Page 3 of Devil's Queen
Justice has been served tonight, and when I get home, I’ll be hugging my son a little tighter, knowing he was safe with a man like Gacy off the streets for good.
REMY
The next morningisn’t going any better than the night before. After my son, Beaux, decided that this morning was the best day to test my patience about going to school, I walk into my custom bike shop to find several key staff members not at their stations an hour after we opened. We’re a small operation, and if my people aren’t on time, it makes me and the entire business look bad. It’s hard enough running my father’s business as a woman.
“Where the hell is everyone?” I bellow once inside.
The employees who did show up today go quiet when I walk in the door. Something is up.
I scan the area as I walk the stairs to the business office on the building’s second floor. My mom sits quietly at the small desk outside my office, thumbing through invoices with a pencil in her graying bun on the back of her head.
“Did I miss that today is a holiday?” I ask her as I pass into my office. “This is the second time this week Frankie and Scott are both not here. They call in?”
“No, baby. No one has seen them.”
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath. “Mr. Diaz has already been on my ass for nearly a week about his order.It’s supposed to be done today.”
“Language,” she corrects me. Leave it to my mother to continue to correct her grown daughter about cussing. Of all the things she could disapprove of when it comes to my life, swearing is her biggest beef. Not the fact that I was a young, unwed mother who ran an outlaw female motorcycle club in the south. Makes total sense.
“Sorry,” I mutter under my breath, knowing damn well I am not sorry about it at all. I walk past her to toss my helmet on my desk when I notice a few sheets of paper that weren’t there before I left last night to take care of Gacy. I snatch them and start reading. I get halfway through the first two sentences before I start seeing red.
“Son of a bitch,” I growl. This can’t be happening. I gave both guys a chance when no other well-known shop would give them a second look. They built their careers here under the Papa Midnight name, and now they’re going to leave with no notice and without even talking to me first. Cowards.
“Remington!” my mother yells at me. “What did I say about your language?”
“I think I should get a pass when I find resignation notices from my lead painter and engine modification specialist lying on my desk.”
“What? That can’t be possible,” my mother replies as I hear the heavy wooden legs on her desk chair squeal against the tile floor. She appears a few seconds later inside my office and rips the pieces of paper from my grasp. “Let me read those. Maybe you misunderstood.”
“It’s spelled out very plainly, Mama.” I watch her read over them. Her face scrunches the farther down she gets.
“You don’t think they’re going to Harrington’s shop, do you?”
“It’s not the first time he’s sniped one of my best employees out from underneath me. I just thought Frankie and Scott wouldn’t be stupid enough to go to him, but I can’t rule it out.”
And it was the truth. Harringtons was run by one of my ex-employees and ex-boyfriend, Skyler Harrington. He came to me right out of technical school, and one thing led to another. It had been years since I’d let a man into my life, and after being burned for the second time in so many years, I’m not about to do that again. Lessons have been learned, and repeating the past isn’t on the agenda for the foreseeable future.
“I told you that boy was bad news. It didn’t help that he was as ugly as homemade sin,” she scolds me. “I told you and told you, but did you listen? No. My daughter knows best.”
This again. A southern mother’s guilt trip. The same old argument we’d been having for years with just about everything. My dad. The club and the shop. Beaux’s father. It is a discussion that is on constant repeat with no means of ending when every decision I make doesn’t pan out to her old-fashioned expectations.
“Mama, how was I supposed to know that Skyler was more interested in our business model than our relationship? It’s not like there was a sign flashing over his head that said I’m going to rip you off and rip out your heart,” I argue back, gesturing with my hands over my head, miming it out for her. You can’t see inside someone’s head no matter how many times you screw him and how well you think you know them. Beaux’s father is proof enough of that fact. “I had no idea he would steal my designs, and now it seems my employees.”
“A woman should know these things.”
I let out an exasperated sigh. Nothing I can say will make her see my side of the story. Every bad decision or folly that came my way was always going to be my fault because of who my father was. His genes tainted me in her eyes, but I didn’t get a decision on who he was or how much I reminded my mother of her time with him. I can only be what I am—a woman who did what she had to do to protect my family and ensure my son had everything he needed. I didn’t have a choice about the motorcycle club life like she did. It’s in my blood. It’s my family. I wish she saw it the same way I did and not as a source of darkness in my life.
“I know you mean well, but I can’t keep talking about this. I have bigger fish to fry right now, Mama.”
She leaves my office without so much as another word, shutting the door behind her. Anger getting the best of me, I pull out my cell phone and dial my ex’s number. It goes straight to voicemail. I consider for a split second to hang up, but I’ve had enough.
“Care to fucking explain to me why two of my employees turned in their notice this morning, Skyler? If I find out that you’ve poached my employees to get my new designs, I will hit you with so much litigation it’ll make you think the ground flew up and hit you in the fucking face. Back. Off.”
I pace the floor for a few minutes, racking my brain about what to do. Frankie and Scott were my two most veteran employees. When my dad died, his entire crew walked out the second they heard his eighteen-year-old daughter was taking the place over with zero experience in managing a business. My father’s inheritance, or at times, his curse, gave my mother and me a chance at survival when his club, Zulu Kings, put us out on our asses before his body was even cold. It was only a shot, and it turns out I had a head for business just like my father. It took a year to rebuild the team and regain the confidence of Dad’s long list of clients, but I had done it. For it all to fall apart years later because my ex couldn’t keep his hands off my staff is a slap in the face. I have to have a way around this. I must do it myself until I can come up with someone more qualified.
I walk to the door, open it, and poke my head out. “Mom, can you watch Beaux tonight?”
“You know I will. He’s my only grandchild,” she turns and answers back. “Club business?”