TOMMY

The bar smells like stale cigarette smoke, spilt beer, vomit and fucking cat piss. It's a sickening combination, but I need my morning coffee, and I don't want to share it with whichever one of the girls is taking a shower in my apartment. It must be Lola. I don't think she left last night. Not sure how I managed to allow that oversight, but I've been pretty tired lately. I remember telling her to leave after that amazing blowjob she gave me, but nothing afterwards. Hell, I'd still be sleeping right now if the shower didn't wake me, and my mind didn't go into overdrive worrying about today's meeting the second I realized I was awake.

It's freezing down here like it's not almost June. I'm glad I at least put on my cut. I hardly go anywhere without wearing it on these days. Must be because of some sick, unconscious wish to hold onto something that gets farther beyond saving each day.

The door to the back swings open with a crash, a loud and jarring reminder to keep my thoughts in check, or else. Crystal walks across the bar, humming some ballad and looking down as se sticks pieces of tape to a cardboard sign. Her dead eye catches the overhead lights for a moment, glowing white.

"Wear the fucking patch over that thing, Crystal," I snap and her humming cuts off abruptly as she turns her whole head to look at me with her good eye.

"It itches," she counters tonelessly and resumes her walk toward the front door.

"And get someone to clean this place up more often," I tell her. "It smells like some cat lady's house."

"Did someone get up on the wrong side of the bed, Tommy?" she asks.

My bed doesn't have a right side anymore. Hasn't for months.

"What's that sign you got there?" I ask.

She holds it up for me to read. It's a generic red and white HELP WANTED sign under which she wrote Enquire Within with a black marker.

"Oh, Hell no, Crystal! The last thing we need is to hire more people." I slam my cup against the counter so hard most of the coffee spills out all over it.

She frowns at me, completely unfazed by my outburst. "I need help around here. I'm too old to stay up until all hours tending bar, and then clean this place all day. I thought you were gonna get the girls to help with the cleaning, but nothing's come of that yet, now has it?"

I wipe off the now empty cup, and place it back on the coffee machine. "Most said they will, I asked Lolita just last night."

She frowns at me again. "You mean Lola?"

"Yeah, her," I say pressing the button to make myself a new espresso. "But Lolita's more fitting. She looks about twelve."

Pubescent looking women aren't really my thing, but I like variety, and Lola sucks cock like she was put on this good earth to do only that.

"She's eighteen," Crystal says, surprisingly catching on to the reference to Nabokov's masterpiece I just made.

Yet she said it with a completely straight face, which makes me certain she's lying. But I won't call her on it. If she thinks Lola needs to be here, then Lola stays. For as long as here lasts. Though I'll try to get her out before it's too late. The list of people I want to get away from this place before my brother turns it into a whorehouse just keeps growing.

"Make me one of those cappuccinos, will you?" Crystal says, and sits down on one of the stools, carefully placing the sign on the counter just beyond my spilt coffee. "I can never get the machine to work right."

She reaches over the bar for a rag to wipe up the coffee I spilt. "So are you ordering me not to hire anyone, or was that just you being cranky?"

I keep my back turned to her as I fill up the little container with a fresh batch of ground coffee. She'd be able to read all I can't tell her about the future of this place off my face, and we must never discuss club business with outsiders, and least of all "property". She's about to lose this place and all she's been trying to do here for the past thirty odd years sure as the summer heat's coming. And sooner too. Even my father let her run this place the way she wanted to. But Shade won't. He'll make all her strippers whores as a matter of principal, and pretty soon I won't be able to stand in his way without risking my own life. I'll do what I can for her and her girls, but I won't die.

"Do what you want, Crystal, you always have," I say and look back at her over my shoulder for a reaction. Her face is stone, even her white eye grey. She knows what's coming, but she's smart enough not to ask any questions.

"You're VP now," she says nodding slowly. "You have power."

So much for considering her smart. The only way she'll get through this transition my brother Shade, the newly made President of Vipers Bite MC, is planning unscathed will be by keeping remarks like that to herself. Keep her head down and go along. Like she should've done until now, then maybe she'd still have two fucking eyes instead of this scarred, white monstrosity she can't even shut her lid over.

"And if you play your cards right, one day you'll be President and have all the power to do what you want—"

"Shut the fuck up and drink your coffee, Crystal," I interrupt, pushing the cup toward her.

I should be reprimanding her more harshly for talking freely about shit she shouldn't even be mentioning. But I care about her. That's always been my problem. I care. And I lose sleep over shit being done to people who don't deserve it. What's worse, I never actually understood the concept of treating people like property, no matter how hard my father tried to drill that lesson in.

She picks up the cup with both hands and smells it, then takes a sip, smacking her lips afterwards. "This is good."

I nod absentmindedly and check my watch. It's just past three, less than an hour before the Executives meeting starts. Shade'll reveal his full plan for the future of the MC today, I'm sure of it, and then I'll be forced to make my decision. For good or ill.

I dig in the inside pocket of my cut and pull out the patch I picked up for Crystal's owner Bear last night. The word RETIRED is stitched on it in cursive black and silver letters against a pure white background. "Look what I got for Bear."

She visibly recoils from it.

"It could go right here," I tell her, slapping it over my VP patch just above my heart, and in this moment I'm beyond certain I want a patch exactly like this one.

Her face is stone again, but it softens as she reaches over and squeezes my hand. "I know you mean well, Tommy, but you know it's "Ride 'til Death". Bear will never accept this, even if you convince the others to offer it to him."

"He'd take it, if you told him to," I say still holding the patch over my own, the one that clearly says Life Term even though it spells Vice President. "Would it be so bad to retire out in Arizona somewhere, or maybe Florida? He'd still get to ride his bike and keep his cut this way, and…"

You'd both be safe and out of harm's way, is how I wanted to end that sentence, but I stopped myself just in time.

She shakes her head, and climbs off the stool. "Put that away now, Tommy."

She picks up the sign and goes over to the door. I watch her affix it in silence.

"There, that's done," she says turning back to me. "And while we're talking about things that need doing, get someone to fix the boiler in the upstairs shower. The girls will stop showering if they don't get hot water soon."

She winks at me with her good eye as she says it, and smiles wryly. I can't help but chuckle.

"What? I let them shower at my place. In fact, I insist on it."

That will all end soon too. The other members have been grumbling about me getting all the pussy I want over here at Crystal's, and not letting anyone in on the action. I'll never subject the girls to that, but it won't be easy giving them up either.

"Just make sure whoever you hire understands the rules," I tell Crystal and finish off the rest of my coffee.

Those same rules I wish I could still follow without resentment and without question.