Chance did not end up going out that night. His mother and Link convinced him that even he needed to take a break once in a while. Hannah got the guest room and he crashed on the couch. Well, he came as close to crashing as possible since he found it incredibly hard to sleep. But now the prostitution ring would know something was wrong, their goods hadn’t been delivered. They’d be looking for her, they might take their required payment out on Gabe and there would go any chance of Chance ever getting the money back. Not to mention he seemed to care, just a little bit, that it might hurt Hannah to find Gabe dead or hurt while she hid out.
So he tossed and turned and checked his phone for updates to see if anyone had sent any breaking news, but the sun came up with no talk of bloodshed or war. He crawled out of the couch and made coffee while his mother worked on the pancakes. That was always her go to when people were over, blueberry pancakes. Chance rarely ate a real breakfast but when he was home it wasn’t an option. You ate.
“Has this taught you anything?” Kat asked, flipping a pancake.
“Taught me what?”
“The Knights were never meant to be loan sharks, you’re encroaching in territory and it’s not paying off,” she said.
“It’s going fine. This is part of the business.”
“Is it really? Is it part of loan sharking to have to deal with a third party prostitution ring now? Part of leading is knowing when to be smart and when to not take deals,” she said. “That girl’s brother is a moron and you never should have loaned him the money.”
“I didn’t,” he said through gritted teeth. “It was Ben who did the whole transaction.”
“Then you give him too much power.”
“His father was a founding member too. I couldn’t just pretend that’s not true. He deserves to have some freedoms.”
“He’ll deserve freedoms like that when he earns them. As of right now he’s gotten the Knights into a mess that need not have happened at all.”
Chance sighed and walked out of the kitchen with his coffee, scowling. His mother had a point. Ben was a loose cannon and a little too reckless for his own good—or anyone’s own good. But Chance risked a lot by pissing him off or marginalizing him. He had his own faction within the gang. It wasn’t many men, but it was enough to create a serious problem if Ben decided to act on his influence. Not to mention he had a valid claim, he was the child of a founding member as well. Chance becoming chapter president was a spot of luck. He could easily find himself dethroned.
Link came into the kitchen with Hannah in tow. Her face was brighter than it had been the night before. She slept a lot better than him, clearly. He wasn’t sure how that was possible considering it was her body and life on the line, her brother in the line of fire. Yet somehow she managed to wake looking rested and almost even pretty. Chance shoved that thought out from his head.
“So, we’ve got a conundrum,” Link said. “As your treasurer I can assure you that Gabe has not paid us back the debt, despite whatever he sold his sister for. That’s a problem. But more presently, there’s going to be people out looking for her.”
“What do you suggest?” Chance sat down at the kitchen table, folding his fingers together and looking at Link from across plane.
“We kill several birds with one stone,” Link said. “We get that money out of Gabe. We use it to buy your friend here back from this ring, everyone walks away happy—except for the perverted fucks who were waiting to rent her from the pimps.”
Chance’s eyes flitted over to Hannah to see her face turn beet red and stare hard into her coffee cup. He couldn’t blame her. He turned his head back to Link.
“Sounds fair enough, we’ll have to offer a low price though,” he said. “We go too high and they’ll know something’s up.”
“My thoughts exactly. She technically belongs to the Knights. If they find out that she was never Gabe’s to sell, then this whole thing will completely blow up in our faces.”
“I’m not anybody’s to sell,” Hannah practically spat from the end of the table.
“We know,” Link said, kinder than Chance would have, “But these are the politics of it. These people won’t care about your free will or what you want. We need to think like them. Don’t think I don’t know that you could probably put me right on my ass if I stepped too far.”
He had such kind warm eyes and a soft laugh. He was a natural born father, something Chance wished he could be one day, though he doubted he could possibly be that good at it, that natural. He hoped to be a natural leader as well but he couldn’t even keep Ben under control long enough to prevent this whole thing from completely blowing up.
“So steps: we find Gabe, we get our money, we get this girl her freedom back,” Link said. “Deal?”
“Sounds good to me.”
It was all easier said than done.