Chapter 5 Axel
Axel
Week one as a Royal Bastards Prospect was equal parts Groundhog Day and boot camp run by glue-sniffing war criminals.
There’s a myth that motorcycle clubs are all guns, drugs, and raw-dogging groupies, but the truth is ninety percent chores and humiliation.
The other ten percent is the hangover you get after drinking with men whose blood types have more letters than your last name.
First day’s alarm was Red’s voice, catcalling up the stairwell. “Move it, sunshine! I got more crusty shot glasses than you got pubes.”
I rolled off the mattress, boots still on, and shambled down to the main bar, where the air was already thick with cigarette ash and last night’s sweat.
Even with no windows, I could tell it was before nine by the sound of lawnmowers starting up two streets over—suburbia’s revenge for all the years of two a.m. bike rumble.
Red was waiting, arms folded, staring at the clock like she was timing my pace. “Morning, Ax,” she said, not looking up from the stained bar top she was disinfecting with a shot of bottom-shelf tequila.
“Thought you only served the good stuff,” I said, trying to find a clean glass.
She grinned. “You want good stuff, earn it. For now, you mop floors and wrangle barf buckets.”
That was the first test. How low would I go? Turns out, pretty fucking low. If I had a superpower, it would be taking a hit and pretending not to care.
Mornings started with a scrub-down of the bathrooms, which were less a place to piss and more a testament to the human capacity for atrocity.
Day one, I found a condom floating in a urinal, three used tampons in the sink, and enough blood on the stall wall to summon a demon.
By day three, my only goal was to keep the mop from dissolving in whatever leaked out of the women’s room after Ladies’ Night.
Prospects were banned from gloves, a lesson in either humility or hepatitis.
After that came trash detail, the bar’s dumpster was a fifty-yard hike down an alley patrolled by feral cats and, if you believed the old heads, one actual coyote with a taste for chewing through brake lines.
The trash was liquid and solid in all the worst ways.
After the second day, I stopped using my arms to haul the bags, just deadlifted them onto my shoulder like body bags.
I started thinking of myself as a mobile landfill.
Lunch break was never actual food. Sometimes Red threw me a Slim Jim, sometimes she didn’t.
Usually, she just handed me a list of shit to restock—beer, limes, ashtrays, paper towels—and sent me into the walk-in cooler.
The only time I felt like a human being was the thirty seconds I spent in there each day, shivering in the meat locker, lungs full of crisp air and the faint, sweet rot of forgotten potatoes.
On my fourth morning, one of the patched members—Moses, six-four, sixty years old, and carved from gristle—sent me to “polish the trophies” in the back room.
The trophies were two actual bowling league plaques and a dented brass cup labeled “Worst Bastard 2003.” I spent an hour buffing them with a rag until I realized he was watching from the doorway, smiling like a snake that’d just learned to wink.
“You do that for all your jobs, Prospect?” he asked.
I shrugged. “If I’m gonna eat shit, I wanna know what flavor.”
Moses laughed, the sound like a chainsaw chewing through ice. “Good answer. You might make it if you don’t get stabbed first.”
The bar connected, via underground tunnel, to the actual clubhouse house, a large warehouse where a back room was the nerve center of the Royal Bastards MC Lexington chapter, but nobody called it the nerve center.
Everyone just called it “Church.” It was where club meetings happened, where punishments were dealt, and where at least one member each year got “voted out” in the kind of way that made you miss the world’s best janitor on Monday.
The Church was wallpapered with street maps of Kentucky and Tennessee, thick lines drawn in permanent marker to outline “turf,” “no-go,” and “call before entering” zones.
There was a hand-painted mural of a skeleton riding a hog, flames shooting from the tires, and above it the phrase, “Heaven’s Full, Hell’s Full, Try Here.
” It looked like it was done by a guy who’d spent most of high school in detention.
The one window was spray-painted black, but light still leaked in around the edges, cutting a dirty gold outline across the carpet stains and mismatched folding chairs.
The head table, where Vin presided, was a slab of reclaimed barn wood scarred with names, slurs, and at least one crude drawing of a dick.
At my first meeting, I was told to stand by the back door and “keep it shut.” I got the feeling this was less about security and more about seeing how long I’d stand there before passing out from boredom or nicotine withdrawal.
The patched members filtered in, each one bringing his own gravitational field of drama and silent threats.
Vin took the center, flanked by his VP (a slick, mountain of a man named Canon) and Sergeant-at-Arms (Moab).
