9. Earl

Chapter nine

Earl

I finish up my work after he leaves and head to the clubhouse. Barking orders at some prospects may be the only thing to calm me the fuck down right now. The whole time Jax sat in front of me, I wanted to wring his neck, but if Melissa can't choose, I need to learn to play nice— even if it kills me!

It's only two and I already need a drink. As I pull up to the gate of the clubhouse, I catch one of the newest prospects, John, asleep on fucking duty. What if this happened when Ashlynn was in danger? Any of the fucking Devil's Rejects or Mike could've slipped right the fuck in and taken my daughter.

I park my bike and get off, walking to the guard shed. The fucker's snores sound like a freight train, none the wiser to my presence. Pulling out my phone, I take a nice little video, then message Javier.

Me: Where are you

Javier: In the office

Me: Hells Desire or the clubhouse

Javier: Clubhouse

Javier: For the next couple hours

Me: Come down to the gate and be quiet

I lean against the wall, pull out my pocket knife, and begin to clean my nails. Not once has the fucker woke up; instead , he's still cutting logs, oblivious to the fact I'm about to rip him a new asshole.

A few minutes later, the sounds of rocks being kicked away, skittering across the ground, mixes with a familiar crunching as someone in boots heads toward me. I don't have to look. I know it's Javier, especially when I hear a thud against the shed, knowing he's kicked a rock at it. He's never outgrown being a kid even though he now has one of his own, albeit he's eighteen.

Did the fucking lump wake up? No!

Javier opens the door and I place my finger to my lips, telling him to be quiet, then point toward the fucking waste of space. I can see the rage building on Javier's face. He's thinking the same as me. This dickweed is putting our clubhouse in jeopardy. What's even worse is that he's the nephew of one of our members—the only reason we accepted him as a prospect.

Javier's eyebrows draw together, fist clenching at his side as he scowls at the sleeping man. He takes a step closer to him before lifting his leg and kicking John out of the chair. John's arms flail as the chair crashes to the floor. He jumps up, immediately taking a fighting stance with wide eyes. His gaze darts wildly around the room, until his sight lands on Javier and me standing there.

His face instantly drains of color, knowing he's fucked up royally. John runs his hand through his long hair as I watch him trying to form some sort of plausible excuse about why he was sleeping on the job.

"Prez—" he starts, but Javier cuts him off.

"Fuckin' speak when you're spoken to prospect and don't even address the Prez. Your worthless pussy ass is in here, sleeping on the job. On top of that, you didn't even wake up when not one, but two, of your officers came into the room." Javier steps closer, squaring up to the shell of a man before him who's already cowering in fear even though he's the same size as Javier.

"It won't happen again. I just didn't get no sleep last night." He tries to explain away his failure to perform his job.

"Not my problem. When you're on duty in this shed, you're protectin' every brother in that buildin'. Drink coffee, get an energy drink, whatever the fuck it takes to stay awake and alert."

I step outside of the building while Javier handles the mess inside and call another prospect to come take over at the shed. John's going to be busy with grunt work for the foreseeable future, and if he's lucky and proves his ass, just maybe when the time comes, we'll patch him into the club. Or if not, he'll get his walking papers.

"You got this. I've called in another prospect to take over. I'm headin' to my office." I pop my head back inside, letting Javier know before getting on my bike and heading to the clubhouse.

I park in my spot, nodding to a couple of the brothers in a deep conversation and make a mental note to talk to Corkscrew about his nephew.

As I step into the clubhouse, I see some of the brothers are already in party mode, with a fucking club whore riding their cock, or sucking it. My mind keeps going back to the decision of whether or not I want to cut the whores out of our club all together. After Nattiee, I'm on the fucking fence, but teetering toward doing it. I've been thinking about it for a while, but with dealing with Ashlynn being kidnapped, then the pregnancy, it got pushed to the back burner. The only thing stopping me from doing it now is that the single brothers would pitch a hissy fit about it.

But that's a decision to be made later. Right now, the focus is club safety and Mel. I want my woman to be by my side and safe. Even if it's with the pastry maker. Maybe I need to have a chat with Bash and see how he dealt with coming to grips with his relationship. I know he struggled for the longest time, both with Arizona's age and sharing her. If he can do it, then I know I can.

I head straight for my office and drop in my chair, sighing loudly. Pulling open my bottom drawer, I retrieve the bottle of Jack and my glass. I always keep them close by, not knowing when I'll need it to celebrate or wallow. Today, I'm doing the latter.

I'm two glasses in when Sam steps into my office and sits in the chair across from me.

"Got another glass?" he asks, his forehead wrinkled, his eyes looking off into the distance as if he can't focus.

I smirk and reach back into the drawer to pull out another, topping off my glass before filling his.

"What's botherin' ya?" I slide the drink over to him. He leans forward and grabs it, taking a big swallow.

"Fuckin' datin' sites are for the birds," he snarls, and I bust out laughing so hard that I almost fall out of my chair.

"Why the hell are you on a datin' site?"

"Because your ass told me I needed to find someone and I don't want to wife up a club whore. Right now, that's all the single women I know."

I down my drink and refill my glass, holding the bottle out to him. He quickly does the same.

"Is no one respondin' to your profile?" I mean, it would probably make me pissy too.

"Oh, the opposite. Only everyone's barely legal. I ain't tryin' to be a pervy, cradle robbin' pedophile. All they can talk about is wantin' to ride my cock and callin' me daddy. What the fuck has the world become?"

"At least ya' ain't got your woman pissed the fuck off at you and havin' to compete, maybe share her with a fuckin' pansy ass wannnabe chef." I raise my eyebrow at him and take a swallow of my drink.

"We're a real fuckin' pair, aren't we?" He lifts his feet, placing them on the corner of the desk as he leans back in the chair.

"You're just still hung up on Kate. In your eyes, no one can compare to her and until you truly open your heart, you're not gonna find anyone," I remind him. When he does find someone, he's gonna be such a good man to that woman. He's honest and loyal to a fault.

"So you really goin' to share Melissa?" He raises his eyebrow.

That's the question. Not actually doing it, but if I can truly be okay with it. I can't stand Jax and in order to be a throuple, I have to at least like him.

"If that's the only way I can be with her, then hell yeah, I am."

"You're a better man than me. Pigs would fuckin' fly before I'd share my woman. I don't know how my boys do it." He nods, his gaze falling to his hand resting on his thigh with the now empty glass.

Sam doesn't waste any time lowering his feet and grabbing the bottle of whiskey, refilling his glass.

I tap my fingers against the wood desk. The sound is a mixture of sharp, staccato clicks on the surface.

"What's wrong, Earl? There's something else other than a threesome with Mel. Are the kids okay? Did something happen that I don't know about?" he asks, his tone laced with concern. His voice changes from the broken English he's so accustomed to more formal sounding, showing his education.

"Mel got a call yesterday after I left her at the diner. A guy. Young. Whatever the call was about had her on the floor, scared, if I'm to believe what the fry cook is tellin' me."

"Any clue who it was?"

"No." I shake my head.

"Well, it can't be Clayton. We ended him. And his father has to be in a nursing home by now and he wouldn't sound young."

"Yeah, but Mel doesn't know we took care of him. She thinks he's still alive and that we just scared him off. I wasn't sure at the time she could handle knowin' we killed someone for her."

We sit there in silence, each of us gripping our glass so tightly our knuckles turn white. I just pray that Bash can come up with something to steer us in the right direction of who the fuck it was so that we can meet this head on with no surprises.

Fucking surprises! I've had enough of them to last me a lifetime.