Brutal Beast: Vicious Vipers MC 5

1. Vigil

1

Vigil

My cell vibrated in my back pocket, and I cut the mower’s engine and swiped at the sweat running down my face before fishing it out. I grunted at the club w***e’s name on the screen.

“Yeah?”

“Vigil!” Tina’s voice caught on a sob, and I scowled deeper at her unusual display of emotion. “Ricky and Bucky got into it—they’re still at it!”

A loud crash sounded in the background, and she shrieked.

“What the f**k?” I muttered.

“You need to get down here!” Tina said, hysteria rising in her voice. “Bucky’s gonna kill him!”

Shit. “Did you call Ryker?” My Sergeant at Arms worked at the chop shop at the back of the compound.

“He hasn’t come in yet!”

“Be right there.” Scowling, I hung up and left my mower in the half-cut backyard. Stalking into my house for a shirt and my bike keys, I muttered more than my fair share of curses.

My younger brother had been in a majorly f****d-up funk lately. Moody and volatile to the point he’d broken a few noses and blackened eyes when provoked. I’d laid him out flat twice in the previous couple of months, but he refused to talk about what had shoved so far up his a*s he’d turned into a little b***h.

He’d taken to drinking the hard s**t and a lot of it. His a*s had been drunk more often than not. I’d been thinking he needed a good talking to, threats and s**t. Guess it was time.

A f*****g Monday, ten in the morning, and he’d already gotten into it. Bucky might be a smaller guy, but he was wiry and scrappy as f**k. Ricky had barked up the wrong damn tree.

My Harley roared to life between my thighs, and I took off out of my neighborhood, the wind on my face a welcome respite from the damn August heatwave gripping New England. It took all of five minutes to get to the club, but the sweat still hadn’t dried by the time I got there. The gate to the Vicious Vipers MC began rolling back when I rounded the bend, and I had to slow before weaseling my way through the old thing without acknowledging whoever manned the guard house.

The club’s door stood open, my jackass brother stumbled through it into the sun, Bucky holding him in a headlock. Still f*****g at it, the stupid f***s.

Still scowling, I parked my bike and kicked down the stand, the sounds of Ricky’s fists on Bucky’s stomach, their grunts and curses filled the air.

Tina appeared in the doorway, her eyes wild, mascara streaks down her pale cheeks.

Temptation to let the two men work their s**t out warred over preservation of life. Just in case things did get ugly, though, I decided to step in.

I grasped Bucky’s hair and yanked him away from my brother.

Bucky jerked backward with a swing, but I side stepped and grabbed Ricky as he went to charge the smaller man.

“Enough!” I barked again, my gaze flitting between the two men. “Just calm your goddamn britches, boys!”

Bucky finally focused on my face—and went still as f**k, hands fisted at his sides, chest heaving. He sported a cut on his lip and the beginnings of a shiner he’d have to brag about in the coming week.

“Vigil.” He at least acknowledged me.

Ricky spit blood and yanked free of me, his wild hair glinting more red than auburn in the sun. The fucker could have been my twin, but we couldn’t have been more different.

“The f**k is going on?” I looked between the two as they took their battle to a stare-down.

Movement in my periphery caught my attention. Ryker sauntered out of the club, two bottles of water in his hands. He tossed one to both Ricky and Bucky, his forehead furrowed as deep as mine.

“The f**k is going on?” I asked again.

Ricky’s lips remained clamped, and he swayed on his feet.

“Are you drunk?” I asked, my frown deepening.

“Yeah,” Bucky answered for him. “Caught his a*s stealing a bottle of JD from behind the bar.”

“I told you to supply your own s**t,” I said, turning back toward my brother.

“Ran out,” he snipped.

“Then you’re done until you sober up to drive to the damn liquor store! Goddamnit, Ricky.” My hand itched to cuff him upside the head, but I expected that would start another brawl, one he definitely wouldn’t win in his f****d up condition. “I’ve had about enough of your s**t. You need to sober up for good. If you can’t do it on your own, get your a*s in rehab. I’m done, Ricky. Seriously. Make a change or I’m taking your colors.”

The air charged around us as Ricky stared at me, his pale eyes so like my own, void of emotion. “You’d do that?” he slurred.

