Page 44 of Ignite

“Please stop it!” she yelled. “Wolf isn’t here! This is Bill and Madge’s place! You’re hurting them!”

The leader of the quartet shrugged and spat on the floor. “I don’t give a fuck. Whoever gets in my way is gonna get hurt. Tell that fucker Ramrod was here. The Knights give us what we want, we’ll stay away. They don’t? We’ll be back with more than bats next time.”

Next time?

As they left, one of them yanked down the brass bell over the door. It clanged harshly once, and then there was silence save for Hugo’s scared wails.

He was hyperventilating and in full panic mode. Jazz wanted to go that route herself, but she crammed that urge back into its box and calmed her brother. She rocked him back and forth, holding his body against her tightly. “They’re gone, Hugo. They’re gone, sweetheart.”

It took several more minutes of gentle tones to get Hugo to reduce his hysterical crying to subdued sniffles.

“Why did they do that?” He wiped his nose on his sleeve as he released his death grip on her neck.

“I don’t know, bro.”

“They were so mean!”

“I know, I know.”

Her mind combed through every response she could have. Collapsing into a blubbering heap was not an option. She needed to call someone. Police. Hugo’s counselor. Wolf. Madge. Not necessarily in that order.

A passerby appeared at the broken window. “Oh my gawd, yinz okay? I’ll call the police.”

One task down. With trembling hands, Jazz pulled out her phone and dialed Wolf.

25

Wolf satat one of the two round tables in the club. The Knights didn’t have a formal meeting room, and he wasn’t happy to be having this one in public. Thankfully, there were no dancers this time of the morning, so no one else was in the bar save the Iron City Knights.

There weren’t words in the English language to describe the emotions from yesterday. When Jazz called him to say a group of Slaggers had come and trashed the bakery, the fury that erupted in his gut had no limit. He’d broken several traffic laws on his way to get to her. He found her sitting on the sidewalk outside the ruined building with a swarm of flashing blue lights surrounding her. Hugo was clinging to her like a limpet and unwilling to let her go.

He didn’t see any bullet holes, but there were several streaks of blood on her face and shoulders where glass had caught her. Hugo had a small cut over his left eye. Wolf guessed she had used her body to shield her brother from flying debris. She raised her eyes to meet his, and her expression was one he hoped he never had to see again.

He was ready to kill someone. Slowly. With a lot of pain.

That anger had not dissipated.

“This shit is going to stop. One way or another,” he seethed.

Scrap sighed and scratched his scraggly beard. “I don’t see what your woman’s bakery has to do with us.”

Wolf was incredulous at the club president’s blasé attitude. “What the fuck do you mean, you don’t see? Those fuckers named me. Named this club. They scared the shit out of my woman and told her they planned to come back with worse. Not even a blind man would mistake this shit!”

Scrap growled back, “The bakery is not our problem. No need for us to do anything.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” This came from Quillon, normally the chillest guy in the club. He was regarding Scrap with disbelief. “The drive-by and the vape shop? We should have already taken the bull by the horns and finished this business then. It’s gonna be harder to do that now.”

“Did you fucking hear what I said? The bakery is not our problem!”

“So, we just hang Bill ’n’ Madge out to dry?” Camshaft added his voice to the mix. “They torched the hippie’s place and him with it. They extorted the auto parts place and the laundromat next to it. Marcie at the deli said they came to get money from her, too, and now they’ve destroyed the bakery where we’ve been getting our coffee for years. How much more is it gonna take before we do something?”

Scrap banged a heavy beer glass on the table in lieu of a gavel. “We don’t have the men.”

Wolf kept a tight lid on his anger. If he let it go, there’s no telling what would come out. “We have three new recruits ready for patchover.”

“We don’t have enough weapons.”

“How many do we need? Everyone here is armed. What the fuck are you waiting for?”

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