ARIC: The Wild Ones – TBR Book Blog

Title: ARIC: The Wild Ones

Series: Jokers MC Series

Author: Jessie Cooke

Genre: MC Romance

Release Date: May 23, 2021

Aric grew up wild in the swamps of Louisiana with one goal in mind: To become a part of a 1% MC. The perfect choice, the New Orleans Jokers whose president Blackheart grew up with Aric’s mother and helped her raise the wild child after his father deserted them. Blackheart gives Aric chance after chance to not screw up, and become a patched member of the club…but it would be his last chance that will change everything. A simple initiation, a joke really, will ignite a war between two rival clubs that will end lives for some and an entire era for others.

Gianna Lear grew up the daughter of the Mad Men’s president, Lear. She loved her father, and thought of the rest of the men as family, but it was a life she hated and couldn’t wait to escape. Gia happens to be at the Mad Men’s bar the night of Aric’s dangerous initiation. At first he amuses her, then he scares her, and then without either of them even noticing, he steals her heart.

Two worlds will collide in an inferno that will burn so hot that even as some look to the future and others live in the past, none will escape a present that will leave burns so deep and scars so thick that nothing will ever be the same again.

Hands on his knees, Aric tried to keep still as the car jostled him against the two men he was stuck between. He was not a fan of physical contact while blindfolded in the back of a car when there was an armed man on each side of him, but who was? A little light came through the bottom of the old, dirty necktie that covered his eyes. Aric didn’t know anyone who wore neckties and he couldn’t help but wonder where they found it. It’s likely they took it off of one of the Tuccis, a crime family they’d had “business” with lately.

“We’re gonna go over the rules one more time now,” the man sitting in the front passenger’s seat informed Aric. “Shit’s about to get real and we can’t have you forgetting.”

Aric didn’t say anything, he just nodded.

“You have until we remove your blindfold to back outta this. You do that, we’ll let ya go. You wanna leave town with your tail between your legs and you don’t cause any trouble for us on your way out, hell, we’ll give you a lift to the bus station.” There was silence as the car went around a corner, and the man started speaking again. Aric knew he had heard his voice before, but can’t put a name or a face to it thanks to the way the “tie” fold was screwing with his senses.

Aric also knew that there was no real way out of his current situation. He already knew the rules. Hell, he had asked for it.

Aric kept his mouth shut so that nobody could hear the dry crackle when he tried to speak. He didn’t move, so that nobody could see his hands shaking. In his head, he was counting three seconds: Inhale. Three seconds: Exhale. Just then, he was more worried about what he looked like to the men around him than he was about what was coming. It was his only inch of control.

“…screw this up, though, and you’re on your own. We don’t want someone who can’t get the job done. Far as we’re concerned, you fail, you better be dead.”

The rest of the speech went on in a muffled haze, but he heard that part of it. It was not helpful. The only thing he could do to keep still was counting two seconds: Inhale. Two seconds: Exhale. The man in the passenger’s seat kept talking.

After a few more turns, it was just the sound of the car and Aric’s heart pumping so loudly that it was hard for him to believe that the organ was still in his body and not held in the tight grasp of one of the men next to him. It was so loud that they might as well have been holding it up to his ear so he could hear his own life fade away. The only consolation at that point was that his heart didn’t seem to be slowing down. That had to mean he was at least still alive…so far.

The car came to a sudden stop after about an hour, and he pitched forward a second before there was a hand on each of his shoulders snapping him back against the seat.

“One more thing before you get out,” the man in the passenger’s seat said. “You do this right, and you might just be a legend. Till then, we’ve already forgotten about you, ‘cause chances are you’re already dead.”

The man was laughing loud and hard as a door opened and suddenly there was no one on one side of Aric. Instead, there was a pair of hands gripping his wrists, pulling him out of the car. He fell sideways onto packed dirt. A second later, the door slammed shut and the tires squealed as the car sped off, kicking gravel.

Aric was quick to his feet and at the same time, his hands were tearing away the blindfold. It was so dark. No moon in the sky, but under the orange glow of a streetlight he could see about a hundred crashed cars laid out in long rows. The older ones, the rusted-out ones, they were all smashed and stacked on top of each other. The place was a maze.

