Monk (Royal Bastards MC: Sacramento Book 3)

by Winter Travers

  “I might combine soaking in the tub and passing out.”

  Monk shook his head. “You looking to add drowning to your exciting past couple of days?”

  I shrugged and took a bite of my burger. If I did fall asleep in the tub, it wouldn’t be the first time. I normally woke up when the water turned ice cold anyway. I was able to recline enough to where I didn’t slide under the water. I just laid there like a beached whale ‘til I woke up.

  Monk finished his food before I did and cleaned up his trash. “I’ll get the tub going.”

  I waved my hand at him. “I can do that myself, Monk,” I called.

  He was already halfway up the stairs before I could even get the words out from between my lips.

  I popped a fry into my mouth and sigh. Dealing with Monk was just making me more exhausted. If he wanted to make a bath for me, I wasn’t going to argue. He was a big boy who was going to do whatever he wanted even if I told him that he didn’t have to.

  The problem was I was going to have to really learn how to accept that.

  Letting Monk draw me a bath was going to be the first test.

  I finished my food while trying not to run up the stairs and tell him I didn’t need to be cared for. I wasn’t some fragile doll that needed to be treated with kid gloves. I had been treated that way before, and I fucking hated it.

  “Mitzy,” Monk called. “Get your ass up here. Your bath is ready.”

  So, maybe he wasn’t exactly treating me like a fragile doll.

  I couldn’t help but smile when I popped my last fry in my mouth. He could wait a minute ‘til I cleaned up and grabbed a bottle of wine from the fridge.

  If I was going to get in the bath he had drawn for me, it was going to be on my own terms.

  I wanted to tell him to fuck off, and I’d be there when I was there, but I didn’t.

  Baby steps.

  *

  Monk

  “You can go.”

  “I’ll be just down the hallway.”

  Mitzy rolled her eyes. “I think I’ll be safe in the tub, Monk.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. Not when I could see how tired she was. Five minutes in that tub, and she was going to be passed out. Hell, she had brought a bottle of wine upstairs with her. I would give her half a glass and two seconds, and she would be knocked out. “I’ll check on you in a little bit.”

  She shooed her hand at me. “I’ll leave the door cracked, but don’t come creeping in without me knowing,” she warned.

  I nodded. “Sounds good.” I stepped out and left the door slightly open.

  “Go to your room, Monk,” she called. “It’s creepy that you’re standing there waiting to hear my clothes hit the floor.”

  “I’m just down the hallway,” I reminded her. I peeked my head back in the room.

  She held up her middle finger in the air. “I’m fine, Monk.”

  I was two words away from having Mitzy tell me to get the fuck out of her house.

  It was best to pick my battles, so I moved down the hallway to the last door on the left and sat on the edge of the bed. She hadn’t shown me my room because I had picked it before she had even gotten home. I was pretty surprised when Jinx had called to tell me he was headed to Mitzy’s house. I thought for sure she was going to be stubborn as hell and stay ‘til close just to prove me wrong.

  I had planned on eating whatever she had in the fridge for dinner, so it was a nice to have her actually think of me and bring something home.

  While Mitzy had been at work, I had stopped back at the clubhouse to grab a few more things and had called the police to see if they had discovered anything with the pills that they had taken from the club. They had told me it would be at least another twenty-four hours before they would have the analysis back on the pills.

  We needed to find out what type of pills Mitzy had taken, and from there, we might be able to figure out who had been able to get them.

  Playboy and Mace were talking to the girls today, and tomorrow, we were going to have church to go over everything. We also needed to get back on track with finding Barracuda and all the bullshit with Menace. We were still waiting to hear back from Leo, but I was hopeful that would happen in the next few days.

  Now we also had to figure out where the hell Tank had disappeared to.

  None of these problems had existed when Barracuda had been in charge. As soon as he left, all hell broke loose, and I’m the one who was supposed to put it all back together.

  After I got everything squared away, I was gonna hunt down Barracuda’s ass and drag him back to the head of the table.

