Warren: A novella

by Xyla Turner

  “Yay, coffee,” she sang in an unknown tune.

  I retreated to the kitchen and began the brisk brewing of the coffee, however when I returned, Maxine Robins had her stocking feet on the couch, curled up in a ball and was out sleep.

  Shite.

  “Maxine,” I called as I moved towards her. “Miss. Robins.”

  There was no response, except light breathing from her. She looked bloody angelic and there was no way I was putting her in a cab with her state.

  Putting the coffee down, I lifted her up and took her to my bed. The jacket was the only piece of clothing that I removed, but that did not help the party in my head to see her buxom bosoms, soft and plump covered in a tease of a blouse. It was not fair. She turned to lay on her side and they piled up right in front of her.

  Quickly leaving, I went to get her satchel with the passport, so she’d see it when she arose. God knows I could not bear to have her forget that again. Then I moved myself to one of the spare rooms after my nightly routine. It hit me that I could have put her in that room, but I liked her where she was at. The room was fit for her, just as it was.

  There was little doubt in my mind that Maxine would wake before me, since I was up at five every morning. The woman continued to surprise me, because not only was she up, but she was gone by five.

  Satchel, passport and her.

  The prick in my heart was once again foreign but mainly missed. I used to have it with my ex but never after her betrayal and deceit. I would not allow a woman to even get close enough. Yet, this American stranger, caused just that.

  My routines continued with my workout first, then on to my office in South London. It was directly between Wolfe I and II. I chose this office to serve as the management company, so if we decided more hotels or other entities would be created, there would already be a central office with the allotted systems and structures. This lesson was learned early on, when I noticed the World I did things differently than World II. There was even pushback from the managers and the group about letting each decide. This was my first test of leadership, where I differed from my father. He was okay with that sort of chaotic methodology. I was not. This caused me to remind each manager, that I was the one who set these rules and if they didn’t like them, they could sod off. That move did not make me popular, but it was an effective one. Four years later, the hotels look the same, with consistent practices and tools that each can utilize. What happens to one, happens to the other. This also creates an opportunity for the organization to move people between the two entities and more if I continue to expand.

  Around noon that day, the American woman bombarded into my thoughts. I tried to push it away but just like she refused to pay for the pizza my mother clearly messed up on, she was just as relentless as she took over my psyche. With my continual efforts to tamp down on the sassy woman, the same issue happens the next day. This time, I indulged myself and looked her up. From what I could gather, she was American, forty-two years of age and her accent was more of an Eastern one. Maybe she lived in New York or a surrounding area. Her clothes suggested she was a businesswoman, in the traditional sense and her posture signaled that she was someone in leadership. So, I googled her name. There were a bunch of Maxine Robins, so I clicked on Google Image.

  Ha.

  There she was, the fourth picture but her hair was in long thin braids. The image directly next to her, was her with short hair, posing in a pink suit, with the words Maxine Robins, President & CEO of The Always Right Company (ARC).

  I bloody found her.

  My finger clicked on every site, image as I looked for a phone number or address. It was on the Contact Us page, that I found a form, but I wanted her direct email. Most companies used a first initial, last name combination or the full name. I drafted an email to both with the ending of her website address and sent the following:

  To: Maxine Robins

  From: Noah R. Wolfe

  Subject: Trotting Off/Passport

  Dear Ms. Robins,

  It is I, Noah Wolfe, whose home you escaped when you were here in London. I presume, you are no longer here, which is sad news since I offered you money to compensate for my mishap and would have even called in a favor from my mate, so you could have use of his personal jet.

  My apologies of course, as the mistake was unintentional. Please allow me to make amends. A goodbye would have suited as well.

  Regretfully,

  Noah Wolfe

  I continued to search through her hits and found that she was located in Philadelphia, had a fairly large size of YouTube following and her largest presence was on LinkedIn. There were many videos about good customer service and how company’s downfall in business is centered around not listening or foreseeing what people want. After watching a good ten of them, it hit home why this woman was so mad at my mother. This sort of thing was what she did to make a living. Most people just leave and write a bad review. Mama had many bad reviews. Rarely any said anything about the food. Ninety-nine percent of them were about the poor customer service, which was mama alone.

  An hour had already passed where I spent most of my time trying to find all I could find out about the mysterious Maxine Robins. Since most of the links took me back to LinkedIn, I followed her and requested a connection. It was then that I saw a review about a restaurant in London.

  Bloody hell.

  She described the interaction to a T, gave links, the name of the restaurant, my mother’s full name and a picture of the pizza she wanted versus the pizza she received. Then showed screen captions of the reviews she posted on ten different sites about the service and what business should not do.

  Fuck.

  End of Preview.

  To receive an alert when this book is released, text EZXYLA at 313131.

  Dream Ride: Legion of Guardians

  Unedited

  Prologue

  “Holy fuck,” Shiz gasped.

  “What?” Apollo turned around to see Shiz staring at the woman who just vacated the car. “You know her?”