Down one row, he spotted something a little out of place and realized that this must be his mission. He knew that sounded dramatic, but honestly, there was nothing else to call it. He started walking toward his bike, a 1200 Custom. It was sitting next to the compactor and he was as happy to see it as he would have been to see a naked supermodel. There was a piece of paper taped to the gas tank and Aric looked all around him as he reached the motorcycle, but there was no one around. He leaned forward, taking the piece of paper in his hand and reading what was written there. In neat block letters it said, “Retrieve the green bag from the safe and bring it to the club in one hour.” At the bottom, there was an address. Aric knew the area, and it only made his heart beat harder.

He checked his saddlebags…there was no gun. He was hoping they would give him a gun. If they were sending him where he thought they were, he was going to need one. He wondered for a second if they were hoping he’d fail, but that was a stupid thought. Of course they were.

Aric tore off the address at the bottom of the note and put it in his pocket. Then, he took the lighter from his other front pocket and set the rest of the paper on fire. He was on autopilot then as he swung one leg over his seat, turned the key already in the ignition, and started off. After just a few turns and one dead end, he found the road he didn’t want to be looking for. He knew as soon as he took off from the junkyard that he wasn’t in Louisiana any more. He was only about an hour from New Orleans…but he might as well have been in a different world. One place you did not want to be if you were a Joker was Pearlington, Mississippi.

This was Aric’s initiation. His FINAL, initiation. When he first joined up with the Jokers, there was an initiation then, too, but it wasn’t like this. Tonight, there was a fair chance he would end up dead or in handcuffs…not that there was much difference between the two in Aric’s mind. The man in the front seat gave him one final chance…he’d been given more than any other man in history, according to the other men in the club. He could thank Blackheart’s affinity for his mother for that. But Aric had always been a screw-up, and he’d screwed up one too many times where the Jokers were concerned. He hadn’t taken the last chance the man had offered him, and now he had two options only, finish the job clean or embrace the hell that was coming if he didn’t.

He was almost to his destination when he realized that the bike was almost out of gas. Aric had just filled it up that afternoon. They had siphoned him almost dry, and it would be a miracle if he even made it where he was going. Thinking about getting back to the Jokers’ clubhouse after the deed was done was thinking too far ahead anyways. Right then he couldn’t afford to focus on anything other than the job at hand.

Aric turned onto the street named at the bottom of his now-burned instructions, and any doubt about where they were sending him were gone. They should have given him a gun. They had taken his colors, at least. Where he was going, he would have probably gotten shot the moment one of them spotted the big Joker patch on the back of his vest. At least he had that going for him.

When Aric was younger, joining up with a group of one-percenters was the best, most thrilling thing he could think to do with his life. The Jokers had always been a part of his life since his mom and Blackheart were friends from the time they were both in diapers. His mother had raised him on her own, in the swamps of Atchafalaya, and that had been no small task. If not for Blackheart and some of the other older bikers in the club, their tiny little family probably wouldn’t have made it. Hell, if not for them, Aric would probably already be rotting in prison. Blackheart had talked to him, and he’d even had the guys take him out behind the proverbial woodshed a few times too. It had kept him out of prison, but it hadn’t deterred his craving to wear that patch and ride a Harley. Blackheart gave him that chance as soon as he turned eighteen. He was almost twenty-five now and still a prospect, a fuck-up that most of the Jokers thought shouldn’t still even be breathing, much less given another chance. Blackheart had finally given up on him and he’d let his executives decide what to do. That was why now Aric was heading into a rival gang’s hangout and probably his own funeral.

Aric knew that he had to walk a fine line from there. If he showed any fear at all, it was over. The guys in the place he was walking into could smell that shit from a mile away. If he showed any aggression, it would be over too. If he said one wrong thing to the wrong person, it would be over. And somehow, he was supposed to get a green bag out of their safe. He can’t help but roll his eyes and wonder who came up with that one. But, he didn’t wonder for long. He was sure it was the man in the front seat, the one they called Le Singe…the VP of the Jokers. Le Singe was a no-nonsense man. He worked hard, and partied harder, and he never took shit from anyone. He was the one who finally stood up and told Blackheart that enough was enough. No amount of connection to Aric’s mother was worth risking the club because, as Le Singe put it, “The kid has alligator shit for brains.”

Aric wished he could blame Le Singe for that, but even he could look at his history and know it was true. He never meant to fuck up…it just seemed to happen. Sometimes he wondered if all those years of smoking weed out by where everyone said the swamp was haunted by Julie White, the witch, had cursed him. His mother told him that was nonsense, and without using those words said he was just basically a fuck-up.

So now Aric had about twenty minutes to get in and get out if he was going to make it back to the club in time, and his engine was already starting to sputter as he pulled into the dirt parking lot. He told himself he couldn’t think about that…he had to stay focused.

