5. Vex

5

VEX

" Y ou could have gone to one of those fancy schools like Harvard, Tiberius," my mom says for the three hundredth time as I warm up after clearing both driveways.

She always uses the full version of my name. I was named after Captain James Tiberius Kirk. My mom thought it was a strong name. Always had, being a fan of the series for as long as she could remember. My dad thought it would be cool. I was proud of it.

Until I went to school and explained where it came from to someone. From then on, I used to get a whole boatload of "live long and prosper." Like, that isn't even Kirk's line.

I roll my eyes but continue to shovel down my grits. Mom makes them special for me, served with tender shrimp and salty bacon and more paprika than I want to know about.

Food is her love language. And this bowl is a welcome thank-you for shoveling the snow while Dad's at work. I was going to take a drive over to Bates's house so I could take Avery through the investments that I picked out for her, but I knew Mom couldn't handle all that snow on her own.

"What would it have given me that I don't have now?" I ask.

Mom turns around, the apron still around her waist. "Standing, Tiberius."

I pause with the food halfway to my mouth. "Standing?"

She points a spatula at me and gestures toward my cut. "Something more than that."

It's a story I've heard a million times. "I'm proud of my cut. I earned it. And this piece of leather that you look down on paid for this." I look around her dream kitchen that I renovated, in the house whose mortgage I paid off.

She sighs. "You don't know how it feels, walking into church and seeing all those judging eyes on me."

I shrug and chew on the perfectly seasoned food. Mom always had a liberal hand with seasoning and flavor, and my taste buds approve. "And that right there is the reason organized religion is holding on by a thread."

"A trip to church and a little time spent with the gospel might cure you of what ails you."

I shudder at the thought. "The only church I've got use for is the one we have at the club."

"I'm not saying you should go to college, at this point. But I had so much more…hope for you. Every parent wants more for their child than they had."

"And we've got that."

Families like ours have been stripped of the ability to build intergenerational wealth. But that isn't happening on my watch. My two brothers and sister have starter homes I paid a hefty deposit on in their names. I paid off my parents' home and made sure that they had a clear, legal Will that pays back my investment and then splits the profit three ways between my brothers and sister.

"Ill-gotten gains, though. It's hard to make my peace with God."

"Mom. How I made the money is none of your business, but I took what I had and grew it legally. The system is stacked against us. I think of it as evening the scales. And if you think any of the banking or investment institutions in this country are any more legal than me, you're mistaken. They take massive bonuses while foreclosing on mortgages. So, please. Make your peace with yourself because God isn't looking out for us."

"Tiberius," she snaps. "You're not too old for me to wash your mouth out or hit you with this spoon."

I've faced off against the Irish mob, the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, the Righteous Brotherhood, and the Russians. And none of them have the ability to eviscerate the flesh from your bones like Omari Williams when she gets mad. Plus, we've had this conversation more times than I've eaten her grits.

Even her collection of Star Trek Bobbleheads stare at me accusingly.

"When is Laila getting here?" I ask.

Mom glances at the clock, then turns back to the dishes she's rinsing in the sink. "She should have been here ten minutes ago. And you be nice when she gets here. She does your hair for free whenever you ask her."

Yeah. And I'm the reason she doesn't pay rent, but I keep my thoughts to myself.

My hair's thick, and it grows fast, so Laila's gonna detox it before retwisting my locs for me.

"So, Calista is back in town," I say, eating a mouthful of food.

The pot Mom's rinsing clatters into the sink. "She is?"

"She is."

And, man, had I forgotten what it felt like to just be in her presence.

Sure, she was still the girl who let me sit and read without bothering me with a hundred and one questions about what I was thinking. And there was definitely that rip of fire running through her still.

But she was suddenly so much more than my best friend.

She's no longer a girl. All woman.

A fine woman at that.

Ripe curves.

Lush ass.

And lips that a guy wants to kiss for the rest of his life.

I'm torn between all the different versions of her. Part of me wants to erase her ungrateful, bitchy ass from my life. Part of me wants to try and keep her in the nostalgic box of former best friend. But there's a small piece of me that needs to know what it feels like to fuck her.

"Why?" Mom asks, breaking the visual of Calista changing in her mom's living room. High, firm rack in lingerie I bet cost a small fortune.

It takes me a hot minute to realize she's asking me why Calista is back in town, not asking me why I want to fuck her. "Don't know. But I bumped into her this morning outside one of those fancy banks."

Mom tuts in a way only she can. "That girl's getting herself into trouble again."

Cali always had a way of jumping into everything feet first, especially if there was a cause involved.

I rub my hand across my jaw. "No idea what she was doing, but she's next door right now."

I think about what Sophia told me on New Year's Day…that Alessio is having trouble with their systems being hacked by someone insistent. I have no idea what Calista does now. All those fancy clothes she was wearing could have been bought and paid for with hacked funds for all I know.

Maybe her trip to the bank building was a scouting trip or some shit. Although, why she'd need to show up at a brick-and- mortar building when everything inside it is available at the tap of a few keys is beyond me.