  At first, he didn’t respond, then he said, “Know her. She just fucked up my bike yesterday. A case of mistaken identity. What the fuck is she here for?”

  “Wait, that was your bike looking like somebody chewed it up for lunch?” Apollo laughed.

  “Yup.” Shiz was shaking his head as the woman turned towards us and pointed at him.

  “You,” she called.

  “Oh, fuck,” Apollo murmured.

  “Why’d you call the insurance company?” The woman yelled across the dirt covered road that separated the shop from the rooms of the compound.

  “Excuse me?” Shiz asked in confusion.

  “You heard me,” she replied.

  The woman was a short thing with meat on her bones and in all the right places.

  “Lady, the fuck are you doing here?” Shiz snapped back at her.

  “Why did you call the insurance company?” she asked again with her spiky, black hair gelled up, a short jacket on and fitted jeans with a pair of designer boots.

  “Because they needed to pay so my shit could get fixed,” Shiz replied.

  “I told you, I would cover it,” she snapped. “We agreed.”

  “No, darling. I agreed to no such thing. You said you would cover it and I called my insurance company. I don’t fucking know you, and you crushed my bike like a goddamn roach because you were having a temper tantrum over some guy that loved and left you?” Shiz shook his head as he folded his arms over his broad chest. “No fucking way was I going to let you cover it. I’d rather insurance deal with it and deal with you.”

  Her big eyes grew wide, then they narrowed on Shiz.

  “I had it and now thanks to you, they’ve taken my license away. You idiot!” She was screaming.

  “Lady don’t bring your ass on Guardian turf with your drama. Take that shit back with you back to crazy town.” Shiz pointed to her car.

  Apollo was abo
ut to take off when he heard sobbing. Looking back at the two, she was crying loudly and had turned to move towards her car.

  “Fuck,” Shiz sighed. “Listen, my fault.”

  He walked after her and touched her shoulder.

  “Look, I’m sorry.” Shiz tried to console her.

  “No, it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have crushed your bike.” Her head was shaking. “It’s just that these guys from a bike club jumped my brother in front of his girlfriend and I thought the bar was Viper’s territory.”

  “What did you say?” Apollo asked as he hopped back off my bike.

  “Uh,” she turned his way and blinked away the tears.

  “Where did this happen?” Apollo asked.

  “Right outside of Manor,” she answered. “He was at the Puff Bar.”

  “Come with me,” Shiz interjected, talking to the lady. “I got this, Apollo.”

  Chapter 1

  Avery West

  My hometown used to be a place where I felt safe. my entire family lived here, grew up here and we knew everybody. So, this notion of moving was a little surreal. It was a great opportunity, but in the end, I would be away from my family.

  My dream job was to work with the art galleries in the county and eventually for the state of Pennsylvania. I was always artsy, so I was able to get away with a lot of shit. My brother, on the other hand, not so much. I had him by four years, but the studious, scholarly little brother thing afforded that he received consequences that I would never receive. That's just how my dad was with everything. My mom and dad were together at a time when it was frowned upon for them to even be in the same room. Oddly enough, they had kids late in life, but my thirty years compared to their sixties seemed minute considering how great the two of them looked.

  Mom was a long-haired beauty, who actually was on the front page of Front Royal’s cover magazine in her day. Dad looked like a bouncer from those television shows, but in actuality, he was a carpenter. The man liked to work with his hands, and he was good. People from all over would reach out to him to get their work done.

  They toiled hard to provide for my brother and I, letting us know that we could do anything. Maybe they worked too hard for us because my brother, who was younger, was smart but for some reason, he kept finding himself in all kinds of trouble.

  As a teenager, he was fine, but those early twenties were when everything began. Maybe it was the freedom of being on his own or college life. I thought it had a lot to do with the guys he considered friends, which happened to be the stupid soccer team at Lancaster College. They were stupid because they were stupid, and soccer was the only sport that didn’t require a minimum grade point average to play. They also sucked, so they took mostly anyone who could play, hence why Nathan West ended up on the team. Along with the other misfits who weren’t good enough to play for the division one and two schools.

  Mom and dad kept bailing him out of trouble, but even they stopped helping. I was recruited later but was only minimally helpful because well, we’re grown now, and I no longer babysit. I had finished my two years at community college, and I was painting, drawing and trying to make a living for myself. Art was beautiful, but it didn’t always pay. As a matter of fact, it did not pay well, unless it was combined with being famous, having your own business that was secured by someone famous or some other work of miracles that required being famous.

  I had a job but needed a new one fast, but my temperament, which I blamed on the artistic side of me was a little impulsive. Let’s just say I would act first and then ask questions later. It was a trait that I had embraced, but at the same time, it did not always go in my favor. Hence, the many formal write-ups that could end with me being jobless.

  Like the time my brother was beat down by some bikers outside of the Puff Bar. I didn’t spend my time in Manor, but I knew the Puff Bar. The only bikers that were there included the Vipers and some little spin-off group that formed. Some were on bikes, which were mostly Harleys. By the time I received the call to go to the hospital, one look at my brother and I nearly blew my top off.

