Ricky nodded. He stood next to Jorell Winston, the member who had drawn the ruined bikes to our attention. Jorell stood to move up to fill the hole left by Angelo’s death. I wasn’t sure if he was fully aware of that yet, but we’d already talked about promoting him several times. If not with us, then we were preparing to offer him a position in another chapter.
Jorell was ripped. Beneath his broad shoulders, his arms bulged with thick, powerful muscles. His chest pushed against his shirts as if it wanted to break out. He always wore sleeveless t-shirts to show off the ink covering both arms. He sported a shaved head and full beard. He was an impressive specimen of biker, and he took club business very seriously whenever he was involved. He stood with his arms crossed and watched me to see what my next order would be.
“The point is we lost some great people today, but I also think it’s a testament to the caliber of everyone standing here now that we didn’t lose more. I want to commend everyone for their response today. We returned fire pretty quickly despite being ambushed. That being said, I think we’ve grown too lax, too soft, too damn comfortable here,” I continued.
Voices murmured as the group certainly felt like I was calling them out.
“Now, I can’t remember anything like this ever happening to us before, so I don’t really have any fair points of comparison, but what I will tell you is that I’ve failed you. I’ve gone soft, and because of that, I feel like the MC as a whole has started to go soft. Well, not again. We’re in too deep, and the stakes are too high for us to go soft now. If anything, we need to harden up. We’re the damn Kings of Hell, for crying out loud. If someone attacks us, they need to be put on the defensive quick. We need security.”
I looked at Chase, Juarez, and Ricky. I could see that we were all on the same page. They nodded, each of them already seeing where I was going.
“Jorell, come here.” I held up my arm for Jorell to come up in front of everyone else. “You all know Jorell, right? He’s going to be our new head of security.”
Jorell gave a hearty laugh.
“You think you’re up to it?” I joked with him in front of the rest of the group.
“You know I am.” He took my hand and shook it. “Thank you for the opportunity, Gage.”
“Alright, guys, that’s the good news,” I said, killing the applause.
I felt the mood drop around me instantly.
“What’s the bad news?” Juarez asked cautiously.
“The bad news is that we still have a lot of work to do to clean up and contact the families of the men we lost today. The bad news is that gunfire like that doesn’t occur without some sort of law enforcement response, so they’ll probably be here soon. Ricky, I need you to handle them when they get here.” I was honestly pretty surprised they hadn’t already shown up, but they were probably on Ivan’s payroll, which meant there was a good chance they would never show up.
“So, all this talk,” Chase piped up suddenly, “but what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to make sure that after we ambush the deal they’ve got coming up, they aren’t able to do anything else. We’re going to eliminate Ivan and his men so that they no longer pose any kind of threat,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster. I still wasn’t sure of what we were going to do, myself.
“We need to have a private meeting with just the kings,” Jorell said in my ear. “We need to leave the princes out of this one until we’re ready to make a move.”
It struck me as odd that Jorell was so eager to assume his position that he’d try to tell me what we needed to do. I agreed with him completely, but it seemed a little early for him to be asserting himself.
“Look, right now, we need everyone to focus on cleaning up the mess from today. We need to replace the back window on the Suburban and fix the bikes. I also want everyone armed, just in case. In the meantime, I need to see Chase, Juarez, Ricky, and Jorell in the boardroom. The rest of you are dismissed.” I waved the group away and hobbled immediately into the boardroom with the other Kings.
Once the heavy double doors were closed, we took our seats around the table.
“So, how’s it going down?” Chase asked almost immediately.
I looked between his face and Juarez’s. Neither of them held any humor. There were no more jokes to be shared. Their faces had hardened in the course of the evening.
“Might I make a suggestion?” Jorell spoke up before I could answer, raising his hand like he was still in school.