After she left all those years ago, I had to look for her for my own sake. Still worried about her, even though I couldn't do shit anymore to keep her safe. It's not something I'm proud of. But she was capable of not leaving a trail. No social media accounts. Online, she was almost a ghost.

It was like she disappeared.

Then, because shit was so intense and heavy at the club, I knew I had to get my head on right that I'd joined a motorcycle club, for life.

There was no getting out.

At some point, my own life became more important than hers, and I made my peace with the fact I'd never hear from her again.

But now, I'm really curious. I tug my laptop out of my bag and start from the beginning of a basic search.

"You hear of Mrs. Moray having problems, Mom? Beyond the obvious hermit shit she has going on?"

"Watch your language around me, Tiberius." She glances out of the kitchen window towards the Moray house and shakes her head. "Nothing specific. I mean, the woman's practically a recluse. She stopped going to church in the last couple of years, but I heard she didn't let the minister in anymore either. Barely leaves unless it's to get food, but I did hear from Shelby Hodson that her shopping is always simple. Bread. Peanut butter. Occasionally chicken when it's on special. No greens. Nothing fresh."

I chew another mouthful of food. I don't like the idea that Mrs. Moray's been struggling even more than we know. And right now, Calista needs to take a long hard look in the mirror.

A little trickle of anger moves through me over Calista giving me shit on the porch about her mom.

Where the fuck was she ? Why wasn't she checking in on her? If she could afford all those fancy clothes, she could sure as shit afford to throw her mom a hundred bucks a week for food.

"Tiberius, do yourself a favor. Stop worrying about that girl and her momma. You don't need her back in your life. And you certainly don't need the hassle of looking out for them. Calista is a grown up. She can look after her family. I see you shoveling that driveway, and my heart cracks in two because she is never going to forgive you for Calista leaving."

I sigh and look down at my bowl. My mom has no clue what really went down. It's where her disappointment stems from. I was supposed to go to college. Instead, I became a biker. So out of character. She thought I'd gotten in with the wrong crowd she'd spent her entire life trying to protect me from.

But I guess one thing I've learned over the last year is that people will make big sacrifices for their friends. Switch lost his memory to look out for Halo. Clutch took a bullet for Iris. I've taken a bullet to save Cat.

I gave up my future so Calista would live to see hers.

And it's frustrating to find I'm not proud of who she went on to become.

Or how far away she is from the girl who used to sneak me the orange Starbursts from her mom's candy stash because they were my favorite. Or how she used her first weekend paycheck from the hardware store to wait in line at midnight and surprise me with the last book in a series I loved.

Wonder where all those books ended up?

The day I became an Iron Outlaw, I became a man. Whatever that quote is, about leaving childish pursuits behind. Can't remember the last time I picked up a book.

I glance through the results of my search and start to refine it. I search the bank and her name. I set a program to run through each state's Department of Motor Vehicles but focus on California.

It takes about five minutes to really find her. An article in Forbes magazine gives me all the details I need. Her company is a huge success, which explains why she was outside a private Manhattan bank.

But everything about it seems too smooth.

Too polished.

I find it hard to believe she's left every part of that young girl behind. The one who liked to push boundaries. The one who lacked any trace of fear.

There's an obvious leap from hacking to cybersecurity. But I find it hard to believe it would be enough to satisfy Calista.

I log in to a couple of the darker places on the web Calista and I used to hang out in and think back to some of the various usernames she used over the years. Vermillion, because she loved that it was such a fancy way of saying her favorite color, a reddish orange. Dark Angel, because what hacker doesn't go through an emo Dungeons and Dragons phase? And L33d3RC. She always insisted on changing her name every twelve to eighteen months because leaving behind the shell of her online presence periodically reduced her traceability.

Some hackers use the same cypher or name their whole careers so it can become synonymous with career hacking. But Calista was never in it for the name.

Bank, not rank, she used to say. Finding a way to be financially viable while minimizing traceability was all she cared for. She didn't care how high up the list of most wanted hackers she appeared; she cared about the number of zeroes in her bank account.

A hand touches my shoulder, and I jump.

Shit. I'm at Mom's. Her kitchen.

"You finished with your food?" she asks.

I look down, and there are two mouthfuls left. I scoop them up and eat them, even though they've started to go cold. "Sorry, Mom."

"You may be too big for me to spank with a hairbrush, but you need to stop thinking about that girl."

I shake my head. "Mom, it's illegal to take a brush to my ass anyway."

She taps the patch on my chest. "I'm sure you've taken worse."

I chuckle at that. I have. Far worse.

The front door slams down the hallway. "Your sister's here. Talk her out of dating that loser from the bar she works at. And you…" She pauses until I look at her. "Put Calista out of your mind."

I lean back in the chair as I look at the photograph of her in Forbes .

"What the hell are you doing here, Cal?" I ask myself.

I think of her arriving. Of what she told me about Mrs. Moray. I think about the snow, her lack of a car, the hurt in her eyes when she spoke about what she found.

"Fuck it," I say, pushing the bowl away.

"Language, Tiberius," Mom says. "And where do you think you're going?"

"Tell Laila I'm sorry, but I got some shit to do."

And I'll worry about whether Calista values my interference later.