Chapter One

Patrick O’Reilly exhaled a thick plume of smoke and stabbed his cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray on the table in front of him. He gave a barely perceptible nod of his head, and the doors were flung wide, granting admittance to three men, two of whom were dragging in the third.

“He’s here.”

Patrick rose to his feet and tugged the black leather kutte over his shoulders. There were two patches on the worn old vest that set his apart from the rest of the members of the Steel Claw Motorcycle Club: the most important in this particular moment was the one that read “Vice President”.

“Where do you want him, Pat?” Asked Fitz, his Sergeant at Arms, essentially his right-hand man. Flanking their new guest was a prospect, much more brawn than brain, much more bite than bark.

“He can have a seat,” Patrick said, crossing his arms over the broad expanse of his chest. He regarded the man with cool curiosity as he was deposited, rather unceremoniously, into a chair in front of Patrick. The man had been roughed up a little — nothing too extreme, but at the first opportunity he got, he leaned forward and spat blood onto the concrete floor at his feet. “Declan Pierce,” said Patrick, steadying himself a few feet in front of the man, “Our paths finally cross.”

“Would that it were under more fortuitous circumstances.” Declan’s manner of speech had the gentle lilt of a person who was born in Ireland, but raised in the states, a mere shadow of his father’s more aggressive brogue. And his father was precisely why young Declan was sitting in that seat to begin with.

“Yeah,” Patrick agreed, shifting his weight to fall into an easy lean against the table at his side. “I know this isn’t exactly your fight.”

“But I’m here to clean it up anyway, aren’t I?”

Patrick looked past Declan and glanced between Fitz and the Prospect, a cant of his chin indicating that he wished to be left alone with their guest. The two men obliged, and a little of the electricity went out of the air with them. Declan relaxed against the back of the chair into which he’d been deposited.

“Sins of the father, and all that,” Patrick grimly intoned, fishing a half-crushed pack of Camels from the back pocket of his jeans.

“Aye,” Declan agreed, leaning forward so that his elbows rested on his knees. “How is old Ed, anyway?”

“He’s stable, I think. Took one’a those bullets in the chest, collapsed a lung. So he’s on a ventilator, in and out of consciousness. But it looks like me might pull through.” Patrick placed the cigarette between his lips and plucked a tarnished silver zippo from the pocket of his kutte. He lit the cigarette, inhaled, exhaled. “And that is very good news for you and your old man.”

“Why don’t you just take your pound of flesh and be done with it?” Declan had expected the Claws to come for him, as soon as he’d gotten wind of the attack on Old Ed Channing, Patrick’s father in law, and the President of the Steel Claw Motorcycle Club. He’d been perturbed, but not exactly surprised, to learn that the perpetrator of the attack had been his own father, Jimmy Pierce. Not that he’d deign to bash Old Ed’s skull in himself, no: had one of his ex-IRA cronies do it, no doubt. Jimmy Pierce insisted that he was absolutely not part of an organized crime ring. But when push came to shove, they seemed pretty organized to Declan.

“I’m not here to rough you up, Declan,” Patrick said, “I’m not gonna kill you. I’m not gonna lay a finger on you.”

Declan quirked a brow in question. “What d’ya want with me, then?”

“What do you know about Jimmy Pierce’s attack on my father?”

Declan shrugged and leaned back in the metal folding chair. “Next to nothing. Don’t know if you heard, but my Da an’ me, we aren’t exactly… close.” To put it mildly.

“The Claws run a bit of a…. an underground competition, shall we say, where we pitch two

men — fine athletes — against each other for sport. Then, our guests are free to place wagers on the fighters.”

“Spit shine a turd, it’s still shit,” Declan said with a grin, which Patrick immediately mirrored.

“Yeah, it’s cage fighting. Bloody, brutal shit, but turns a good profit. So, your father was a regular around the ring. Lost a lot of his own money, lost a lot of other people’s money. He knew we were gonna come after him for what he owed, knew that he was facing a truly savage beatdown, and tried to disband our entire organization in one fell swoop, rather than pay what he owed, or take what was coming to him.”

“Yeah. Sounds like my Da.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“Not a clue. I imagine he high-tailed it across the pond as soon as he heard Old Ed was still breathing.” Jimmy Pierce’s connections to the crime syndicates in Ireland ran deep. Declan guessed he’d have rather an easy time of hiding out there forever if he needed to. But someone had to pay; someone always had to pay.

“That’s what we figured.” Patrick tapped the end of his cigarette and let the ash scatter over the blood on the concrete floor at their feet. “So that’s where you come in.”

“Listen, Patrick, if I had the kind’a money Jimmy owes, I’d just give it to you. But I don’t.”

“I know, man,” Patrick said, and his green eyes softened. Declan found himself realizing that he actually kind of liked this crazy son of a bitch. “So we’re gonna take it from you in trade.”

“Trade?” Declan worked construction. He wondered if Patrick O’Reilly needed any walls demolished.

“Yeah,” he said. “How good are you in a fight?”