  I checked in with Six-Gun to make sure everything was good at the clubhouse and then laid back on the bed for a few minutes before I heard a crash in the bathroom.

  “Mitzy?” I called. I jumped off the bed and hightailed it to the bathroom. I called her name again before I pushed open the door. “Mitzy?”

  “Come on in,” she laughed.

  I pushed open the door and saw Mitzy laid back in the tub with one leg hanging over the edge and the bottle of wine hanging from her fingertips. She was also covered up to her chin with bubbles. Bubbles that weren’t there fifteen minutes ago.

  “Hey there,” she called.

  I couldn’t help but smile. The Bitchy Mitzy I had known for the past five years was gone, and she was replaced with Tipsy Mitzy with a wonky smile on her lips.

  “Everything okay in here?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah. I just dropped my bottle for a second.” She held it up triumphantly. “I got it, though. Only had a little bit of a spill.”

  There was a pretty big puddle of wine next to the tub and on the bath mat. “Sounds like alcohol abuse,” I chuckled. I open the cabinet under the sink and grabbed a towel. “How much of that bottle is left?”

  She swished the wine around in the bottle. “Hmm, about a quarter of a cup.”

  “A quarter of a cup?”

  “I like to bake,” she stated.

  “That so?” I didn’t know what that had to do with how much wine was left in the bottle.

  “I tend to measure things like I’m baking.”

  Mitzy was obviously a little tipsy, but she wasn’t all-out drunk. I guess her way of measuring the wine made sense. I dropped the towel next to the tub and soaked up the spilled wine. “Water, okay?”

  Mitzy nodded and tipped back the bottle of wine. She took three big gulps and held the bottle out to me. “It’s perfect, and you need to take this. She’s gone.”

  “She?” I laughed. I grabbed the bottle and tucked it under my arm.

  “Wine is a she.”

  Maybe she was a little more drunk than I had thought she was. I nodded and grabbed the towel off the floor. “Where did you get the bubbles from?”

  Mitzy nodded to the tipped-over bottle on the floor. “I added a touch of bubble bath.”

  The number of bubbles in the tub hinted that she added more than a touch. “You wanna soak a little bit longer?”

  Mitzy shook her head. “I’m good to get out. I’m gonna turn into a prune.” She pointed to the door. “Hand me my towel. It’s on the back of the door.”

  I grabbed the towel and looked back at her. “Uh, you want me to just hand it to you or what?”

  “Come closer and hold it up. Shut your eyes.”

  I stepped to the edge of the tub, held open the towel, but didn’t close my eyes. It wasn’t like I could see anything between the towel in front of my face and all of the bubbles covering her.

  Mitzy stood, and I listened to the water stream down her body back into the tub.

  Her head popped over the top of the towel. “Your eyes are open,” she scolded.

  I shrugged and wrapped the towel around her. “You don’t like being told what to do, and neither do I.”

  She rolled her eyes and snuggled into the towel. “It’s only acceptable when I do it, Monk.”

  I chuckled and stepped back so she could step onto the bath mat. “If you say so, ba
be.”

  She stepped out and moved the towel around her, so she was wearing it like a cape. “Good thing I bought big ass towels, right?”

  I sort of wouldn’t have minded if she had tiny towels that didn’t cover her. As much as I liked sassy Mitzy, who wasn’t afraid to tell the world to fuck off, I was becoming a fan of light and bubbly Mitzy. Thank you, bottle of wine. “You ready for bed?”

  “Are you gonna tuck me in like a good little girl, Monk?” she giggled.

  “Whatever you want, babe.”

  She planted a hand on my chest and pushed me back. “Out of the way, Mr. Monk. I can take it from here.”

  I held up my hands and stepped to the side. She opened the door and bounced down the hallway to her bedroom.

  “I’ll just clean up for you,” I called.

  “You do that,” she laughed. “I think I might like having you around, Monk. My personal butler.”

  I pulled the drain on the tub and grabbed the tipped-over bottle of bubble bath. “You’re getting a pass tonight, woman,” I warned. “Tomorrow, this ain’t happening.”

