by Ivy Black
Carefully, I pulled down another coffee mug, and Chatterbox peeked his head around the corner to see if I’d calmed down. I stopped preparing my coffee long enough to pull down a bag of his fish-shaped treats and the second I did, he came traipsing back into the kitchen and hopped up on the counter. I sprinkled a few of the pieces on the countertop and then when he walked up to nibble them, I scratched the top of his head.
“Sorry, buddy.”
While Chatterbox worked on his treats, I finished pouring coffee, skipping the cream to really help knock the edge of my hangover off, and carried the mug into the living room. I used my phone to play some calming, ambient lo-fi music, and forced myself to relax in the calmness of the morning. Eventually, Chatterbox made his way over from the kitchen and up into my lap, and the call of snuggles was enough to draw out the shyer of my cats, a spotted Bengal named Jingle. He walked from the hallway toward the back bedrooms and hopped up onto the couch and curled up next to me.
With only one free hand, I had to alternate between petting each feline, which was fine for Jingle, but every time I stopped petting Chatterbox, he let out a series of loud, disgruntled meows.
“You are such a brat,” I chided. “Your brother doesn’t scream about it.”
Chatterbox’s only response was to lean heavily into my hand as I switched back to petting him, and with Jingle curled up and purring at my side, I continued to stroke Chatterbox to keep him quiet.
I stayed like that for about an hour, letting my cats and the warm coffee soothe my soul, and made my peace with putting Celia behind me. Next time someone tried to set me up, whether it was the President of the motorcycle club or not, I would be sure to decline. My mom, the judge handling my case, and now Celia. All they’d done was let me down, and I was too old to continue being taken advantage of.
If it was just me and my furry friends for the rest of my life, so be it. I wasn’t about to be treated like an idiot.
At exactly seven-thirty AM, my alarm went off on my phone, coaxing me to get up and start my day. Thanks to learning I’d been shiested, I hadn’t gotten much sleep and was up well ahead of my alarm, but the blaring disturbed the cats, who both got up and walked off to go find a quieter corner to curl up in, which meant I could get up and do what was left to do before leaving for Hoppa’s. I packed up my laptop, did another pass through the kitchen to make sure all the glass was cleaned up, filled up the boys’ dishes for them to eat later, grabbed my helmet, keys, and wallet, and left the house.
Eight in the morning was considered pretty damn early for my brood. No one, not even Nick, got to the Taphouse that early, mainly because they didn’t need to. The Taphouse didn’t open to the general public until three PM, and even then, the bulk of the crowd didn’t start to arrive until well after five. Those of us who had “desk” jobs as officers could come in as late as eleven AM and still get done what we needed to get done for the day.
I, however, liked to work without distractions.
A true, blue early-bird, I preferred to get to the club as early as possible so that I was already done working by the time everyone else started showing up. Nick had gotten sick of me bothering him to let me in and eventually had a set of keys made for me. His kids were the only other club members with keys to the building, so with them gone it was just Nick and me.
Once I was inside and back in the warehouse, I used my phone once again to connect to the sound system and play more of the lo-fi music, and then pulled out my books and got to work. Thankfully, my job was pretty easy. The money was a mess when I first joined the Steel Knights, but I’d kept a tight leash since then. People did what they were supposed to so I could track the money effectively, so my daily tasks mostly involved reconciling purchases and tracking payables and receivables. Easy.
Just like any other day, I was working on the books, and hours had passed without my noticing. I hadn’t even looked at a clock until I heard the warehouse door opening, and I looked up to see Nick walking in. His face was back to being shaven and it looked like he’d trimmed his growing hair, too, though the grays were still present.
“Morning,” I said.
He nodded at me. “Good morning. Early as usual.”
“You know me,” I replied, turning my attention back to my books.
Nick kicked around the warehouse doing different things that I didn’t really have much interest in, but eventually, he came to sit down across from me at the table. “How we lookin’ over there?”
“Not bad at all. Last quarter was really good. Bucky’s really running ’em in,” I said. “I imagine we’re going to stick with this new business venture then?”
“We’d be dumb not to,” Nick said. “Although, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a hair uncomfortable with him doing border runs without Taylor.”
“You should talk to Bullseye about taking his place,” I suggested. “He’s stealthy and pretty charismatic, like Bucky.”
He smiled. “That’s not a bad idea. I’ve always liked that decision-making quality in you, Bullet.”
“Thanks?”
He chuckled before his face faded to seriousness again. “How much did we lose when Taylor fell out?”
“I hate to…” I sighed. “We’re doing better now that it’s just Bucky.”
Nick let out a long, deep sigh. “That doesn’t surprise me. It’s not just because Bucky is more charismatic, but I think Taylor was dipping into the supply. It wasn’t consistent, but on occasion, I would find we were getting less than I ordered. I’d ping-pong between who I had handle the coke, and whenever it was Bucky, not an issue, when it was Taylor, I was coming up short.”
I glanced up, letting my eyes peer at Nick over the top of my glasses. “How long did you suspect that?”
He held up a hand, nodding his head knowingly. “I know, I know. I should have said something, but I didn’t really have any proof beyond the hunch, and then before I could really dig into it too much, we had to start prepping for MiD. I had Bucky do those runs all himself with Texas and Jonesie so that we didn’t get fucked in the desert and then, well… it wasn’t an issue anymore.”