“Damn right, I will. Should have given you that ultimatum weeks ago.”

He turned and staggered toward the club’s entrance, and Tina stepped aside to let him pass. She hugged herself, her face still pale.

“How bad is it in there?” I asked, nodding toward the interior.

“Bad.”

I nodded to Bucky. “Get your a*s back in there and start to clean up.”

“What about Ricky?” he muttered like a petulant brat, the little s**t.

“Just get your a*s in there or you won’t be getting your damn colors,” I barked at the pledge, having had enough bullshit for the morning. Add in the f*****g heat, and I toed the line of losing my s**t.

He scurried away, and I stalked after him, Ryker falling in beside me.

“Where the hell were you?” I asked him.

“Talia is getting her first molars. Whining and crying. I was trying to help,” he grumbled.

“Pia okay?” I asked about his wife of almost two years.

“She told me to leave.”

“You must have been one miserable bastard if she told you to get the f**k out of the house,” I muttered while stepping into the club.

“f**k off. You’ve never had to deal with that shit.”

“Never want to, either.” Hands on my hips, I surveyed the damage and stretched my neck side to side.

A smashed table. Two broken chairs. The custom made dart board lay on the ground in two pieces, the VV rockers around the bullseye split with jagged edges. I wondered who’d gotten the wooden plank over the head and how Hammer and Crow would feel about their favorite pastime being unavailable until I could get it replaced.

Ricky and Bucky had been behind the bar, too. Glass and liquid lay f*****g everywhere. The liquor fumes in the air damn near watered my eyes.

“Goddamnit.” I huffed a pissed off sigh. “I gotta get him outta here, don’t I?” I asked Ryker quietly as Bucky and Tina picked up pieces of broken glass and tossed them into a barrel.

He pulled up a chair to the closest table and sat. “If he won’t open up and tell you what the f**k his problem is, maybe.”

I slunk into the chair beside him. “I really don’t want to take his colors.”

“As VP, he should know better.”

Scrubbing a hand down over my face, I eyed the destruction. I would have to call in Hammer and Crow to fix the dented drywall, broken table, and chairs. “Yeah, he should,” I finally agreed.

We both had demons, but I’d always seemed to have a better grip on their reins. Ricky had become a ticking time bomb and I didn’t know what the f**k to do about it.

“Maybe a change of scenery would be good for him.”

I considered Ryker’s words while Bucky grabbed a package of paper towels from the storage closet. “Talk to Klingon lately?” I asked, turning back toward Ryker.

He eyed the mess, too, his hazel-green eyes less cold and calculating since his old a*s had claimed Pia and he’d become a father. “Everything in Vegas has been quiet.”

I nodded, happy to hear there’d been no change. We’d made one hell of a mess out there years earlier, ending a few lives to save Stone’s woman, and our Viper brothers from the Vegas chapter had helped to clean it up.

“Jenny?” I asked after Ryker’s sister who had moved out there not long after her and Ryker’s mom passed.

“Doing pretty good. Klingon still checks up on her even though there’s no need.”

A subtle threat had concerned Ryker enough he’d asked his childhood friend who happened to be the Vegas chapter’s president to keep an eye on her. But that threat had been eradicated when we’d helped put the Martínez cartel and the Russian mob in the New England area behind bars two years earlier.

We might be one-percenters who didn’t hesitate to take life or make tens of thousands though our chop shop and extortion opportunities, but I didn’t allow drugs or s*x slaves. f**k knew my childhood had enough of both.

My father had been addicted to the first, and in true battered woman syndrome, my mom was nothing more than the second to him.

I stood, the sudden need to move and erase memories from my mind kicking into gear. “Let’s clean this f*****g place up,” I grumbled. “I’ll decide what to do with my brother’s a*s later.”

Took us most of the day to set things right, and I ended up staying for steaks Tina slapped on the grill out back as brothers began to show up after their nine-to-fives. Hammer and Crow fixed their precious dart board, thank f**k, and puffed on cigs while tossing them, frothing mugs in their other hands.

