Chapter 3
THREE
brONX
“Fuck it, I need to say something.”
Texas’s voiced stopped all of us as we headed for the door. Church had been dismissed, but from the look on Texas’s face, I knew there was something else bugging him. And rightfully so. He had both Ella and Keva to protect, even though they were on a protected vacation he had arranged for them.
Apparently.
“What?” Stone grumbled.
“Do you mean to tell me we’re really gonna walk out of this lodge without a solution to our issue?” Texas asked.
“We all just need some time to process,” I said.
“Fuck that. We’re being hunted by some pig on the force. I’m with Texas on this one. I don’t think we should be leaving until we’ve got a plan in place,” Notch said.
“Fine. You got any ideas? Because I’m fresh out for the moment,” Stone said.
“An apt statement from our president,” Notch said.
Stone slowly turned around as Texas and I fell silent.
His eyes burrowed into Notch, the newest member of our group.
I kept my mouth shut. I knew when Stone was two ticks away from killing someone, and he had a lust for blood in his eyes.
Stone slowly stalked toward Notch, and the man put on a good facade.
But not good enough.
Texas stepped in front of him. “Notch is snarky, but he’s right.”
Stone growled. “Ideas. Go.”
“Is the lodge fortified in case the Chinese come after us?” Notch asked.
“I already took care of that. And Texas made sure the bunker was restocked and cleaned,” I said.
“Well, how are we going to deal with the police? I mean, we know the force has told Detective Woolf to start up a new case. But for all we know, he could make us a special project in that home office of his,” Texas said.
“And if you asshats would let me go so I can go talk to his damn daughter, I’d have a better light to shed on that shit,” Stone said.
“I don’t think it’s wise to start plans for building a new bar until this settles down,” I said.
“Right. See? We can’t even get our new source of income going because we’ve still got too much heat on us. I mean, I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t have a savings or shit like that,” Notch said.
“Not my problem, youngin’,” Stone said mockingly.
“That’s true. Not his issue. You’ve got someone who’s apt at finances right here. Wouldn’t take me but a second to draw you up a budget and—”
“Shut up, Bronx,” Texas hissed.
“The fuck you say?” I asked.
“I said shut the fuck up Bronx,” Texas said through gritted teeth. He stood up and got right in my face.
“What the fuck is your problem, Texas?” I yelled.
“Enough with the goddamn numbers Bronx. No one gives a shit,” he said.
“Well someone has to give a fucking shit about them, otherwise we are fucked. But if you don’t think that we need someone watching it then that is fucking fine by me. See what the fuck happens with the cops when you just think you can get away with shit without fucking being smart about it.”
“Enough!” Stone roared.
I stood toe to toe with Texas, my head cocked up and my chest puffed out.
I didn’t give a damn that he was taller than me.
I had more muscle than him, and he knew it.
I’d knock his fucking brakes off in a heartbeat.
Everyone made that assumption, that because I was good with numbers, I wouldn’t swing a punch first. Or last.
They were wrong. On both counts. I’d start that shit and then finish it to prove a fucking point.
“I think the main issue is that we don’t have the numbers,” Stone said.
“We are a smaller crew,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Texas, back up,” Stone said.
“What?” he asked.
“I said, back the fuck up,” Stone said.
Texas backed away from me, and I cracked my neck. I popped the knuckles on my hands and then rolled my shoulders. Every vertebra down my spine cracked for the world to hear, and everyone’s eyes were on me.
“Bronx?” Stone asked.
“What?” I grumbled.
“Look at your hand.”
I looked down and found my palm sitting over the butt of my gun. I drew in a deep breath and closed my eyes and let my hand fall to my side. I cleared my throat and turned my back to Texas, needing that asshole out of my view long enough to calm my adrenaline rush.
“You good?” Notch asked.
I sighed. “Stone’s right. We’re too small of a crew to face off with both the police and the Chinese.”
“I could place a call to The Rat Bastards,” Texas murmured.
“I’m in good with a couple local gangs. I could talk to their leaders,” Notch said.
“Good. I’ve got a few calls I can place myself. For a short spell, I rode alongside the Celtic Riders back in Arizona. Maybe I can cash in the one favor those assholes owe me,” Stone said.
“They owe you a favor?” I asked.
Stone nodded. “Saved the ass of their now-president from a girl’s father that wanted him dead.”
“Sounds like a story,” Texas said, chuckling.
“Yeah. And the moral of it is this: don’t shack up with a rival drug lord’s daughter,” Stone said.
The four of us shared a small moment of laughter, which eased the tension from the room.
I didn’t have outside contacts, but what I had was a bar that still needed to be managed.
Stone snapped his fingers to disperse us again, and everyone drifted into their respective offices-slash-bedrooms. And while they placed their phone calls, I headed out to my bike.
I struck it up with the papers in my back pocket and made my way for the crew’s bar.
“Bronx!”
“Hey, can I get your opinion on something?”
“The schedule’s off again. Can you take a look at it?”
“Our tip jar’s missing again. Why can’t we have a security system in this place?”
“We need another bartender, Bronx. Have you hired anyone yet?”
“The menu’s getting stale. And we really need to think about opening a kitchen in back.”
I ignored the barrage of questions and requests.
I walked in the back door and headed straight to my office.
I knew all that shit needed to be dealt with, but not now.
I wasn’t bringing on any new hires or adding any additions to this damn place until we had shit settled with this Boulder-Chinese setup mess.
It boiled my blood just to think his name, but I was finally past the bulk of it.
