Chapter One
Magnum
I’m drunk at eight a.m. again.
Never good to get drunk this early in the day. I can’t help it. I have too many numbers whirling around in my head and a long ride out to the clubhouse which I have to get started by noon. The Rebel Barbarians quarterly meeting starts in a couple days, and we have several boring discussions planned before someone inevitably asks me to find an empty spot in one of my real estate holdings.
I’m lucky. I gambled once, won big, and never looked back. Never caught the bug, even if ironically, I was babysitting grown ass Owen Shaw at an old Indian casino fifty miles or so from the old club house when I won it all.
I swear the Shaws lack sense, because I “babysat” that grown man at the casino while I was fifteen years old and I swear that night I out-drank and out-gambled him.
At fifteen years old, I took $10,000 and invested it in two single wide trailers outside our town in California. From there, I ended up owning the whole park at eighteen. Of course, I had to do a lot of shady business to get that accomplished before then.
But at eighteen, I had around $500,000 in real estate investments to mess around with and by the time I was twenty-five… somewhere around twenty-five million dollars. Now my net worth is in the range of three-hundred million. Not like it pays for people to know how much money you roll around in.
And I sacrificed. Most of the good old boys from my hometown have wives and kids. I don’t care for the shallow lip-filler obsessed women in Los Angeles. I never enjoyed those tarantula-feet eyelashes scratching all over my face. I’ve gone five years without touching a woman and while chastity has its drawbacks… As a rich man, I can assure you that there’s no price I wouldn’t pay to have peace of mind.
Fire ravaged part of the city. All my tenants got out okay, and I offered them similar rates at my other building in the Eastern part of Los Angeles, which they all accepted for the time being. But we have a lot of trouble ahead for California. It’s too dry. Too hot.
Maybe I need to follow Ethan Shaw out to Boston.
Maybe I wouldn’t get so frustrated by the shallow women greedy for money and fame.
I have all the money any man could ever want. I could do anything. But I feel stuck in California. Well, I did until the fires woke me up to the fragility of my life and everyone else’s. I helped the people I could but… what about my future?
Do I really want to burn out here in the desert, having made nothing of myself but millions? You can’t take that money with you. I might not be as religious as a Blackwood, but it’s just the damn truth.
I end up drinking a little more before I ride out East to the clubhouse. The new place looks great, better now that Wyatt stopped gambling long enough to save up and invest in repairs, a new stable for the bikes, and a garage where he currently employs Oske’s brothers, Chitto and Nokose.
They’re getting good with repairing the bikes and chances are they can earn the club some money instead of costing us. Wyatt offered to cover their legal fees for a few charges they picked up in Kansas and in Iowa, but he only did it if they agreed to work and sign their names in blood to the club.
Ruger will run their initiation next quarterly meeting. This time, we just drink and get to initiate the new boys.
I sober up around halfway through the first day of my ride. It gets peaceful when I’m sober and the sky is just this gorgeous shade of orange. The hours disappear, along with all my problems with money and tenants. Club business means I can feel like a good person, helping with all their needs and wants. No one will care if I get stinking drunk or end up passed out in a pool of my own vomit on a billiards table.
My brothers would never judge me for that.
It still sucks to end up alone.
After stopping only once at a motel for a quick couple hours of sleep, I park my bike behind the clubhouse two days after starting my ride back east. It’s normally a three or four day trip, but if you know which roads to take, you can cut the drive time down quite a bit. Nokose and Chitto are doing the first guard shift. They’re easy to tell apart because of their long hair and how skinny they are for their height. There might be a few families here tonight, depending.
Ryder would never bring his kids around the club, but Hunter might because using the kids to keep Juliette out of trouble seems to be the only way he can keep her from pyrotechnics. He caught her making homemade fireworks in their garage about a month ago.
I have something in common with Donald Trump, which is a love of a big beautiful building. Entering the club for the first time after months away and seeing all our members and aspiring members milling about and partying reminds me that all the money and work I put in is worth it.
I might not be the type to save the world, but I feel like more of a man for carving out a patch of earth for my family and providing the club with a place to conduct business and make it into their home.
The club might not be perfect, but the Barbarians save who they can... and even if it might be wrong for me to think it, I swear we've all changed for the better with all the color in the club.
I can't say I mind it. Oske is behind the bar tonight because she's the only one -- aside from Juliette -- willing to shoot at the bikers when shit gets too rowdy. Juliette likes shooting a little too much.
Ruger sits on a black leather couch in the back corner of the room with his wife Zayna leaning all over him and kissing him like they're in high school. It's hard to watch and I won't lie... it's strictly out of jealousy.
Even Ethan Shaw has a woman now...
I pull up to Reed Hollingsworth and Zebulon Blackwood at the bar shooting dice. It's like being seated at the kids' table at awedding. Since the shit out in Boston, they grew on me a little but honestly... I'm not the friendly sort.
They stiffen up when I get close.
