I grab the chain link and pull it to close the first of the three bays.
Over the sliding of the metal door, I hear Summer whistling.
“Damn, did you get some new inspiration?”
“Huh?” I flip the lock on the bottom of the bay, then walk over to her and follow her line of sight. I roll my eyes when I see she caught the eye of what she always catches when she comes around—bikers.
Gotta love neighbors. But since they don’t complain about my noise, I give them the same courtesy and ignore them. We’ve perfected that. Until Summer is around. Then she stops and stares, and not in any subtle way at all.
“You’re drooling,” I say as I start to close the second bay door.
“You would, too, if you actually looked. They’re the same ones from the diner.”
“What diner?”
“The one we go to every week for our big cheat meal?” She looks over at me as if I’m crazy and rolls her eyes when Igive her my evil grin. “You’re an asshole. Will you just look so I can shut this?”
“Sure, I’ll look, but we can shut th—” I stop speaking. Not because the heavens parted and I found the one or anything. It’s just something you do when you look over and get locked in a tractor beam. Or that’s how I imagine it would be. Mom loved watching the oldStar Trekshows, and they always stopped mid-sentence when they did, just like me.
It isn’t a tractor beam that’s captured me, though, but eyes. Deep-seated eyes that, from this distance, are an unknown color, but they’re enough to hold me. Not sure if he was already looking at me before or we just happened to look at the same time and lock eyes. All I know is we both seemed trapped in this epic stare-down from across the street.
I hear Summer chuckle, but I can’t be bothered to be annoyed by it. That would require me looking away to glare at her, and I’m not ready. Not that I can’t. I could… if I wanted to.
But while this might be a simple deer-caught-in-the-headlights staring contest, I refuse to be the one to look away first.
Chapter 5—Domino
“Dude, you even listening?” Grim asks, but there’s no malice in his voice, just curiosity.
“Nah, man. Guy’s eye-fucking the chick across the street.” Lucky laughs on my other side.
We were going over what I wanted to add to the club for the outer layer of protection. It’s been a few weeks since I arrived. We’ve had ten brothers walk. Not because they were in the sex trafficking ring with their last boss but because they refused to do shit. And that might work outside the club life, but when the boss says, “Jump,” you say, “How high?” Most were pissed, especially about giving up their patches for life. A few dumb fucks tattooed the patch on themselves, so, of course, we had to remove it. I could have just scratched over it with my tattoo gun, but crossing out my patch isn’t something I’m comfortable with. I gave them the option: Burn it off or cut it off. Every single one cried; a few even wet their pants.
One more was removed permanently. Another’s on ice.
After my swearing in as president—aka, I said I was in charge, and there were no challengers—I took an unofficial victory lap. Meaning, I went through the entire place and looked at everything. Nothing was safe from inspection. Some grumbled about privacy—those were the ones we eventually kicked out. The rest stayed quiet, knowing it needed to be done.
And it proved to be the correct plan, as we found evidence on two of the brothers who were some of the quietest in the bunch. Before I produced the evidence, I had Bane give me details on the brothers in question. Sure enough, they were both brought in under the last VP and spent more time with him than the rest.
All I was going to do was question them. To start anyway. But when I came back to the commons area after going through the living spaces, one made a run for it. Rooster pulled his trigger faster than I think a man could blink. The body lay on the ground, the headshot bleeding out everywhere. The other one just sat in a chair, pale, as he watched his friend’s blood pool on the ground.
Lucky had the guy up and in the holding cell below the main floor in less than five minutes. He might have been a stupid fuck for leaving evidence in his room—the kind that had pictures of girls with price tags on the back of each picture, as if he was making a sick fucking collage of all that he took or trafficked—but for all his dumbness, the guy was zipped up tighter than a foot in the ass. He said nothing. He cried, pleaded for mercy, but gave us shit. Just kept saying he didn’t want to do it over and over again and that Cast Off made him. That all he did was take the pictures, nothing more.
And for the last few weeks, he’s kept it that way. My patience is getting thin, and I know I’m not the only one. Not only with the guys, but Casper too. We know there were more involved. There had to be. Despite the guy saying he only took pictures, he’s in most of them, holding the girls down for their “photo shoot.” So is everyone else we’ve identified as being involved. Some solo shots, others in groupsettings. So that leaves one simple question: Who’s taking the pictures?
While we wait for the guy to crack—and he will if we keep putting him through the wringer like we are—we need to fix the clubhouse. Nothing’s too bad inside to fix. We’ll put new locks and alarm systems in place to keep track of everyone coming and going. What we really need is a gate.
It won’t keep the worst out, as my clubhouse in Kansas found out earlier this year when the mafia and then C8 walked through our fencing as if it wasn’t there. Even so, we need something. Right now, it still looks like a hotel. Anyone can drive up. Hell, the strip mall across the street uses our parking lot for their overflow.
Bane just shrugged when I brought it up, said it was never something he worried about. Then again, he let a sex trafficker into the club, so it’s fair to say he didn’t think a lot about anything. I know the guy ain’t that bad, but I’ve just got a bad taste in my mouth with him. Casper knew him before all of this. Maybe at one time he was an okay guy. And maybe one day he will be again. But right now he’s doing shit duty like a prospect. Like half the damn club.
A few have proven themselves already, Grim being one of them. The guy has the makings of a club officer for sure. He’s only been a Hound for less than two years, but he’s good. He gets the brotherhood more than most who’ve been in for three times as long.
He’s still on shit duty, but not as much as the others. Some might be on it for years with the attitude they keep giving me and my team. At least with Grim, he does his shit and then asks what else we’ve got. He ain’t a brownnoser, but he knows the clubhouse needs a cleanup, and he’s steppingin. That’s why I pulled him in to talk about fortifying the club with a gate or something. I wanted to know how his mind worked, see if he notices the holes in security around here.
I was listening, really I was. But then I got distracted. I saw the garage across the way when I showed up, but it rarely had its doors open, and there’s no sign on the outside that advertises what it is. Figured it was abandoned or just closed forever. But today was a particularly sunny day, all things considering. And while I decided it was a good day to do a walk-around of the club, it seems I wasn’t the only one who wanted the fresh air. I noticed the bay doors were open and was a bit thrown when I saw sculptures and not cars in the garage bays, but it was cool. Even saw the guy working on a few pieces during the day. I liked what I saw from here and figured I’d reach out to get a feel for them. Always good to know your neighbors. Hell, they might have even seen something before I got here.
I already did it with the rest of the places on the street. Learned early on that just because you’re in a club that doesn’t advertise for people to come knocking, that doesn’t mean you won’t find nosy bitches peering in any chance they can get. So far, no one has turned up anything useful, other than that a chair is open at the tattoo shop, and they’re willing to let me use it as needed.
