House Rules(18)

Ashton shook his head. “She had a late rehearsal last night. With the new show opening up this weekend, Alan’s been pushing everyone hard to get it perfect.”

“That poor girl,” Mom sympathized. “She must be exhausted.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Mom. She loves every minute. And don’t worry, I left her breakfast this morning.”

Mom pressed a hand to Ashton’s cheek. “It’s good to see you taking care of her. She needs it.”

She wasn’t wrong. Elena had been emotionally abused by her ex-husband. The bastard traded her to my brother for three months to pay off his debt. Ashton took it upon himself to save her from the horrible situation she was stuck in. In the end, Dominic attacked Elena, trying to get her to come home to him. After years of beating her down, he hadn’t expected her to grow a backbone. He especially hadn’t expected her to shoot him to protect herself.

Still, to say she needed someone to take care of her was an understatement. She needed someone to spoil her rotten. Which my brother and mother had mastered.

“Besides, she’s looking forward to dinner on Thursday.”

Dinner. I almost forgot. My plans for a few nights of drinking and fucking to wash Tess from my brain disappeared.

Mom lay her hand on my arm. “You’re still coming right?”

I nodded. Mom’s cooking was worth it and I could get drunk after I left.

Conversation continued over breakfast until I glanced at the clock. Splitting time between the dealership and the bars was getting to be exhausting.

And with Dad’s retirement on the horizon, life was about to get that much more complicated.





CHAPTER 6





Miller




“Miller, we have a problem.”

Jason approached me, coming from the bar area. He had been with me ever since we first opened our doors; working his way up from tending bar to handling all the bets in the building.

Clients coming into place bets on different events would either take a seat at the bar or at one of the tables. They’d order a specific item off of the menu to eat, letting Jason know to go and visit them at their table. From there, Jason would ask them certain questions about their dining experience, the answers telling him how much they wanted to place and on what game. We rotated the menu options every few weeks and the dish was only spread by word of mouth. The system helped to keep most of our waitresses in the dark about what happened across the bar. It might have been sexist to hire only females to wait tables, but the bets were always higher when they were distracted by half naked women.

Only the members who had a role in the betting and collecting of payments knew what happened behind closed doors, and I planned to keep it that way. The less people involved, the less likely you were to get caught. Jason handled everything on his own. The only time he came to me was when the problem had grown beyond his reach and we needed a different approach to deal with the person. So the very fact that he’d come to get me said a lot.

“What’s the problem?” I looked up from the papers on my desk. I’d brought work over from the dealership, hoping to get most of it done. After leaving Dad’s I realized the stack of shit on my desk at the dealership was bigger than I thought. If he was going to trust me to take over, I needed show him I could get it all done, not leave piles of untouched crap in my office.

Rock Bottom ran like a well-oiled machine, everyone doing what needed to be done, which was the main reason I didn’t spend a lot of my time there. The dealership and Orbit required more attention, which made Rock Bottom the perfect place to come when I needed peace and quiet to dig myself out of the pile of shit on my plate.

Even though the dealership was a front, we still had to run the business. This meant selling cars and doing repair work for customers who came in having no idea what happened in the back offices. With too many new clients coming in, all of them trying to get away from Nathan Marcello, the paperwork had become overwhelming.

That bastard had started going to extreme lengths to collect money; much further than Dad or I would ever consider going. The stories I’d heard about things he’d done to people for not having their payment on time made my stomach turn. Sure, we gave people a little warning if they didn’t have the money when they were supposed to, but we didn’t take it too far. After all, we still wanted to get paid at some point.

Not him. He’d go for the jugular right away, sometimes even going after the person’s family. And family was a line a Hawes never crossed.

“There’s a guy making a scene at the bar.”

Now he had my full attention. I pushed the papers aside. “Over what?”