  His entire face was twice its size with his eyes closed, lips busted and gashes everywhere. He could barely talk, but with his left hand, he wrote which of his stupid soccer friends we could call. They swore they weren’t there but said that Nate was definitely meeting some girl at the Puff Bar. We filed a police report, and as soon as he was able to talk and give a description, they’d put a sketch together, in order to get a warrant and go from there. I didn’t have much faith in the law or what they planned to do. A lot of this stemmed from my younger life and what my parents had instilled in me when they were growing up.

  A black man and white woman, being together was not the ideal situation. Therefore, when people tried to intimidate them by burning crosses on their lawns, calling my father a nigger to his face, threatening his family and sneering at my mom and calling her a nigger lover. Let’s just say the police did nothing about these things. Not one and my parents never forgot it and brought us up with the same mentality.

  You take care of yourself, because looking for folks to help you, even the ones that are sworn to protect you, might not go the way you think.

  This came from my mother, more so than my father. Who tried to keep the brunt of the impact just for him? He did not want us to be jaded, but mom always said to be careful.

  Well, I know mom didn’t mean that we should take the law into our own hands. They never did, that I know of but again, I’ll just blame it on the artist in me. I got creative. Sitting at the Puff Bar, which was across the street from the general store in my bright yellow Jeep Wrangler with little red and pink artwork on the side. It made my vehicle different, and I’m sticking to that logic.

  My plan was to get pictures of the guys and show them to my brother. That was the goal but after seeing one lone biker ride up with that cocky grin on his face. He strutted his ass into the general store but parked in front of the bar. That was when I got the idea.

  There was no time for analysis or even clear reasoning. My brother’s bruises and his swollen face popped into my mind, which caused me to turn my four-by-four on and I knocked that bike over like it was a cockroach. Then I ran back over it again by backing up. Some medal bent, one of the wheels popped off the bike, and before I heard the horrid screaming, I shifted into the lower gear and went forward again until I saw the biker, waving frantically on the other side of the mangled metal.

  Reluctantly putting the car into park, because I hadn’t lost my mind enough to go for attempted manslaughter. I did, however, hop out the car, with my hands on my hips, ready to breathe fire down on his biker ass.

  “You crazy ass bitch,” the man yelled. “The fuck is wrong with you?”

  Watching him, I saw that he was tall, lean, handsome with the black hair on his face, above his upper lip and around his cheeks. Those faded jeans fit his muscular thighs, and those boots were worn, just like his bike. Despite his pretty face, I hated him because of what he did to my brother, but just when I was about to tell him, something caught my eye.

  Manor used to be a small community of folks who worked together, and the bikers were a group that came and disrupted life as we knew it. My dad used to always say, these bikers were out of control. They’d ride into town and just set up shop where they wanted, using violence and everything else to intimidate people. Those were the Vipers, and nobody liked their ass. However, there was one group of bikers who weren’t like that. They used to be menacing but some years ago, they changed. Actually, became some sort of avenging angels from what I heard. They were the Guardians and fuck me, but the guy in front of me had a patch with wings extended on a bike that read, Legion of Guardians.

  Holy shit.

  I attacked the wrong biker club.

  “Shit,” I murmured.

  “Shit,” he screamed with his hands in the air, waving them in an animated manner. “Shit. You run my bike over like it’s a fucking bug and say shit.”

  “I, u
h, I had the wrong club. I’m sorry…” I started to say.

  He cut me off, “You had the wrong fucking club.”

  The pretty man was full out yelling, and his voice was getting deeper and louder as he was approaching me. It wasn’t in an intimidating manner, but the man was mad as hell. I hopped in my car and said, “I’ll handle it. No need to call the insurance company. I’ll handle it.”

  I might have been in more accidents than I should have been. My insurance basically said they would drop me if something else happened. It also might have been a case or two of road rage, but nothing serious. Just a tap of my bumper, to a slow ass pedestrian who was walking leisurely as a turtle, and he didn’t even have the right of way. My car lightly grazed his calf, and he began to start his Oscar-winning career by falling out, hitting his head on the sidewalk and faking his concussion. I’m sure he paid a doctor, and my insurance covered all of his medical bills. That was only a few months ago, so I was on thin ice. My case also wasn’t helped because a woman had recorded me yelling to him before my car tapped him, “Move the fuck outta of the way.”

  He yelled back, “I’ll sue your ass if you hit me.”

  My response was, “That’s why I have insurance, bitch.”

  That did not go over well, for the evidence submitted against me. So, with this incident, I would most definitely lose my license and my insurance. In an effort to save both, I gave the man all of my information, which included my artfully crafted business cards in the shape of a paintbrush that had to be unwrapped to see the full print out of the text.

  “Just call me with the damages and I’ll pay for it.” I left out the somehow. “No need to call the insurance company, okay. What’s your info?”