18. Vex

18

VEX

A wareness creeps into my brain slowly.

The first thing is, I fucking slept.

Insomnia is not my friend. But for the first time in two weeks, I slept.

That alone is enough to ironically wake me up.

But then, I remember.

Calista.

Best fucking sex I ever had in my life.

Meant more. Felt more. Tasted more.

Everything about her was more.

The warmth of her body, the power of her orgasm, the way she let go of her stubbornness, the way she did what I said, the way her pussy clenched when I praised her.

Fuck. It was everything, and I want more of it.

I roll over to reach for her, but the pillow beside me is empty.

I reach over to her side of the bed, and the sheets are cold. She's been up a while.

"Calista?" I call out as I throw back the covers.

The light isn't on in the bathroom. I pull on a pair of jeans I threw on the chair last night, grab my phone, and step out into the hall.

"Calista?" I call out again. She's not in the guest bedroom. And she's not in the kitchen or the living room or any other part of the house.

She left.

My heart drops.

She fucking slept with me, then ran off into the night or morning.

I haven't had a girl run out on me since… well, ever.

I turn off the house alarm, rip off my bonnet, and turn on the exterior lights before yanking the front door open. The street hasn't been plowed, but I see footsteps down the drive that take a left at the bottom.

The stubborn woman got up and got dressed and started to walk home. She must have stayed the night because the footprints look fresh enough that she only left recently, but not so fresh that it's worth me jumping in the truck to track her down. It's a fifteen-minute walk to her mom's. She's probably there by now.

"Fuck," I mutter as I close the door, so I don't lose my nipples to frostbite.

Wait, how did she turn off the alarm and reset it?

Thinking back to when we arrived, I realize she stood and watched me turn it off. Need to remember she's a clever woman.

Pulling up the camera footage from around the house, I see she left about forty minutes ago. Definitely no point in firing up the truck to go grab her and bring her back here to talk some sense into her.

I pad to the kitchen and put some coffee on. Sleeping with her might have been a bad idea, but nothing that bad ever felt so good.

When I invited her to come to my room last night and she picked the guest room, I resigned myself to the idea that we should mend our friendship and move on.

Then, when we talked, we decided it was a one-night thing. Because nothing says getting someone out of your system like fucking them into next week.

And now… I know I need more of Calista Moray, because whatever the fuck was simmering between us has not burned out yet.

As I drink the coffee, I realize my brain is fully recharged like it always is after I've finally slept. All the things I've been struggling to get my head around for the club become clear.

I need to check in on all the investments I'm running for people. And I should make a little update for Avery that she can understand and see how her money is growing after only a week.

When I'm caught up on all that, I'm gonna see Calista and persuade her we should do last night all over again.

"Ah, shit," I say to my reflection. I promised Switch I'd go with him and Sophia to see Alessio today. The last thing I need is the hour ride into the city. You'd think people living in New Jersey and New York would be used to driving in the snow, but the highway brings out a certain kind of asshole driver.

I shovel a peanut butter–coated bagel down and then hop into the shower.

My mind drifts to the way Calista felt on top of me, all up in my space. Everything between us aligned in a way that was as natural as it was perfect. Maybe there's a reason why I never saw the potential of that when we were teens. Maybe we just weren't ready for who we'd be together.

And it makes what I'm going to do today even more important. Because I'm terrified that when I dig into what is happening to Alessio, I'm going to find Calista's fingerprints all over it.

Common sense tells me I should just ask.

Like a mature fucking adult.

And yet, I can't bring myself to. First, it would destroy the fledgling peace building between us. If she isn't responsible, it will trigger everything she just told me last night. It would build distrust between us. Second, she could lie to me, tell me she isn't responsible, and then, I'll be forced to confront her when I find out she is. And third, which I guess is the toughest question: Would it matter if she is?

It would matter to my club, for sure. They're building an alliance with Alessio, which would be threatened if I made Calista my old lady, which?—

"Whoa!"

I need to calm my fucking thoughts. One night of great sex does not an old lady make.

But is it really such a leap? The story of us began more than two decades ago, when she climbed into the car next to me on my very first day in the neighborhood.

She was all curiosity and braces.

And wouldn't stop asking me questions while I was trying to finish the chapter.

I jump in the truck and head over to Bates's house. When I get there, my brother opens the door wide. "Just brewed coffee. You want some?" he asks as I shrug out of my jacket and hang it on the hook by the front door.

