The Rampage MC #4: Max and Briony

Chapter 18 (Briony): A Long Line

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA

Max had pressed a sweet kiss to the top of my head and left me to think about things, but he hadn't disappeared on me. He was sitting on his bike across from my place, watching.

So he saw Rie storm up to my door before I realized she was there.

"Do you have a gun?" she demanded as she blew past me after I opened the door to her pounding.

"I --"

"Because I'll need to know if it's registered. Maybe we can file shit off of it. Or just throw it away in a deep lake in another state."

"Rie --"

"And do you have bullets for it? I'll probably want to shoot him at least three times just to make sure I got him with the first shot or two."

"What --"

"Shit! I didn't want to make you an accessory. Just...forget what I said."

"I don't have a gun, but I know where we could get one," I said once she let me get a word in. "And instead of filing off the serial numbers, we could ask Beard to see about melting it down for us after we use it. Now, if you're mad enough to kill Emmett, I have to think he did something pretty bad, so do you want to torture him first? Again, not sure, but thinking Beard and his island of misfit toys could recommend a place to do it. Do you have any rope in your car? Because I don't, and I don't think it would be smart to go buy some from the hardware store. They track that shit now, and I don't want to commit a crime and get nailed for something stupid like that."

"Briony --"

"Do you know where he lives? He didn't look like a very big guy, but dragging his ass out of wherever he lives might require some muscle. Again, I'm sure Beard and company could help since I'm almost one hundred percent certain they've done this before."

"Briony," Rie practically shouted to stop my roll, "I'm thinking Beard won't help us because it's one of his men -- Darren -- that I'm going to kill. Not Emmett. Darren. Hereafter known as Asshole Darren. Or Fuckface Darren. Maybe even Asshole Fuckface Darren considering what he pulled tonight."

"Wait. I don't understand. You left here with Emmett. How did Darren get involved in your date?"

She stomped around, waving her hands in the air as she answered me. "That's a really good question! An excellent one! Emmett and I left here, alone, I might add, on our date. We got to the restaurant and Darren pulled up behind us and parked his damn Harley right next to Emmett's car. Then he said he followed us to make sure the clown car -- he actually called it a clown car --made it to wherever we were going."

Damn. Now I was wishing I'd followed her so I could have seen this play out.

"Then -- then! -- Emmett starts explaining hybrid cars to Darren, who looked like he was going to lose his damn mind, and I thought he was going to hit him when Emmett explained why they were superior to his, and I quote, little two-wheeled bicycle."

It was really difficult at this point not to laugh.

"So at that point, to save his life, I grabbed Emmett's arm to drag him into the restaurant, and Darren followed us in. Asked for the damn table next to ours and that ho flirted with the hostess to make sure she seated him right beside us."

It would probably have been wrong at that point to ask if she recorded this scene on her phone, so I kept that question to myself.

"Then, Darren kept interrupting us as we tried to talk, just kept inserting himself into our conversation. When we ordered, he made fun of Emmett for being, and I quote again, a pansy-assed bitch who couldn't handle his meat, just because Emmett ordered the vegan, gluten-free, keto-friendly meal. I wasn't even sure that was a possible combination, but apparently it was."

I was going to have internal injuries if I kept suppressing my laughter.

"Well, I can see why you want to kill him."

"Oh, no," she said. "I haven't even gotten to the bad part yet. At the end of the meal, when Emmett suggested I pay the bill since he'd driven, Darren snagged the bill and paid it himself. Then he told Emmett that women don't pay for meals when you take them out, and if Emmett thought my outfit meant he'd be getting lucky tonight, he'd figure out how wrong he was when he found out I was closed up tighter than Fort Knox."

I suddenly didn't feel like laughing and was debating whether I could lift a gun off of Max without him noticing.

Noticing the look on my face, Rie nodded. "Yeah. Exactly. The asshole."

"That's terrible," I fumed.

"No kidding. And then, after Darren told him he wouldn't be getting lucky, Emmett looked at me and thanked me for wasting his time on a date with no payoff."

"What an asshole!" I was thinking we needed two men shot tonight.

"So, Darren, with all the mouthing off he'd done tonight, suddenly decided that Emmett couldn't talk to me like that. Hello, pot? It's the kettle. He punched Emmett, and surprisingly, Emmett fought back, and at that point, I just walked around them, ordered an Uber and left the two assholes to it. Maybe they got arrested, thrown in jail. Whatever. I was out of there."

Then she burst into tears, and I hugged her while she alternated between crying and making plans to shoot Darren.

I settled her in my second bedroom and then I stormed down to Max.

"Everything OK?" he asked warily when I stopped in front of him, hands on my hips. 

"Where's Darren?"

"No clue."

"Find out."

He grinned at my demand, then proceeded to call Darren. No answer, so he texted him. No answer.

"Where do you think he is?" Max asked.

"I'm hoping the asshole's sitting in a jail cell. He started a fight in a restaurant."

"Hold on." 

He called someone -- Beard I was soon to discover -- and asked Beard if he'd heard anything about Darren. Max listened for a minute, made some noises only men understood, then hung up. 

"He's been arrested. Currently sitting in a jail cell. Beard has Chain heading to bail him out."

"Can't he just leave him there for a year or two?" 

Max laughed, and I'd forgotten what a wonderful sound that was.

"The Rampage don't sit in jail ever. You're out of luck on this one."

"Fine," I agreed as if I had any say over Darren's fate. "Thanks for finding out for me."

Max grabbed my hand as I turned away. "Saturday's supposed to be really nice. Now that you aren't confined to the club grounds, and I'm not confined to club grounds, I want to go for a long ride with you on the back of my bike."

"The back of your bike's seen a lot of action," I said icily.

"If you're talking about Wendie, yeah, she's been on the back of my bike, and so have some other women. All clubs are different," Max explained. "In the Rampage, we'll put women on the back of our bikes and it doesn't mean anything except we're going somewhere and she's going with us. Nothing deeper than that. But that all changes when we make someone our ol' lady. Then no one sits behind us on our bike except her and she doesn't sit on any bike but ours. Beard was the same, Chain was the same, Atlas was the same...I could list them all, but you get the idea."

"So, essentially, I'm just another in a long line of women who have been on the back of your bike?"

"You aren't the first, no," he said evenly. "But you're the last woman who'll ever be behind me on my bike. And to the Rampage, last is the only thing that matters. Last is your ride or die."

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA