Bullet: An Alpha Male MC Biker Romance (Steel Knights Motorcycle Club Romance Book 2)

by Ivy Black

  After first taking a deep breath in and then out, Nick replied, “Well, we kind of did. I was breaking the rules a little bit before you guys, but this one I can’t take entirely on myself. You guys wouldn’t really let Tess do the VP stuff. None of ya.” He looked at Avery. “Well, hardly any of ya. Thanks, Bullseye.”

  “No problem, Nicky,” Avery replied.

  “Most of you wouldn’t take Tess seriously. She didn’t know as much, but in order to make sure she was actually doing stuff here, I gave her the Secretary duties as well. She was the one keeping all of our records. Actually, she went off and documented us to the best of her ability, all the way back to when my grandpa established us.”

  Bucky let out a hollow whistle and my jaw dropped as well. “That must have taken forever.”

  “Yeah, she worked on it for a year or more,” Nick said.

  Knowing how many times I’d referred to our club history for spending habits and audits, that realization was bittersweet. Tess and I didn’t really… get along. It wasn’t so much anything she’d done personally, but more my personal distrust for women. My experiences drove my feelings, but they hadn’t steered me wrong yet, so the guilt I’d slowly been developing regarding Tess was disconcerting, to say the least.

  “Well, hopefully, we’ll get a chance to thank her someday,” Avery said.

  Nick nodded. “Yeah. Hopefully.” He cleared his throat again and continued. “Anyway. I’m working on a plan right now. Got a few things in mind, but I really want to bang it out solidly before I present it, so have a little patience with me. I hope to have things chiseled out soon. If any of you have any thoughts though, please talk to me. Obviously, time is of the essence, but we’re gonna do it right this time. I do think we’re gonna have to go for open enrollment, though. The bylaws call for this, and my old man did it a lot, but it’s not my favorite method. I prefer recommendations from existing members, but shit, we lost three officers, plus Stag, the poor bastard.”

  Bucky turned his head down. “He had it coming, grabbing Tess the way he did, though. Dumb drunk couldn’t get out of his own way.”

  “He’s dead, Bucky, Jesus,” Avery hissed.

  “What?” Bucky replied. “Rest in peace and all that, but we were all smart enough not to piss Grim off that bad.”

  “He did not play games when it came to Tess,” Nick said. “I suppose, if nothing else, he looked after her, but she wasn’t really able to live her life.” He shrugged. “Truth be told, though, if Taylor hadn’t ended him, I was going to for putting his hands on my baby girl.”

  “A prospect didn’t make it through, too, right?” Avery said. “Didn’t one of them go toe-to-toe with Tess right before MiD?”

  MiD stood for Music in the Desert, the fundraiser The Steel Knights and our allied clubs hosted in the desert every year. I’d heard that one of the prospects got cut the day of, but I never knew the details.

  “Yeah, Aaron. I guess he tried to get snippy, so Tess cut him loose. Seth and Vil backed her up, so I respected her decision,” Nick explained. “That’s only happened once before.” He locked eyes with me. “Hopefully, it doesn’t go as bad as it did last time.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not worried.”

  He smiled. “Glad to hear it.” He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Anyway, I’m probably gonna get some posts out on social media and just see what comes walking through the door. We’ll have to vet everyone carefully, but I’m thinking we can pour a little booze into ’em and see who shows their true colors and go from there. Sound good?” Avery, Bucky and I all let out our own sounds of affirmation and then Nick finally broke out one of his typical, good ol’ Nick smiles. Everyone let out sighs of relief and then Nick clapped a hand against the table. “Well, does anyone else have anything else we need to cover?” No one responded so Nick clapped the table again, as if he was hitting it with a gavel. “All right then; meeting adjourned.”

  We all lingered for a few minutes longer, breathing in the silence of Nick’s words, but eventually, Bucky gathered himself up from the table. “Well, I’m starving. I know it’s only about eleven, but let’s go find someplace to hole up and eat.”

  Nick nodded. “I could go for that.”

  Avery and I looked at each other and then Avery nodded his head with a smile. “Yeah, we’re in.”

