Page 36 of The Princess & the Prospect

The fucker still had a hard time being nice to Ever no matter how much everyone pointed out that he had been wrong about the way he had treated her. I was starting to see that maybe Merc and Double-D had been weeding out their problem children in the club slowly, but surely. A brother named PeeWee had been ousted from the club shortly after everything blew up with Ever when it came out that he’d said some pretty heinous things to her, including threats that involved the shit he’d do to her sexually. She had still been underage when he made those threats. He had also been stealing from the coffers over at one of the strip clubs, and no second chances were given. He was stripped of his kutte and all Aces High insignia. Crow apparently wanted a smoother transition away from trouble and had offered to leave when asked. At least he was somewhat intelligent.

“We’ll be glad to have you down here, brother,” Crusher told him. “We could use some seasoned vets who were around when we were all knee deep in shit and learning to swim with the flies or drown in it.”

“Yeah, bunch of these kids now don’t know what it means to fly the 1% patch. Aside from dirty club snatch, they’ve never had a chance to get their hands in it. Especially these green mother fuckers here,” Crow taunted.

“No need to,” I explained quickly. “Army life taught me all I ever needed to know about how to kill and survive at all costs. What did it teach you?” Crow had been in the military for a short time, but he had been Coast Guard, never served overseas, and was stationed almost solely at a base in northeastern North Carolina until he got out after his first enlistment and moved to Charleston.

“Let’s go check this place out,” Crow called out, ignoring my question completely. I hated men who bragged about shit when they hadn’t been in the heat of anything more than a club whore’s pussy – to borrow his own analogy.

The setup wasn’t something any club brother could complain about. “Fuck, it’s better than what we’re currently using back home,” Crusher echoed my own thoughts. “There’s a lot of building potential here too considering the trucks won’t be everywhere.”

“It’d probably be a smart idea to get a garage in out by the street side. There’s enough room to have the custom ride shop some of the men have been talking about,” Crow put in. I just bet he would want that available wherever he ran off to. He was a decent mechanic, but he wasn’t custom ride worthy. I wasn’t even certain he was trainable beyond what he already knew. Not that he wasn’t intelligent enough, just that his own stubborn bullshit would get in his way. That wasn’t going to stop him from wanting a larger piece of the club pie that the custom shop would bring in. Profits from club businesses were put into a pool and split amongst the brothers of the club. Officers took a higher percentage, then the rest would be divided equally amongst the rest of the regular members. The men in the chapters where the businesses were earning higher than others were given bonuses based on those higher percentages because they usually worked hands on with those businesses to make them a success.

That was another reason why we were here. Even though the Tallahassee Chapter had gotten themselves on the hook for the decade of gun-running, that shit was bringing in profit too which meant we all had to do our part to support them since we all saw a piece of the pie.

The men looked over the property more in depth while Kane and I sat out by the roadway keeping watch for anyone who may seem a little too interested in what we were doing. The property wasn’t the only reason we were here. On the way back, we would end up pushing Kane’s bike into a box truck with some precious cargo and scooting to Charleston where it was going to be picked up. Even though I knew a part of my club pay came from it, I wasn’t a fan of running the guns. The last thing I needed was to get pinched for gun running before I could straighten things out with Anna and see our baby born.

“Mind if I ask something?”

Kane’s attention moved from the horizon to me and back again before he tipped his chin up. “Ask away.”

“Why are you prospecting? I thought you guys over at Permanent Marks hated the club on Ever’s behalf.”

“She’s part of the club despite what happened to her, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, she is, but her biological family is club. Her husband is too. It’s kind of hard to walk away from that.”

He nodded his head once. “Well, Deck made me hopeful the whole club wasn’t full of morons who treated little girls poorly,” he teased. “Seems I was right about that, and besides you have to admire hardened men who can bow down and admit they’re wrong. I enjoy the open road too, and don’t exactly fit in with the rest of polite society here in the south. Seems these are my people. At least they are if I get through this bullshit prospecting period. Gotta say, not enjoying that part so much.”

“What? Say it ain’t so? You don’t actually like cleaning up used condoms off the floor after a party or the nasty bathrooms after some of those fuckers explode their guts out?”

“Jesus, what is wrong with that one guy?” I furrowed my brow just as he said, “Tuesdays are the worst.”

I laughed then. “You’re talking about Grit, and his wife thinks Taco Tuesday is something of a holiday, never to be missed. The rest of us think Grit could do without the bean burritos though. She always sends him to the clubhouse afterward too. Damn near the only night he doesn’t stay home with her these days. Three guesses as to why she encourages that.”

Kane laughed. “Smart woman.”

“You do know the policy about messing around with another brother’s woman, right?”

Kane turned a critical eye on me then. “I have no interest in any of the brother’s women.” We both sat silently contemplating that. “Does that extend past death?” He finally asked.

“I think that depends on the circumstances. No one would begrudge the woman moving on, and it’d be damn hard for a club woman to move on in a different lifestyle if she’s been in it a long time.” I shrugged. “I don’t think there’s any hard or fast rule against it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“It is.”

“You know, knocking a brother off to get his woman wouldn’t be looked upon favorably though,” I added with a hint of laughter in my voice. Kane threw his back and laughed heartily at that.

“That’s good to know too,” he grinned at me as the other men finally came outside. “Not that I planned to do that, but just in case you don’t get your shit together where Anna is concerned, you might want to think about how some of the younger brothers look at her. Neil hasn’t shut up about the night she sat at the bar.”

“Neil?”

“One of the other prospects,” he informed me. “Though, I don’t really see you having to worry about that guy. He’s a bit too soft for the life. Surprised he made it this long.”

“You sound like you know a little more about club life than you’re letting on.”

“My Uncle used to run with the Renegades in North Carolina. Any time we’d go up to visit, he also dropped me by their club to get my fill of bikes. Probably helped my sister’s case a bit too when she became best friends with Ever. My mom nearly had a fit about her daughter hanging out with that kind of girl, at first. Then she met Ever and fell in love with her. She wishes Ever could have gone to college with Erin. My little sister has been partying and getting into a little trouble over there at USC. I’m going to end up making a trip to Columbia to straighten her ass out before she flunks out of school.”

“Well, damn. You’re making me thankful I don’t have a sister.”

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