And as he closed the door, I rolled back toward Brielle, pulling her closely against me and drifting off to sleep.
23
MAVERICK
“How the fuck did this happen?”
“No one pulls the wool over Dante’s eyes, he had to have known something was up.”
“Hey, you leave him out of this. They’ve been juggling a lot.”
“Yeah, like getting their dicks wet.”
“Hey!” I barked as I walked into the room.
The men immediately quieted down, and I went and stood at the head of the table.
“Has anyone seen Axton yet?”
And right on cue, he came prancing into the room with his fingers soaring away over his cell phone screen. I scoffed and folded my arms across my chest. He was already fifteen minutes late to church, which was something none of us did. When a church time was set, you fucking showed up.
It didn’t look good that our own fucking President was late.
“Care to join us?” I asked flatly.
He pressed a button dramatically with his pointer finger before smiling up at us, and when he did, our phones buzzed. Screens lit up in pockets. Ringers poured their music into the room at a rapid pace.
“What the hell, Axe?” I asked.
He slid his phone into his pocket. “Check your phone.”
“Four hundred thousand dollars!?” Rocker exclaimed.
My eyes widened as I ripped my phone out of my pocket. I didn’t even have to open the screen to see the notification, though. It was from my bank. A deposit for exactly four hundred thousand dollars.
“Consider it your yearly bonus,” Axton said, shoving me out of the way.
I didn’t even care that I stumbled and almost hit the fucking floor. “Where the hell did you get this money?”
The guys were too busy high-fiving one another to pay attention to my question.
“Axe?” I asked.
The guys settled down when he raised his hand into the air. Everyone fell silent before he slowly lowered his hand toward the table, and every single man in that room took their seats. It was amazing to me how he could command a room. How just the smallest flick of his wrist had all of us falling in line. No one was shocked when Luca picked him as Vice President. No one was shocked when he seamlessly transitioned us from Luca’s reign to his.
And as he stood there with a proud grin on his face, he drew in a deep breath.
“Everything got fucked yesterday,” he said plainly.
Blaze scoffed. “You can say that again.”
“Everything got fucked yesterday.”
Dee chuckled. “Someone’s in a good mood.”
He peeked over at Dee. “You mean, four hundred big ones aren’t reason enough to celebrate?”
“You got to her money, didn’t you?” I asked.
