Page 89 of Shaken Knot Stirred

I twisted to look back at Beg, face down in a sludgy puddle of sick.

“We’re not doing anything about Beg?” I asked.

“No. We never even have to think about him again.”

Lana’s eyes shot wide and then a smile bloomed on her face. All the white drained from her aura, replaced by a rosy pink.

Chapter 49

Nico

I shut the door softly behind me, tucking the phone into my pocket. It was one of the new “poor little rich boy” rules, as Moxie dubbed it. Star really hated it when we were on our phones when we were together. I couldn’t disagree seeing as managing the Pax and Hotel Pantheon threatened to take over our lives.

Lana and Star were side by side, examining the massive canvas they’d spread out on the floor of the living room. They were bonding over art. Going to galleries and touring private collections. They had now moved on to making art themselves.

I slid my arm around Lana’s waist from behind. She jumped slightly and then settled back into me. Repairing our relationship was slow going, but we were making progress.

“I don’t know, more blue maybe,” she said, tilting her head.

They had said it was an impressionist take on a beach scene. To me, it just looked like different colors of blue and green splashed together. Beautiful. But what did I know about art?

We all turned at the sound of the door. Moxie had a half a dozen shopping bags weighing her down. Star snorted. Money was a constant fight between the two of them. Moxie was reluctant to spend any money that she hadn’t earned herself. Star was insistent that there was no “mine” and “yours” in a pack.

With biting us, Star fulfilled his Knightbridge destiny and got full access to his inheritance. Stocks, bonds, the Hotel Pantheon, an obscene amount of wealth. We got the Pax, too. Beg had been not too smart financially. He’d put the Pax, his only asset, in the pack’s name, not his own. So, when Star took his pack, he got the Pax. He immediately put it in a pack trust with all of us as equal beneficiaries. It was all pack property, not Star’s. Moxie was having problems coping with the fact that she didn’t have to work and could spend as much money as she wanted.

Work was another touchy subject, one that Star was having problems coping with.

I had taken over the Pax and purged the staff. We were still closed as we made changes. Lana and I spent a lot of time talking about how to run it more ethically. We would still have fight nights, but we wanted to make it safer and remove all of Beg’s sick games. We were planning on a massive renovation to turn the grungy warehouse into a multipurpose event space.

Lana was considering moving over to Hotel Pantheon. Star wanted the general manager out and was trying to coax Lana into that role. She didn’t think she could do the job. Moxie said itwas a confidence issue, and we needed to give her time to figure out how amazing she was.

Star was also floundering a bit. He had never really had a job, not a traditional one. He didn’t really have a role to play at either the Pax or Pantheon. He joked that he should just wash dishes at the Delta Lounge.

We all drove up to the Delta Lounge a few weeks ago to help Moxie settle up there. Star’s lawyers had fixed all the deed and tax issues so that Moxie could turn over the bar to Marty and Helena. She cleaned out her trailer, donating almost everything to a local thrift store. She didn’t want to go back to bartending, at least not right away. She was having long lunches with Aria, the paragon, discussing what an “auracle consulting firm” might look like. Minus all the scams she’d been brought up on, of course.

We were figuring it out and finding ourselves.

Moxie dropped her bags next to the counter. Lana slid away from me to go investigate. They were mostly from Cuddle Puddle, a high end nest shop. We had moved into Star’s penthouse the night of the fight. Moxie had insisted we each have a bedroom, saying that having private space was healthy for a pack. Star insisted she make the fifth bedroom a nest and trick it out however she wanted. She had never had a proper nest before and was paralyzed with indecision. Last week, Star had bought a giant round bed to hopefully give her inspiration.

“Okay, so new plan,” she declared. We all traded looks.

“Does this plan involve murder?” Star asked, holding back a smile.

“No.”

“Poison?” I asked.

“No.”

“Throwing people down stairs?” Lana said, pulling out a fuzzy blanket from one of the bags and nuzzling it.

“Oh, for fuck’s sakes, no.” Moxie tossed her phone and keys on the counter and put her hands on her hips. “We’re all going to have sex.”

Silence gripped the room. Star leaned forward, squinting at her. “I’m sorry, what?”

“We all,” Moxie made a circling motion to include all of us, “have to have sex.”

And we braced ourselves for a ramble. We discovered that when Moxie was feeling vulnerable, her mouth ran and ran.

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