Page 225 of Moon's Promise

“Cutting it close, aren’t you?” Viper’s forbidding profile was the only hint he needed to know the brother wasn’t happy.

Taking the seat next to him, he reached for a yellow pad of paper and ink pen. “Had some fallout to deal with.”

His concentration on the monitor broken, Viper focused on him. “Who with?”

“Leave it to that woman to pick the worst possible time to try to break up.”

Neither Viper nor Rider seemed surprised.

“Been there more than once myself,” Viper said wryly. “What shocks me is it hasn’t happened to you before. When you moving back into the clubhouse?”

“I’m not moving back. I’m going to change her mind.”

That information did surprise them.

Viper and Rider shared a glance, as if silently asking, Which one of us is going to tell him?

Rider’s sigh showed he had lost the battle of wills.

“That’s going to be hard for you to do.” Rider leaned back in his chair, hooking his ankle over his knee. “You might have getting women into your bed down pat, but when it comes to the hard stuff … Mr. Sensitive, you’re not.”

Moon cocked an eyebrow in Rider’s direction. “How in the fuck would you know?”

“I don’t know …” Rider drawled sarcastically. “Maybe me having to listen to countless women threaten to tattoo ‘love them and leave them’ on your back more times than I can count.”

“Then”—opening a roll of mints, Viper popped one in his mouth—“a week later, he’s complaining he can’t find a woman who’s ready to get serious and have a bunch of kids with him.” Viper shook his head in disbelief. “I’m still amazed none of them have taken you out in your sleep. Remember Lucinda?”

Rider’s expression turned pained. “I do.”

“You told her you loved Mexican food, so she started bringing you a fucking buffet every Friday night. Then, when you started dating her, she introduced you to her whole family, and you started hanging out with them, too. For a couple of months, you were at Lucinda’s apartment more than you were at the club, except on Fridays, of course, and … let me tell you, brother”—Viper’s expression turned just as pained as Rider’s—“I count them some of the best Fridays I’ve spent. But what did you do? What you always do—you fucked it up. You invited the woman cleaning her house to come to a party right in front of her.”

“I still don’t get why that pissed Lucinda off.” Moon rubbed the stubble under his chin reflectingly.

Balefully, Viper stared at him. “I don’t know,” he said snidely. “Maybe it was because the cleaning lady was Lucinda’s sister-in-law. We had to post three guards at the club doors for a year because her brother tried to take you out no less than four times. The only reason he stopped was because he got arrested for arson when he set four of our bikes on fire.”

“Don’t forget the mayor who tried to put his ass in jail if they caught him, for taking his daughter’s cherry,” Rider reminded Viper.

Viper grimaced. “I try not to.”

“She wasn’t a virgin any more than I was.”

Suddenly, Rider shot up in his chair to press a button that opened the garage door, allowing the transport truck entry.

“Here we go.”

Laying the ink pen down when he stopped doodling on the pad, Moon folded his hands together as they watched the monitors.

As the three men watched, the last cart of the day was wheeled out of the factory. Moon looked at the employee identification number flashing up on a side screen to his left. “Gundy, that’s number one.”

They watched as Gundy rolled the cart to the appropriate number spot painted on the concrete then went to add his signature to the sign-in sheet. After hanging the sheet back up, he walked back to the cart as the factory door opened and another cart was rolled in by another employee.

“Howie, number two.”

Observing, they noticed none of them talked. Their eyes went back and forth between the different monitors—one showing the two men by the carts, the other two cameras angled so they were able to see different views of the truck parking and the driver getting out to open the end of the trailer and lower the ramp.

Once the ramp was lowered, Howie rolled his cart down the sloping ramp to the truck. The driver didn’t take his eyes off the inside, carefully watching the two men as they loaded the carts inside.

Gundy and Howie had loaded four carts when another employee wheeled another cart from the factory.

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