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WRAITH

“ W hy are we all here so fucking early?” Catfish asks, nursing his mug of coffee like it’s liquid life, two days later.

“Just sit,” Butcher says.

“Morning, cocksuckers,” Smoke says and plants his ass in his chair.

Atom slaps the back of his head as he walks by. “You’ve got no right to be so fucking jolly this morning given what you spent the night doing.”

Smoke grins. “Just making Isla feel better now that Wraith is done with her.”

I flip him the bird. “Don’t give a shit how she feels, just that she got the message.”

Grudge lights a cigarette, then blows a slow and steady stream of smoke into the air. “You make things right with Raven?” he asks.

I’ve thought about how to do that over and over in my head so many times, I’m not sure which way is up. “No.” But I’m gonna work on it.

Butcher saves me from having to say more by slamming the gavel. “Can you fuckers settle down?”

Will comes to the door. “You told me to come?”

Butcher nods. “Sit next to Atom.”

The guy looks confused, so I throw him a bone. “We’re patching you in.”

It was my suggestion. I was looking at the organization structure. We have a lot of older members with full time jobs. We need some fresh blood among the leaders of the club and Will has experience as a construction project manager.

A wide grin almost splits his face in half. “For real?”

“Not if it takes you a day and a half to actually take your seat after I told you to sit down,” Butcher says.

“Shit. Sorry. Yeah.” He hurries to the chair next to Atom and sits. Palms on the table in front of him, he rubs the table like it’s a magic fucking lamp. “So, this is what it feels like?”

There’s a raw emotion to his voice. Like he knows he just got given something incredibly rare and important.

Catfish slaps him on the back. “Welcome to the club,” he says.

There are more cheers of welcome, and Butcher finally slides his cut across the table to Atom, who stands up and holds it out for him to put on. “Welcome to the club, Taco.”

He looks up at Butcher, then drops his head into his hands and laughs. “Fucking Taco? Really?”

“What else did you expect with that last name?” Smoke asks.

He stands and peels off his prospect cut, then slips his arms into the new one. You can see the joy in his eyes as he slides his fingers over the leather. “Thank you…brothers.”

Butcher nods. “Now it’s time for everyone to sit and listen to Wraith.”

I stub out my cigarette in the ashtray to the left of me and look down at my notes. It’s been a while since I properly sat down and thought not only about what the club is doing, but what I want to do with the rest of my life.

The latter can wait a hot minute, because now my only focus is to rally the club.

“We’ve lost our hustle, it’s partly my fault, and it’s time to get it back,” I say. “I know, I know, it doesn’t feel like we lost it given we’re all fucking busy every day for the club. But we’ve got a lot of holes, and shoring ‘em up will position the club for success. Looks like the Bratva aren’t going away any day soon. We have no clue why they rode towards us then turned around. Maybe it was just to prove they could. But we need to be invincible.”

Grudge looks to Butcher. “What’s brought all this on?”

Butcher points to me, and I answer. “Seeing the New Jersey Outlaws. You remember when we saw them at the Sturgis Motorcycle rally over two years ago. Camelot was president, but they had infighting and shit. Niro was a loose cannon. Bates slashed up that asshole from Virginia. But their recent visit got me thinking how far they’d come in the last two years. They’re fucking organized. They train for shit in teams. They’ve got multiple revenue streams. Niro turned their financial management into a well-oiled machine. Made me think about how we’ve become…”

“Jaded,” Butcher says. “The Russians have us by the balls. With their fucking armored vehicles and weapons.”

Atom nods towards the pile of notes in front of me. “What are you thinking?”

“We start with the structure. The seven of us in the room. We’ve become an older club. Need to bring in younger men to fill in some of the key gaps. Like, Taco. He’s prospected longest, got construction project management experience, and we have a real estate portfolio. It makes sense to jump seniority to make it happen. We redefine all roles with clearer requirements.”

“I’ve asked King to send everything he thinks might be useful,” Butcher says.

“Any reason you asked Wraith to look at all this shit and not me?” Grudge asks, living up to his name.

Butcher points at Grudge. “This is the kind of shit we need to get past. Why not Wraith, when he was the one who saw it clearer than you or I did?”

