The couch had a line of blankets and pillows propped on top.
Because it was only a one-bedroom, one bath apartment.
You didn't exactly need more for a fuck-pad.
But you kind of did need more for three grown-ass men to be living there.
"Fuck, I gotta get us out of here," I told him as he turned away, going into the upper cabinet, pulling down the whiskey - for me - and the scotch - for him - before pouring glasses.
"It's tight," Hatch agreed with a sigh, holding up his glass to toast me. "To freedom. However short-lived it might be."
"So, what is the news?" I asked, dropping down on the smaller couch, wondering if that was going to be my bed for the next however how long.
"Things are locked down tight," he told me, sitting off the edge of the other couch. "The girls come and go, but that's about it."
"Have you tried reaching out to the girls?" I asked, meaning the strippers that worked at the club. A lot of them were transient, just making some money while in a bad stretch. Others, though, had been with us since they were legal. Loyal, or so I hoped they still were. It wouldn't help us with whatever was going on in the clubhouse, since the girls didn't - as a rule I enforced early on, sticking with my father's idea that mixing business with pleasure was a recipe for fucking shit up - go into the club. But at least we could know what Doug was up to somewhat.
"We can't get anywhere near them coming and going. Doug's got the guys stationed all over. I guess keeping an eye for us. And then, well, we have work. There's only so much we've been able to do, stakeout-wise," he told me, half apologetic, half annoyed. At the circumstances. Maybe at me for getting locked up when I did.
"I'm a fuck for getting locked up," I told him by way of apology. We weren't the mushy, over-the-top appeals for forgiveness sort. This was as good as it would get.
"Wasn't your fault the cops were around."
"Yeah," I agreed, snorting. "That's another thing. Had a lot of time to think. Wondering if maybe I got fucked there too. That the cops were called before I even threw a punch. Seemed to get there a little too fast."
"Yeah, Cal and I said the same thing," he agreed.
"Who'd have thought Doug would have a fucking brain in that giant head of his?" I wondered, reaching to pour another round.
"You told Pops not to patch him in," Hatcher agreed, sighing, kicking his boot-clad feet up on the coffee table.
And he thought I was just being a prick, just hating him for no reason. Sometimes you got a feeling about people. I got a feeling about Doug. But after a while, he became a brother like all the rest.
I needed to remember not to silence my gut instincts in the future.
They were never wrong.
"That's Cal," Hatcher told me, the distant rumble of a bike not wholly unfamiliar in the area, but if he said it was Cal, it was Cal. "Just so you know," he started, casting a worried look toward the door, "Cal didn't handle this situation the way you or I did."
No, he wouldn't.
Always primed to be president by our old man, I was the rougher-around-the-edges business sort. I handled shit. That was what I did.
Hatcher wasn't any softer per se, but maybe a bit more well-rounded. What with the fashion and his interest in books, art. He had the street and the book smarts. He was calmer, more centered where I flew off the handle and went every which way.
But Calloway, while only a year and a half younger than Hatch, who was a year younger than me, had always been a bit deeper, darker, prone to moods and the need for solitude.
I imagine having everything ripped away, then getting shot on top of all that, hadn't exactly done wonders for his dark moods.
The rumbling got louder, stopped, then boots clomped slowly up the stairs before the door slid open.
"Surprise."
"Jesus," Cal hissed, going back a step as his gaze fell on me.
Unlike Hatch and me, Calloway favored long hair. As in past his shoulders long, in a medium brown color darker than my dirty blond, but lighter than Hatch's dark brown. While my beard wasn't cultivated like Hatch's, it was nothing like Calloway's completely carefree beard. His ears were pierced, though not gauged like mine, and his body was maybe the strongest of all of ours, though it hadn't been when I had left.
Whatever his moods were lately, he was taking it out at the gym. Which wasn't the worst way to exorcise demons, if you asked me.
