Chapter 1
REBEL
Numbers don’t lie. People do. That’s why I trust the books more than I trust faces.
Cash always carries a stink of sweat, smoke, sometimes blood, but once it’s in my hands, it tells me everything I need to know.
The Royal Harlots’ clubhouse used to smell of bourbon and gunpowder.
Now it smells like fresh paint and a second chance.
We rebuilt after the attack that nearly leveled this place.
Calypso swore we’d rise from ash and asphalt, and damn if we didn’t.
The new building is a blend of brick and chrome, with sharp lines and feminine edges.
Graffiti tags mark the doorway of each Royal Harlots chapter, warning every bastard on the coast that this is the Royal Harlots' territory.
From the upstairs office above the strip club, I can see most of the compound through the big bay window.
The bar sits closest to the road, with music pulsing even on a Tuesday.
Next to it, the tattoo parlor gleams behind smoked glass.
French’s idea of marketing. Let them wonder what kind of art a woman with brass knuckles designs.
Out back, the fight ring glints under floodlights, iron fence still slick from last night’s rain. Beyond a second wall of steel and razor wire lies our shelter. The Haven. The quietest corner of our chaos.
I should be asleep. Instead, I’m staring at spreadsheets bleeding red across my monitor.
The bass from the main stage thumps through the walls, rattling the thin glass of the office window. A muffled cheer rises as one of the girls drops low on the pole, then bills smack the stage floor. Out front, everyone’s laughing, drinking, and forgetting their problems. Back here, I’m not.
“Come on, you beautiful bitch,” I mutter, clicking through columns. Donations in. Expenses out. A few line items don’t belong.
The cursor blinks like it knows something I don’t.
French pokes her head in without knocking, her short dark hair a halo of static. “You talking dirty to the books again, Rebel?”
“Numbers are the only thing that listen,” I say, not looking up.
She grins. “That’s ‘cause they can’t talk back, unlike Divine.”
As if summoned, Divine’s voice carries from the hallway. “I heard that, heel-queen!”
French snorts and vanishes before the tech goddess can retaliate. The banter should loosen me up, but it doesn’t. My pulse keeps ticking faster with each mismatched total.
“Thirty grand,” French says, dropping the duffel onto my desk with a thud. She flips her long hair back, her eyes narrowing. “Private rooms from last night.”
“Should’ve been forty,” I say without looking up, already uncapping my pen.
French arches a brow. “Or maybe you’re running your math sideways again.”
I flash her a grin. “Sideways keeps us paid.”
She doesn’t bother answering, just rolls her eyes and sits across from me.
That’s French. Businesslike to the core, cold enough to cut a man’s ego in half, yet steady.
She’s the only one who can keep pace with me on the books.
Where I bend the rules until they scream, she straightens them just enough that the numbers still pass if anyone takes a closer look.
I start counting, fast and methodical, my hands moving by memory more than by sight. Alex taught me that trick when we were teenagers hustling pool halls for pocket money. He’d laugh every time I caught a cheater skimming the pot, swearing I had X-ray eyes.
“You’ve got to feel the weight,” he’d said, stacking bills into my palm. “Cash tells you when it’s short, V. People lie. Numbers don’t.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“Thirty even,” I say, stacking the bills into neat piles. “Every one of these bastards reeks of cheap whiskey and cheaper regrets.”
French snorts, then fires up the laptop. “Good thing regrets look so good in a ledger.”
Together, we start funneling the cash through our fronts. The tattoo shop, the bar’s receipts, fight-night bets, and even the women’s shelter donations. On paper, the money’s clean. In reality? Dirty as sin. Exactly the way I like it.
Give me a dollar, and I can make it wear a thousand different faces before it hits the bank. That’s my gift. That’s why they trust me with the purse strings.
But as I log the totals, a small gap catches my eye. Too small for French to notice. Too small for anyone but me to see.
“Something’s off,” I say quietly, tapping the column.
She leans over my shoulder, scanning the screen. “Could be a mistake.”
“Not in my books.” I zoom in, scrolling through the vendor list, tracing the outgoing transactions. A new vendor name sits where it shouldn’t. Plain, boring, forgettable.
Silver Talon Janitorial LLC.
My stomach tightens. “Something’s coming through a janitorial vendor account. Silver Talon LLC.”
French frowns. “Never heard of it.”
“Exactly.”
She tilts her head. “Could be a sub-contract from the bar?”
“Could be someone cleaning more than floors.” I jot a note in the margin, a single star. One anomaly becomes two, then three, each smaller than dust yet still enough to make my instincts itch.
French sighs, closing the laptop. “You push too hard, Rebel. You bend shit until it’s one breath from snapping. One of these days, it’s gonna snap back.”
“Maybe,” I say, flipping the ledger shut. “But today isn’t the day.”
French leaves, and I glance once more at the Silver Talon entry, that neat little line hiding in the dark between decimals. Numbers don’t lie, but they sure as hell know how to whisper when someone’s trying to bury the truth.
I collect my things, close the office above the strip club, and hurry into the Clubhouse. I need more proof and more access to my books than I would get there. Once I’m settled, I open the ledgers and skim through everything from top to bottom.
Footsteps echo down the hall, boots, heavy and confident. Allura and Sloane. Midnight conference hour.
The door swings open. Allura steps in first, her sea-green eyes sharp enough to cut glass. VP Sloane follows right behind her like a shadow in leather.
