Page 72 of Cognac Secrets

“Fuckin’ organized crime unit,” Axeman spit on the ground.

I snorted, “Figures they’re so busy looking into us they ain’t gonna find who did this,” I muttered.

“We alreadyknowwho did this,” Chainsaw said and his eyes were glassy.

“Shut up,” Axe said firmly.

“Anything can and will be used against us in a court of law,” I reminded him. He nodded miserably and didn’t look happy about it – but he kept his mouth shut.

“This is bullshit,” Cypress growled.

“What’re they fighting over?” I asked.

“Fuckin’ bikes,” Axe sniffed. “They’re in the back but these assholes want to declare them part of the crime scene and impound ‘em or some shit.”

“Over my dead fucking body,” I said.

“Right,” Col agreed.

“In a gun fight who you think would win?” Cypress asked, eyeing the cops and our leadership hashing it out.

“Us,” I said.

“Yeah,” Axe agreed.

“You ever see them try to shoot anything?” Chainsaw asked, and he was grinning.

“Worse than Storm Troopers in a Star Wars movie. They legit can’t hit for shit,” I said under my breath and the guys chuckled.

It was stupid fucking humor, but anything to keep you from going down the fuckin’ tubes before it was alright to fuckin’ do so.

This shit had just barely been started. We were going to finish it – but that took time. This wasn’t a brute force op anymore.

“Here they come,” Cypress stood a little straighter, as LaCroix, Hex, and Saint made their way across the compound’s front lot with their police escort.

“We gotta walk around back, open the back gate, everybody got your keys and shit?” Saint asked.

“Fuck yeah,” Axe declared.

“Stick together, keep your mouths shut, and let’s move,” Hex ordered and we did just that, moving en masse along the cracked sidewalk, two by two, walking around the yard and the block to the back of the compound.

LaCroix went up to the heavy lock and chain and keyed the lock open, pulling the thick chain through the space in the fence holding the rolling gate closed.

“Ah!” Hex said and LaCroix stopped mid-motion, getting ready to shove the gate along its track himself.

“Let some of the boys get in there and do it.” It was another moment where Hex was having to remind LaCroix that he was our leader now… and that commanded a certain amount of respect. The reason LaCroix had so much of our respect didn’t have shit to do with his station as our president. That was just the fuckin’ cherry on top. The reason we had such a respect for LaCroix was precisely this: that he had to beremindedto act like a fuckin’ president.

He never asked a single one of us to do what he wasn’t willing to do himself andthatwas the goddamn difference between a leader and a boss – and as we all know, boss spelled backward is just the moniker for Sorry Son of a Bitch.

I’d learned from an ex-con from Texas that’s how the penchant for calling CO’s ‘boss’s had started.

It was something that’d stuck with me. I never called a motherfucker ‘boss’s unless I meant it in just that way. It’d served me pretty fucking well in my citizen life. Most of the dumbasses I’d directed that particular, ah hem,honorificto, were too stupid to realize was using it in the most ironic and deprecating way I could muster. Then again, sarcasm was typically lost on those same types.

Cops met us on the other side of the gate, which was damn annoying. LaCroix handed one of them the padlock and chain and said, “You boys go on and do us the favor of locking up when y’all are done.”

“I wouldn’t leave the immediate area,” one of the cops said trying to talk big. The other one’s jaw worked like he was trying not to say some choice words.

“We’ll go wherever the fuck we want to. That’s our brother we’ve got to bury,” Cypress’s expression was tempestuous at best.

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