CHAPTER ONE

Brew

Bringing a cold bottle of beer to my lips, I notice our president walking into the room. He looks around, his body rigid with tension as he eyes the normal commotion of the common room. It’s filled today, just like it always is on the weekends. All the brothers are here, letting off some steam, drinking and finding ease with the club whores.

“It’s time for church, brothers!” Boz shouts, his voice filling the common room. “Officers only, for this one.”

“Motherfucker,” I grumble to anyone within hearing distance, pushing away from the bar and standing up. “Guess it’s time to get this over with.”

I knew this shit was going to happen, just didn’t know it would happen today. It was just yesterday when Hack came to us, saying the club was in trouble. We have too much money going out and not nearly enough coming in. With Trix’s cancer, Boz hasn’t been around much, not enough to run the club the way it needs to be run. Hack, Smoke, and I have tried to step into his shoes, and do what we can to keep things going, but we’re not the Pres. We can’t make all the decisions, not the important ones. The ones that affect the club’s bottom line. It’s those decisions that have been lacking.

I walk into church, mumbling toward our club treasurer. “This is fucked up, brother. Boz doesn’t need this right now.”

“You’re right about that,” Hack replies and adds, “But we need to get this figured out before it gets any worse.”

“Yeah,” Smoke agrees and then states, “it has to be fixed before all the brothers find out their money is running dry.”

That’s true because everyone is going to know soon. Every member of the club gets a cut of the money that comes in, even the prospects get enough to live on. Us officers make enough to make sure we are living the good life. As it stands now, in a few months, there will be no money for any of us.

We are all running low right now. Every single one of us have helped pay Trix’s medical bills. Since she didn’t have insurance, the surgery took nearly everything they had. Addy and I damn near cleaned out our savings account to pay off her hospital stay. Considering she had just went through a mastectomy, we didn’t want her or Boz to have to deal with bills coming in from the doctors. Smoke, Stone, and Hack got together and paid for her treatments. The other brothers have been helping with random bills that seem to be coming in every day.

I take my seat to Boz’s left and watch as his eyes scan the room. Stress is easy to read on his face, even though he is trying to hide it. Right now, he should have his mind on Trix and her getting better, not on the club and all this shit. Then again, without money, any other cancer treatments Trix has to have won’t get paid for.

Boz meets each officer’s eyes and lifts the gavel, banging it against the table. “We got to decide if we want to take the deal with the 816 boys.”

The 816 crew is out of Kansas City. A few of their officers came down a couple of months ago to talk to us about joining together to run drugs out of Canada. They would pick that shit up at the border and bring it to Kansas City. From there, we’d pick it up and distribute it throughout Tennessee and Kentucky, maybe even a little into Georgia.

For years, we have been running both drugs and guns for a club out of Texas. That shit ended not too long ago. They patched in a new member, a man that turned out to be an undercover DEA agent. The fucker was only around about a year, but he screwed up everything. The entire club is now gone; damn near every member is behind bars. We’re just lucky we were not caught up in that shit.

“There is just something about those Kansas City boys I don’t like,” Scout states with a shake of his head. “I’m thinking joining forces with them will only lead to trouble.”

Scout is Hack’s brother-in-law, the president of the Clarksville charter of the Grim Bastards. When he first put on a Grim Bastards cut, I wasn’t sure about him. As the years have passed, he has proven he is sharp as a tack. The man can read people like no one I have ever met. I lift my chin his way, letting him know I agree.

Turning to look at Boz, I add my thoughts to the conversation. “The deal is too good. They’re offering us fifty percent of the take, but they are taking the majority of the risk. Something about that doesn’t feel right to me.”

If that was us, wanting help with deliveries, the other club would be lucky to get twenty percent. That’s just how that shit works. The club facing the most danger, always gets the biggest cut. Not to mention, this is their deal. They made the contact with both the seller and the buyers. That fact alone should mean their portion of the take should be bigger.

“That’s what I’m thinking too.” Boz nods, letting out a frustrated breath. “I’m not wanting to take the deal, but we need the money. Right now, they’re our only option.”

