Page 32 of Brooks (Dirty Misfits MC 1)
I shook my head. “Women aren’t property to be sold—”
Chops yelled over me so hard I thought the house would shatter. “Who died and made you president!?”
The gun on my hip burned a hole in my skin as Chops turned his attention to the other guys. “Look, our business at the chop shop is down forty percent and plummeting. We’ve had to fire two different outside mechanics because without the chop shop doing well, we can’t pull people over this way enough for them to even know we’ve got a fucking mechanics shop. We started selling the drugs as a desperation to pull us all out of the red, but fucking hell, aren’t you guys tired of living this way?”
Archer shed his jacket. “I won’t be part of this shit. Count me the fuck out.”
I watched him throw it at Chops’ feet before he tried shoving the man out of the way. I clenched my fists at my side as Chops gripped the man’s arm, yanking him back and tossing him into the middle of the room. And the second Archer went to charge him, I wrapped my arms around the man.
“Let go of me, Brooks,” Archer growled.
I pressed my lips to his ear. “He’ll get his day. Just breathe. We won’t be able to do a damn thing without you. Remember that.”
That seemed to settle Archer down enough, and he scooped his leather jacket up off the floor. There, I already had one guy on my side willing to go down whatever rabbit hole I saw fit. And as Chops stared at me, I held my head high.
“I take it the guns aren’t raking in the kind of cash you want to see, either?” I asked.
Chops grinned. “Between the guns and the auctions—or possibly a prostitution ring—we’ll be unstoppable. With that kind of constant cash flow, we can rake the floor with those Black Flags guys, push them out indefinitely, and claim Santa Cruz as ours.”
He sounds just like them. “Are you going to talk to the girls and make sure they get a good deal before you enslave them? Or are you just going to snatch them off the street like a common criminal?”
He walked up to me and chuckled. “Does it really matter if they have a say? The sex trade is the future, and some of these women out here could do with a real dose of reminding as to what their actual role is in life.”
I drew in a sobering breath. “If you’re going to make changes to how we get our money, in our by-laws it states that you need a formal vote.”
Chops twitched. “What?”
Porter nodded. “He’s right. You haven’t taken a formal vote the first couple of times, but we need to take one now. There’s too much at stake.”
Chops whipped around. “I don’t need to take a vote for shit. I’m the president of this club, and what I say goes.”
Archer snickered. “That’s a dictatorship, and you aren’t our dictator. You’re our president, which means this club is a democracy.”
The guys nodded and I grinned as I drew in a deep breath. “All in favor of getting into the sex trafficking syndicate of the world, raise your hands.”
And Chops was the only man that raised his hand.
I chuckled. “Well, there you have it.”
He growled at me. “You guys are making a big fucking mistake.”
Archer shook his head. “There’s more to this than money and territory, even if you can’t see it.”
Chops pointed his finger against Archer’s chest. “I will find a way to get you guys to see this my way. After all, I’m your president. And if you don’t like it? I can ask for your cut at any point in time I please.”
Porter barked with laughter. “What? You gonna threaten to take away our coats if we don’t start selling women as if they’re property? Fine by me.”
I nodded along with the rest of my guys and Chops took a step back. “I can force you to do whatever I please. And yes, if you don’t like it, I can forcibly remove your cut from you.”
I slid my jacket off my back and handed it to him. “No need. You can have it if this is how things are going to be with you as president.”
Archer did the same thing. “Yep. You can have mine as well.”
Porter shrugged off his jacket. “And mine.”
Cole tugged at his sleeves. “Mine, too.”
And when all of us had our jackets off and dangling from our fingers, Chops stormed through the living room, heading down the hallway where the darkness swallowed him whole.
“So, is that a ‘no’ to our cuts?” Porter asked.
The guys chuckled as they put their jackets back on, but I didn’t find it funny. What the ever-blessed fuck just happened? Has Chops lost his goddamn mind? Anger unlike anything I’d ever felt in my life rushed through my system, yet I knew I was helpless. The only thing I could do was walk away. It wasn’t as if I could strip Chops of his role.
