One
Porter
The hissing sound of the cracked beer beneath my fingertips made me sigh. But when I gazed down at the foam slowly rising to the top, I paused.
Brooks is gonna have your ass for this.
I drew in my first sober breath of the morning before bringing the can to my lips. I tilted my head back, chugging the carbonated alcohol down as it burned the back of my throat. I gulped half of it down before placing it on my bedside table, growling as the carbonation brought me out of my sleep-induced haze.
I needed to get back to the clubhouse.
I dragged my ass into the shower before throwing on the first pieces of clothing that my hands could find in the darkness. The lightbulbs in my ceiling fan needed to be changed. My dresser sat cockeyed against the wall on the other side of my apartment bedroom. But I didn’t give a shit.
I never gave a shit when I drank.
After throwing back the last of my morning beer, I slid my bike helmet over my head. One beer wouldn’t kill me on my bike. Hell, at one point in my life I could’ve thrown back half a case and still driven home just fine.
Yeah, and Gage almost beat your ass for it.
I ground my teeth together as I made my way out the door. I didn’t even bother locking my apartment, either. It wasn't as if I owned anything of value other than my bike. All I had in that small one-bedroom apartment were my clothes, some bullshit furniture, and two towels.
One to dry my ass with, and one to use while I washed that one.
Just as I threw my leg over my bike, my phone rang in my back pocket. I groaned as I slid it out, listening to the Bluetooth connection in my helmet kick on.
“Text message from Chops. Read message?”
I sighed. “No.”
Chops: Church in thirty. Get your asses in gear. We got lots to discuss.
I rolled my eyes and slid my phone back into my pocket. I cranked my engine and revved it a few times, making sure to piss off the neighbors real good. I loved it when people got mad at me for my bike. Watching them get riled up over shit like that fueled my boredom whenever I felt myself slipping back down into the rabbit hole.
And no, one beer didn’t mean I was back down in my rabbit hole.
“Damn Brooks, always blowing things out of proportion,” I murmured.
With the push of my feet, I took off toward the clubhouse. I rolled through yellow lights and kicked it into gear so I wouldn’t get caught at any of Santa Cruz’s main intersections. I didn’t want Chops punishing me for being two minutes late like fucking last time.
Two minutes late, and I had to inventory and spit shine all of our fucking weapons every damn day for a week.
I wasn’t sure what I expected from this church meeting, either. I mean we all practically knew what Chops was up to. We weren’t sure how we felt about the recording Raven took since things were still pretty vague. It gave us a hell of a lot of information to work with, but it also didn’t do a lot of incriminating. Sid—before Brooks blew him up—apparently had a way with talking around things. And while we could assume most of what—and who—he was talking about, that didn’t give us any traction with any of our police contacts to do anything about this shit.
However, when I rolled up into the clubhouse, it seemed the party had started without me.
“You’re a fucking lunatic!” Brooks roared.
Tanner tried to hold him back, and I raced to his side as Chops fired back. “You don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Move,” I murmured.
Tanner stepped off to the side and Brooks tried to charge Chops, but I wrapped my arms around him. I physically picked him up, turned him around, and pointed him toward the fridge when I set him down. And when he whipped around on me, his eyes as big and as bright as the fucking morning sun, I sighed.
“Dude, cut that shit out. I haven’t even had coffee yet,” I hissed.
Brooks wrinkled his nose. “I smell your party has started early, though.”
I glared at him. “It’s just one beer, get off my damn back.”
“Chops! No!” Cole exclaimed.
I turned around and saw our president charging toward me, heading for Brooks. He might as well have been charging me. Brooks reached over my shoulder with his fist, ready to deck the guy as he got closer, but I put my arms out and refused to let the two of them duke it out like this.
“Why don’t you show me the kind of man you really are, huh?” Chops growled.
Brooks snickered. “Don’t worry, your true colors will come shining through no matter what.”
How much does Chops know about what we know?
Chops turned around as I peeked at Brooks behind me. I shot him a look that told him to shut the fuck up, then I stepped off to the side. Chops’ eyes ran down my body before he turned his back on us, gazing out toward the rest of the crew.
Who looked like they were two seconds away from imploding on themselves.
“All right, this is gonna be quick so I want you to listen up. I don’t give a shit what the hell happened with those Black Flag fuckers this past weekend. Your job is to not make shit harder with them than we already have it. All right?”
Brooks scoffed behind me. “What a crock of shit.”
Chops whipped around. “What was that?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. He was just talking to me.”
Chops nodded slowly. “Well, why don’t you share with the rest of the class?”
Brooks and Chops stared one another down and I honestly thought I was going to have to kill one of them to keep them from fighting each other. But Brooks kept his composure and I was honestly proud of him.
“What do you suggest we do then, Chops?” Brooks asked.
Maybe a bit too harshly, but at least he asked.
Chops chewed on the inside of his cheek. “I’m in the process of working with them to get new contracts for us to work on. You can’t deny that they’ve got a corner of the marketplace that we want.”
Cole shook his head. “I thought we decided no prostitution, though.”
Chops rolled his eyes. “Not that, you imbecile. Car parts.”
I blinked. “Since when do the Black Flags deal with cars?”
Chops looked at me with a dumbfounded look on his face. “Ever since they wanted to steal our territory. Didn’t you ever wonder why they wanted our zones in the first place?”
Archer clicked his tongue. “It makes sense, but I haven’t heard of any deals they’ve been doing lately.”
Chops turned his back to me to face him. “That’s because they aren’t stealing cars off the streets. They’ve tapped into the local mechanics shops. Chop yards. Shit like that. They’re undercutting our prices selling bullshit parts to our clients, and I don’t like it.”
I shrugged. “We could just kill them.”
Chops slowly turned back around and stared me dead in my eye. “Despite how Hyde ran things at one point, I don’t always want to resort to violence with shit like this. If we can do a deal with the Black Flags, we can negotiate keeping them out of our fucking territory and we can get them to stop undercutting us and stealing our damn clients.”
Finn finally piped up for the first time since I’d gotten there. “I mean you did bring up the idea of prostitution, so it’s not a far stretch to think that taking out an entire MC is okay.”