“How bad is it?” Round asks from his spot at the end of the table.

I close my eyes, knowing the answer to that question is going to piss off every man in this room. No one likes to have their money fucked with. Being bikers, these men react a hell of a lot stronger when they don’t like something. I open my eyes just in time to see Pres take another breath, then look to Hack. He lifts his chin, giving him permission to speak.

“As of this morning, we have less than three hundred thousand in reserve,” Hack answers, looking around the room. “When you add upkeep of the junkyard and other businesses, keeping the clubhouse up and going, and member pay, that is only going to last three months, four if we all take a ten-percent cut in our monthly take.”

One of the older officers lays his palms flat against the table and growls out, “And you’re just telling us this shit now?”

Boz nods, his eyes hardening. “I had other shit on my mind.”

I can hear the pain in his voice, as can everyone else. Trix and her battle with cancer is first and foremost on his mind, even when we are dealing with this shit. Without words, he is letting everyone know that he isn’t sorry about it either.

“I’ve been thinking about something,” Smoke says, breaking the tension. “Sally is selling off her clubs. She moving to Atlanta.”

I lift my brow at his words, wondering how the hell I didn’t know Sally was moving on. She has three strip clubs, all on the outskirts of Nashville. Each has a stable of girls that are more than willing to go the extra mile to make sure their customers leave with a smile on their face. Other than crack whores that stand on the corners downtown and expensive call girls that service the upper crust of Music City, she is the only person that sells pussy in the area. Better yet, her girls are always clean and won’t leave a man’s wallet as empty as his balls.

Since one of her clubs is less than thirty minutes from the clubhouse, we all know her. Even those of us that do not take her girls up on what they are offering have spent time inside her joint. Some of our boys even work security for her.

“Her places are like a bank; the money just keeps rolling in,” Smoke adds, a half grin on his face. “If we could get our hands on her clubs, we’d have a steady stream of income.”

He goes on to tell us that she wants a million dollars for all four clubs, which is a fucking deal. Each club clears a half a million a year, bringing the total yearly to two million. According to him, she just wants out. Her old man ran off with one of her dancers a few months back. Not only did she love him, but the dancer was one of her close friends. Now, she wants away from here and all the memories.

“Selling pussy is a fuck of a lot safer than running drugs,” Boz says as he leans back in his chair, a thoughtful look on his face. “But we’d have to have the capital to buy her out.”

“She knows us. I figure she’d be willing to work with us. We’ll just need some money to give her up front, maybe half,” Smoke answers, pulling a cigarette out and sticking it between his lips.

Everyone looks to Hack, hoping he has an idea. As the money man, he can usually come up with something. Most of the time, that something is not legal. Still, he usually gets us what we need. The only problem is the Feds have been watching him lately. After some fancy computer work that gained our club a quarter of a million dollars, they have been on his ass. They haven’t proven anything. According to him, they never will. But, he has to lay low for a while.

“We could sell off some property. We got that land in Robertson County that we have no plans for,” he answers, grasping at straws.

“No,” Boz says, his voice hard. “That land is for the boys.”

The club has been buying land, accumulating as much as we can get. We all voted, wanting to do something with the money that we were making. We wanted to have something for our boys, the future Grim Bastards to fall back on if things ever went south. Land is the one thing that never loses value, so it seemed like the safest bet.

“We could get a loan and use the land as collateral,” Stone suggests, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. “Lisa won’t have any trouble getting one.”

When we started buying land, we put it in the old ladies’ names. Each one of the officers’ wives has some. We did it that way just to be safe. If one of us gets caught with guns or drugs, we didn’t want the government getting their hands on it.

“Let me think on it,” Boz states, picking up the gavel. “I’m done with this shit for today. We got a party coming up tonight, so let’s put this to rest for now and throw back a few. I’ll let you know something next week.”

With that, the Pres bangs the gavel and stands up. He leaves the room without another word. I watch him go, knowing his mind is in turmoil and knowing I need to do something to help him. My mind goes to my own wallet, thinking how little extra cash I have. Right now, there isn’t a fucking thing I can do.