There was only one right way to get through this “mission” alive, but unfortunately, Aric didn’t know what it was. All he could do is turn off his bike, climb off, and walk inside giving just the right amount of eye contact so that the Mad Men didn’t take him out before the job was done.

The bar went quiet when Aric walked in. A few of the guys in the bar looked vaguely familiar and suddenly he wondered if they might know his face. The Mad Men and the Jokers had been enemies longer than Aric had known how to ride a bike, a three-wheeled tricycle for that matter. He was inside their bar though now, and so far, the Mad Men were keeping their distance from him.

Aric picked a spot at the bar and sat down. When the bartender came over, he ordered a drink, and once the words were out of his mouth, he couldn’t remember what he ordered. It didn’t really matter, except that it might be his last drink on earth.

The good news, and what he was trying to focus on, was that the safe was right behind the bar. Aric wouldn’t have to waste time finding it, but of course he had hoped for the security of a small, dark room away from everyone.

A firm hand suddenly slapped onto his shoulder, startling him out of his thoughts, and Aric spun around.

“Ain’t seen you around here before,” a man with face tattoos, no teeth, and a vest with a big 1% patch on the front of it said.

“First time here,” Aric responded, trying to hide all emotion. But he could tell by the man’s eyes that he smelled his fear. It was like facing a bulldog in a junkyard…and there was nowhere to run.

“You think you can just mosey on in here and plop a squat at the bar and we ain’t gonna say nothin’?” the man asked.

Aric lifted his hands and said, “I’m not here to cause any trouble.”

“Well, you got trouble,” the man spit.

Aric’s heart seized in his chest. “I’m not trying to offend anyone. You want me to move, I’ll move,” he said. There was no point in starting a brawl. He had work to do. Besides, there was no way he could take everyone in the bar. There had to be at least half a dozen of the Mad Men there, maybe more. They owned the place, after all.

Another man slapped his hand on Aric’s other shoulder, saying, “Maybe you walked into the wrong bar.”

“Fellas,” he said, in as friendly a tone as he could muster, “I’m not here to start something. Why don’t I buy you guys a round of drinks?”

The men looked at each other and then at the bartender. “Whiskey. Taco here, he’s a gin man.” The man’s eyes narrowed and he didn’t blink, waiting for Aric to make a move.

The only move he made was to turn to the bartender and say, “Could I get a whiskey and a gin for these gentlemen?”

Almost in unison, both of the other men said, “Make it a double.”

Aric relaxed a little, but he was careful not to show that either. They were just harassing him to get free drinks and it was worth eleven bucks if it kept them from kicking in his skull. He gladly paid the bartender and when the shots came up, the two men drank them down. Then slamming the empty shot glasses onto the bar, the toothless one said, “I think one more sounds about right.”

Aric didn’t have a lot of cash with him. What he did have on hand, he had hoped to use for gas. He was nowhere near completing his objective and the two weren’t going to leave him alone for free though, so he nodded to the bartender.

The two men drank their second round and slammed their shot glasses down once more. “Another,” the toothless one said again. It was all Aric had, but he nodded. He had to keep his cover.

“Now, guys,” he told them as they slammed their shot glasses onto the counter a third time, “I’m about out of money here.”

“So maybe you finish what you’re drinking and get your sorry ass to an ATM,” the one with the grin said before bursting into a fit of gregarious laughter. A second later, the man’s face was blank, expressionless, and he stared at Aric before the toothless man patted both of them on the shoulder.

“We got our eye on you, friend,” he said, before they both walked away.

Aric looked down into his glass, still uncertain exactly what was sitting in front of him until he took a sip. It was bourbon. He hated bourbon, but he took another sip anyway. He looked up afterwards to find a smirk on the bartender’s face before he headed down the other end of the bar to take the next order.

“You really shouldn’t let those guys walk over you like that,” a woman’s voice floated toward him from further down the bar on the other side. Aric glanced over, and a new wave of adrenaline hit his veins. Women in a one-percenter bar were at risk if they were not part of the club. More often than not, they wore a vest with the words “Property of…” on the back, and you could bet whatever name came after it, that guy was sitting somewhere close by, just waiting for you to do something stupid. The woman was raven-haired and she had green, knowing eyes. She sat there with her elbows on the counter, hardly turning toward Aric as she said, “Now that they know they can get a free drink out of you, they’ll never leave you alone.”

