Page 6

Six

Affectionate friends scare me. Why TF are you hugging me?

— Chevy to Doc

CHEVY

I was in love.

There was no other way to describe the feeling that I was experiencing at that moment in time.

“Dibs.”

I was already shaking my head. “Absolutely not. She’s mine.”

And had been for a while.

“You are full of shit.” Webber laughed, thinking I was joking.

I wasn’t.

The woman that was apparently somehow related to Aella started to struggle in my arms again, but I gave her a good shake and said, “Stop. You’re not getting free.”

She fought harder.

“She’s ruining my brand-new car!” she cried out. “You’re the worst daughter ever!”

She elbowed me in the gut and tried to break free again, but I stilled her fight easily with one hand.

“You should’ve thought about that before you pissed her off so bad,” Apollo muttered, surprising me with his sudden appearance.

I’d been so enraptured, watching everything else that was going on, that I didn’t notice the arrival of the other club members.

There was a large group now, watching it all.

Seeing as we were supposed to be in a church meeting right now, it made sense that they were all there.

But still.

I didn’t know that I liked them all watching Aella the way that they were.

Admiration in all of their eyes.

And lust.

The motherfuckers.

“Maybe we should stop her before she hurts herself,” I wondered as she suddenly produced a knife.

“If you stop her, I’ll never forgive you,” Copper muttered. “I’m really enjoying this.”

“That’s a sixty-thousand-dollar car!” the cleaning lady cried in my arms. “And you’re letting her ruin it!”

We all ignored her as we watched and waited for Aella to get herself under control.

It took a while.

It wasn’t until she punctured all four tires and moved to the trunk that she calmed down.

That’s when the woman I was holding in place started to struggle and struggle hard.

I let her go only for her to fall, and when she hit the ground, I stepped on her long hair to keep her in place.

She screamed when she tried to get up and couldn’t.

“Take this,” I said to Webber, jerking my head down to indicate the woman.

He replaced my foot with his, and then I walked over to the trunk to see what had Aella so frozen.

When I got to the back and saw, my heart skipped a beat.

“Holy fuck,” I said as I stared at all the cash.

To say that it was filled to the brim would be an understatement.

There was so much cash that when she’d opened the trunk, some of it had spilled out onto the ground.

I whistled in appreciation.

I had plenty of money.

But still, this kind of cash would tempt anyone.

“Webber, get over here,” I urged.

Webber came, and when he saw the money, his brows rose in surprise.

He turned back to the woman on the ground and said, “Whose money is this?”

Aella’s mother refused to answer.

Aella walked over to her mother and said, “Who did you take that from?”

“I didn’t take it from anybody,” she lied.

Aella pulled out her phone and toggled to a news app that covered the greater DFW area.

She stopped on something and then turned the phone around and showed it to her mother.

“You robbed a bank?” she cried.

“I didn’t!” The woman paused. “But I might’ve started dating someone that did. And he died from a gunshot wound, so I thought…why the fuck can’t I keep the money?”

When she put it like that…

“What I’m hearing is that you’re a disgusting piece of trash, and you can’t even stand by your man!” Aella crossed her arms across her chest and glared at her mother, who was writhing on the ground as she tried to reach out and catch a stray hundred-dollar bill.

“This money’s probably tracked in some way,” I said as I saw more money fly out of the trunk. “Why don’t you at least have this in bags?”

“Because the bags were marked.” The woman on the ground rolled her eyes, as if that was something we should know.

Listen, I might not be the best person in the world, but I prided myself in not stealing and not killing anyone that didn’t need killing.

Sure, I was a murderer. And sure, I’d done a lot worse than “stealing,” but I had some morals.

Apparently, my moral compass felt like robbing a bank was bad.

Now, did that mean if a pile of money from a bank robbery fell in my lap, I wouldn’t figure out a way to use that money?

No.

I’d definitely suggest donating all of that money to a good cause.

As if we were on the same wavelength, Aella said, “You know, I can’t morally keep this money. But I can donate it to a good cause.”

“Whoa,” Webber said as he dropped down to pick up a couple of hundos off the ground.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much money in my life,” came Doc’s careful words from behind me.

“That’s my money!” Aella’s mother screamed.

“Mother,” Aella said.

When Aella’s mother still didn’t calm down, she said, “Trini!”

Trini!

That was her name.

I couldn’t for the life of me recall it, but the moment Aella said it like a swear word, I remembered.

I’d always thought the name fit her.

She looked like a vindictive bitch, and I’d done my level best to stay away from her when she was in the building.

I’d had her stop cleaning my room a long time ago because it almost felt like she’d rolled herself in our clean sheets when she was done.

Not that I stayed at the clubhouse all that much.

Hell, I was at the hospital more than I was at home.

And I was at the clubhouse even less.

Working my ass off since I’d graduated medical school years ago became such a natural thing that I didn’t know how to stop now that I didn’t need the money.

When Copper had gone to jail, Keely, Cutter and I had made a pact that we’d save a specific portion of our incomes to help Copper when he got out of prison.

At the time, we were still fighting an uphill battle along with our grandfather to maintain control of my father’s company, and we weren’t sure if we’d get it or not.

When we finally won that, though, it’d become such an ingrained habit that we’d all kept at it anyway.

I supposed I could finally slow down, but what would be the point?

It wasn’t like I had anyone at home…

“There’s a charity locally,” Aella said, interrupting my loneliness thoughts. “That accepts anonymous donations. We should take it all there.”

“We can’t take it there without getting some clean money first,” Webber pointed out. “Let us take care of it, then you can donate it to wherever you want.”

Aella’s eyebrows raised as she peered up at Webber. “You’d let me take it?”

“It’s not mine.” He shrugged. “But I’m serious, the money needs cleaned. They’ll find you in a heartbeat when you start using it. Or the charity does. We want them to be able to get something out of this, we have to make sure we get it clean and untraceable.”

Agreed.

“Okay,” she said, nodding. “Now, what do we do about her?”