  Bucky and Avery led the charge out of the warehouse, while I stayed behind after noticing that Nick hadn’t moved. He was just sitting in place, smelling the glass of whisky in his hand. “You good, Squared?” I asked.

  “He liked whisky most,” Nick said, “Taylor did. Got that habit from me. Weird thing is, I haven’t brought myself to drink it since then. Keep pouring glasses and just...” He took a big sniff in and let the sentence die out. I didn’t say anything else. Loss wasn’t something I dealt with in the healthiest way, so I couldn’t really offer any sound advice. Eventually, he set the glass down on the table and looked up at me. “Hey. You ever thought about applying for a higher position?”

  Math and finances were something I’d always been good at. I went to college for it and loved being a bookkeeper. “No.”

  Nick didn’t press. He nodded his head as he stood up from the table. “Let’s go then. I’m starved.”

  We left the warehouse and made our way back into the main room of the bar, where the two newest and also youngest members of the Steel Knights had arrived and were packing up a game of pool. Seth and Vil had prospected for months before Colin showed up, and his fast track pulled them into membership a bit before they were meant to be. For those mistakes, they’d turned out to be worth their weight in gold. They were strong, not easily ruffled, and had been good additions to the club thus far. In short, I liked them.

  “Hey, Nicky,” Vil greeted, slapping hands with the man as he walked around the bar.

  Nick smiled. “There he is, Knuckles!”

  “Knuckles?” Avery asked.

  Nick slapped Vil’s shoulder. “These boys got nicknames last night,” he announced. “Vil here’s a bit of a scrapper, and a few disrespectful idiots wandered in at bar close and got a taste of his fists. I’ve never seen hands flying so fast. Called him Knuckles and it just stuck.”

  Vil smiled. “I acted fast.” He flipped over his left arm and revealed the new moniker tattooed down the inside of his forearm.

  “Whoo!” Nick said. “Look at that!”

  Bucky hooked an arm around the much more stoic Seth. “This one here, we call him ‘Dynamite’ now. He’s always off in some corner quiet as a bird, but the second those guys caused trouble—BOOM!”

  “True members now,” Avery said. “Welcome to the family.” Both Seth and Vil smiled at that. “To start, I need you young bucks to school Bullet over here.”

  I furrowed my brow. “I don’t need to be schooled on anything,” I sighed, rolling my eyes. “Can we go? I’m hungry.”

  Avery’s eyes narrowed. “Come on. You still have a snit up your ass about that girl.” He looked at Seth. “He went out with this chick, right? Really liked her, but he hasn’t heard from her since.”

  Seth looked over at me. “Have you called?”

  My nostrils flared with frustration at the sudden intrusion into my business. “Of course I’ve called. “

  Vil raised an eyebrow. “Was she talkative leading up to when you guys went out?”

  I crossed my arms. “Yes.” Seth and Vil looked at one another and then back at me. “What?” I yelled.

  “Did you take her home?” Vil asked.

  My body burned all over instantly just thinking about it. “Yes.”

  Vil’s lip turned down at the corner. “And how long has it been since you guys spoke?”

  “The last time I talked to her was when she left my house the morning after,” I replied, “about three weeks ago.”

  Seth frowned. “Sorry, Bullet,” he said with a sigh. “It sounds like you were ghosted.”

  Chapter Two

  Bullet

  The
sound of shattering glass sent my Calico cat, Chatterbox, skittering out of the kitchen, mewling as he went.

  “Sorry, Box,” I grumbled out loud, wincing at the shattered pieces of coffee mug now scattered across my kitchen counter. Very little had managed to abate my anger since Seth and Vil explained to me what it meant that I was being ghosted.

  Used and discarded? Who the fuck did I look like?

  I opened the cabinet under the sink that held a pull-out trash can and pulled it up to the countertop so I could swipe all the broken glass in. In my rage, I accidentally slammed the mug down on the countertop and destroyed it, fortunately before I had poured my morning coffee in at least. My head throbbed, thanks to the amount of liquor I drank at Hoppa’s the night before, trying to wash away my frustrations. Coffee was certainly needed if I was going to get through an entire Monday without crashing.

  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 be
gin 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.”