Page 13 of Knife Volume 2

Angelica was working on steaks now, and Tuesday assumed the bacon was under a dome off to the side.

She set her phone for ten minutes, just to be safe, put some butter in the microwave to melt, and went looking for a brush. She couldn’t find one, but she found scissors and parchment paper, so she folded the paper and went at it with scissors to make one.

And then had to explain what she was doing, and told them she’d bring a pastry brush to use in the future.

By the time the biscuits were ready, other women had put everything on the bar, turning it into a buffet worthy of any restaurant — eggs, gravy, bacon, steaks, a variety of jellies, honey, and Tuesday’s biscuits. She’d quadrupled the double batch she usually made, and hoped that would be enough.

They looked good, but she wouldn’t know how they tasted until it was time to eat.

The men were sitting on the sofas watching the NASCAR pre-race coverage, but as soon as Gen placed the stack of plates on the end of the bar, Duke stood and headed for the bar. Clearly, that was the equivalent of the dinner bell.

The others followed, some sitting to wait instead of standing in line.

And the women waited until all of the men had moved through before getting in line.

But she was relieved to discover Knife had saved a seat for her beside him, as had all the other men with girlfriends and wives.

“Oh man, who made the biscuits?” Dawg asked. “These taste like my Mamaw’s.”

“Tuesday made them,” Angelica said. “And I knew by the way she made the dough and then worked it, they were going to be good. Her hands just did it without thinking.”

Others chimed in about how good they were, how soft, or how buttery.

“What do you do?” Razor asked. “I mean, for a living?”

“It’s kind of complicated. Technically, I’m a trained chef, but I don’t work as one. I help restaurants create their menus. Come up with the dishes, the ingredients and how they get made, train their people.”

“She has a YouTube cooking channel,” Knife said.

“Right,” Brain said. “Give me a minute.”

Moments later, her channel appeared on the large screen on the far wall. She blinked at it, and then looked around and realized it was on every screen in the room — behind the bar, above the far tables, angled toward every possible sightline. Brain had put her channel on all of them simultaneously, which was both efficient and slightly surreal.

He played part of one video, then a second, and questions came from around the room — had she ever done a video on smoking meat? On making biscuits?

Eventually, the men pushed back from the tables and disappeared downstairs, and Lexi must’ve noticed Tuesday looking at the door with her brow furrowed. Knife had just left with them, without saying goodbye or telling her where they were going.

“Church,” Lexi said, and that didn’t make sense at all.

“Church?” She repeated back, and she sounded pretty incredulous, but what the fuck?

“It’s just what they call their meeting,” Angelica said. “I grew up in the club. My dad is president in Atlanta, so all this seems natural to me, but I know it can be a shock, coming at it as a civilian.”

“I was completely naïve when I first started seeing Duke,” Gen said, “and he shielded me from a lot of it for a long time, but it’s a lot.”

“And someone needs to tell Knife to get his head out of his ass and explain some shit to her,” Hailey said.

Tuesday didn’t tell them his plan, merely carried a load of dishes to the kitchen, and then went back for more.

- - - ❖ - - -

Knife had asked to speak, and Duke went straight to him after he gaveled them in.

“You’ve all met Tuesday,” Knife told them. “Thanks for making her feel welcome. I know you want answers, so…”

He took a breath. “She walked into the shop the day before Valentine’s. I invited her to my place, thinking it’d just be a fun fuck, but then it turned out our kinks match up. Fucking perfect match. But I still thought I could keep it to fuckbuddies. See each other once a week when she was in town, nothing more.”

He shrugged. “Turns out, everything else matched up, too. She was pack, and that meant I couldn’t share anything but the sex with her, and she couldn’t handle that, so she broke it off.”