Page 9 of Trick
This woman – this sexy-as-hell woman – somehow managed to look amused, disgusted, and annoyed all at the same time as she shook her head and took a step back. “No, but thanks for dropping these off.”
I barely had time to move my arm out of the way before the door was shut in my face with a decisive click. I slowlystraightened to my full height as I tried to understand what the hell had just happened.
Trying to shake off the unfamiliar sting of rejection, I hopped on my bike and headed off to the gym I managed for the club. The short ride did nothing to clear my mind as I pondered Lauren’s reaction. Now, my ego wasn’t so massive that I thought every woman in the world would fall at my feet, but in all honesty, I didn’t normally have to do much more than smile, wink, and crook my finger to get what I wanted.
I knew I was considered handsome, and between my muscles, my MMA fighting background, and my position as the club’s Sergeant-at-Arms, I’d never had much trouble picking up women. I’d been turned down before, of course, but admittedly it was a fairly rare occurrence.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been shot down so resolutely without even a second’s thought, though. Shit, I really should have given her a little more time to forget about the whole“catching me fucking a club bunny”situation on Friday night. That was a definite miscalculation on my part.
Determined to put the entire clusterfuck out of my mind, I pulled up to the gym and parked in my reserved spot at the end of the front row. I whipped off my helmet, tucked it under my arm, and strode inside.
The sounds of the usual Sunday crowd helped ease my irritation. Even over the beat of the hard rock music pouring out of the sound system, I could hear the steadythwack-thwackas Brick pounded the punching bag, and the rhythmicwhappita-whappita-whappitaas Hawk delivered rapid-fire hits to the speedbag. There were close to twenty other people scattered around the large open space – running on the treadmills, lifting free weights, and doing reps on the pull-up bars. There were acouple of guys getting ready for a workout with the grappling dummies, by the looks of things, and two more climbing into the practice octagon.
Thanks to the kick-ass ventilation system I’d insisted on, the building didn’t reek of sweat and dirty socks like the gym I’d spent every spare moment in during my teenaged years. Back in those days, I’d sworn that smell was permanently embedded in my skin.
“Hey, man. Anything going on that I need to know about?” One of our prospects, Rod, was working the front desk, and glanced up at my question.
“Not really. One of the treadmills is acting up again, so I put in a call to the repair company. Oh, and a couple of Rossi’s guys have time reserved in the cage late this afternoon.”
Luca Rossi was the head of a local mafia family, a group that our club had a friendly affiliation with. The gym was the location for the underground fight ring La Famiglia Rossi had run for the past few years. We trained his fighters and provided the site and security for fight nights, and Rossi gave us a nice cut of the profits from the illegal betting that went on.
The gym was located in an old warehouse on the outskirts of downtown Indianapolis. The size was perfect for our use, but the biggest reason the club bought it was that it had been constructed with a lower basement level accessible by part of the catacombs, a tunnel system built in the late 1800’s which ran under a portion of the city. The majority of them were unusable after all these years, and most people had no idea the tunnels even existed. We’d restored the section between our gym and the parking garage on the next block, allowing for fight attendees to come and go undetected. If anyone did take notice of the unusual activity above-ground, Rossi had enough copsin his pocket to make any investigation go away before it even started.
It was literally an underground fight club in every sense of the word.
The basement level was outfitted with a regulation MMA octagon, state-of-the art cameras to capture the fights and transmit them over a secure network to carefully vetted bettors around the world, and enough seating for those lucky enough to score an invitation to watch the action in person. There were also changing and shower rooms, plus warm-up rooms for the competitors and their trainers.
The fight nights were the only illegal activity the MC participated in these days. The club pulled in great money with the legal businesses we had, and none of the brothers were greedy enough to want to risk our freedom by dabbling in anything else.
I nodded an acknowledgement, instructed Rod to order lunch to be delivered for me from the Greek place nearby, then made my way down the hall toward my office. I had to get some administrative shit done before I got my daily workout in.
Several hours later, I roared into Rome’s driveway and came to a stop next to his bike.He’d invited Lucky and me over for dinner, and I could smell the burgers cooking on the grill as I bypassed the front door to walk around to the backyard. I let myself in through the small fence gate, and braced myself for impact as their son, Ethan, yelled my name. As always, he charged over toward me and took a flying leap, trusting that I’d catch him. I let out a silent “oof” as he made impact with my ribs. He was almost seven now, and tall for his age, so it wouldn’t be long before he was too big to do this anymore.
After I lowered him to his feet, Abby strolled across the yard to greet me with their little girl, Everly, perched on her hip. Ev had most of her fist crammed into her mouth, and her chin was covered in drool. She wasn’t quite a year old yet, and clearly had another tooth coming in. She already had two of them and wasn’t afraid to use them. I’d discovered that the hard way when she’d bitten my finger as I’d tried to feed her a banana the last time I’d been over to visit.
I bent down to kiss Abby on the cheek, then dropped a kiss on top of Everly’s head, before Rome yelled at me to get my lips away from his girls. I laughed and flipped him off behind Ev’s back as we headed over to the patio where he was manning the grill. The sound of another Harley signaled Lucky’s arrival, and Ethan greeted him in much the same way. Lucky joined us at the grill, with Ethan hanging off his back like a monkey.
“Do you need any help with anything, Abs?” I asked.
“Kiss ass,” Lucky muttered, laughing when I flipped him off.
“Nope, I’ve already got everything ready, we’re just waiting on the burgers,” Abby answered, motioning for Ethan to get down off Lucky’s back. “Come on, kiddo, you need to wash your hands before we eat.”
Ethan let go of Lucky’s neck and slid down until his feet were on the ground, almost taking Lucky down with him, than darted into the house with Abby and Everly trailing after him.
“I’m starving, man. I got roped in to helping my sperm donor fix his bike after Church and missed out on lunch,” Lucky scowled as he shook his head. “That fucker’s gonna run that thing into the ground one of these days. I just hope like hell it takes him out when it happens.”
Lucky’s dad, Ace, was our Road Captain as well as the manager of Fallen Angels, the strip club the Guardians owned. He was also King’s half-brother, and a mean, miserable son-of-a-bitch. Most of the brothers would love to see him stripped of his cut and removed from the club, but he hadn’t technically broken any bylaws. I should know, since King and I had triple-checked that shit, hoping to find a legit reason to kick his ass to the curb.
As Sergeant-at-Arms, it was up to me to enforce the rules of the club, as well as to protect the club from outside threats. Ace was a problem just waiting to happen, and I didn’t trust the bastard as far as I could throw him.
On top of that, he’d been a shitty father to Lucky, who had been raised primarily by Sinner and King since Ace had spent years in and out of prison. He was also a racist, homophobic piece of shit who tried to undermine King’s leadership every chance he got, just barely shying away from crossing the line every time.
Rome snorted a laugh at Lucky’s comment as he reached out and flipped the burgers over. He hated Ace, too, and refused to even acknowledge him as his uncle.
Moments later, Abby opened the patio door and stepped outside, carrying a tray filled with hamburger buns and various condiments. She set it on the table of the outdoor dining set before walking over to the grill to see how much longer the burgers needed to cook.
“Just another minute or two, baby girl.”
