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Winking at her, Alyssa whispered, “Shifty. I definitely like that in a new friend.”
Taking another sip of her drink, Tiffany decided to keep the whole setting-Ace-up shenanigans under wraps for the time being. “I applied for a job at Reynolds Medical.”
“Good for you,” Alyssa praised. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. Getting my career back on track seems like a good idea for me. Hanging around the clubhouse was fine for the short term, but it’s no kind of life.”
“I noticed they had a spot open for a receptionist. If you want to fill out their online application, I can talk you up when I go for my interview,” Tiffany offered.
“Thanks. It’ll probably take all the help I can scrounge up. I’ve been out of the workforce for a while, so I’ll probably need to brush up on my skills.”
“I don’t know much about being a receptionist, but I’ll help in any way I can.”
Alyssa nodded. “If we end up working, we’ll both be pretty busy.”
“I know. It would be great if we both got hired. We could ride together and have lunch together. It would make working in a new environment more bearable for me.” That was the truth. Tiffany always found work more tolerable when she had someone who understood and could blow off steam with.
“Me too. I have some social phobias.”
“We all have something. I suppose they’re not the worst thing to have though.”
“You’re right about that. I had a friend with some kind of panic disorder, and she couldn’t even make herself leave her house.”
“That’s rough,” Tiffany said sympathetically. “Sometimes, I meet people like that and can see myself getting to that point if I really let myself go. I tend to just lock my worries away in a dark little corner of my mind and leave them there. Every now and then, it really catches up with me.”
Alyssa nodded her agreement. “I try to keep myself distracted, so I don’t dwell on stuff. It’s the only thing that really works for me.”
Tiffany’s thoughts drifted to Ryder. “Well, when the guys get out of their little meeting, I’ll have my favorite distraction.”
Lifting her glass, Alyssa murmured, “I’ll drink to that.”
~ Ryder ~
Sitting around the huge oval table, twenty men wearing cuts with Blind Jack MC patches got down to business.
Darkness broke the silence. “Let’s talk business first. Ven, dish the dirt.”
Ryder watched his father pull out a stack of papers and begin reading the club’s current financials.
“We have around two hundred grand in our account for the month after expenses from all our business enterprises. Our payouts will be roughly six grand each for the twenty of us. Our three prospects will get stipends of three grand each. The nine widows and orphans will get paid out one and a half grand each, for a total payout of thirteen and a half grand. A grand apiece will get put on the books for the three club members and two affiliates currently doin’ time for this quarter, for a total of five grand. That leaves roughly fifty-two and a half grand for operating expenses on our businesses. We have almost a half a million in the MC savings account for long-term expenses. We added another ten grand to the thirty in cash we have sitting in our safe here at the clubhouse. It’s looking like this month will be pretty standard in terms of pay and revenue.”
Darkness nodded his thanks. “Those are some comfortable numbers for each of us. Hickory has been looking at another business acquisition. I’ll have him talk to you about that.”
Hickory cleared his throat then and sat forward in his chair. “I’ve been running the numbers on a warehouse out near the river. It’s going for dirt cheap, and though businesses in this area don’t run a lot of merchandise up and down the river, we feel there is enough business to turn a nice profit. Darkness has also pointed out how owning this piece of property would enable us to move drugs and guns easier and with less risk as we’re still taking an occasional job. The staffing would be minimal, and we’d be looking to add storage units for rent to beef up the monthly income. It’s in line with our other operations in terms of being a low investment and relatively high yield.”
Ryder asked, “Wouldn’t adding a bunch of storage units draw unnecessary notice with people coming and going?”
“Possibly, but it would also give cover to our movements,” Hickory conceded. “It’s really half a dozen of one and six of another, in that regard. The area is also out of the city limits, and we know the county doesn’t have a strong police presence in our area. It’s perfect for our needs.”
Ryder listened intently as they went through every line item on their weekly agenda. They wrestled back and forth with a few issues and finally hit on the topic of most concern to him.
Darkness leaned forward. “We’ve had a motion put forth to vote on one Jeremy Strond, AKA Ace.” That hardened stare cut across the table. “Ryder, speak up for your man.”
Ryder stiffened a little. “Well, he ain’t my man exactly. We all know what his brother did, and we all know I gave him a dirt nap for his trouble. It’s true Ace did come gunnin’ for me, and we shot each other up…a couple of times, in fact. But we worked that shit out between the two of us.
“He’s only been prospecting for a short time, but he prospected with us for almost a full year before he ended up in the pen. He’s good people, strong as fuck, never talks about shit he shouldn’t with the wrong people, and with as many enterprises as we’ve got spread all around, we could sure use another brother in play,” he said, listing what he viewed as the man’s strong suits. “Running around here working for peanuts after doing a solid dime seems fucked up to me. We know he’s solid, so I’d like to request a vote on patching him.”
Darkness threw in his two cents worth. “He prospected under me before he did time. I thought he was good for our patch, and he ain’t done anything to make me change my mind on that account.” He glanced around the table. “I’ll need a second motion to bring this to a vote.”
Ven spoke up first, his words filled with venom. “I don’t like the fucker. He looks too much like his fucked-up brother to suit me.”
