tracker of the club. Opening the walk-in cooler, Puck stopped in his tracks. Christ, they even took the kegs. He hit dial on his phone and waited for Kingdom to pick up.
“Whattup?” Kingdom began.
Without a greeting, Puck broke the news. “The bar got busted up.”
There was silence. “Come again.”
“The bar got trashed. It’s a professional job. They did the maximum amount of damage possible. Someone wanted to send us a message. I need Cutter down here to get any clues of who did it.”
“Fuck!” Kingdom bellowed so loud that Puck had to pull the phone away from his ear. Putting his president on speakerphone, he went through the bar, describing everything as he’d found it. If this was Kingpin, if Puck was the reason behind this clusterfuck, then he’d decimate that motherfucker. Shame burned a hole in his gut. He was the fixer, not the fuckup who brought trouble to his club.
“This could be Kingpin, though it seems like a bit much,” suggested Puck. “It’s not like I owed him money or any product. It doesn’t make sense, Kingdom. Someone wants to fuck with us, or me, but I can’t figure out a good enough reason why.”
“I’ll be right over. Get ahold of Cutter and tell him to meet us down there. Don’t clean or move a thing before we get there. We’ll go through the place together with a fine-tooth comb. I’m going to contact the brothers and call Church. This needs to be addressed today. No one fucks with the Squad and gets away with it,” he vowed before hanging up.
The die had been cast. It was just a matter of figuring out who’d cast it, but someone out there was in for a whole world of pain, and Puck would be first in line to inflict it. Like Kingdom said, no one fucked with the Squad.
※※※
Puck spent the morning talking to the police and insurance company but made it in time for Church as the brothers filed into the meeting room at the clubhouse for their gathering. After going through the perfunctory opening motions, Kingdom updated everyone on the situation and announced, “We believe it’s the Renegades.”
“What?” Puck jolted off his seat onto his feet. His head pounded like a jackhammer was trying to puncture a hole in his cranium from the inside out. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Cutter found this,” he said grimly and threw the remnant of a patch across the table at Puck. Catching it in his hand, he inspected it carefully. It was a corner of a bottom rocker that had been torn off, but there was enough of a skull left to recognize it as the Renegades MC. “Where’d you find this?” he asked as he fell back into his seat and passed the evidence to the brother sitting beside him.
“Near the back door. Probably came off one of their cuts when they were hauling the kegs out of the bar. The footage from the cameras show a few men with vests, but they didn’t have patches on them,” explained Cutter. “Must have cut them off, but for this piece that hung on, and then got ripped off when they were wrecking shit.” He grimaced as if he’d sucked on a lemon. “Sloppy.”
“It doesn’t make sense. The Renegades are a bunch of old weekend warriors. Ava’s father is a long-time member. At least fifteen years.”
Kingdom straightened and gave Puck a sharp look. “Yeah. What’s he like?”
“Met him one time. What I do know is that he doesn’t like me, but that doesn’t mean much. I’m the dirty biker that’s fucking his little girl.”
“Doesn’t it, though? If he’s been a biker that long, he can’t have a problem with you being one. That wouldn’t make sense. What would make sense is that he doesn’t like you fucking his precious daughter. And you know any biker, even his kind, can go mad dog on you,” declared Kingdom.
“He know about your past with Ava?” queried Loki.
“Yeah, and she told me he was pissed when he found out I’d come out of jail. The guy definitely doesn’t like me. But to go this far?”
“It was the Renegades,” Cutter said with finality. “Don’t matter the reason behind it. The proof points to them, and the way to hit them hardest is at their shop, like they’ve done to us. Tit for tat. ’Cause right now, it’s our liquor they’re guzzling down their throat.”
The thought had Puck’s head about to explode. No one touched what was the Squad’s. It riled him up like nothing else. He’d poured blood and sweat into the bar, been there every minute of every fucking day he wasn’t with Ava, and even then, he’d duck out of her house to check on the bar.
It made no damn sense for the Renegades to fuck around like this with another, stronger club on their home turf, but there was no denying the anger rolling off Ava’s father when Puck met him. Later that night, she’d told him what her father said about him, and he sensed she was holding back in a misguided attempt to spare his feelings. He hadn’t enlightened her to the fact that he didn’t give two fucks what her father thought of him. The man hadn’t even been in her life during phase one of their relationship.
The Renegades had a rep for being waxers—bros who’d rather wax their bikes than ride them. On the other hand, bikers were bikers, and who the fuck knew what could set them off. No kind of biker should be underestimated, whatever colors they wore. Maybe it was revenge ’cause he was corrupting the man’s little girl. Maybe it was something else.
As Cutter said, the reasons didn’t matter as much as the reality, and that reality now included revenge. After Loki stepped down, Puck became the sergeant at arms, which meant it fell to him to plan the attack on the Renegades.
“Hit them where it hurts. The Harley shop. You know that’s were their money comes from,” revealed Flicker. “I checked their finances. Ava’s father is the primary owner, but there’s a consortium of Renegade members as investors.”
“What about Ava?” asked Kingdom.
“I’ll take care of Ava,” Puck replied in a bleak tone. He swallowed. Christ, he prayed he was right. This could put a wedge between them. Shit could get ugly fast in a fight between clubs, even a fake one like the Renegades. But she wasn’t a member of the Renegades. Although this affected her family, she wasn’t exactly close to her father. He had to trust that if it came down to choosing between him and her father, she’d choose him. He squeezed his eyes shut. Christ, he hoped he was right.
Loki turned to him, “You sure you want to do this, brother? After all, this is your old lady’s father. We can handle this without your involvement. Maybe even find another way.”
“This is the best way. I’m the sergeant at arms, so I’ve got to be involved. This is happening because of me. The least I can do is take a lead to right the wrong. Either Ava understands, or she doesn’t. Nah, I got this.”
“Suit yourself,” replied Loki with a skeptical expression on his face.
Kingdom slapped his palm on the tabletop. “Time to vote on what we’re gonna do. Everyone for revenge, say ‘aye.’”