“Look, Nick, this is your club, and I’m in no position to tell you how to run it—”
“On the contrary,” Nick cut in, “you run the money. I may be President, but whoever has the money, has the power. You know that.”
“Well, I don’t really see it that way, but let me say this. We have potential to grow. You’ve been talking about it for years, adding officers, getting a facility of our own, but it won’t happen if you continue to side-step obvious shit like this.”
“Yeah.” Despite the fact that I was lecturing him, Nick developed a smile on his face. “I got it, Bullet. I’m gonna rein it in, I promise.”
“Good.”
He peered over. “So, we really have potential?”
“With the border runs going as well as they have been and Vil and Seth getting the product out the door like good car salesmen, yeah, we do. We could even be looking at something by the end of the year if we really wanted to,” I told him.
“Wow.”
“At least begin talking about it. Building something or buying something and having it remodeled.” I looked around the warehouse that was stacked, not only with our filing cabinets of paperwork, but with Hoppa’s bar supplies. “I’d appreciate an office.”
“Okay. Well, look at this...” Nick reached under the table, into the cubby where he kept all of his papers, and pulled a notebook out. He flipped it open to a page with a tree of boxes and arrows on it and turned it to face me. “I wanna start here.”
I tilted my head to the side as I read. It didn’t look like Nick’s handwriting. “What is this?”
“It’s Tess’ model.”
My eyes went wide as they shot up to look at Nick. “Really?” I wasn’t going to insult her to her dad’s face, but I honestly didn’t think she had that in her.
“Yeah. She knew I wanted to expand, and she was annoyed that
I would never actually pull the trigger. This was among the stuff she was working on behind my back—wiley woman that one. I haven’t gone through most of her stuff yet, I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it, but I made it this far at least.”
My gaze drifted back down to the map, and it was all there. Twice as many officers as we usually had, higher salaries, and there were notes that seemed to refer to additional money sources as well. Nick may not have gotten through more of Tess’ plans, but they were definitely out there.
I… was impressed. “So, we wanna get up to twelve titles?”
“Yes. Pay-ins for those bottom two levels is pure income, because they get nothing out of it.” He pointed to the bottom two squares, inside of which the words “Friendly” and ‘Regular” were written. “It’s basically all the people that fucking pay around the Taphouse, and they can ‘donate’ to be able to say they have an affiliation. That fucking kid of mine, I swear.”
“Yeah, this…” I looked up at Nick with a smile. “This could work.”
“We’d need salaries for every officer, obviously, and the stipends for the members, which we’re seeing a return on anyway because of dues.”
I flipped through the pages of my books, looking at our trajectory for profit by the end of the year. “We could do this going into next year, Nicky.”
“For real?” he asked.
“For real.”
“How about you head it up, then?”
My eyes shot up to him. “What? Why would I do it? It’s something the new VP should do.”
“Exactly,” Nick said.
There was silence between us for a moment before I plainly said, “I’m not interested in being VP.”
The excitement that had gone into Nick’s face as we spoke about the new plans evaporated in a second. “Fine.” He reluctantly pulled the plans away and tucked them back into the cubby, muttering, “We can’t really expand until I find a second-in-command,” then got up from the table and wandered away.
I didn’t like that it seemed like I added to his stress, but that kind of position just wasn’t for me. My life was fine exactly as it was. Shaking it up never seemed to work well for me, and I was good at what I did, so why change it? We were going to find a VP, and there were several men in the club who’d been there longer than me that Nick could choose from, so why he seemed to have his mind set on me, I wasn’t sure. Whatever the reason, I had no plans of buying into them at all. Even if he went for Avery or one of the younger guys, I was meant to be the Steel Knights’ Bookkeeper, nothing more.
Things got progressively louder over the course of the next few hours, and just as I was finishing my books for the day, I could hear the kitchen firing up as Hoppa’s prepared to open. The other members floated in and out of the warehouse, knowing better than to bother me while I was working, but eventually, Avery walked over and sat down in the chair next to me. He handed me over a band of receipts, with a grin. “The monthlies.”
I added them to my book for reconciliation tomorrow. “Thanks.”
“So, did you see what’s going on out there?”
“Huh?” I was jotting down my last numbers and notes for the day and was mostly not listening.
“Did you see all the people?”
Finally, I stopped and looked up at him. “What do you mean?” It was only then that I realized it was as loud as I would expect it to be at eight or nine at night, but it was still just after opening. “Wait, what’s going on?”
“All that commotion,” Avery said, “is hopefuls.”
My jaw dropped. “What?”
With that, I finished up what I was doing, put my books away in the locked drawer where I kept them, and made my way out to the bar with Avery at my heels. I shoved my way through the swinging doors and when I passed into the bar, I froze.
There were dozens of people scattered around, all talking excitedly.
Nick was standing behind the bar with a wide smile on his face. “They’re all here to pledge?” I asked.
“Most of ’em,” Nick responded. “So, we’re gonna spend tonight whittling ’em down, and you know who I think you should start with, Bullet?”
“Who?”
Nick pointed out and I followed his finger to someone who took my shock away and replaced it with rage. In the center of the bar, mingling with the different hopeful prospects, and in an outfit that unsubtly showed off her assets, was Celia.
* * *
What’s more dangerous than a rival MC? Someone wanting to destroy yours from the inside… Click below to download your copy of
Bullet (Steel Knights MC Series Book 2)
Your Free Gifts
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See you on the inside,
Ivy Black