Page 6 of Truck

“Okay, Truck,” Ian quickly responds as he heads toward the truck. Spencer and Robert are only three steps behind him. Once they’ve taken off, I walk around noting what we’ve achieved today and how much we still have to do.

My phone rings and taking it out of my jeans pocket I see it’s Rum. “Hi, Rum.”

“Hi, Truck. I’ve gotten a lot done today. I placed an advertisement for staff in the Post Office on Main Street and on the notice board at Mrs. Willoughby’s grocery store. I even twisted Charles' arm at the hardware store to place a notice behind the counter.” I chuckle because Charles is renowned for being a grouchy bastard.

“Did you get the paint we needed for the office?” I hope so because I can set the prospects on that chore tomorrow.

Rum snaps, “Of course I did. For the storeroom and the store area. I didn’t get for the restrooms because I wasn’t sure what you had in mind.”

“I’ll pay you for all the paint. Bring the receipts, and I will hand them to Coin. I’ll ask him for a fuckin’ card so we can use it when we need to get stuff. We shouldn’t have to keep using our own money for this place.”

“Okay, no problem. I have the receipts for everything, and I’ll bring them all in the morning.”

Before more can be said, I look up at the sound of bikes approaching. “Talk tomorrow, Rum.” I don’t wait for a reply. I shove my phone back into my pocket and wait for Pres and Cap who have turned into the gas station frontage.

Once they are both parked, I step closer and ask what’s going on. Pres smirks and I’m thinking holy shit what the hell is he smiling at.

“I wanted to check out how much you had done. I’m going to leave the three prospects with you for now, Truck. Bull said there is a hell of a lot of shit to get cleared away, and Judge said you are going to need a few more dumpsters to clear it all away.” Pres says all this as he passes me and enters what will be the convenience store area of the business.

“We have all the shelving down in the store area, and the office is a blank canvas apart from filing cabinets and two desks. The desk chairs were broken, so they went into the dumpster. But the desks we can sand down and varnish,” I start to relay what we have been getting done, but Pres puts his hand up to stop me from speaking.

“Ditch them too. Everything, ditch everything. We’ll start with a clean slate, Truck. How is Rum getting along?” Pres calms his aura somewhat, and his president voice becomes his Tracker voice. Anyone who knows him, or us for that matter, knows that our Pres has two personas. One is the hard-ass President who takes no prisoners, and the other is Tracker the man, still a hard-ass but has a softer side underneath. We’ve all seen it over the years, and more so since Cilla came along. He shows that side of him especially when he’s stolen Ayla from her parents. Cilla finds that highly amusing. Finger? Not so much.

“Do you need more help than the three prospects, Truck?” Cap asks, speaking for the first time.

“I don’t think so. We got a lot done today, and between us we worked like a well-oiled machine.” I grin more to myself than to Cap. “If I can keep them for now, that would help me get things moving. Rum is doing the paperwork side while I do the manual labor. He is also working closely with Coin and Keys, so I’m not worried about that side of things. I, or should I say we, are very lucky that he has come aboard. Just so you know, Pres, it was his dead wife that got him here.”

“Cilla?” Tracker asks with a fuck-off huge smirk on his face.

I reply with a chuckle. “Yeah, Cilla,”

For the next thirty minutes or so, I walk around the building talking to Tracker and Cap about changes that need to be made, what work needs to be completed first, and how long it may take to get everything done.

“How about we speak with Xero?” Cap rubs his chin in thought. “They are no longer in official service, so out on a limb. I can try to pull them in to help, and you never know, we may get some more decent brothers.”

Tracker grunts in a form of approval, while I nod because any extra pairs of hands are good as far as I’m concerned. “Yeah, ‘cause I’m going to need employees here, and they need to be employees I can trust. Rum has put out some vacancy ads, but you never know who will turn up interested in a job.”

“Try contacting him and see what kind of reception you get,” Tracker says as he walks out of the building and towards his bike. “We are all servicemen. It doesn’t matter what team we were on, we all bled and nearly died for the same reasons. Let’s see if we can pull them in, along with the crew that is building our houses. We lost a lot of brothers when I cleaned up, and we lost eight good ones to the Satan’s Guardians MC.”

“Yeah, we did, Pres,” Cap agrees. “I’ll do my best to get these three on board to help Truck. They would be reliable, Truck, and that would take some pressure off you.”

“Thanks, Cap. I’ll see you later. I want to do a few more things here before I leave.”

I watch them leave before turning back to the building, and allowed myself a moment before my mind catalogued all that still had to be done.

Chapter 4

AURORA (Rory)

As I walk through the house before handing over the keys to the realtor's office, I smile at the memories that flood my mind. Breakfasts where laughter was the start of the day. Evenings spent snuggling before the TV before heading to bed with my husband of three years, who I loved beyond measure. Now he’s gone.

Terrence went to work and never made it home. He had a defective valve in his heart, and we were waiting for the operation date. The heart valve ruptured, and he died almost instantly. His best friend, Samuel, who he worked alongside, said his last word was my name.

I miss him so badly, but he told me if this happened, I had to move along with my life. How do you move along when your heart no longer has a reason to beat?

Parking the rental truck in the driveway of the house, I take a deep breath and close my eyes for a moment. I feel like I left my life behind, but I know this is what I have to do to move on. I have been without Terrence for a year, and it’s taken that time for me to be able to do as he asked me to, which was to sell the house and move away from his family.

His mother, Dorothy, and his father, Kenneth, are not my favorite people. They tried to rule Terrence’s life, and when he walked away to marry me, they did all they could to make our lives miserable. It failed, and they even tried to challenge the will, which made me want to leave them far behind.