I set down my pen. “Did they give names?”
“The older one says Rock. The younger one didn’t offer one.” Another pause, slightly longer. “He just gave me a lopsided smile.”
“That would be Jasper. Send them on in. And if you could bring fresh coffee, I’d appreciate it.”
“Of course, sir.”
I stand from behind the desk when family enters a room and tease my father, “Did someone die?”
He drops down into the chair that I gesture to and frowns at me, causing it to groan under his massive weight. “Fuck no. What would make you think that?”
Jasper answers before I can get out the punchline, “He’s insinuating that something dramatic must have happened for us to come to his office.”
My old man’s frown doesn’t let up. He shoves one hand through his dark salt and pepper hair. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s nervous.
I glance over at Jasper who’s reading all the credentials hanging on the wall.
“Hot damn Mica. You actually work here, don’t ya? You just come here and sit at a desk, like a regular joe. What the hell’s that like?”
“That’s how an accountant operates,” I tell him. “It feels perfectly normal.”
Since he’s intent on being annoying, my brother picks up a gigantic onyx specimen and turns it over in his hand. “This looks expensive.”
“Put it down and stop acting like a child.”
He sets it back, grinning like a mad fool.
“Fuck, look at you all dressed up. You don’t even wear your cut when you’re accounting. How did I never know that?”
“Because you don’t pay attention to anything except club business and your old lady,” I shoot back. “Wanna tell me why you decided to make a trip all the way to my office? I know it’s not to aggravate me because you do a good enough job of that at the clubhouse.”
He wanders over to my desk and picks up the framed photo of the four of us from a run we made together a fewmonths back. We’re all wearing our cuts and looking happy. I think maybe we were drunk.
He puts the frame down and sits beside our old man. My brother can barely contain his smirk. “I came to see the look on your face when you get the news.”
Before I can ask what in the hell he’s talking about, Rachel knocks and comes in. She’s got a tray with three coffees, and cream and sugar on the side. She slides the tray onto the table and hurries off clearly unsettled by the appearance of my dad and brother.
Jasper watches the door close. “Are you banging her?”
“No,” I say flatly, not in the mood to entertain any more of his bullshit today.
Rock doesn’t make a forty-minute drive just to have coffee with the only one of his four sons who works outside the club.
I don’t know what brought them here today, but they’re both acting more squirrely than usual. I try to logic my way through this situation. Our old man is slightly nervous, like he’s the bearer of bad news. He’s letting Jasper run his mouth to cover that fact. He hasn’t looked at his watch once, which means whatever this is, it’s important enough for him not to worry about time. None of this sounds like a win for me. So I get straight to the point.
“It’s good to see you both,” I tell them, before turning to my father. “Why did you come to see me today? And what’s this news that Jasper wants to see me react to?”
Rock shoots Jasper a dirty look and sets his coffee down.
“I want to talk about Vulture’s territory,” he says. “He’s been gone three months. His club fell apart when he died and as you know Viper convinced a lot of his crew to join Stolen Oath.”
“Yeah, that didn’t last long once we forced Bran to explain how Viper was setting fire to clubhouses only to circle back around a few days later to act all shocked and offer to patch them over.”
Jasper speaks up, being just as flippant as ever. “I will remember them peeling off those Stolen Oath cuts and burning them in front of Viper until the day I die. We didn’t even have to deal out club justice to that crazy fucker. His own did the job for us.”
“Yeah, those were good times. No man likes being manipulated and betrayed. But what specifically does that have to do with me?”
My old man speaks again, “Vulture’s territory is now unprotected again and three clubs in that region are already making noise about moving into it.” He pauses. “If that happens, we’ll end up with an unstable mess right in the middle of our own territory. I don’t want us being forced to police someone else’s mess. Nor do I want to risk it spilling over onto our club. I’ve seen shit like that before. We had to put our old ladies on lockdown because we couldn’t risk them going to town alone. By the time it was all said and done, we lost a half a dozen men. I don’t want to risk that happening again. We need to be proactive.”