I spot Avery as she runs towards us from the kitchen.

"Would love some, but I came by to see Avery. We have investments to discuss."

"Uncle Vex," she says, throwing her arms around me. "Did I make enough money to buy a clubhouse yet?"

Bates's eyebrows almost hit his hairline. "What?"

I pick Avery up. Vi says we're coddling her, but Avery doesn't seem to care. "Did you tell your dad what you want to do with your money?"

She shakes her head.

"I thought you were saving for a dog," he says.

Avery giggles. "I'm saving to buy my own bike and build my own clubhouse where girls can make boys leave when they have important conversations and girls make all the rules."

Bates shakes his head. "Clubs are more than that."

"I know, Daddy. Auntie Cat is helping me make a…umm…it begins with a ‘ch' sound. Like, what we stand for."

"A charter?" I offer.

"Yes. A charter. And I'm going to be an enforcer like you and Uncle Colton."

"Jesus. I hope not," Bates says.

He's answering as her father, not that the club role sucks. There's a level of violence in what he does that I hope this sweet little girl I'm carrying never has to face.

"And I'm going to have a boyfriend, and he's going to wear a patch that says ‘Property of Cupcake.'"

Bates almost chokes on that. "What? And your road name is ‘Cupcake?'"

Avery nods solemnly. "Uncle Colton gave me my road name because you can't just pick your own. And he said I'm sweet like a cupcake."

I grin. Of course, Niro would come up with something like that. He's changed in the last year. He's still the same guy at his core, but he's learned shit, about his conditions and about life and the love of a good woman.

I think of Calista and wonder what my life would be like after a year of her.

"It's too early in the morning for this shit," Bates mutters and leads us to the kitchen.

He pours me a coffee, and I put Avery down on one of the stools at the kitchen island.

"No Vi this morning?"

Bates places my cup down on the counter. "Had a rough night, so I told her to sleep in. Pregnancy is hot as fuck for me, but fucking exhausting for her."

"I wish you paid me five bucks every time you said a bad word, Daddy," Avery says.

Bates ruffles her hair. "Thankfully, that's just a you and Uncle Colton thing."

"How much money did I make, Uncle Vex?" Avery asks as I take my first sip of coffee.

"So, you gave me nineteen hundred dollars," I say, and I hear Bates cough and splutter.

"Nineteen hundred dollars?" he says.

Avery nods. "Uncle Colton swears all the time."

I take another quick drink of my coffee. "Anyway, these are all the companies you are now a shareholder in." I simplify it as I take her through it. She doesn't need to know all the details of a diversified portfolio that has a mix of funds and individual stocks with different risk and growth profiles. "So, we're one week in to holding your investments, and you made five dollars and thirteen cents."

Avery holds her palm out for a high five, and I slap it. "You're the best investor, Uncle Vex."

"You're my best client," I say, putting my arm over her shoulder and giving her a quick squeeze when she leans into me.

Never thought much about having kids beyond the fact I love hanging with my nieces and nephews and I'd like some of my own one day. But if and when I do, I'm gonna be coming to Vi and Bates for advice—mainly Vi, given she raised Avery alone—because Avery is such a sweet and well-adjusted kid.

"You ready to go?" Bates asks.

"I am. Need to stop by the club to pick up some shit first."

When we finally approach the club, after Bates woke Vi with decaf coffee and something else that took him fifteen minutes which I really don't want to think about, I feel a sense of dread.

The only thing that has changed since I was last here is the knowledge I gained from Calista. And my image of the club has been irrevocably altered. Intellectually, I know that what happened is not the fault of the current leadership team. But given Calista only caught the patches of Wrinkle and Cue Ball, I don't know if any of the old-timers who loiter around the clubhouse were there too.

And I'm mad that after they told me I had to stay for a year to prove I hadn't just planted shit for them, I threw myself into the club whole-heartedly, in spite of every objection from my mother.

But rationality isn't the driving force of my emotions.

I find myself getting mad and feel that all-encompassing frustration that I have nowhere to aim it, again.

I've been in my office for two seconds when there's a knock at the door.

King lets himself in before I have a chance to acknowledge him. "You want to tell me what all that bullshit was about being sick? You look fine this morning."

"Had some private biz to deal with, Prez." I start to power up all my machines and get a grip on the workload I have to catch up on for the club. I need to run the shit from the strip club and send some automations running to see if I can get a hit based on what I see.

