Page 6 of Bullet
“I hate to…” I sighed. “We’re doing better now that it’s just Bucky.”
Nick let out a long, deep sigh. “That doesn’t surprise me. It’s not just because Bucky is more charismatic, but I think Taylor was dipping into the supply. It wasn’t consistent, but on occasion, I would find we were getting less than I ordered. I’d ping-pong between who I had handle the coke, and whenever it was Bucky, not an issue, when it was Taylor, I was coming up short.”
I glanced up, letting my eyes peer at Nick over the top of my glasses. “How long did you suspect that?”
He held up a hand, nodding his head knowingly. “I know, I know. I should have said something, but I didn’t really have any proof beyond the hunch, and then before I could really dig into it too much, we had to start prepping for MiD. I had Bucky do those runs all himself with Texas and Jonesie so that we didn’t get fucked in the desert and then, well… it wasn’t an issue anymore.”
“Look, Nick, this isyourclub, and I’m in no position to tell you how to run it—”
“On the contrary,” Nick cut in, “you run the money. I may be President, but whoever has the money, has the power. You know that.”
“Well, I don’t really see it that way, but let me say this. We have potential to grow. You’ve been talking about it for years, adding officers, getting a facility of our own, but it won’t happen if you continue to side-step obvious shit like this.”
“Yeah.” Despite the fact that I was lecturing him, Nick developed a smile on his face. “I got it, Bullet. I’m gonna rein it in, I promise.”
“Good.”
He peered over. “So, we really have potential?”
“With the border runs going as well as they have been and Vil and Seth getting the product out the door like good car salesmen, yeah, we do. We could even be looking at something by the end of the year if we really wanted to,” I told him.
“Wow.”
“At least begin talking about it. Building something or buying something and having it remodeled.” I looked around the warehouse that was stacked, not only with our filing cabinets of paperwork, but with Hoppa’s bar supplies. “I’d appreciate an office.”
“Okay. Well, look at this...” Nick reached under the table, into the cubby where he kept all of his papers, and pulled a notebook out. He flipped it open to a page with a tree of boxes and arrows on it and turned it to face me. “I wanna start here.”
I tilted my head to the side as I read. It didn’t look like Nick’s handwriting. “What is this?”
“It’s Tess’ model.”
My eyes went wide as they shot up to look at Nick. “Really?” I wasn’t going to insult her to her dad’s face, but I honestly didn’t think she had that in her.
“Yeah. She knew I wanted to expand, and she was annoyed that I would never actually pull the trigger. This was among the stuff she was working on behind my back—wiley woman that one. I haven’t gone through most of her stuff yet, I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it, but I made it this far at least.”
My gaze drifted back down to the map, and it was all there. Twice as many officers as we usually had, higher salaries, and there were notes that seemed to refer to additional money sources as well. Nick may not have gotten through more of Tess’ plans, but they were definitely out there.
I… was impressed. “So, we wanna get up to twelve titles?”
“Yes. Pay-ins for those bottom two levels is pure income, because they get nothing out of it.” He pointed to the bottom two squares, inside of which the words “Friendly” and ‘Regular” were written. “It’s basically all the people that fucking pay around the Taphouse, and they can ‘donate’ to be able to say they have an affiliation. That fucking kid of mine, I swear.”
“Yeah, this…” I looked up at Nick with a smile. “This could work.”
“We’d need salaries for every officer, obviously, and the stipends for the members, which we’re seeing a return on anyway because of dues.”
I flipped through the pages of my books, looking at our trajectory for profit by the end of the year. “We could do this going into next year, Nicky.”
“For real?” he asked.
“For real.”
“How about you head it up, then?”
My eyes shot up to him. “What? Why would I do it? It’s something the new VP should do.”
“Exactly,” Nick said.
There was silence between us for a moment before I plainly said, “I’m not interested in being VP.”