He had manipulated me into opening up. Into being a friend.
Which meant I simply needed to keep my guard up longer and better with people who came across as “my type.”
Friends or otherwise.
I pulled out the financials and flopped down at my desk.
I pulled up the inner security camera feed, something I kept private from the rest of the staff.
I didn’t want anyone to know I had security cameras up.
Including the damn police. The only reason I’d convinced Stone to have them was because someone kept stealing our damn liquor, costing us thousands of dollars in sales a month at one point.
But the compromise was that the security system wasn’t set up to keep data for long amounts of time.
Forty-eight hours before shit was dumped.
I rewound all the footage we had on the place in the last couple days and started watching on fast-forward.
I kept my eye on that tip jar, trying to figure out who the fuck had taken it.
This was the third time in two months it had gone missing, and always with a decent amount of cash in it.
We didn’t operate with tip jars at night.
We had plenty of customers for that nonsense.
But during the day? It helped to get the bartenders what they needed by essentially guilt-tripping their customers into tipping what they needed to tip.
It took me over an hour of watching footage to come across the moment when the tip jar was taken.
I paused, zooming in on the face of the asshole.
I’d seen him around here a few times. Always came in and drank us out of our bottled Miller Lite and then never tipped a damn thing.
A drunk, if anyone asked me. He always came in walking upright and left stumbling out trying not to slam his head into anything.
I watched him sling back beer after beer without the bartender once questioning his sobriety.
Then, I saw him swipe the tip jar and tuck it in his jacket pocket.
“How big is that fucking pocket?” I murmured.
I couldn’t call out the bartender who’d let the man get drunk in the first place.
They’d know I had a system back here if I did.
The only recourse I had was calling an employee meeting and giving some sort of boring-ass lecture on not letting our patrons walk out of here shit faced.
I pulled up our official email and sent out a notification to all the employees.
Nine in the morning, tomorrow, there’d be a required employee meeting.
If someone didn’t show up, they were without a damn job.
I sent off the email and made plans to figure out how the fuck to bolt down a damn tip jar.
After figuring out partial solutions to all the issues thrown my way as I walked in the damn back door, I pulled up our bank accounts.
Investment vehicles. Shit I’d opened in aliases I’d taken out over the years in order to help our fucking crew.
The guys couldn’t have cared less about it, but I’d set them up better than ever.
The half a million for the new bar was doing well.
Dividends for the month had dropped, and I toggled them so I could reinvest the money.
I checked out the retirement accounts I had set up for the guys.
Every once in a while, I skimmed money off the top of shit and dumped it equally into these accounts.
Each of us had about three hundred thousand to our names right now. But in ten years if I kept skimming?
All of us could fuckin’ retire from all this shit if we wanted to.
I toggled some money around and made sure the last of the gun money had funneled through the right channels.
With cash, it was tricky. Online currency was easier to clean.
Cash had to be deposited before it could be cleaned.
The first step was shuffling the money. You know, so the bills weren’t in sequential order.
Then, I split it up evenly into seven parts and deposited each part at banks outside of San Diego.
Once the deposits processed, I slowly funneled the money through the bar as a ‘monthly donation’ from ‘investors’ who had accounts set up at the seven banks I deposited money into.
Which was a fancy way of saying that I had a shit-ton of aliases working in our favor.
After the donations were cleared into the bank account of the bar, they were drawn out as business necessities.
Ordering of supplies and liquor. Paychecks.
Cleaning products. Renovations. Shit like that.
At least, that was how they were labeled.
What really happened was the money dropped back into the guy’s hands after being shuffled, funneled, circulated, and utilized as business expenses.
Disguised as paychecks for the bar they worked at and purchases for the bar they helped manage.
I tracked all of the data and wrote it down in a notebook I kept in a safe at my feet.
And once I saw that all the money had been funneled back into the bar, I set up the automatic transactions.
Even paychecks, every two weeks, until the end of the year.
The guys knew what to do once that first paycheck hit.
With every paycheck, they could draw out from an ATM an extra three thousand for “business expenses and necessities.”
In other words, the rest of the money they were owed.
I sat back in my chair and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes.
Numbers tumbled around in my head, haunting and mocking me.
My brain had always worked like this. Numbers never lied.
They didn’t turn to drugs and alcohol for comfort, and they sure as hell didn’t abandon me.
As a kid, I’d sought comfort in the peace and stability numbers provided.
If there was ever an error, I always knew the error was with my calculations. Something I could easily control.
Control.
I craved control over my own world.
Which was why this shit with the police and the Chinese had me constantly on edge.
My phone vibrated on my hip, and I groaned. I pulled it out and saw I had a text from Stone telling me to get my ass home. That I was pulling too many hours at the bar and I needed to get myself some rest.
“Guess he got the employee email,” I murmured.
He was right, though. I needed sleep. So, I pushed myself away from my desk and walked out to the bar.
I helped the bartender clean some things down and restock items we needed.
Garnishes. Toothpicks. I cleaned glasses and restocked beer into the fridge before taping up one last reminder of the employee meeting in the morning.
Then, I headed out to my bike.
I had no idea what the fuck was going to happen from here.
I had no idea how we were going to get ourselves out of this situation.
The only thing I could do was control my end of things.
The money. Making sure the guys could live and feed themselves as well as the women coming into our ranks via their dicks.
And while I couldn’t blame them for seeking comfort during this time in our lives, it made me a bit jealous.
I was growing tired of going back to my house and not having anyone there to greet me.