Once I'm done, he's still standing there, hands shoved into his pockets. "It's not like you," he says.

"Yeah, well, had some shit to process."

King narrows his eyes. "This shit you had to process? Is it more important than the club? Because we had some shit we needed you to process too. Saint's fine, but we needed to get a jump on who attempted to rob the club."

And my anger at King's father, Camelot, and Cue Ball spills over. "The shit I had to process was how this fucking club let me down so badly, it ruined multiple people's lives. So, with respect, Prez…fuck off."

"You better start talking," King says.

"Nothing to discuss, Prez. And I said I'd meet with Alessio. Guys are waiting on me outside."

It's a white lie. Bates is outside, but the others aren't here yet.

"When you're done, I'll expect you back here and telling me the truth about what the fuck is going on."

And with that, he turns on his heel and walks out of my office.

"Fuck." I rub a hand over my jaw. As I do, I repeat the mantra I've been trying to remind myself of since this all started. King is not Camelot. Clutch is not Cue Ball. And yet, I feel like the club owes Calista some kind of apology.

Calista hadn't even made her first attempt to hack them. I fixed it before she could.

She'd done nothing wrong.

Yeah, I know I'm dancing a fine line between Calista taking accountability for her actions and me making excuses for them. But seriously. We were fucking kids.

If I overexplain this, the club will immediately jump to the Sicilians and their issues.

I'm still thinking about it ninety minutes later as Alessio introduces me to his safety net.

"This is my cousin's son, Antonio. You can call him Tony. Has a degree in computer science from Harvard," Alessio says.

I glance at the preppy kid with tight jeans that barely reach his ankles and loafers. "And?" I ask.

Alessio smirks. "He's been managing our data security, and he'll be…partnering…with you on this."

I roll my eyes. "You mean he'll be keeping an eye on me while I'm in your system."

"Purely insurance," Alessio says.

I look at the kid, who doesn't look any older than Calista and I did when our world fell apart. Maybe part of my reaction is that he's the kid I could have been. In an alternate universe where I'd never stepped foot onto the Outlaws territory, where I'd gone to college.

"I'm more capable than you think. And I maintained a high GPA," Tony says.

Alessio smirks as he looks down at the floor.

"Yeah, well, that GPA won't do anything for you here. It's like bringing a pedigree Shih Tzu to a dog fight. Someone's got their teeth into your system good. Says to me they used something unconventional to get in. Has to be deeper than what your anti-virus shit could catch. So maybe you could watch and learn and keep your mouth shut."

"Fuck you," the little shit has the balls to say.

I just bark back at him like one of those little yappy dogs who go ballistic if they see the mailman.

Switch laughs and slaps my back. I'm glad Cat and Niro are outside the room I'm in because Niro would have fun teasing Tony.

I look at the table of twenty-seven laptops for me to check. "Fun fucking times," I mutter to Switch as I sit down at the table.

Each laptop has a username and password on it. Trusting fuckers, they all must be. It's either that, or they're all good schoolboys, never doing anything they shouldn't on their machines.

Tony logs into the first one, then hands it to me.

"Virus codes run an infinite loop in a separate thread that spikes the CPU and makes the computer difficult to use," I say to Alessio.

He looks at me blankly. "You say that like I know what you're talking about."

"The interface response time will slow down," I say.

"If you find it on one of those machines, will you know how it got there?" Alessio asks.

I shake my head. "Nah. People think hacking is like it is on TV, that you hook up some kind of automated password generator and then, eventually, you're in. But passwords are encouraged to be long now. A mix of letters, numbers, and characters. If there are sixteen characters in every password, there are over six quadrillion combinations. So, there's only a couple of ways it can realistically have happened. Someone opened some shit they shouldn't have. Or they left the laptop in place where someone else could access it."

The muscles on the side of Alessio's jaw clench as he grinds his teeth. "I suppose, as a subset of the population, there's a chance I've got an idiot on my team who thinks it's fine to open spam on what is essentially a work laptop."

I understand what he means. I often wonder the same for the MC. It's a miracle Niro hasn't infected the whole system with all the random shit he decides he's into and then goes searching for on the internet. When he was our treasurer, I gave him a second laptop for his own shit and locked up the club one so he could only do club business on it.

There's only one way to see who let the virus in.

So, I knuckle down to begin, and pray that I don't see a trace of Calista in what I find.