Bucky manned the bar along with Greed since the place jammed like it usually did after a long as f**k Monday. Some bullshit dance music played thanks to Stone’s woman who sat on his lap in the chair beside me. Devil and Dasia sat on my other side, sucking face and ignoring reality as they’d been doing for two years since they’d found one another.

Sully, Sin, and a handful of others played cards at the table beside us, tossing back shots like water—but they could hold theirs.

Ricky didn’t show, keeping to his small apartment above the club, hopefully still sleeping it off. I missed my sober brother and having him beside me, but found contentment with the peace we’d had as a club for a few years.

Devil had dug up some s**t on one of our state’s congress women and she paid a pretty penny to the anonymous blackmailer to keep the images of her using a strap-on on her personal assistant from her husband.

The chop shop had also done well the last couple of months, the black market hot for s**t we’d gotten our hands on, and the mob and cartel goons still sat in cold cells. As a club, we’d been enjoying the good life to the point my neck tingled on occasion as I wondered what lay around the corner. It’d been quiet. Too quiet.

Dasia giggled as Devil grasped her hips and ground her against him. “Like that p***y cat?” he murmured, completely lost in her and not giving two shits that I sat less than a foot away from their dry humping.

Giada sat facing Stone, all googly-eyed in love, the soft smile on her face for him alone.

I shifted, thinking to ease the sudden strange ache in my chest. Wondering if my blood pressure was up, I rubbed over my pecs while scowling. Didn’t hurt—at least, not physically. I knew I was a jealous fucker over my brothers’ having found their old ladies, but that wouldn’t cause chest pains, would it?

“Vigil?”

I turned back toward Giada to find her focus on me, her smile gone. “Hmm?”

“You okay?” She motioned toward my hand still rubbing at my chest.

“Yeah.” I managed a half smirk, slapped my palm down onto the table calling it a night, pulling the attention of the other love birds around me. “Think I’m done for the day. f*****g beat.”

“Not off to find a w***e to suck your d**k?” Giada asked with a laugh before she and Dasia made gagging noises.

What was it with the old ladies and making faces over my usual hand-slapping a table at night’s end and the truth about what I usually went in search of?

“Too f*****g tired,” I muttered as they continued to snicker.

“It’s been weeks since you’ve gone off looking to get your d**k sucked. Starting to think you need some little blue pills.”

I glared at Devil.

He held up his hands and leaned back in his chair, but his smirk stayed in place, the pretty boy pansy-assed motherfucker.

“If I liked boys, I’d make you get on your knees for me,” I shot back.

“The hell you would,” Dasia said with a laugh. “I don’t share.”

Yeah, neither did I—and d***s other than my own didn’t do jack s**t for me.

I stood, clasped a few brothers’ hands, and headed into the humid night, their ribbing following me out the damn door.

Ten minutes later, the ache in my chest lingered as I turned into my neighborhood, enjoying the leisurely ride unlike the one earlier in the morning. I approached Widow Betsy’s old house and eyed it as I’d been doing every time I’d passed in the previous two weeks. Her son had decided to rent rather than sell after she’d passed, but I’d yet to see the people who’d moved in beyond their teenage son. He’d been out and about on a bike as though looking for friends—or trouble.

A curvy backside on the stoop caught my attention, but the woman straightened and slipped inside the front door without glancing my way even though she must have heard the Harley between my legs. I’d seen enough to stir my d**k to life, though. Tall, wavy dark hair even though I preferred blondes, and a juicy a*s to set my mouth to drooling.

Fuck. Me.

I’d gone too damn long without getting laid. Hadn’t even let one of the club w****s treat my d**k like a lollipop in months, not just weeks like Devil had noted. I hadn’t been interested—figured maybe my balls were on their way out even though I’d just crested the forty mark.

Neighbor lady brought on a chub, so guess I wasn’t needing those blue pills just yet.

I drove around the block and pulled into my garage, my mind still on the woman I hadn’t gotten a good enough look at and that f*****g a*s.

Was she single? I hadn’t seen a man around, but I also wasn’t interested in hooking up with a single mom. Last thing I needed was some teenage punk c**k-blocking me from getting my d**k wet.

At least she’d brought the fucker back to life. I could live with that.

I made a mental note to hit Devil up for info on the new renters—just in case the woman wanted my d**k down her throat.