Aric didn’t have time to be cautious. Those three rounds cost him a lot of time he didn’t have, and this woman might be his only chance of getting what he wanted. She was either his unwitting savior, or the silver bullet that would bore a tunnel through his head.

“I’ve got an ex had the same problem with stray cats one time,” Aric said, taking another sip of his bourbon. “She left out half a can of tuna one night, and the next night there they were with all their feral friends, sitting outside waiting to give her rabies.”

The woman laughed. Aric looked at her long enough then to notice she was wearing a vest, but he couldn’t see anyone’s claim on her, at least not from where he was sitting…so he decided to sit closer.

He could feel dozens of eyes on him as he moved down to the end of the bar, but no one said a thing to him. No one tried to stop him. He was sure that those paying attention wanted to see what he was going to do next.

“Well, look at you,” she said. “You’ve got some testicular fortitude walking up to a woman you don’t know in a biker bar.”

“Just figured conversation with you had got to be cheaper than talking to your friends over there,” he answered, sitting down next to her.

She scoffed. “These guys are like family and all, but friends might be a little strong.”

“I know some guys that fit that description, myself.”

“So, what brings you to an outlaw club at 11:30 p.m. on a Tuesday night?”

“I heard this place makes a decent cheeseburger,” he told her with a grin.

The woman laughed. “Kitchen’s closed, hon.”

Aric waved his hand dismissively. “That’s all right. Don’t think I could afford one now anyway.”

Behind the counter, the phone rang then. Aric didn’t pay it any mind until he noticed the bartender with the receiver against his ear and a red face. His eyes were narrowed on Aric’s face and to Aric it wasn’t clear what, but something bad was about to happen.

Aric tried to think. As far as he could tell, he had until the bartender hung up to make a move, so he did the only thing that came to mind. Taking a pen from the counter and a napkin from a nearby holder, Aric scribbled a quick note, crumpled it up, and slipped it to the woman sitting next to him, just as the bartender hung up the phone.

The man behind the counter motioned to a couple of Mad Men at the other end of the bar; it was some kind of hand signal. Whatever he was communicating, it wasn’t going to be good for Aric.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” the woman asked, unfolding the napkin on her lap.

“It’s pretty self-explanatory,” Aric answered, noticing all the faces turning toward him reflected in the big mirror behind the bar. Within a minute, the whole place was silent. The calm only lasted a few seconds, but for Aric, those few seconds were eternity, waiting for the hammer to drop.

Aric stood up and looked toward the door. Even if he could make it to his bike, he would run out of gas long before he lost anyone. There was no alternative, so he started walking. He’d only taken two steps when the woman with the black hair, emerald eyes, and now a devilish smirk on her pretty face, turned just enough so she could kick her leg out, tripping him.

Aric didn’t fall all the way to the floor, but by the time he had his footing back, he was surrounded. Men were grabbing at him, and despite Aric’s ferocious struggles, he was quickly overpowered and physically carried outside.

“What do you want here, Joker bitch?” one of the men shouted. Aric opened his mouth, hoping to lie his way out, but before he could take a breath to speak, a fist came down hard on his stretched abdomen.

They dropped Aric to the ground before grabbing him again and forcing him to his knees. He was gasping for air as another man smashed his fist into Aric’s jaw.

A voice shouted, “Take that Joker son of a bitch apart!” Four men held him while the others shouted their approval.

The toothless man, now thoroughly sauced, stuck his rotten maw in Aric’s face and said, “So which one’s yours?” Not waiting for an answer he walked away, leaving the stench of stale liquor and advanced gum disease in the air.

“Gotta be that one on the end!” one man shouted.

The four men holding Aric dragged him closer to his motorcycle. The rest of the Mad Men, who seemed to have multiplied suddenly, grabbed rocks, tire irons…whatever was close by…and in less than a minute, there was not a piece of Aric’s bike that wasn’t dented or shattered or broken.

“You like that, huh?” the toothless man shouted, getting back in Aric’s face and laughing wildly. “You see what happens when you wander into the wrong territory, boy?”

The toothless man punched Aric hard in the gut, and that was when everyone else joined in. Blow after blow crashed down hard onto Aric’s body. All he could do was curl up and try to protect himself, but he wasn’t going to last long. Hatred and panic surged through Aric’s mind and body, but he couldn’t move. There were too many of them.

The shouting started to spread, but it wasn’t coming from the men trying to stomp him out. The blows to his body slowed and then stopped completely, and suddenly, the only men shouting were the ones rushing out the front of the bar. Surprisingly, they weren’t rushing toward Aric.

