The six former Bernard Boys, now Black Reaper men, stood in a circle just behind the Santa Maria Auto Repair shop. It was just after sunset. Brock, Connor, and Mason were lighting up cigarettes. Garrett and I had dark beers, while Zack was drinking some water. I suspected it had less to do with not liking alcohol than it did having worked in the shop all afternoon.
“All right, guys,” Brock said. “Within a couple of months, we’ll have a clubhouse, and within a week, we’ll have a table we can sit at and discuss business. But for now, we’re sort of having to roughhouse it.”
“So we’re too broke for chairs?” Garrett said. “Fuck! I could have asked—”
“We’re not too broke for chairs; we’ve got three in the office,” Brock said. “However, unless one of you wants to claim disability and endure mocking from us until kingdom come, I figured it’d be better for us to not have our first club fight over who got chairs.”
Brock sighed and chuckled. He sure seemed in a lot cheerier and easier spirits since Tara had chosen him. The healthiest since, well, before the incident with Rachel.
Put in that light, I didn’t feel as bad that Tara was with him as before. No, better said, I felt more grateful Brock had gotten her and not someone other asshat. I was still pissed my plans had not come to fruition, but I could rest with a smidge more ease knowing she would be treated well.
“Where’s Shorty, anyway?” Garrett said.
“Shorty?” Brock said, arching an eyebrow. “Cole? Don’t ever fucking call him that. Remember, without him, we’re still a bunch of kids.”
“Speak for yourself. Garrett’s still a teenage boy,” Mason said, drawing snickers around the table.
“Can we stay on fucking topic?” Connor said. “I just finished a long-ass day at work.”
Brock nodded.
“Point is, have some fucking respect for the man that made this all possible. Now then. Today was our first day open here, and I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised at the business we pulled in. Guess people aren’t thrilled with the alternatives. So, fucking cheers to that.”
“Here, here,” we all said, either nodding or clinking beers.
“Bad news is, that will do nothing more than make ends meet and pay us what we’ve already been making,” Brock said. “If we’re to have some extra cash, if we’re to not depend on Cole’s inheritance paying for everything, we need to find alternative revenue streams. Ideally, something that’s not on the books.”
“Sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll?” Garrett said, his voice doused with unbridled hope.
“We can make money on the first two while listening to the third, sure,” Brock said. “But we got a problem. The easiest option, the weed trade, is handled by someone else.”
Whatever humor Garrett had meant to inject faded immediately. The “someone else” wasn’t going to just let us take even a single percent of the marketplace. “Someone else” was going to fight us and kill us if we impeded on their land.
Yeah, we weren’t boys anymore. We were playing in the fucking big leagues.Actually, no. Not playing. Battling.
“The good news is so long as this state keeps making delays in making it legal, there’s a good underground market for it,” Brock said before he took a puff of his cigarette. “But if we try to upend any Bandits business, there’s going to be some retaliation.”
“So let’s go for the harder shit,” Connor said. “Crack. Heroin. Whatever the fuck sells the Bandits don’t have.”
Brock shook his head.
“We could, sure, but remember why we started this whole shit. To keep the peace.”
Officially.
Unofficially, so we can kill every fucking Bandit for what they’ve done to us and the women we love. And to Sheriff Davis for being a spineless prick and letting it all happen…and for what he did to me before.
That is our goal, and that is our outcome.
“It’s survival of the fittest out here,” Mason said. “We can’t keep peace if we’re getting demolished financially or literally.”
Brock grimaced, but if anyone knew that there was no place for morals or philosophical standing in a war zone, it was the man who had lost a beautiful soul to the Bandits—and had to witness it while being held down.
I may have been infuriated with him when I saw Tara in his room, but I had never reached the point of hatred. He’d gone through too much shit even I couldn’t appreciate for me to ever wish serious ill on him.
Not that that prevented me from coming close to winning the fight, though.
“If we have no other option, then we can take it,” Brock said. “But it is my strong preference that we take the road already paved that’s going to make this town more peaceful, not a fucking shitshow.”
