Page 97 of Biker's Tribute: Property of Bear

After kissing Amanda, I don’t care what happens. If I had things my way, I would skip the whole social affair and take her straight to the airport hotel for a night of pleasure before we fly out to Jackson Hole. Amanda refuses to deviate from the plan.

If my wife wants dancing – she gets dancing. Plus, my wedding gift should be waiting for us at the reception.

Our limo ride takes us to the venue for our reception, where my present awaits.

When we burst through the double doors together, Mallory doesn’t stick to the plan.

“I’m HERE!” she screams, bursting out of the white box early and sprinting across the dancefloor into Amanda’s arms. It wasn’t safe for her to come to the wedding with her Pittsburgh mob family potentially tracking our movements around Boston, but I worked with the Irish mobsters to sneak her into the reception via a gigantic white box – Aiden Murray’s idea.

I don’t know where he found a human-sized box but… not my place to ask questions.

Mallory and Amanda’s screaming nearly shatters the sound barrier but… I would let Amanda burn the whole city down if I thought it would make her happy. She’s my wife. My old lady…my everything.

She even agreed to a tattoo at our next club meeting. The least I could do is let her have her fun with Mallory.

The DJ starts the music, our family and friends arrive, and the dancing starts. I have to convince Mallory that I’m the one who should get the first dance with Amanda, but I have my physical size on my side, so I pull my wife away from a much-needed first dance with her body pressed against mine.

My one song request for the evening isTennessee Whiskeyby Chris Stapleton and as the perfect lovesong plays, I hold Amanda close to my chest and promise her…

“I love you, baby. I love you and that will never change.”

“I love you too, big bear,” she whispers.

I smile. I don’t think she knows that’s so similar to what my mom calls me. But it feels right coming from her lips. I kiss the top of her forehead, wondering what deal with the devil I made to deserve the kind of luck it would take to end up with a woman like this one.

* * *

Thirty-Eight

Magnum

I’m drunk at eight a.m. again. Never good to get drunk that early in the day. I can’t help it. I have too many numbers whirling around in my head and a long ride out to the clubhouse which I have to get started by noon. The Rebel Barbarians quarterly meeting starts in a couple days, and we have several boring discussions planned before someone inevitably asks me to find an empty spot in one of my real estate holdings.

I’m lucky. I gambled once, won big, and never looked back. Never caught the bug, even if ironically, I was babysitting grown ass Owen Shaw at an old Indian casino fifty miles or so from the old club house.

I swear the Shaws lack sense, because I “babysat” that grown man at the casino while I was fifteen years old and I swear that night I out-drank and out-gambled him.

At fifteen years old, I took $10,000 and invested it in two single wide trailers outside our town in California. From there, I ended up owning the whole park at eighteen. Of course, I had to do a lot of shady business to get that accomplished before then.

But at eighteen, I had around $500,000 in real estate investments to mess around with and by the time I was twenty-five… somewhere around twenty-five million dollars. My net worth is in the range of three-hundred million. Not like it pays for people to know how much money you roll around in.

And I sacrificed. Most of the good old boys from my hometown have wives and kids. I don’t care for the shallow lip-filler obsessed women in Los Angeles. I never enjoyed those tarantula-feet eyelashes scratching all over my face. I’ve gone five years without touching a woman and while chastity has its drawbacks… As a rich man, I can assure you that there’s no price I wouldn’t pay to have peace of mind.

Fire ravaged part of the city. All my tenants got out okay, and I offered them similar rates at my other building in the Eastern part of Los Angeles, which they all accepted for the time being. But we have a lot of trouble ahead for California. It’s too dry. Too hot.

Maybe I need to follow Ethan Shaw out to Boston.

Maybe I wouldn’t get so frustrated by the shallow women greedy for money and fame.

I have all the money any man could ever want. I could do anything. But I feel stuck in California. Well, I did until the fires woke me up to the fragility of my life and everyone else’s. I helped the people I could but… what about my future?

Do I really want to burn out here in the desert, having made nothing of myself but millions? You can’t take that money with you. I might not be as religious as a Blackwood, but it’s just the damn truth.

I end up drinking a little more before I start the ride out East to the clubhouse. The new place looks great, better now that Wyatt stopped gambling long enough to save up and invest in repairs, a new stable for the bikes, and a garage where he currently employs Oske’s brothers, Chitto and Nokose.

They’re getting good with repairing the bikes and chances are they can earn the club some money instead of costing us. Wyatt offered to cover their legal fees for a few charges they picked up in Kansas and in Iowa, but he only did it if they agreed to work and sign their names in blood to the club.

Ruger will run their initiation next quarterly meeting. This time, we just drink and get to initiate the new boys.

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