“You still crunching numbers?” Allura asks.
“Someone’s gotta make sure our good deeds don’t bankrupt us,” I joke.
Sloane folds her arms. “You mean the bar didn’t cover the shelter’s new roof?”
“The bar barely covers Calypso’s tequila budget.” That earns Sloane the smallest curve of a smile, an accomplishment worth framing.
Allura leans against the desk, scanning the screen. “Everything running clean?”
“Clean enough.” My lie tastes like copper. I slide the top folder over the printouts, hiding the glaring red flags beneath.
Allura studies me for a beat too long, then pushes off the desk. “Don’t stay up all night, Rebel. You start snarling when you don’t sleep.”
“Snarling’s my charm.” Allura and Sloane leave with matching smirks, and I wait until the echo of their boots fades before exhaling. Pride and fear twist in my gut. Equal parts accountant and outlaw.
When you’re Treasurer of a one-percent club, you don’t get the luxury of mistakes.
I reopen the hidden spreadsheet. Donations meant for The Haven have been rerouted. Twelve grand here, twenty there, small enough to slip past a casual glance yet steady enough to build a trail. The destination: A. Slade Logistics LLC.
My chair squeaks as I lean back. The air leaves my lungs.
A. Slade.
Alex’s name glows cold on my screen.
For a moment, I can’t breathe. It’s as if the air’s been sucked out of the room, replaced by the taste of dirt and gunpowder.
“Son of a…” I whisper, but the words fall apart.
Alex’s been dead for four years. He was shot in an ambush that was never supposed to happen. After the Royal Bastards cleaned up the Cartel hit that killed Alex, Bones, the guy I was seeing at the time, buried him off-grid.
Bones buried him off the grid, just as he lived. Nobody, and I mean nobody, should have that name in their system.
I scroll deeper. The transactions loop through offshore accounts, bouncing between shell corporations before landing in a trust held by an anonymous signatory. Clean. Professional. The kind of laundering that requires resources. The kind you’d kill to keep quiet.
My hand trembles as I reach for the whiskey bottle in the drawer. I take a swig straight from the neck, letting the burn ground me.
Behind me, the door creaks again.
“Still working?” Divine’s voice is softer than usual. She pads in barefoot, wearing one of her oversized band tees, with a tablet tucked under her arm.
“Just finishing reports.”
She eyes the whiskey. “Uh-huh.” She slides onto the couch and taps her screen. “You know, the firewall’s been pinged three times tonight. Someone’s sniffing around our accounts.”
I freeze. “You think it’s the Vultures?”
“Could be. It could be the Bloody Femmes testing our defenses, or a drunk hacker in his mom’s basement. You know how it is.” She glances up. “You sure you’re good?”
“Peachy.”
“Right. Well, holler if you need me.” She leaves, closing the door behind her, but I know Divine’s suspicion is already working overtime. The woman doesn’t miss a damn thing.
I lean forward, fingers tightening on the keyboard. If I report this, Allura will call for a full audit. She won’t raise her voice, she won’t accuse. She’ll just sit at the table and start asking questions in that calm tone that makes everyone tell the truth.
And when Alex’s name shows up in the middle of our books, there won’t be a way to explain it cleanly.
Why didn’t you tell us you were tied to an RBMC prospect?
Why keep something like that from your own club?
Trust isn’t a word we throw around lightly, and once it cracks, it doesn’t go back together the same.
The ledger I kept since Alex died, the one I took to his grave, sits in my saddlebag downstairs. Same neat handwriting, same instinct for numbers. He taught me to double-check everything. He’d laugh his ass off at me now for hiding lies inside the truth.
I rub a hand over my face, closing my eyes. “What the hell are you into, brother?”
Outside, laughter erupts from the bar. A group of off-duty firefighters is celebrating something loud and stupid. The bass line thumps through the floor, steady as a heartbeat.
Life goes on out there. Calypso’s at the tattoo shop finishing a dragon sleeve, French is probably flirting with some poor tourist, Iris is tuning her bike near the ring, and Raven’s guarding the back fence.
All of them are living, breathing, fierce. And I’m in here talking to ghosts and spreadsheets.
I pull the printed reports from under the folder, fold them into thirds, and shove them into my cut’s inside pocket. The paper crinkles against my chest like a confession.
When I lock the office and step outside, the night air hits cool against my skin. The compound hums around me, music from the bar, a metallic clank from the ring, laughter from the tattoo parlor windows.
I light a cigarette and watch the smoke curl upward. For a second, everything looks perfect. Our rebuilt kingdom, our reclaimed power.
Then my phone vibrates. Unknown number.
The screen lights my face in pale blue. For half a second, the whole world narrows to that one glowing message:
Nice work, Treasurer. Keep the books balanced.
No signature. Just an attached image, a single line item circled in red. A. Slade Logistics LLC.
The cigarette drops from my lips. My pulse spikes, hard enough to make my knees wobble. Whoever’s behind this isn’t just in the system, they’re watching me.
I pocket the phone, grind the cigarette out under my boot, and head toward the ring, forcing my heartbeat to slow.
Tomorrow, I’ll tell the girls the accounts are fine. I’ll smile, laugh, and pour drinks. I’ll sit at Church as if nothing’s clawing at the underside of my ribs.
Tonight, I dig deeper. Alone.
Because if someone’s resurrected the name A. Slade, they didn’t just move money. They declared war. And I don’t lose.