Grudge bites down on his lower lip for a second, and I’m prepared for a fight if it’s going to go that way.

“Fair,” he says, surprising the fuck out of me. “Continue.”

“No one changes roles, but Grudge off-loads some of his administrational shit to Taco so that he can better focus on growing our businesses. And we expand the core group. We need to consolidate and grow. We’ve got properties, business and residential. We’ve got the pharmacy shit. We’ve got weapons. But we should also be in security and transportation. Each business should have a leader. Each leader should have goals.”

“Fuck me. Sounds like a capitalist’s wet dream,” Catfish says. I don’t miss the sarcasm in his voice.

“I’m not suggesting we act like a corporation. But we need to level up, take it seriously. Our pay was fine last year, but what would it be like to double it? Triple it, even? If we’re going to do this every day, why wouldn’t we spend our time where it yields the most value?” I realize it feels good standing here. Taking the lead on this. The last two years, something else has continually clouded my brain. “Because we’re going to need the time and money to defend. We’re in a fucking tit-for-tat with the Bratva, and they currently have us outmanned and outgunned. We’re going to die fighting a battle we aren’t ready for.”

Atom nods in agreement. “Been having similar thoughts myself. Soda gets out of prison next month too. Be good to bring him back into the fold. We’ll need his skills.”

“Just put me in, Coach,” Taco says. “Whatever you need, wherever you need me.”

Catfish leans forward in his seat. “Hate to rain on the parade, but have you thought through how we fund all this now that the Russians took out the grow-op?”

“The meth,” I answer. “And I’m thinking we don’t worry about the distribution. We sell it wholesale to a dealer, then get the fuck out of Dodge with the full amount in our bank account. Think about it.” My mind reels at a mile a minute. I don’t even have to look down at my notes anymore. “Consolidation is free. We shore up the leadership team roles, possibly select another prospect or Soda to join. Then we fill up the prospect pool from the hangarounds. Atom builds a training plan. Talks with Halo and Spark about theirs. Levels up our skills. That’s free too. King suggested we find a prospect with better medical training, preferably military triage or emergency room. Save us paying out to that doc in town to see us privately. We increase our fact finding in Denver. Undercover shit, if we have to, no colors. Network the fucking underground to get our ears back to the ground. Also, technically free.”

I lift my papers. “I got a full list.”

Grudge nods. “I’m in. That was some kind of pep talk, brother.”

“It’s a lot of work, but I’m in,” Smoke says.

“Don’t need to take a vote,” Butcher says. “It’s time we put being motherfucking Outlaws back to the top of our agenda.”

It takes the next five hours to work through the details. Every goal gets broken down into actions. Turns out, Taco is really fucking good at organizing this kind of thing. He lends structure to ideas.

We skip lunch, our heads down in the details.

Calls are made to Halo, Bates, Spark, and Niro, and they lend their input to our plans. It becomes audacious. King offers to front the club half-a-million loan for ten percent of the first year’s take.

Butcher accepts it, but the idea we could turn over five million in the next year is exciting.

King extends the invitation to go hang with them in New Jersey to learn more, but Butcher declines. Says we need to show progress first. If we do, then we can ride out.

It makes sense.

The work is here in Colorado.

By the time we’re done, everyone is half-starved yet buoyed with enthusiasm.

“You want to go grab some food?” I ask Smoke.

“Yeah. Feel like my stomach is about to eat itself,” he says.

“I’m in,” Catfish says. “Nice job on that plan.”

Smoke slaps me hard on the shoulder as we walk out the door. “Keep that up, you could be president of this club one day.” His words are quietly spoken.

It’s a good feeling to have your work appreciated by men you respect. “Thanks, but I’m happy as I am.”

“Where are we eating?” Catfish asks.

Smoke’s belly laughter barks through the lot. “You think we’re eating anywhere other than the diner these days? Pretty server there with long black hair that Wraith goes all caveman over.”

I shake my head at the teasing and zip up the hoodie I’m wearing beneath my cut. “Got plans for her, as well.”

Catfish climbs on his bike. “In that case, I can’t wait to see how this goes.”