Page 1 of The Deals We Make
1
VEX
“Uncle Vex?”
I look down at Avery, my Iron Outlaws brother Bates’s little girl. “What’s up, peanut?”
She climbs up onto the barstool next to me, ignoring the New Year’s Eve party swirling around us.
The clubhouse is full, the rock music is loud, and the single brothers have been put on notice by Niro that if he sees any of them doing any shit that’s even PG-13 with club girls in front of Avery, he’ll slit their throats.
“What are invest-i-ments?”
I grin. “Investments?”
“Yeah. Those.”
“It’s when you take a hundred bucks and use it to buy into something, like a company. And if the company does well, they give you more than a hundred bucks back.”
Her eyes narrow. “How much more?”
I shrug. “That’s the problem. You don’t know. They might even make a loss. So, they only give you ninety of your hundred bucks back.”
Her mouth opens, and little lines form across her nose. “They steal your money?”
“No. It’s like, they used those hundred bucks to make more money and it didn’t quite work, so they can’t give it all back. Or, sometimes, it works so well, they give you lots of money back. Why do you ask?”
“I overheard Uncle Switch tell Uncle Clutch that you’re really good at making him money.”
She’s not wrong. Neither is Switch. I’m a goddamn genius. Plus, I wrote and run a little code to trade foreign currencies off against one another. “That’s fair. I am.”
At this, she grins and shrugs her panda backpack off her shoulders. “Is there a hundred bucks in here?”
We all know what the panda backpack holds. Every time Niro swears around her, he pays her five bucks. At one point, she was saving for a dog. Don’t know what the fuck happened to that, but I heard Bates’s old lady, Vi, is allergic.
And Avery never lets anyone look inside her backpack. Bates is worried it’s going to need its own security detail eventually because of how much cash is stuffed into it.
“You want me to count it for you?” I glance around to see where Bates and Vi are and find them dancing together, but Bates’s eyes are on his daughter.
“She okay?” I can’t hear his words over the music, but I catch his drift.
I nod. “I got her.”
Bates grins and looks back at Vi, causing a ripple of envy to pass through me. Those two have something real fucking special. The kinda special that keeps you warm on a winter’s night and lasts forever.
I suppose the benefit of being single is knowing no girl can ever break your heart.
“Okay,” I say, grabbing a cloth that sits on top of the bar. “Lesson one about money. You gotta respect it and be grateful for it.” I wipe the bar top down until it’s dry.
“I said thank you to Uncle Colton for the money.”
“Good girl. Now, open panda up.”
When she does, fives spill out all over the bar top. Some are crumpled, some folded, all are bent. “Ave,” I say. “Girl. We gotta take better care of the notes than this. Let’s unfold them all and lay them flat, yeah?”
Avery kneels up on the stool. “I have so much money, Uncle Vex.”
“I can see.” I mean, there might even be a grand here. Maybe more. I slip my glasses on so I can see what I’m doing. “What are you going to do with it?”
