Page 12 of Property of Mercury

“What’s got you in a good mood today?” Orion asks me, raising his brows at me as if he’s suspicious.

“I’m always in a good mood when you put your foot in your mouth and get it shoved deeper in there,” I say, taunting him.

“You two, don’t talk to each other. You’re in time out from each other for the rest of the day,” Sutton orders, shaking her head like she’s scolding a preschool room full of toddlers. Which if my jokester of a cousin is in attendance, that’s a pretty accurate assessment.

Most people think I don’t like Orion, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I love the fucker, but I love him more when he keeps his trap shut. I know that it’s his way of dealing with shit, and nine times out of ten his family are the ones who are on the other end of his comedic relief. I don’t like being teased, even on my best days. I think a lot of it boils down to the fact that I’m not great at comebacks. They usually come to mind once the whole thing is done and over with and that aggravates the holy shit out of me. I have a tendency to get wound up and think faster with my fists than I do my words.

We decide, after coming to the conclusion that we’ll do a rebuild rather than a refurbished one, that we all should head into Sutton’s office at the big house while Hercules makes a few calls. It isn’t long until her emails are flooded with blueprints and designs. We immediately dismiss the ones with only one floor, we need multiple levels in order to house the entire crew we plan on living here. Now we’re down to our top five, each of us having a favorite and are unable to come to a decision on whose to go with.

“So what, should we rock, paper, scissor it like we did in the old days?” Orion asks.

Pisces and Aries give him a supportive look while Gemini and I give him a dumbfounded one. “That game always ended with one of us getting a black eye or a sore jaw,” Gemini reminds him.

“But we always had fun while doing it,” Orion says, a gleam in his eyes. Most likely, because he’s sly like a fox and always managed to weasel his way through us and ending up on top. He’d use his smaller frame against us and take us off our feet.

“Okay, let’s do this logically,” Sutton decrees. “We’re going to look at each one for its own merits and if there’s something that won’t work for all of us, then we move on to the next one. We have to consider the number of bathrooms, square footage needed for your armory because I know you’ll want one, and the common room needs to be big enough to host another club or multiple brothers should you get a visit.”

God, this woman makes sense in the most practical ways sometimes. “I like that idea and think that this first one here isn’t going to work. We want to have each room feel like a small apartment, remember? Plus, the kitchen itself needs to be industrial sized, so it’ll take up most of an area of the clubhouse. We need several safe rooms in the event that we’re somehow caught off guard, as well.”

“What are we going to do with the house itself?” Orion asks.

“I think we should refurbish it and we stay there while the rest of the club brothers stay in the clubhouse,” I reply. “It’s big enough for everyone already, plus we have extra guest rooms that any visiting presidents and their old ladies could use, instead of them being in the clubhouse.”

“I think we have a plan and I agree with Mercury that this first one isn’t going to work for us,” Gemini states. “Open the next one, baby.”

As a group, we huddle around Sutton’s laptop after she pulls up the blueprints for the second barndominium. This time, it’s Pisces who rattles off a list of cons as to why it won’t work. After a lot of back and forth, we nix number two and look at the third one.

“Now, this is something we can work with,” Gemini muses as he reaches over and takes possession of the mouse so he can zoom in on each level. “Plenty of room for expansion down the road, plus there’s enough square footage to put our stamp on it and make it ours. From the outside, it’ll look unassuming as fuck, but once inside, it’ll be a different story.”

“Which isn’t a bad thing, Gemini,” I say, voicing my thoughts out loud. “We don’t want curb appeal, it’s what’s inside that matters to us.”

“Did you see that there’s a space between the walls we can turn into storage?” Hercules asks as he motions with his finger for Gemini to go back a page. “Right there,” he points out as he aims his finger at the diagram. “We can use that to stock shit and hide it behind a secret passage door.”

“Damn, that’s diabolical,” Orion says.

“Where the hell did you learn that word from?” I ask, goading him.

“I read and shit,” Orion muses, looking proud of himself for cracking open a book.

“I don’t think you used it the right way though,” I counter.

Hercules stops the argument before it ensues. “It’ll be a handy space to have. We can store alcohol in there so we can keep up with the inventory or use it to store weapons and ammo like Sutton said earlier.”

“Or we can split it up and use it for both,” Gemini reasons.

“So are we in agreement that this is the one we want?” Sutton asks, leaning closer to the monitor and taking a closer look. “It has my vote, I like it.”

“Mine too,” I insert.

“I’m good with it,” Orion states, shrugging his shoulders.

“I’m down, it looks sweet,” Aries replies.

“It has the room we need and like Gemini said, it’ll be easy to expand down the road if not,” Pisces concludes.

Sutton does something then looks over her shoulder at all of us, grinning, and says, “It’ll be here in the next ten days, so we’ve got that long to get this razed to the ground.”

“I’ll get the equipment over here tomorrow so we can start demolishing,” Hercules says.