"We were just having a drink and talking about the club," I told him, jerking my chin toward the fridge where I knew he would have his beer stashed, never having taken to the hard stuff when we did in our late teens.
He paused, but inevitably got his beer, came back over, sat down on the other side of the big couch, popping his feet up, nudging mine with his, an unspoken 'Welcome home.'
"So where were we?" Calloway asked, sighing before tipping up his beer.
"Bea's betrayal," I told him, watching as he choked on his beer.
Hatcher's gaze caught mine as his lips mouthed Sore spot.
But, well, I was all about pressing those.
"We don't know that she betrayed us," Cal insisted, recovering, swiping the back of his arm across his mouth.
"The fuck other explanation could there be?" I demanded. "The week she turns eighteen and gets everything in her name, I get locked up, you guys get shot, and Doug takes over." Even just the memory of it was making rage bubble up and boil over. "Look, I don't want to think she'd betray us either, Cal. But grow the fuck up; she had to be in on it."
"I can't believe the others are," Hatch cut in, shaking his head. "I mean, maybe some of Pops' old guys. But Abe?" he asked, meaning a man who had been like an uncle to us our whole lives, who had sneaked us our first drinks, who had taught us to throw fastballs - and a good punch. He was as loyal as they came. Or so we thought. "And Roux?" he added, hissing out his breath between his teeth at that one.
Roux hadn't grown up in the club like we had, but he'd been a neighborhood kid, been in all Hatcher's classes growing up. Anytime we were out playing ball, riding bikes, hiking through the woods, climbing trees, getting into scuffles, then - later - joy riding, chasing girls, getting into whatever trouble we could find, Roux was there.
Until, at seventeen, he got his mom to sign a waiver so he could join the military early, wanting to get away from the drunk fuck he had for a father whose favorite pastime was roughing him up.
He'd done his four years active, then two years inactive.
Then he'd come back to us when he'd heard our old man died, knew that I had inherited the role as president, wanted in, wanted a patch, wanted to be a ride-or-die.
And he had been.
Or so we thought.
"Apparently, there was a lot going on in that club that we had no idea about. As hard a pill as that is to choke down."
"What is the plan, Thayer?" Calloway asked, looking down at his beer, the nail of his thumb slowly scraping away the label.
"To get my fucking club back."
"To what end?" he asked, gaze moving over to mine, making me see what Hatcher had warned me about, a hollowness there, a brokenness even. There was worry about it, sure, but it also acted as fuel to the fire of my rage, knowing it could have been prevented. If only we'd had loyal brothers. If only our sister hadn't sold us out. If only I had been more observant, less trusting.
Well, fucking lesson learned there, huh?
I could count on these two bastards and that was it.
"What do you mean, to what end? It's ours. They took it. We need to take it back."
"Take it back how?" Cal asked, seeming to hint at something, but not outright saying it. Where I was one to blurt out everything that came to my mind, and Hatcher was someone who weighed every word, Cal had always fallen somewhere in between. Apparently, that too had changed.
"By force most likely." There didn't seem to be any other option.
"Yeah," he agreed, nodding. "Taking 'em out. To end up, what, on death row. Or, if by some miracle we get aw
ay with it, we have an empty fucking club. And a strip club we don't technically own."
"I wasn't planning on fucking killing Bea, you idiot," I spat at him, pissed he would even think that. "She might be a traitor, but she's our sister."
"And you think she's gonna want to sign over the papers?" Cal insisted, tone implying I was being the idiot.
"I'm saying she's not going to get a choice. She's going to sign them over so this shit doesn't happen again."
"Right. Because Bea has always been so accommodating," Hatcher piped in, smirking a little.
Bea - unlike my brothers and myself - had been a somewhat late-life bastard, the daughter of one of the clubwhores. Her mother, after a couple months of genuinely trying to fit into the mold of one, decided she couldn't be a mother, left Bea in Pops' care, and never looked back.
