At the checkout counter, we were putting things on the conveyor belt. There were several people who were in other lines and behind us. As I was giving Hope some animal crackers to eat and Bear was emptying a cart, a woman a little older than me, I’d say in her mid-thirties spoke to me. She was watching Bear. I could see a spark of interest in her eyes, which raised my hackles.
“It’s so nice that your dad is buying all this for you and your baby. What a sweet thing to do and generous. Is he single?”
I choked down my response to tell her to go eye fuck someone else. Bear turned when he heard what she said. I gave her my best frown. “He is generous. But he’s not my dad. He’s my boyfriend.”
She choked back a gasp as she looked at me, then Hope and then Bear. He was standing there with his arms crossed and an eyebrow raised, daring her to say something. She was stupid and did. “Why is it that men always have to go after some woman who’s too young for them? What’s wrong with women closer to your own age? She’s a child and can’t give you what you need.”
“Listen, I don’t know you or care what you think. However, Ilara’s age wasn’t what attracted me to her. It was her beautiful soul. That’s what a real man looks for. If the women his age don’t have that, then he finds one who does, no matter the age. She doesn’t care that I’m older, so why should you? And she can give me every damn thing I need and want.”
The woman snapped her mouth shut then got out of line and moved over a couple of registers. I looked at Bear. The cashier was grinning, and over one aisle, I saw a man giving him the thumbs-up. I shook my head. “Some people.” I didn’t say what I really wanted because we were in public, though if she’d continued, I’d have let it fly.
Bear merely grinned and we finished checking out. The total made me gasp. I felt faint. I’d be paying for this forever. He didn’t seem fazed by it. He handed the cashier his card then got one of the employees to push one of the carts while I handled Hope. I saw him hand the guy money while I was strapping her in the car seat. I got myself up in the truck with very little finesse. When he got in, I had to say something.
“Donovan, thank you for all of this, but I still say most of it was unnecessary. I’ll pay you back. I promise. And I’m glad you didn’t let that bitch make you feel like you’re too old for me. I hate people like that.”
“Baby, there’s no paying me back, so don’t even try it. As for that woman, she was just jealous. Who’d want to be with a bitch like her? Now, who’s hungry? I’m starving. How about we go to The Dark Angel? They have lunch items.”
I didn’t argue with him about the money. I’d see about sneaking that money back to him somehow. “I could eat. I’ve never been to The Dark Angel. I’ve seen it of course. I thought it was a bar.”
“It is but we do have a section where you can sit and get what I call an extensive bar and restaurant menu. We’ve just moved it to this location and expanded it for that reason. We’ve added to the menu items, and it’s bringing in more customers. My manager should be there and I’ll check that everything is going well. It’s Saturday, so tonight will be busy for them.”
We were driving when he said this. I swung around to look at him. “The Dark Angel belongs to you?”
“Well, not just to me. It’s owned by the club, but I help manage it, so I earn more of a share than the others.”
“Shares, are there other businesses that you guys own?”
“We’re the majority owner of the bakery, Angel’s Delights, and Madisen owns the rest. We have a real estate company that’s mostly property management stuff. It’s called Archangel’s Realty. Player manages it. Maverick oversees Warriors’ Garage and Towing. Tank manages AW Construction. Payne is over our tattoo shop, Archangel’s Ink. Outlaw and Ajax oversee our security business, Salvation Security. Slash manages our outdoor supply store, Warriors’ Excursions, and Ace does the electronics store, Archangel’s Remedies. Oh, and the newest is the refuge I told you about for women and kids who’ve been abused, raped, or trafficked. It’s starting up and Demon will oversee it. That’s Warrior’s Haven.”
I sat there stunned to hear of all the businesses the club owned. Hell, they owned a huge piece of the town. I couldn’t imagine how much money they brought in with all those businesses or how they kept all of them straight.
“Oh my God, how do you ever find time to do anything but work?”
“We have great employees who we can trust.”
“How do you keep up with all of them and make sure they’re managed like they should? There’s so much HR stuff that it’s crazy. Do you use one company to do it, or someone at each location?”
“Hell, we try to do it ourselves. To be honest, it probably could be done better. HR is what you did wasn’t it?” he asked with a speculative tone to his voice.
I shook my head. “I wasn’t angling for a job, Donovan. I just wondered how you guys managed all of them. I had no idea you owned that many. It’s shocking and amazing. So, you all get a set share of the business profits except for the manager, who gets more?”
“Yep, that’s how we set it up across all our chapters. It seems to work best and gives the manager more of a sense of ownership too.”
“How many chapters are there? How long have you guys been doing this? You didn’t say exactly last night.” I was interested to find out more about the Archangel’s Warriors. So far, they weren’t what I expected a motorcycle club to be.
“We have this one, one in Dublin Falls, Tennessee, a third in Louisville, Kentucky and finally one in Gastonia, North Carolina. We started with just this one. Then Bull, I, and the other founders decided to expand.”
“You’ve always had all these businesses, for the last twenty-five years?”
He hesitated before he answered. “Babe, we didn’t start out doing legit businesses. When we started, we were into other things. After a few years, we realized we wanted to live to see old age and started to get out of that stuff and into legit things.”
I swallowed. What kind of things was he talking about? Had they run drugs, run prostitutes?
“I can see your face, Ilara. We weren’t into the awful shit like prostitution or trafficking people. We didn’t hurt innocent people. That means we didn’t touch drugs. I’ll admit, we did sell guns that weren’t always legal and offered protection for people who might not have been the most upstanding, but we didn’t protect drug lords or pimps.”
I processed what he said the rest of the way to the restaurant. When we pulled into the parking lot, he parked and then looked over at me. “Say something. It’s killing me. Does that change how you feel about me, about us? That was a long time ago, Ilara, and we smartened up. We were all kind of rebelling against life and that was how we did it. We didn’t go around randomly stealing or killing people.”
“But you have killed people, haven’t you?”