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“I’ll be out in five. Tell him to chill.”
“Dunno if he can do that. The guy’s another level of intense.” He chuckles. “I know I weren’t down with him being brought on board right to SAA with no prospecting to speak of, but I gotta say, the kind of attitude and commitment he’s rocking is exactly what we need in our SAA.”
“He’s impressed you, yeah?” Ax says, with that know-it-all tone of his.
“Wouldn’t go that far. I’m just liking what I’m seeing, is all.”
“Severe bastard,” I comment.
“Learned from the best, didn’t I?” He grins at me. “You wanna get a drink before you head out?”
“I ain’t heading out. Char’s meeting me up here in a few.”
“We got time then.”
“Yeah,” I say, starting for the door.
“One!” Ax calls out. “One drink, Dealer. No more. You’re on mission real soon.”
I hold up my hand. “I’m good.”
“It ain’t you. It’s Mullet. I know how he gets.”
“I can drink all you bastards under the table, no worries.” He tells me, “He’s still pissed about me doing it with him a couple of months back.”
That pulls me up short and I eye Ax. “You got pissed drunk?”
“More like slobbering drunk, took three of us to get him up to his old room to sleep it off for the night.”
Damn, that ain’t like Ax at all.
He picks up on my concern and waves his hand dismissively, telling me, “A night off gone wrong, that’s all.”
When I move to push it, he grasps the door and ushers us through. “I got an email to get out, then I gotta meet with Tanner. Later, boys.”
He closes the door, literally shutting me out.
When this mission’s over, there won’t be none of that.
I won’t back down.
The way things are looking, he damn well needs me not to.
* * *
“Gotta tell you,Dealer, never thought I’d live to see the day where Thorns would be thriving without gun and drug running.” He takes a pull from his beer bottle. “It’s construction contracts now and above-board business deals and investments.” He smiles to himself. “Striking a balance between being a well-oiled business machine and keeping true to club life… Ax has pulled it off. Damn, the kid’s got one hell of a knack for it.”
“He does, yeah. Doing hella well. Don’t let him hear you call him a kid, though. He hates that.”
“You’re the only one who gets away with it.”
“I gotta deal with the old man shit in return.”
“He’ll always be a kid compared to us.”
“With Char coming back into my life, it sometimes feels like twenty years back again, like all those years weren’t wasted with me stuck off the grid.”
“I got a habit of doing it myself, but don’t dwell on all that past bull. It’s toxic and it don’t do nobody good. We made the decisions we did and nothing can change them.”
