Page 4 of The Deals We Make

“To better things,” I say.

I hug Sophia and kiss her unscarred cheek. “Happy New Year, sweetheart.”

She grins. “Thank you. Do you have any resolutions?”

“Meh. Not really,” I say. “You?”

Switch leans against the bar. “She’s got a color-coded list.”

“But the biggest one is I want to ask the club to let me build a real estate portfolio for them,” Sophia says. “It’s an easy way to wash cash.”

“I like the way you think,” I say. “I’d be interested in hearing more.”

“Good,” she says. “Because I have a whole presentation that?—”

“It’s New Year’s Eve, Sparrow. Well, New Year’s Day. It’s a party. No presentation talk tonight.”

She looks up at Switch. “You’re no fun.” She looks back to me. “I suppose he doesn’t want me to tell you I was talking about you yesterday morning.”

“You were?”

“My brother is having some issues with someone trying to hack into their system.”

I love the way she says it so nonchalantly. Like her brother isn’t Alessio Viscuso, head of the New York Cosa Nostra.

“Pretty sure you shouldn’t be telling me that,” I say.

Switch pulls Sophia against him and nuzzles the back of her ear. “I said no work, babe.”

“Meh,” Sophia says. “I told him I’d ask you if you’d come take a look at it for him. It appears his tech team isn’t as capable as you are, and I think that might piss him off a little.”

“Pretty certain my president might have an issue with me helping out another criminal enterprise, but I’ll run it by him.”

Sophia places her hand on my arm. “Thank you. I’ll make sure he owes you for it.”

And there’s the natural shrewd businesswoman. Sophia may have lost her memory, but she knows at a visceral level how this game is played.

The two of them head off to grab some food and I’m reminded again that I’m alone. Even as the noise in the clubhouse escalates and patched-in members and prospects celebrate, I feel isolated. Everything starts to irritate me.

I’m happy my club is happy, but I retreat to my office, an old pantry, in the back of the kitchen.

I know they all think I’m just a nerd who wanted a cubby.

But the truth is so much more than that.

First, no wall is an exterior wall. If anything happens to the exterior, like when the Italians fucking bazookaed us, nothing will happen to my setup.

Second, if by some miracle someone manages to break into the clubhouse, they’ll start with the offices on the other side of the club. Church, maybe. The treasurer and club secretary offices. By then, I’ll have been notified through all the alerts I set up, and help will already be on the way before they have the time to find all my computers.

And third, it’s fucking quiet most of the time. But when it’s not, I hear the wildest shit. People forget I’m in there.

I know Ari and Halo have secretly started treatment at a fancy clinic in New York to see if they can have kids together, but it looks like their chances are slim from the early findings, and I heard Halo hold and reassure Ari he was going to love her whether they had biological kids or not. That they will always have Lola to love and protect as their own.

I heard Rae ask King what it would feel like if he weren’t president of the Iron Outlaws. And for a sweet ten minutes, they pretended he wasn’t. He said he’d go into the carpentry and construction business with Niro because his dad would have liked the idea of the two of them looking out for each other. And Rae told him she’d love him no matter what he did, because any life would be better with him in it.

Clutch was devastated one night because Gwen safe-worded on him, and I heard Switch pick him up and put him back together, reminding me all over again why Clutch is a good man and why Switch is my best friend.

Still puzzling over why the fuck Gwen’s safe word isflounder, though.