There was a freedom in that Eight had, honestly, enjoyed. He could say and do pretty much whatever popped up in his head, and the worst consequence he could expect would be getting called to the ring.
Nine times of ten, when he said or did something shitty, he wastryingto get called to the ring, so it was all good.
But Becker said there was nobody he trusted more, nobody who understood him like Eight had. And, he’d said, Eight had changed since prison, calmed down and straightened out.
That was true, for the most part. He was still an asshole, but after years of the hell that was the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, his appetite for causing trouble had waned considerably.
At least, once he got his feet back under him on the outside, it was true. The first year or two after the joint, he was probably worse than ever.
Marcella would say so, no doubt.
By the time Simon went down, though, Eight had settled a lot. Beck had wanted him at his side, and Eight had wanted to have his friend’s back. The rest of the club, however, had thought Becker was completely out of his gourd. Maverick, of course, had been the loudest.
But VP was president’s choice, not a vote, and Eight had worn that flash for five years, until he’d replaced it with the title Becker had worn. He’d tried his hardest to deserve the trust Beck had put in him. For the first time in his life, he’d truly given a fuck about respect—earning it or paying it.
He supposed he’d been a good VP and silenced the doubters and haters, seeing as they’d all voted to give him the gavel.
The first thing he’d done after that was ask Maverick to take VP. He’d done it thinking it would be better to have the guy who liked him least—or hated him most, depending on how you wanted to look at it—at his side, so they could fight their fights away from the table and work it out before they sat down in church. And Mav was a smart dude. Way smarter than Eight. Of everybody at the table, it was Mav Eight thought could best shore up his weaknesses—like his tendency to act first and get around to thinking eventually, usually while he was standing knee-deep in the rubble of his actions.
The call to tap Maverick for VP had had the bonus of completely shocking Mav and earning some goodwill from the guy who’d hated him most. Things had gotten a lot better between them. They weren’t real friends, and maybe they never would be, but they were finally real brothers.
And they did work well together. So Eight’s first move as president had been a good one.
There hadn’t been many more calls than that one, really. For the past year, Eight had done nothing but try not to capsize the boat Beck had left him. The club had reeled for months in the aftermath of the implosion of the Perro Blanco cartel, a cartel the Volkov family, the Bulls’ main contract, had pushed to prominence. Irina Volkov had passed the reins of the bratva to her grandson Nikolai before the Volkovs, and the Bulls, and everybody else, had come to regret that alliance.
Now, everybody from New York to California, Canada to Colombia, was trying to fill in the crater that Julio Santaveria had opened in their world and get back to the business of getting whole and staying that way.
And Eight was just trying to keep this ship afloat.
All the patches were seated, so Eight picked up the gavel and tapped it on the table. As always, he felt a little sick doing it. He was nowhere near the man the previous two presidents had been, and he felt like a kid playing with his daddy’s tools.
A kid in his fifties. It was not a good feeling.
But here he was, and all he could do was honor his friend’s trust and do his best.
“Alright, let’s get to it.” He looked to Caleb Mathews, the secretary/treasurer. “Everybody paid up? Anything to report?”
Caleb leaned in. “Everything’s holding steady. Bills are paid, booze and food is stocked up. Apollo’s got something to say on the one big capital outlay this month, but overall the books are square.” He looked down the table at Jake Jessup, Rad’s youngest son and the Bulls’ newest patch. “Except I’m still waitin’ on JJ. As usual.”
A chorus of more or less good-natured shit rose up around the table, directed at the kid. Eight gave him a look.
JJ ducked his head and shrugged. “Sorry, sorry. I’ll have it for you by Monday, I swear.”
“This is gettin’ to be a habit with you already, kid,” Maverick chided. “That’s not the way to get started at this table.
“I know, Mav. I’ll do better.”
“Pop and I both told you not to buy that truck on a loan,” said his older brother, Zach.
“Suck my dick, Zach. I’ve got it handled. I just need to figure some shit out. I thought we’d earn better than we are.”
That was the thing about the work they did: it tended to run hot and cold. They were still running steel for the Volkovs—that alliance was something like thirty years old and seemed fixed in stone—and that and the Sinclair station kept them solvent, no matter what else was going on. But the implosion of the Perros had turned a bright, hot federal light on all the crews and clubs involved, and everybody had backed off, hunkering in the shadows for a while until the Feds found a new mouse to chase.
The Night Horde had actually gonestraightin the aftermath, and that had taken a toll on the Bulls, too.
On a single day last September, the Bulls had lost their president and two other long-standing patches, the great bulk of their earnings, and their longest-standing ally. And they’d done it all on purpose. They’d set out to destroy the Perros and Santaveria, the absolute nutcase Perro boss. They’d put everything on the line to get out from under that cocksucker.
With the massive exception of losing Becker and the others, that fight had been a victory. They’d ended a man who’d basically had most of the US underworld in servitude, who’d surrounded himself with homicidal maniacs and delighted in some of the most outrageous torture Eight had ever heard of. Santaveria had killed a whole lot of good men for little more reason than the display of power. Nobody was sorry he and his wacko crew were gone—even the steep price they’d all paid wasn’t too high.