In a scattered jumble, the men got on their bikes and shot off down the road and away from the bar. Aric was expecting a bullet to pierce his skull any moment, but it didn’t happen. Finally, even the last few men around Aric were on their bikes, racing off toward nowhere.

Slowly, and painfully, he got to his feet. Hunched forward and limping, he walked. It took longer than he would have thought possible getting back through the door of the bar, but when he was finally inside, he found the place empty. He managed a bloody smile before checking his teeth with his tongue.

“Still got ’em,” he muttered to himself, though he can’t imagine how.

When the bartender was on the phone, it was clear that Aric’s welcome was evaporating. So, he had done the only thing he could think to do, the only thing that might still work. On that napkin he crumpled up and slipped to the woman at the bar, he played the only card he had. The note said, “There are multiple pipe bombs in the bar. 3 minutes left.”

It was a desperate plan, but it worked. Now all Aric had to do was break into a safe in the few minutes it would take the Mad Men to realize that their bar was not going to explode. And then of course, he’d have to escape on foot. There was no way his bike was rideable, and it wasn’t as if he could wait around for a cab. Those were all just details though. Aric focused on the task right in front of him, the safe.

He took a shot glass from the counter, drank the contents in a useless attempt to numb some of the pain of getting beaten down by half an outlaw motorcycle club, and crouched down next to the safe. He put the open end of the shot glass against the safe and pressed his ear against the base of it. He’d never cracked a safe before, but it seemed to work great in the movies.

Spinning the wheel, he listened intently for the slightest click or shudder to indicate he’d hit the right number, and he heard a click. It was loud…but it didn’t come from the safe. It came from the gun being cocked just behind his head. Slowly, Aric lowered the shot glass to the floor and put his hands up.

“You really should learn how to quit when you’re ahead,” a woman’s voice said. Aric recognized it as the green-eyed woman to whom he gave the note just before all hell came after him.

“I’ve never been too good at that,” Aric told her, honestly.

“You should have seen all their faces. A lot of them didn’t believe me until they saw the napkin. Then…” she whistled, “…they got out of here in a hurry. I figured you were just trying to avoid a beating. When it started looking like they were going to kill you right there in the parking lot, though, I screamed out, ‘Bomb! He’s blowing up the whole building!’ and I’ve got to tell you something. It really lets a woman know where she stands when she tries to warn her friends there’s a bomb in the room with them, and they come over to see what she misunderstood to come to that conclusion instead of running. In the end, and I will give you some credit for this, they ran. That’s the most fun I’ve had all year, watching all those big, tough biker bros run screaming out of here. Then I find out the guy behind all the entertainment is just some lowlife trying to scam a couple hundred bucks from the safe, and I have to tell you I’m disappointed.”

“I’m not here for the money,” he said, “I just need something from inside.”

“What do you need?”

“I don’t know.”

She clicked her tongue at him and said, “Now, I can’t believe you still think I’m that stupid, do you?”

“It’s true,” he said. Without thinking, he added, “I’m just after a green bag. I don’t know what’s in it.”

“Oh,” the woman said, sarcastically, “You’re not here for the money, you’re just here for the bag we put the money in, huh? Well, that’s a lot better.”

“I don’t know if there’s money in it.”

“Funny thing, actually,” she said, “There’s not. That’s the bag we use for bank deposits. There won’t be anything in there until closing time after they count the tills.”

The bag was empty. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but Aric was gutted. All of this had been a test. He wasn’t running a mission, or stealing something valuable from the Mad Men. He was sent on a useless errand that might still get him killed. What was worse was that he had failed.

“Like I told you,” he said, “I’m not here for money. Just the bag and whatever is already in it. If that’s nothing, it’s nothing. But, I get the feeling that doesn’t matter.”

The woman snickered behind him, but when she spoke, her voice was cold and expressionless. “Stand up.”

Aric wasn’t going to just let her kill him, but his options were limited at that moment. She was far enough back that he’d have to turn and lunge to get the gun out of her hand. She would shoot him long before that ever happened. So for the moment, he was cooperative.

“Take three steps forward and then get back down on your knees, your hands on the back of your head.”

He glanced around as he took those three slow steps forward. His eyes scanned the area for a weapon, something he could use to tilt the odds back in his favor. The closest thing was the shot glass on the floor behind him as he slowly lowered himself to his knees.

“Move and it’s lights out, do you understand me?”