So Bea had been raised in a club surrounded by a bunch of rough-and-tumble men who were much more prone to spoiling her than they had been to spoiling us. It had been good in a lot of ways. It made her confident, tough, unbending when someone fucked with her. But it also made her stubborn, gave her a mouth, made her think that if she fought with you for long enough, you would eventually bend to her will.
It worked on Hatcher and Calloway.
Not so much with me.
In my opinion, someone always had to stand up to that shit. And since no one else was willing, I had to be that asshole. Especially since our old man passed. She'd been young - though she, of course, believed she was grown - and needed a parental figure with a firm hand. That was what I had needed to be. It meant we were at odds a lot, that she claimed to hate me as much as she claimed to love me, but I always figured that meant I was doing something right.
Maybe I had been wrong.
But at least it had shown me that if anyone could get Bea to bend, to do something she didn't particularly want to, it was me.
I was getting my club back.
Officially.
So long as we didn't all end up behind bars, that is.
"I'll handle Bea. Don't worry about it."
"Think you're thinking this is going to be easier than it is," Cal told me, getting up to grab another beer. "It's the three of us against, what, twelve guys? Some people we have known all our lives."
"A traitor is a traitor," I mumbled, not wanting to get into a fight with him, but not wanting him to think I was bending on the issue.
"You don't think you're going to pause? When your gun is aimed at Abe? At Roux? And we're going to storm in there, spitting bullets, and somehow make sure a stray one doesn't rip through our baby sister's body? Take a minute to think on that. Maybe you've been too busy up in prison working on your-"
"Alright, enough," I snapped, folding forward, resting my forearms on my thighs, keeping unnerving eye-contact. "I get it, okay? You're bitter. I was gone. You were left here to worry about everything. And you're tired from having to bust your ass to make ends meet. I get it. But that shit is over. You let me worry about the club, about how we are going to get it back, get our sister back. You can quit those dead-ends you've been working. I'm back. I have the cash to see us through comfortably for a while. I will handle it all."
His gaze held mine for a long moment, something unreadable in it, before he dropped his full beer bottle down on the table, getting to his feet.
"I'm going to the gym," he told us, storming out.
"Told you," Hatcher said to the sound of Cal's bike roaring to life, pouring me another round. "He's been off."
"I get it," I agreed. "Getting shot will do that to you. Especially when it was someone you used to trust. Which is even more reason we need to fix this."
"I, for one, am glad to have you back."
To that, I snorted. "Responsibility is a heavy motherfucker, ain't it?" I asked, knowing too well; I'd borne the burden of it since Pops died.
"Well, all I am saying is... now you can listen to Cal bitch about you not doing your share of the housework," he said, smiling.
"Miss prospects, huh?" I asked, smiling.
"Definitely a perk to having the club together," he agreed. "No chores, but everything gets done. "Not that I'm not happy to see you, man, but I pulled a graveyard and a morning shift today. I need to ass out. You can take the bed. I'll move to the couch."
"What about Cal?"
To that, he smirked at me in a familiar, brotherly way, something I hadn't realized I'd been missing since I went away. "His surly ass can pop up the cot somewhere."
"Alright. I'm gonna raid the fridge and get some sleep too." It had been a long time since I got to sleep soundly, without the sounds of dozens of men yelling, crying, fucking each other. "Tomorrow we will start working on getting our club back."
"Tomorrow," he agreed
TWO
Sera
It was a week from hell.
Well, if I was being completely honest, it had been a year from hell.
A life from hell if I was being dramatic. And, to be perfectly candid, I was sometimes prone to that.
But this week, in particular, was really one for the books.
Three clients in a row bailed on their appointments with no notice, leaving me several hundreds of dollars shorter than I had planned to be. Which meant I had to borrow from my phone bill to pay my rent.
