SEEING RED

Ricky gripped his cell phone under the table, waiting for the vibration. He sure as hell wouldn’t hear a call in this place, the country music cranked too loud for the shitty sound system, every guitar twang raking down his spine. He wasn’t even sure he’d feel the phone, considering the whole damned table was vibrating. His untouched beer sloshed in the dirty glass, foam rising like the sea against a storm-tossed ship.

CJ motioned to the beer. Ricky waved for him to take it. CJ grinned and exchanged Ricky’s for a glass from his collection of empties.

Don sat in a quieter corner, across from the leader of the Lost Rebels, a club out of Indiana. This bar was neutral territory, the meeting to discuss an issue of non-neutral territory, namely that controlled by the Saints and coveted by the Rebels. While the Rebels had been eyeing the Saints’ southern edge for almost a decade, it’d been years since they’d made a direct strike. All that had changed yesterday. And it was, in part, Ricky’s fault.

Just over a week ago, Ricky had been helping Wallace confront some morons who fancied themselves a motorcycle gang and decided they’d take a slice of Saints territory. It happened. Usually all the Saints had to do was knock some heads together and the newly formed “club” would decide they should stick to joyriding. Except, in this instance, the leader got more knocking around than he’d bargained for. He’d been released from the hospital two days ago, with a list of injuries that would keep him off his bike for a while. The person who put him there? Ricky.

There were plenty of guys in the club who lived for knocking heads. Ricky wasn’t one of them. Of course, he could fight. The Saints had been training him since he was old enough to throw a punch. But that night, Ricky had been on edge, his father starting to suspect he was seeing Liv. When they’d gone to warn the knuckleheads off their turf, the leader had taunted Ricky about the photo of him and Liv in the Post. Then he switched to insulting Liv . . . Well, Ricky had heard other guys talk about “seeing red,” but he’d never understood what they meant until that night. It was like his temper went from smolder to detonation in two seconds flat, and the next thing he knew, the guys were pulling him off his target, who was lying bloody on the floor.

For a lot of the guys, that fight was the best thing Ricky could have done to show them he was indeed growing into a man they could follow. His father had not been nearly so pleased. Then the guy’s “gang” took their complaint to the Rebels and threw in with them. So, in effect, Ricky had caused the current crisis.

When his phone finally buzzed, he scrambled out of his seat. Don looked over and his eyes narrowed, telling Ricky he’d better sit his ass back down. Ricky walked out the door.

No one tried to stop him. CJ even chuckled under his breath. Outright rebellion would be cause for concern—the boss was still the boss. Submission, though, would be just as worrying, supporting what they feared most—that Ricky was a little too easygoing, too laid-back, given too much to thinking and too little to acting.

Subtle fuck yous in his father’s direction met with equally subtle approval. Ricky didn’t give a shit about that. He didn’t plan to win the gang over by rebelling against his father’s authority or beating the crap out of rival leaders. It would be at least a decade before his father stepped down, and that was ten years to prove that Ricky was the man they wanted in charge, and to do it his way.

Right now, though, he didn’t give a shit what Don thought, either. He’d told his father that Liv was going to visit Todd in prison for the first time, and he’d explained how difficult that would be for her, and asked if there was any chance he could bail on part of tonight. Maybe leave early? Or arrive late?

No. That’d been Don’s answer. No discussion. No room for negotiation. If Olivia had a problem with it, then Ricky should cut her loose now.

Cut her loose? Sure, because she was the one who pursued him and, really, it wasn’t like he cared about her. Oh, wait.

Ricky let the bar door slam. Don refused to understand how important Liv was to him, and what made it all the worse was that it was, quite possibly, the first time in Ricky’s life that his father hadn’t understood him.

He pushed that thought aside and answered the phone with, “Hey, thanks for calling me back.”

He could barely hear Gabriel’s reply over the booming beats of Madonna’s “Vogue.”

“Damn, it’s louder there than it is here. Where are you?”

“At a bar.”

Ricky tried to picture that and failed. When the Saints had first hired Gabriel, Don had made the mistake of suggesting they meet at a strip club. Their last lawyer had expected that. Hey, that was the advantage of representing bikers, right? Hanging out in dive bars and strip clubs, associating with gun-toting thugs, surrounded by barely clad young women. Which had proven the lawyer didn’t know much about the Saints. Don had accommodated him . . . until they replaced him with Gabriel, who’d gotten as far as the door of the strip club, turned his cool gaze on Don, and suggested that it might not be the most conducive environment for business.

“Is Liv still with you?” Ricky asked.

“Of course,” came the frosty reply, as if Gabriel was offended Ricky would suggest otherwise. “If she hasn’t contacted you—”

“She texted to say she was fine.”

“Then she is.” Impatient now.

“Just because she said she’s fine doesn’t mean she is, Gabriel.”