Aric kept still as he said, “Yeah.” There was a gun underneath the register. It was about five feet in front of him. He was on his knees, but it could be his only chance. Before he could throw himself forward, though, a metal clank stole his attention. The next thing he knew, a green pleather envelope with a zipper on top landed on the floor next to him.

“You should leave town,” she told him. “There’s nothing in that bag, but that’s not going to matter. You’ve humiliated them, and that’s a threat to their power. You got me? If you’re expecting them to just laugh this off, you’re out of your mind.”

“Why are you helping me?” he asked.

“I told you, there’s nothing in the bag,” she said. “Those envelopes are cheap. What do I care?”

“I mean…”

“Because you crack me up,” she said. “Start to finish, everything tonight was edge-of-your-seat entertainment. That, and you can hold a decent conversation. I didn’t have to deal with you staring at my chest, at least. Of course, it probably helped that half the time we’ve been talking you’ve been facing the other way with a gun on you, but I think you deserve a little credit anyway.”

“Who are you?” he asked, but when he heard the distant roar of approaching motorcycles, he decided to skip the pleasantries. He started to get up, but froze when he remembered that she still had a gun on him.

“You should probably get on your feet if you want to make it out of here,” she told him then. He didn’t need her to say it twice. He was up and headed toward the door. Behind him, the woman was calling out, “It’s never going to matter, but my name is Gia.”

He called back, “Aric,” but didn’t turn around to face her. He doesn’t have time to waste.

From the sound, the bikes couldn’t be more than a minute away and Aric had nowhere to hide. He was carrying the green bag as a formality then, knowing he’d never make it out of there. He couldn’t even run.

Nearby, he heard a V-Twin fire up, and a moment later, a chromed-out motorcycle screeched to a stop right in Aric’s path. Aric’s heart dropped until he saw the Joker patch on the back of the man’s vest, and shaggy blond hair hanging out from underneath his half-shell helmet.

It was Gabriel.

“You gonna stand there and get your bones broke or are you gonna get on the damn bike?”

Aric didn’t waste another second. He was hardly on the seat before Gabe was cracking it. Before long, the bar, the Mad Men, the crazy woman named Gia, they were all far behind, fading into the night.

Aric hadn’t planned on riding bitch that night, but Gabe had just saved his life. The way back to the Jokers’ club, the speedometer rarely dipped below ninety. Aric gripped the empty green bag like it was full of rare gemstones with one hand and held on for dear life with the other. If anyone in the Jokers’ clubhouse understood Aric’s tendency to screw up, it was Gabe. They’d grown up together, but Gabe had one thing going for him that Aric didn’t. Blackheart had actually finished raising him when his parents died, so where Blackheart did his best to stand up for Aric, he’d absolutely refused to let anyone lay a hand on his “adopted son” Gabe.

Once Gabe brought the bike skidding to a stop, he was screaming at Aric to “Get the fuck inside! You’re still on the clock!”

Adrenaline kicked in again, and Aric was off the bike and stumbling to the door. He threw it open and held the bag high above his head.

A cheer erupted from the members of the Jokers. Blackheart, president of the Jokers MC, and Aric’s hero, strutted over to him then, and slapped him hard on the back. With a laugh he said, “You didn’t think we was just gonna leave you stranded there, did you?” Aric had thought that, shamefully. But, he wasn’t going to tell his president. He tried a painful smile just as Blackheart’s face turned serious. “What’s the first thing you need to know about the Jokers?” he asked.

Still seething from the “congratulatory” blow to his sore back, Aric managed to grunt out, “Loyalty.”

Blackheart looked proud, which helped ease some of the pain. “We just needed to see if you could do the job,” Blackheart told him. “And, from the look of it…” He took a long look across the room to the clock on the far wall. “You made it back with two-and-a-half minutes to spare.” The club president motioned then to one of the guys nearby. Aric caught Le Singe’s eye in the meantime and wondered if the look on the older man’s face was disappointment, that he’d made it back. It took him a few seconds to realize what Blackheart’s Road Captain had handed to the president and Blackheart was holding out to him. It was Aric’s kutte and the Jokers patch…not the “prospect” one he’d worn for years now, but the real thing…was already sewn onto it. He was filled with a hundred different emotions as Blackheart said, “Brothers, tonight we welcome Aric as a full-fledged member of the New Orleans Jokers.”

Aric had fantasized about the moment for years, and he was thrilled. But as it seemed like every big man in the club wanted to slap him on his sore back, he began to realize that all he wanted at the moment was a soft chair and a bottle of Ibuprofen. There would be plenty of time to celebrate when his body healed.