Outlaw's Ride: An MC Romance by Carter Steele (books recommended by bts .txt) 📕

and out into the parking lot. Dunk and I followed. It'd been a cold-ass spring and after what felt like weeks of rain the sun had finally come out.

It was a beautiful day to go stir some shit up.

Buck drove us through some beaten down neighborhoods that seemed to bleed seamlessly into the industrialized outer harbor area. Asphalt, shipping, and industrial equipment sale and repair companies took up huge swaths of real estate. Man-made hills of sand and gravel broke up the train tracks, cracked four lane roads and vast lots of barbed wire encased concrete landing areas for rusted-out tanks. Smokestacks endlessly belched, darkening the cloudless sky. When we slowed to a stop outside a dingy laundromat I could feel the greasiness in the air on my leather jacket and in my hair.

It didn't matter that we were in eyeshot of the ocean, the whole area felt like a grungy, wet towel that was wrung out of all color.

“Paddy’s Wash ‘N’ Go,” read the sign out front. The sign below it was hand written and read, “A premium laundromat that offers volume discounts to our corporate clients, Quick Clean drop-in rates and extra perks for those that are enrolled in our Deluxe Cleaning Services Package.”

Yeah... Nothing at all shady about this place.

Whatever, we were criminals ourselves. This was par for the course.

Patrick saw us pulling in and came out to meet us. He was tall with some heft and bad posture, had a few days worth of stubble and seemed to almost hide behind his thick-rimmed glasses and ball cap over his balding head. With his build if he hadn't been wearing a button down shirt, slacks and loafers he'd easily pass as a construction worker. He welcomed us to Baltimore with a wide, too-excited smile that made me a little uneasy and ushered us into his dingy laundromat. It was late morning and the establishment was empty save for an out-of-place pair of mid-teenage girls who should've been in school. Patrick hustled them out with a few whispered commands and was quick to put up the closed sign and lock the door behind them.

He led us through all the machines to another room behind the actual laundromat area. It was a lounge with several couches, tables and chairs, a bar and a pool table in the middle. It had the vibe of a refinished man cave and was a few hanging wall TVs short of a sports club.

Over a few beers Patrick told us what he was looking for us to do. It was all pretty straightforward stuff that we'd done dozens of times before. We’d light a few fires, break up a few meetings of his rivals, help Patrick solidify a few alliances and crack a few scumbags’ heads. It was all guerrilla warfare shit which was fine by us. We had a small crew so we were used to being outnumbered.

Dunk, who had a soft spot for small, independently-owned businesses, made it clear that we wouldn't be fucking over any mom and pop stores. After a failed attempt to persuade our president, Patrick reluctantly agreed although he did so through an air of annoyed disappointment.

I could tell that this guy was used to getting his way and didn't handle the word No very well. It was something to keep an eye on.

Patrick’s main rival was a guy named Mikhail. The guy had a ton of enforcers due to his close ties to the local russian mafia and would need to be avoided for the time being until we had a clear plan of attack. While we did recon and gathered intel on Mikhail and his small army we’d knock off all the smaller local threats. Dunk was incredibly good at taking seemingly impossible tasks – like upending the criminal powerstructure in a city the size of Baltimore – and breaking them into doable chunks.

Dunk laid out what was possible and in what kind of timeframe then they shook on an agreement. The deal was that the club gets seventy percent of all the drugs, guns, money, hell anything of any value that we...liberated...from Patrick's rivals during our partnership. Dunk also negotiated an upfront payment. I didn't catch the details of that but figured it would be a lump sum to help with incidental expenses while we got the lay of the land.

Oh how very wrong I was.

Ten minutes later twelve working girls from his stable came parading into the room. I was glad to be in the back room. It would've been a weird juxtaposition seeing whores lined up next to washing machines and candy and soap machines. A few of them were fusing with their clothing and hair, having obviously been just pulled from other clients. The big, bad bikers were now Patrick's number one client. It was easy to tell from our grins as we looked the girls over that the arrangement suited me and the boys fine. After last night we all needed a stress reliever.

“You got a fairy back there?” Buck asked after squeezing the asses of two giggling girls and leading them both away. “Got a brother who ain’t interested in this kinda merchandise.”

“No, but I'll uh...” Patrick stammered, taken aback by the request. We all turned to regard him, seeing how he'd react. It was pretty clear he didn't approve, but he needed us so he watched his words and tone very carefully. “I'll see what I can do.”

“You do that.” Buck winked at him, then turned his attention back to the girls he picked.

The guys all found their type. Dreamer liked blonds, Dunk had a weakness for busty redheads, Buck loved whatever he could get his hands on and we earmarked a cute Asian girl for Mac.

I was a sucker for the pale, gothic look, but was out of luck. There was one girl that caught my eye though. Where everyone else was laughing, drinking and unwinding, this fair-skinned Irish brunette was trying her best to blend into the