There were eight patched, three prospects—including me—and a handful of hangers-on who’d do anything for a chance at the bottom rung.
Red wasn’t a member, technically, but she hovered behind the bar at all times, taking notes, refilling drinks, and occasionally shoving a club member back into his chair if things got out of hand.
She wore a patched “support” vest but didn’t need a single thread of it to make grown men shit themselves.
“Meeting called to order,” Vin barked, not waiting for the room to quiet down. The din died on command. “First up, collections. We’re a week out from the poker run, and we’re short. Any ideas why?”
Canon piped up. “Louie’s been skimming from the liquor runs, I told you. And that new corner by the college? It’s dead. Kids these days are on Adderall, not whiskey.”
Moab snorted. “Or maybe the prospects are too slow moving product. I heard the last shipment sat in the kitchen for two days.” He shot a look my way.
I didn’t flinch. “If it was up to me, I’d snort it all and invoice you for the experience.”
A few men laughed. Moab didn’t.
Vin cut the laughter with a single finger tap on the table.
“Enough. Here’s how it’s gonna go. Canon, you and Moab handle the Louie situation.
Shiv, you bring the prospects up to speed on college ops.
And if one more case of Jim Beam sits for longer than five minutes, the prospect responsible is gonna drink it all or die trying. Clear?”
Three men answered, “Gospel,” in unison.
I stayed silent, which got me a nod from Vin. “Next, security,” he said. “With that last fight, cops are sniffing again. Axel, you work any bars before?”
I shrugged. “I’ve worked a lot of things.”
Vin looked through me. “You ever break a guy’s arm for not tipping?”
I smiled. “Only if he had it coming.”
“Good. You and Shiv do door tonight.”
Meeting adjourned, everyone returned to their default states of bickering, drinking, and plotting. Shiv cornered me by the exit.
“You ever run college collections before?” he asked, fishing a pack of smokes from his pocket.
I shook my head.
He lit up, exhaled in my face. “It’s easy. Most of them are too scared to say no. If you get a holdout, just threaten to post their mom’s nudes on Reddit. Works every time.”
I laughed. “You do that often?”
He grinned. “I got a whole file. Wanna see?”
I declined.
That night was my first on door duty. The bar ran at a low thrum, but it was the faces that made it interesting; college kids with fake IDs, retired hellraisers with old club colors, and the regulars, who viewed the place as a last stand against the collapse of Western civilization.
My job was simple: scan for trouble, bounce the trouble, and collect cover charges.
Shiv taught me to shake down anyone in Greek letters for extra, “just for the privilege.” I took to it fast.
An hour in, a man in khaki shorts and a Vineyard Vines polo showed up, arms roped with muscle but face baby-smooth. He flashed a smile and said, “You guys got IPAs or just pisswater?”
I said, “We got IPAs, but they’re all labeled ‘Pisswater.’ You want it or not?”
He tried to laugh it off, but then Shiv did his favorite trick—stepping in, standing too close, and saying, “That’s a nice watch, is it real?” When the kid didn’t answer, Shiv smiled wide and said, “Good. You get to keep your arm.”
The preppie hustled inside. Shiv leaned close. “You see what I did there, Axel?”
I nodded.
“Never let them think you won’t do it. Even if you’re just fucking with them.”
I logged it. Peanut might’ve been a psychopath, but he was an efficient one.
Later that night, as I cleared the back alley for trash, two other prospects—Chase and Flip—were out there “smoking a joint” but actually just killing time.
Chase was built like a rubber chicken, all joints and bones, with a laugh that made you want to check your wallet.
Flip was smaller, covered in stick-and-poke tattoos, and had a permanent bruise under his left eye.
They were the first to see me as an actual threat, not a temp. They showed it in small ways.
“Yo, Axel,” Chase called, flicking his smoke into the dumpster, “I heard you used to run with the Cartel. That true?”
Flip snickered. “More like ran from them.”
I kept moving. “You guys always this desperate to know who’s fucking you?”
Chase grinned. “Just wanna make sure you’re not a cop.”
“Look at me,” I said. “Do I look like a cop?”
Flip snorted. “Yeah. The kind who shoots his own partner for fun.”
Chase nodded. “Heard you iced a guy once, over a girl.”
“Wasn’t over a girl,” I said. “Was over a dog.”
They both stared, not sure if I was joking. I let the silence hang, then heaved the trash bag into the dumpster and turned to leave.