“Then why didn’t you question that a plot of land that large was still left in the city for someone to use? I mean, fuck, Gunner, if you’re going to double-check things, why not double-check everything? It’s clear you had questions but didn’t bother to go back to the boss and ask?” Astin challenged.
I slammed my mug down on her desk and glared at her. “Wedon’tquestion the boss. He tells us to do something, and we do it. That’s our role as a lieutenant.”
“Get out,” she snapped. “Pack your shit and get the fuck out of this house, Gunner.”
My jaw fell open at this demand. “What?”
“I said get the fuck out of this house, you’re no longer welcome here,” she ordered, her eyes hard, telling me she wasn’t fucking around.
“No, not until you tell me what the hell I did that was so wrong I could have taken down the whole empire,” I shot back.
“Oh, I’m sorry, are you challenging me?” she taunted. “Did you just say you don’t challenge your boss, that it’s your place to just follow orders?”
“This order doesn’t make sense. I’m the only one who knows everything that happened with this idea. I had conversations with senators, government aides, contractors, and everyone who was involved in this project. None of it is written down, the only place you’ll find that is in my brain,” I roared, feeling like I’d been under attack ever since she got here. “There’s no logical reason for you to push me out.”
Astin leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms, looking at me with an expression I couldn’t figure out.Fuck, why were women so goddamn complicated?
“So you do speak your mind,” she mused aloud. “I might say you even challenged me, your boss, in that little tantrum you just had. Now, why was I different in your mind than the boss?”
“Because you haven’t earned my respect and trust,” I blurted, still angry from the bashing I’d taken from everyone.
The tension in the room rose to new heights as I realized what I’d said. While what I said wasn’t wrong, I shouldn’t have said it to her like that or yelled it. There are better ways to handle your emotions than to simply let them fly off the handle. I’d always been taught to respect those in a position of power, but at that moment, I hadn’t done that.
“I’m sorry, what I meant to say is—”
“Exactly what you said,” Astin cut in. “What did I tell you before? I have zero problem with you questioning me or second-guessing a choice I made. Clearly, you didn’t like the decision for me to kick you out, and you felt it would be better for everyone for me to keep you around. Why didn’t you do that when you had questions about the choice my father made?”
“I told you, when the boss makes a choice, you follow it,” I countered. “I’ve seen him when people talk back to him or challenge his authority.”
“But that’s not what you’d be doing,” Astin shot back. “If you went to him and expressed how you felt like this deal was a bust or more trouble than it would be worth now that you found out more information, he wouldn’t shut you down. The one thing my father loves more than me is his business. It’s why I was hidden away from the world so his legacy could continue on through me.”
As she said this, shame washed through me. Why hadn’t I tried harder to talk to the boss about this entire project? Even though I still didn’t know what really had gone wrong, I knew the deal should never have been struck. Instead, I saw it as a challenge to prove how good I was at my job to Boss.
“Will you please tell me what I missed?” I requested, my voice low with dejection.
Astin got up and walked over to pour herself some coffee and doctored it up with far too much sugar than was right. Instead of sitting in her chair again, she sat on the corner of her desk near me, forcing me to look up at her.
“Look, Gunny, I have zero problem with the fact that you don’t trust me right now. I don’t trust any of you,” she stated matter-of-factly. “That’s something we’ll all have to work on. However, if you speak to me in that tone or volume ever again, I’ll slap the shit out of you. I welcome your opinion and thoughts, but I will not be disrespected while you do it. You might not respect me as a person, but out of respect for the fact that I’m your boss, you’ll treat me as such.”
“I understand, and I apologize for my outburst. Truly that’s not the way I was ever taught to speak to a woman or someone who’s in charge,” I answered, holding her gaze so she knew I meant it.
With a nod, she sipped her coffee before answering my request, “It would seem Harvey O’Hagan is making his move, and it’s one that could kill us if he got away with it.”
She paused, letting that information sink in as panic dropped like a lead weight in my stomach. “Don’t tell me he’s the one they’re working with.”
“Oh, how I wish I could, but it seems I fucked up along the way as well. It didn’t dawn on me that if a business wasn’t owned by us, who would have snatched it up for themselves? When I first got here, I decided to stop in The Bandit and get a drink. Even made friends with the bartender who happens to be his nephew,” Astin shared.
“What?” Ryker snapped.
“Oh, it gets better,” Astin commented. “In true Astin fashion, I had to show a man who was hitting on me that he was an idiot. This upset him, and when he tried to retaliate, I broke his nose. Come to find out that it was Harvey’s son… well, one of the four. Now I learn that Harvey is making moves to destroy the Caprioni Family and in a really smart way. Seems there was a burial ground discovered on the property, and it’s now labeled native land. If we were to send out inspectors and they took samples, then we’d be breaking the treaty the government put in place. This would result in jail time along with a fine. I was led to believe it would be one motherfucker of a fine that could cripple us.”
Hearing her explain all this only made my anxiety worse. This was exactly what I was supposed to be protecting the boss from. Yet I’d been too much of a people-pleasing asshole to stand up against him.
“Holy fuck,” I blurted.
“This isn’t Harvey’s first move in the past few months either,” Braxton spoke up. “He tried to poach a bunch of our girls when I had to close down the Monarch. All the girls had been placed at other clubs so they could work, but Harvey seemed to think we weren’t doing so well if we closed down a club. Thing was, I’m gutting the place and having it remodeled. It’s a shithole that needed it a long time ago, but no one ever took the time. The old lieutenants clearly weren’t looking to the future, seeing how it could make a shit-ton more money if the place looked better.”
“Word on the street is he’s the one who’s been stirring things up with the MCs too,” Luca added. “The Red Tigers never had an issue until Harvey commented they might be able to strong-arm us into something better.”