  “Sure.” She slammed her door, and I shook my head.

  Even when Mitzy was a bit tipsy, her sassy and sarcastic mouth wasn’t far away.

  Again, I didn’t hate it.

  *

  Chapter Seven

  An hour…

  Mitzy

  “You taking the day off?”

  I grabbed my cup from underneath the Keurig and spooned in some sugar. “I don’t know.”

  It was half-past eleven, and I was seconds away from getting my first sip of coffee. I wasn’t ready for questions like how did I sleep, or if I was going to work.

  I took a sip and closed my eyes. When that first taste of coffee hits your dark soul in the morning…Magical.

  “All my to-do list consisted of today was to sleep in.” I drew a checkmark with the end of my finger in the air. “Check.”

  “Man,” Monk laughed. “Pretty accomplished when you have your to-do list done before lunchtime.”

  “What about you? You got biker things to do today?”

  Monk shrugged. “I was supposed to have church this morning.”

  I looked up at the clock. “You do know that the morning is basically over, right?”

  He grabbed his empty coffee cup, dropped it into the sink, then leaned against the counter and folded his arms over his chest. “I guess sleeping in was on my to-do list, too.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Go do your biker things, Monk. I’m just gonna hang around the house today.”

  He shook his head. “I am going to go do my biker thing, but you’re going to come with me.”

  “Uh, no, I’m not.”

  “Yeah, you are, Mitzy. I thought we came to an understanding yesterday.”

  “We did,” I agreed. I was fine with having someone at the clubhouse and with Monk staying at my house.

  “So that means if I can’t be here with you, then you need to go where I go.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m safe here, Monk. We don’t need to be attached at the hip. Besides, if something happens, I can always call my neighbor.”

  Monk leaned forward and looked out the window over the kitchen sink. “You wanna tell me what neighbor you are talking about? You literally live in the middle of a field with no house around for half a mile, Mitzy. You’ll be dead before ol’ Frank down the road even knows you need help.”

  I leaned toward the window and pointed to the left. “That house there is Millie, not Frank, and she’ll be here faster than you can say ‘psycho at my door.’”

  Monk chuckled. “I don’t know if that’s true, but it doesn’t matter. You’re not staying here by yourself.”

  “Then have one of the other guys come and sit with me,” I suggested.

  Monk shook his head. “We have church, babe. I need every one of the guys there. Well, all of the guys that I can find right now.”

  “Barracuda?” I guessed. I would’ve had to have been living under a rock to not know that Barracuda had disappeared after Leona was murdered.

  “And fucking Tank,” Monk growled. “No one has seen him in three days.”

  “He’s probably on a bender or something.” I normally would have said he was stuck in Rain’s bed, but from the gossip I had heard from the girls, Rain and Tank were no longer a thing, just like Rebel and Rain were no more.

  Monk turned and leaned against the sink. “That may be, but he should know he needs to fucking check-in and not disappear for days.”

  “I’m sure he’ll turn up.” I mean, he had to, right?

  Monk’s phone rang, and he put it to his ear. “Yo,” he called.

  I turned to the cabinet, opened the door, grabbed a pack of Pop-Tarts, and ripped open the package. Then I popped them in the toaster and sipped on my coffee while Monk talked to Six-Gun.

  He basically grunted and said “yes,” then hung up.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  Monk nodded. “Yeah. You’ve been summoned to the clubhouse by Raelyn and Memphis.”

  “I’m not going with you,” I reminded him.

  Monk held up his hands. “Look, babe. You’re coming with me because if you don’t, Raelyn and Memphis are going to decide to take another fucking drive to come and see you. The last time they did that, it didn’t end well for them.”

  “I sense that is a good story. I am going to have to ask Memphis about the next time I see her.”

  He nodded. “It is, and you can ask them when you see her today.”

  I rolled my eyes, then grabbed my Poptarts from the toaster and set them on a paper plate. “I don’t want to spend the whole day at the clubhouse, Monk. If I’m going to take the day off of work, I want to spend it doing what I want to do.”

