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An old brown wrecker, needing just as much work, was parked next to the house. Sitting beside it, an older Harley.
However, the bike didn’t need any work. It was striking and in perfect condition, which meant someone had dumped a lot of money into it to restore it.
Trip. Because a true biker would make sure his sled was top notch before anything else. He could live in the biggest shithole, have no other transportation and could even be starving, but he’d forgo the rest of life’s comforts to have a great bike.
Stella shook her head. Fucked up priorities.
Well, she had no room to judge. The bar, the apartment above it and her vehicle all needed a lot of work, too. Her father had run the bar into the ground during the last year or so he was alive. Stella had told him he should sell it and live out his remaining days burden-free, but he refused, stating the bar was his life and he was going to die in it.
Which he did.
A regular of Crazy Pete’s had called the police to do a welfare check on him when the front door remained locked during normal business hours. One of the officers found Pete sitting on one of the stools, slumped over the bar. A half-drunk beer sat in front of him and a burned-out Marlboro was found in the ashtray near his cold, lifeless hand.
He died doing what he liked, she guessed. Problem was, he died alone.
He wasn’t supposed to be smoking or drinking but Pete had been a stubborn old fuck and hadn’t listened to the doctors.
By the time they caught his lung cancer, he was stage four and it had already spread.
So, in the end, not smoking and drinking wouldn’t change the outcome. Max Bryson, the Chief of Police, had called her to give her the bad news, saying he believed Pete knew it was his time and wanted to leave the Earth on his own terms.
She hadn’t had the best relationship with her father. Actually, not much of one at all. On a rare occasion they’d talk after her mother dragged her out of Manning Grove along with the rest of the ol’ ladies when everyone scattered.
All the kids she knew from the MC disappeared in different directions. All her friends in Manning Grove, not part of the MC, were left behind, too.
She and her mom started fresh.
Stella turned her head to look at the barn about two football field lengths away from the house.
She had to start fresh one too many times than she would’ve liked.
And now Trip was back.
In Manning Grove.
Making his own fresh start. But she wasn’t sure if he was doing it the right way.
When everything went down with the club twenty years ago, it destroyed a lot of families. Members ended up dead, as enemies, or in prison, and most never saw their families again.
Now the former president’s son wanted to take those broken pieces and attempt to patch them back together. The son of the man who had been the main cause of the Fury exploding like an M-80 in a mailbox.
She got out of her Jeep, grabbed what was sitting on her passenger seat—her excuse to go out to the farm—and heard what sounded like construction noises. Saws, hammers, voices of men in the distance.
But she saw no one out front. All the noise seemed to be coming from behind the barn.
As she took long strides in that direction, she wondered if Trip was even up yet. Maybe he was still in the house and it was just the construction crew working this early in the morning.
It was early for her, too. She usually closed the bar around two a.m. every morning and getting up at the ass crack of dawn was not something she enjoyed doing. But once the bar opened at eleven, she wouldn’t be able to get away since she was the only employee. She couldn’t afford to pay anyone else right now and there wasn’t enough business to get anyone to help out for only tips.
As she walked the length of the old barn, it was obvious where the new section started, which more than doubled the size of the original structure. The BFMC clubhouse was going to be pretty fucking epic. But she wondered if Trip was setting his sights too high.
Her own sight landed on a few men at the very rear of the building. The Amish could be seen working on the second floor, both from the open doorway at the top of the exterior steps and in the large picture windows that faced the field and woods behind the building.
Bet that was a nice view. Especially during sunset. Or a fresh snow.
A solid steel door on the lower level was also propped open and lights were on inside. Stella found it curious that the only windows in the barn and the new addition were on the second floor, all along the front, the sides and in the back. But the first floor? Nothing. The walls and doors also appeared solid.
