Page 27 of Ruin
I wonder if I’m going to get a call when the check clears. Or maybe he’ll be so angry that he’ll show up on my doorstep. Or maybe he just won’t give a fuck because he knows it’s the least he can do. Or maybe he doesn’t have the funds at all and it’ll bounce. No, that won’t happen. I know him well enough to know he wouldn’t allow it.
Once that check clears, hopefully by the end of the week, I won’t have to worry about Lucian ever again. It’ll be done with him for good. The charity is over, and there is no more ten-year anniversary bullshit.
He and I are done. I took my retribution for the years of hurt. Now I can finally move on and let it all go.
Honestly, he’s probably back in Boston by now, so if he has something to say about the check, he’ll call and complain. There’s no way he’ll show up on my doorstep. What could he even do about it now? Yell at me a little? I’d love that. He’s never done it once in all the years I’ve known him.
I pull into the clubhouse parking lot and head inside. The energy level is through the damn roof, the tension so high I can feel it on my skin.
I fucking hate this place.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Had you been here first thing, you’d know,” Prez spits out.
I raise a brow. “I was delivering a check to the school,” I respond.
Morning’s are better for me. The day hasn’t gotten under my skin yet, and I can tolerate more, so I tend to be nicer.
“Which I told you not to fucking worry about,” he snaps back.
This guy is a prick. He’s going to earn himself a bullet through the eyes while he’s sleeping. One of us is gonna do it. Pretty sure my brother has thought about it. We can’t be the only two hoping for this asshole’s demise to the point we’re planning it ourselves.
“Take it fucking easy,” my brother warns as I step forward.
Gritting my teeth, I turn toward the rest of the guys who are sitting around the long table that separates the living room area from the kitchen.
Prez’s phone rings, he glances at it, frowns, then gets up from his seat.
“Someone catch him up.” He walks down the hall and a moment later, his door slams.
“You two need to take it easy with him,” Grizz says.
“Like fuck I do,” my brother and I say at the same time.
“Just tell me what is going on,” I add.
“The Iron Runners got over our side of the border last night. Made it all the way to the third row of defense.”
“Are they dead?” I ask.
“Of course they’re fucking dead,” Rhino says. “But now the guys over the border want us to put more people on our lines since we’re the ones who let them in.”
“Are we going to pull them out of our asses?” I bark.
“He wants us to find some recruits.” Rhino shrugs, leaning back in his chair.
“Recruits? For the club?” I ask.
“No,” Grizz says. “Just low key guys we can pay to watch the lines.”
I look around the room, at all the guys in this club. There are ten of us with Prez. Haven’t really been much bigger either. This chapter of HMMC is small. Always has been.
There have been a lot of changes since our fathers died and this new asshole has taken over. Not sure what he thinks he has to prove, but he’d be better off doing it somewhere else. It’s clear he doesn’t care about this club, so I can’t figure out what the hell he’s doing here.
This town is small, and the club was put together by our grandfathers to protect the townspeople because of the shit we get over having direct access into the border. Everyone wants a piece of it.
No, it isn’t legally our job to make sure people don’t get through, but we use the border to get products to sell. Sure, it’s illegal shit, a little of this and a little of that, but it’s nothing terrible. We don’t deal in drugs and we don’t deal in trafficking. What we get from them is how we make our money; it’s how we survive out here.
