was no way in hell Buddha was sticking me with the responsibility of keeping these crazy women in line unless he wanted me to get locked up again.
I sat down on my bike, pulled out my phone, and dialed Silas.
“Good morning, Styx,” he cheerfully greeted. “It’s about time you called.”
“I’m in,” I declared. “Send me the information.”
: : : :
| TORCH |
After a tense and emotionally-draining morning at the clubhouse, Torch took a swig from his bottle of whiskey and lit a cigarette. He watched as Gauge and Mace pulled out the old motorcycles from his garage to load up on the flatbed, his personal contribution to the Cora fund. He and the other brothers who worked in the shop would be putting in long hours to get them restored. Between his numerous reseller contacts and it being peak riding season, buyers were plentiful and they were hoping to get them fixed up and flipped in a few days. By offering them for two or three grand under value, they figured the bikes would go quick and they could pull in almost half of what they now owed Cora. Buddha had talked him into giving them two weeks, but—just as he’d predicted—it came with an extra twenty-five thousand in interest, bringing the total up to two hundred grand.
Before church that morning, Torch and his president had sat down and held their own private meeting in his office. Despite Buddha’s insistence that he should completely retire for the good of the club, Torch refused to give him the vote he’d need to go out in good standing. Most decisions only called for a majority, but patching in or leaving the MC required a unanimous vote. Between the twenty-plus years Buddha had spent at the head of the table, three decades as a member, he would’ve cut off his own head before walking away without the cut he’d fought and bled for.
It was a bluff, Torch would never deny him retirement or a club burial if it came to it, but he wasn’t about to give Buddha a reason to quit fighting for his life. The fact that he was talking about retiring instead of just stepping down from his post and going back to being a regular patch holder spoke volumes, it was nothing but self-sacrificial bullshit coming from an emotional standpoint. And emotions had no fucking place in decisions affecting the entire MC.
They’d come to a compromise. Buddha would step away from the table indefinitely to focus on his treatment and hand over the reins to Torch, who now also held his proxy vote for every decision going forward until the diagnosis became more… certain.
The announcement had been made in church a few hours earlier, probably the most somber meeting he could remember in his entire time as VP. Buddha took his leave immediately after filling everybody else in, leaving Torch to lead the Cora discussion while his chair sat empty.
Thankfully, all of the guys had sided with him when it came to a gun deal with Largo Scully being a last resort. Muling, extortion, robbery, anything that could start even more problems they didn’t need were all off the table for now. They’d worked their asses off for years to keep their noses clean and the club running legit, two hundred grand wasn’t worth dismantling all that progress and potentially bringing down fresh heat from the law.
Unfortunately, aside from Zed, none of them wanted to entertain the idea of asking Liv for the money either. Torch had pushed it, willing to swallow his pride to avoid bringing down the torrential wrath of Cora on top of everything else, but his brothers felt that sticking their hands out would go against everything they believed in. They wanted to do this on their own, not keep running to his old lady for help. Squid also pointed out that she’d ask too many questions and they’d just be transferring the loan. Torch countered that she’d give them way more time to pay it back, and they could spend the next two weeks looking for the assholes who robbed them instead of slaving away to appease a blood-thirsty loan shark. There was also the matter of Buddha’s medical bills—the whole reason they were in this goddamn mess in the first place—but the boys wanted to wait to worry about that too.
Needless to say, shit hadn’t panned out his way. After a vote where Torch’s conscience forced him to use Buddha’s proxy to go