  “An hour, tops, Mitzy. I got shit I need to go over with the guys, and then we’ll be back here or doing whatever you want to do.”

  I nibbled on the corner of my Pop-Tart. “Seriously?”

  Monk nodded. “Yes, Mitzy. You coming with me just makes my life easier, okay?”

  I sighed and nodded. “Fine. I’ll go with you, but if this lasts longer than an hour, I’m calling an Uber to come home. Deal?” I held out my hand to him.

  He wrapped his hand around mine and shook it. “You got a deal, babe.”

  “You think you could stop calling me babe?” I suggested. I didn’t hate it, but it wasn’t exactly my favorite. I also wouldn’t think about the way his hand fit perfectly with mine and how the warmth shot tingles to places that should not be tingling.

  “No.” He dropped my hand and grabbed one of my Pop-Tarts. He took a huge bite and smirked. “You got ten minutes to eat and get dressed before we are on the way to the clubhouse.”

  I tried to snatch my Pop-Tart back from him, but he took a huge step back and then made a run for the stairs. “Ten minutes,” he called as he jogged up the steps.

  “Hmph. I’ll be ready when I’m ready,” I warned.

  Monk’s laugh drifted down the stairs.

  I finished my Pop-Tart and wiped my hands on my pajama pants.

  Monk had one hour, and then I was out of the clubhouse.

  Nothing would make me stay a minute longer.

  *

  Chapter Eight

  Planning…

  Monk

  “You think maybe we should have locked the front door?” Six-Gun drawled.

  Playboy chuckled. “That isn’t a bad idea.”

  “More like we should have chained the front door.” I sat back in my chair and sighed.

  “And you’re the one who said we were going to stick with having only two ol’ ladies,” Mace scoffed. “Pretty sure Mitzy is the next ol’ lady in the making thanks to you.”

  I flipped off Mace. “Fuck you.”

  “And he doesn’t deny it,” Rebel laughed.

  “Monk has never talked about who he’s banging and who he’s not banging,” Playboy pointed out. “You really think he’s going to claim Mitzy o
utright?”

  “There isn’t anything that needs claiming,” I growled. I was not going to have this conversation at the table. Who I was with had nothing to do with the club. It never did. I looked at Rebel. “What did you find out about Tank?”

  Rebel shrugged. “We went to Rain’s house, but she wasn’t around. We managed to look around the outside, but we couldn’t get in. Her neighbor was outside the whole time and ended up calling the cops on us.”

  Jesus Christ. Rebel and Six-Gun getting popped for B&E right now was not something we needed. “I’m assuming you managed to get your asses out of there before the cops showed up.”

  Six-Gun nodded. “The old bag was standing on her front porch squawking on the phone to the operator. We were out before she even got the address out.”

  Thank fucking God. “You think you need to get in the house?” I asked.

  Rebel shrugged. “I mean, it wouldn’t hurt to look around, but I don’t think he’s in there. The only way he would have been in there, and we didn’t know, is if he was dead. Six about knocked the fucking door down when he pounded on it.”

  “He’s not in there,” Six-Gun agreed. “Though I do think we need to get our hands on Rain. If she was the last one we know that saw him, then we need to talk to her.”

  I agreed, but how the hell were we supposed to find her?

  “It was her night off last night, too. She’s supposed to be on tonight, so I plan on heading over there later.” Six-Gun chuckled. “But don’t tell Memphis I’m going there to talk to Rain. She’ll never let me in bed again.”

  “Memphis not a fan of Rain’s?” I guessed.

  Rebel chuckled. “I can tell you for a fact that none of the girls from the club are fans of Rain.”

  “And yet you and Tank fought over her like a fucking kid's favorite toy.”

  Rebel shrugged. “Power of the pussy, brother. Blinded both of us.”

  “I know of that power,” Six-Gun laughed. “Thankfully, I didn’t fall for toxic pussy like you and Tank.”

  Now it was Rebel’s turn to flip off Six-Gun. “And a fuck you to you.”