Page 15 of Iron Hearts

They would likely barricade themselves into employee-only areas and duck and cover when the fists started to fly, which was smart. With how much the Bastards and the Scorpions hated each other – shit wasn’t exactly liable to stay at just fists.

Now, we were taking a gamble – and had mostly left our firearms locked away in our bikes or left them off our person altogether.

Was that a major risk?

Fuck yeah, but it was a calculated one. Law enforcement from all over the fuckin’ place was liable to show up, and shit was liable to get searched. It behooved those of us with felony records tonothave an unauthorized weapon on our bikes or persons.

Of course, that was what the prospects were for. While St. Augustine didn’t have any, we were relying on Jacksonville’s and Ocala’s to plant some street weapons on the bikes below for the Bloody Scorpions to make their day a real rotten one when law enforcement showed up. When the brawl started – which itwouldstart – our boys in plain clothes who had gotten here early enough were to do their thing with the distraction going on up top.

While just about all of us would wind up in cuffs, and some of us would head to county while the others headed to city lockup for the rest of the weekend, we were prepared for it.

Renegade, The Bishop, and Creed, the Jacksonville chapter’s president, would make their calls to the Royal Bastard’s respective lawyers, and shit would get sorted out.

It all just predicated on us being cool and the Bloody Scorpions losing their shit to where they threw down first.

We knew where the cameras were, and we hung inside their view. That footage would be the first thing collected by the pigs and would likely be the first thing subpoenaed by our defense guys.

While the Royal Bastards were getting a stronghold formed up in North Florida, we’d been doing it carefully and quietly, working mostly above board and legal – nothing that law enforcement could get us on for RICO or other organized crime charges.

That was on purpose.

Strategic.

We were moving the pieces across the board. Building empires took fuckingtime.

Something these idiots in their Halloween costumes couldn’t understand. I shot a dirty look in the direction of the nearest set of black-and-orange colors and turned back to Switch. He was a sarcastic motherfucker, and his verbal barbs were just loud enough and scathing enough that you could see that tempers were starting to flare nearby.

Wouldn’t you know it? They started edging away from our knot like the pussies they were, and we had a good laugh about that.

I felt eyes on me and glanced in that direction to catch little miss Rarity pulling a beer, but her true-blue eyes fixed on me, staring unabashedly.

I swilled down the rest of my beer and sauntered in her direction to grab another.

A Bloody Scorpion tried “stumbling” into me and knocking me pretty good. I stopped, put a hand out friendly like on his shoulder, gave him an easy smile, and called out, “You good there, buddy?”

“I ain’t your fuckin’ buddy!” he slurred and jerked his shoulder out from under my hand. I put my hands up in surrender, the boys in my knot of brothers and a few other Bastards watching like a hawk.

“No harm, no foul, bro!” I did say thatbro,with all due disrespect, even though I kept my tone light and polite.

“I ain’t your fuckin’ bro, either! You son of a bitch!”

“Hey now, let’s keep my momma outta this. She was a good woman – God rest her soul.”

Actually, my mother was alive and well, and I was her main disappointment in life, but that was neither here nor there.

“Fuck you!” he snarled, and I bobbed my head.

“You have a good day now!” I called as one of his brothers who could actually read the fuckin’ room dragged him away.

So close,I thought to myself as I made it to the bar, tossing my cup into one of the nearby trash chutes and asking for another one.

“Sure thing,” she said coolly, eyeing me.

“Mind telling me what that is? It’s dank as fuck, and Ilikeit!”

“Salt Waves & Spanish Moss Brewing. It’s their Haunted Crypt IPA,” she said.

“I’ll be damned. Ain’t they out of Savannah?” I asked.

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