In a life full of games, the one that was trying to pay all your bills when your income was unpredictable by nature? Yeah, that was the suckiest of them all. Yep, I am even saying it is suckier than Magic: The Gathering. Which is really saying something since I once sat next to a boyfriend - or, if I were being honest here, a somewhat casual fuck-buddy - while he and all his friends played a goddamn tournament of that ridiculous card game for seven hours straight. The only way I think I lived through the boredom was thanks to the copious number of joints being rolled and seemingly bottomless bottles of vodka.
Luckily, though, I was a master at this bill-playing game. You kind of had to be when you were never sure if you were going to bring home enough to actually set some money aside, or if you were going to go all post-apocalyptic and need to burn candles for light for a month.
I credited an early education of having jack shit for my ability to live with the uncertainty of a paycheck-to-paycheck-barely-covers-it existence.
My mom ran off when my sister was just ten months and I was all of five years old. Old enough to miss her, to remember her, to hate her as time went on.
My father figure, well, you figure that a woman who smoked all through both her pregnancies and then decided to run off leaving her two girls behind wasn't exactly top shelf, so the men who she fucked around with were rail-level too.
But at least we had a roof all the time, even if it was ever-changing. And we had water, even if there were roaches in the sinks. And we had enough food to keep us from genuinely starving, but also on the gaunt side of skinny, and very accustomed to the churning sensation in the belly that was hunger.
Mitch wasn't technically even my father. Most would say that him taking me on was a sign of his good nature or fathering instinct or whatever other bullshit people thought when they saw a man somewhat feeding and clothing a human being that didn't come from his unwrapped dick, but really, I knew why Mitch kept me around. To take care of my baby sister who he had no patience for, had no desire to learn how to care for.
So, at the ripe old age of five, I became a mother to my sister.
It was a role I never shrugged off, one that I felt she always needed. Even as she got into her teens and no longer needed me to bathe her or cook for her or walk her home from school.
The fact of the matter was, Joey led a much more sheltered life than I had been given. Because I gave it to her. Because I protected her, kept her away from the ugly all around us, made sure the filth never touched her even if I was bathed in it.
It made her softer, sweeter.
And, therefore, eternally - at least in my opinion - in need of me looking after her.
She was too trusting, too naive, too w
illing to give everything she had to someone even if they in no way deserved it.
It was one of the reasons I loved her most. But also the reason I never got to stop worrying about her.
When Mitch finally booted us out when Joey turned eighteen, I had to keep her warm and fed and in classes at the local community college in the hopes that she would go a bit further than I had.
Not that there was anything wrong with being a tattoo artist. It was a respectable career. And it put to use my only workable skill - if shutting down sexist douchebags didn't count. I genuinely enjoyed the work, too.
But my boss who thought he was God's gift to the ink world and my bro-centric coworkers? Yeah, them not so much.
There were only so many times a day you could sit and listen to them critique the female clients' bodies before you felt like your head was going to burst.
Someday, somehow, I wanted to open my own shop. Somewhere female-friendly, somewhere that a woman could come in to get an under-bust without worrying - rightfully - if the artist was going to judge everything from the perkiness to the color of her nipples if her hands slipped for even a second.
You know, if I could ever save more than a grand before some life emergency happened, draining the account.
Maybe I would qualify for a loan eventually, once I cleaned up my credit.
Grand thoughts for a woman who kept checking her phone to make sure her service wasn't cut off.
But a girl could dream.
Sometimes that was all that got me through the week.
Especially this past year.
Especially since Joey went away.
"Stop trying to pretend you don't want to take a ride, Sera," Chip - yes, his parents named him Chip, forever dooming him to a sub-par, douchebaggy existence. His hand moved down, grabbing his dick through his jeans.
I wish I could say this was out of the ordinary. But my place of employment was like a frat party full of entitled assholes whose brains hadn't evolved past a somewhat Cro-Magnon idea of womanhood, thinking all we were good for was a suck, a fuck, and incubating crotch fruit.
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