3. Jax
Jax
Istand up from the desk, staring at my brother’s face in disbelief. He’s generally more laid back than anyone I know, but right now, he looks panicked.
“What do you mean - ‘what am I doing’?” I demand. “I was working on the accounts! I wanted to do you a favor. Why is nothing balanced, Scott? Did you forget you can’t carry a deficit forward? The books need to reconcile from month to month.”
Scott pushes past me, marching to the computer. “I didn’t ask you to do the accounts, Jax. I have it covered,” he snaps.
“Clearly you don’t,” I say, squaring my shoulders as I walk over to him.
“This is my business,” he says, jabbing at the computer keys. “It doesn’t concern you. You’re not in charge of the books anymore, remember? Flynn left me to deal with everything.”
I glower at him, my jaw clenched painfully tight. “I’ve been helping Flynn with this stuff since I was sixteen, Scott, don’t you dare tell me it doesn’t concern me. And for the record, he didn’t leave you in charge; he left us in charge.”
“I do the back end!” Scott thunders, his hands balling into fists at his sides.
His gaze is shifting all over the place, and sweat beads up on his temples as I wait for him to explain himself.
“What’s going on?” I ask darkly. I know my brother, and something is very wrong.
He huffs and walks out from behind the desk, giving me a glare that chills my blood.
“Look, Jax, this is my system. It’s not the same as yours—”
“Damn straight it isn’t. We were never in debt when I was in charge. What have you done?”
He blinks at me, sticking out his chin defiantly for a second before his shoulders slump and he squeezes his eyes shut. The bravado and bluster fade away. Suddenly, he’s seventeen again, telling me he totaled dad’s car on a joy ride with his friends and begging me to help him fix it.
I wait for him to explain, but he says nothing. After a minute or so, his eyes flicker to the safe at the edge of the room, and a weight lands in the pit of my stomach.
“Jax, wait—” he attempts as I stalk over to it, jabbing the code into the keypad and opening it, even as Scott tries to wrestle me back.
There’s always money in the safe, either from the week’s takings, cash tips at the bar, or bonuses for the staff. But when I open it, there are a few solitary bills at the back, and that’s it. I’ve never seen it this bare.
My pulse is thundering in my ears as I turn and face my brother. The sweat that was beading on his temples is now pouring down his face. He removes his jacket, throwing it over a chair as he runs his hands through his hair, muttering every curse word in the book.
“What the fuck have you done, Scott?” I demand, my voice low and menacing.
This is hardly the first time one of my brothers has done something stupid, but usually it’s the younger two, Ben and Seb, who get into the most trouble.
Scott is the sensible one who always thinks everything through.
He’s dependable and trustworthy, but right now, he looks like our lying bullshitter of a father.
He collapses in a chair, his head in his hands. “I fucked up, Jax,” he says, and his tone is so despairing I feel a shiver skitter across my skin.
“Okay,” I say, sitting down in the chair opposite him. “Tell me what’s happened and we’ll fix it.”
He looks up at me, and the hope in his eyes almost breaks my heart.
“It was just an idea at first. Something fun to pass the time, and now I’m fucked.”
“What happened?”
“It was never meant to snowball into this… It was just a few friends hanging out...”
He trails off, and I swallow, panic spreading through me.
“Scott,” I whisper, “please tell me you haven’t started gambling again,” I plead earnestly, but his expression is all I need to see to know I’m right.
I stand up, then sit down again, not knowing what to do with myself.
“Jesus Christ,” I bite out, chewing on the inside of my cheek. Rage rises in me like a tidal wave, and it takes everything I have not to start screaming at him.
“It was just the boys and me, Jax,” he insists, his voice small.
“I’ve known Josh and Cal for years. It was harmless.
We would meet up after the club closed, have a game, and go home.
It was barely anything, a way to let off some steam.
But then, Cal said he knew this guy who wanted in.
It wasn’t like I was charging entry or taking a cut; it was all between friends. ”
“Who was the guy?” I ask, my heel tapping incessantly against the floor.
Scott scrubs his hand through his hair, tugging at the curling strands hard enough to make me wince.
“His name’s Nick Monroe.”
I frown at him. Why do I know that name? Alarm bells start ringing in the back of my mind just as there’s a knock at the office door.
“Come back later!” Scott shouts, and I hear the person walk away.
“Who is he?” I ask.
“He’s a shit, is who he is. Cal didn’t know him as well as I thought, and I’m still not really sure what he does, but he’s bad news, Jax.
He’s competitive and provoked me right from the beginning.
He started to exert his authority, trying to make it seem as if I wasn’t in charge of the game or the room. He made me feel about six inches tall.”
Just like dad did all your life.
“What happened?”
“I lost,” Scott says, his voice breaking on the word, and I really start to get scared. “I lost, and I kept losing. I just thought that the cards would turn at some point, you know, that my luck would win out. But it never did. I owe him a shit ton, Jax.”
“Okay,” I say, standing up, grateful that I’d kicked off my shoes earlier. I can feel the plush carpet beneath my feet grounding me. “Okay, this isn’t as bad as you think, Scott. If we have a good run and another few nights like this one, we can make 80k back. It’s not like we can’t—”
“It’s not eighty grand.” Scott’s voice is low and hopeless now, as he stares at the floor.
I turn to him slowly, a knot forming between my shoulder blades. “How much?”
“Over two hundred,” he says, his voice choking on the number. “Minimum.”
The beat of the music pulses between us. I can hear the murmur of voices from the rooms downstairs, the pop of a cork, the shriek of laughter.
My night and the euphoria I felt earlier are distant memories. Six months looking after Flynn’s pride and joy, and my brother has managed to sink us almost a quarter of a million dollars in debt.
“Did you use the cash from the safe to place bets?” I ask, my hands clenched at my sides. Scott doesn’t have to nod for me to know that he has, in fact, been that stupid.
I turn away, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My long red hair is lying in a ponytail over my shoulder. The top of it has come loose, and wayward strands are flying everywhere.
“I’m sorry, Jax…”
“I thought you stopped,” I say bitterly, staring into my own eyes, wishing I were somewhere else, someone else.
“It was just between friends.”
“Are you an idiot? That’s always how it starts,” I exclaim, spinning around on him, only to find tears rolling down my brother’s cheeks.
Seeing Scott cry is so startling that I can’t speak. The last time I saw him cry was on his eighteenth birthday, when his girlfriend dumped him.
Even with the anger surging through me, my heart aches for him. After a few seconds of indecision, I go to him, kneeling on the floor and pulling him into my arms.
“You stupid fuck,” I murmur, stroking his head as he sobs into my shoulder.
We stay like that for several minutes, my knees beginning to ache from the position I’m in, Scott clutching me like a lifeline.
I have no idea how to fix this, but I know Flynn can help.
He’ll be pissed, angrier than he’s likely ever been, but he’ll know what to do. We always figure things out together.
“Monroe says he’s going to kill me, Jax,” Scott says, pulling away from me and rubbing at his eyes. “And if I can’t pay a portion of what I owe by the end of next week, he’ll break my legs first.”