Page 53 of Brutal for It
“Or anyone’s,” Crunch adds, voice low.
Karma laces his fingers. “Caputo senior is insulated. You can’t shake that tree and get an apple. You talk to the son — Vinnie. He runs day-to-day and likes to be seen as a made man. He’ll take a meet if he thinks it keeps things smooth. He won’t if he smells a corner.”
Tripp’s phone is already on the table. “I’ll make the call,” he says. “I’ll do it on speaker so we all hear the words he chooses.”
He scrolls, finds a number men like us get through favors we don’t write down, and presses it. The line rings, rings, clicks. A man answers with a voice like velvet on a knife. “Vinnie.”
“Tripp,” our President says, easy as oil. “Hellions MC.”
A pause. “Not sure we have called for a transport, Tripp.”
“No, you haven’t in a while. Need a chat and I prefer to call before I come to dinner,” Tripp replies. “We are gonna have a conversation. Not about you. About a man who thinks he’s under your umbrella. He stepped on our family.”
Another pause. Vinnie Caputo isn’t stupid. He can count. Family means more than the room we’re in. He knows enough names to know this is a courtesy call.
“Where?” Vinnie asks.
“Half way,” Tripp answers. “Neutral site. No surprises. No one walks out embarrassed.”
“Tomorrow morning,” Vinnie gives back. “Warehouse at the docks. I’ll send the details. Maryland side. You know the one.”
“We’ll be on time,” Tripp states before he ends the call. He looks around the table. “We roll at first light.”
My back is straight enough to be a board. “I’m riding,” I say.
Tripp doesn’t argue. “You’ll bring the face of the club, Tommy Boy. You won’t bring a fuse. You understand me?”
“I’m not the fuse today,” I respond. “I’m the reminder.”
“Fair,” Tank mutters.
Karma flips a page in his notebook. “We don’t post up in a way that shows our hand. We don’t threaten. We lay out facts. We take offense when our people become someone else’s ledger line. That said, we don’t want their routes that go outside of the Carolinas. We don’t want their money. We want that handler cut loose and blackballed. If we see a return to business as usual in our backyard, we will not call next time.”
“And if he calls our bluff?” Red remarks.
Karma’s eyes go still. “Then we’ll have a different sermon and a different shape to our week.”
No one smiles. The room is full of men pulsing with adrenaline and a fierce desire to protect what is our own.
We move to logistics. Numbers. Bikes and vans. Cuts under plain jackets. No patches in the first meet — respect and deniability. We bring our lawyers’ cards in case anyone wants to pretend this is a thing that can be solved with invoices. We bring medical kits because we pray and plan. We bring nothing we don’t need and everything a man alive to the world might need to not become a ghost.
When the meeting breaks, I find the wall and put my shoulder to it, counting breaths again so I don’t put my fist through sheetrock just to feel something that isn’t memory.
Crunch slides in beside me. “You good?”
“No,” I reply honestly. “But I’m here.”
He nods. “Jenni will sit with her until you return.”
“She’s breathing, Tommy,” he reminds me, and his voice goes gentle, that rare thing with him. “Let the anger do work, not damage.”
“I hear you,” I say. I mean it.
I keep my promise. I bring soup. We eat together, small bites, big silences. Knowing what is coming and coming quick, I decide to tell her about the call with Caputo and leaving for Maryland.
“Maryland?” she affirms, and the word is a shore she hasn’t seen.
“Maryland,” I confirm.
