Page 5 of Brother In Arms

“It’s Dray, that’s Rush and you need to use our fuckin’ names correctly and stop being so damn snooty.”

“Of course, I apologize,” she murmured and the way she said it, automatically lowering her gaze and turning her head to the side breaking eye contact… shit, it echoed Sunshine and Dani who had a major histories with abuse: domestic, physical, mental, emotional, shit you name it. Dray and I exchanged a look and he raised an eyebrow.

It looked like Uncle Ritchie-rich may have been ruthless more places than just the boardroom. I arched a brow at Dray, silently asking if this meant he would go easy, and he gave me a flat, unimpressed look back. I knew this lady probably put on a pretty good show, but the way Dray was portraying her, he made her look like Satan or some shit and I just wasn’t getting that from her. Of course, with rich people, appearance was fuckin’ everything. I knew that.

“Okay, what did you want me to do?” I asked them both.

“I wish to have Bailey hire you. José said that you have experience working with and around horses. We don’t know what happened, but recently, a good majority of our staff here quit with no notice.”

“What, just handed in their two weeks?” I asked.

“No, they simply stopped showing up for work.”

“Do you mind if I inquire as to their legal status?” I asked, looking back over the railing and out over the few people who were in sight working away.

An echoing silence came from Trudy’s corner of the porch and I exchanged another look with Dray.

“Yeah, that one didn’t exactly take a rocket scientist. I bet a few choice dropped words about INS in the right corners had them running scared. It’s a pretty solid and impactful intimidation tactic. Your daughter won’t sell, time to make it so she has to kind of a thing.”

“I see,” she said and I realized that she hadn’t even thought of the immigration angle, that she hadn’t even considered that some of her workers were undocumented. She didn’t look happy about that. I wasn’t exactly surprised. There wasn’t much more in the world that a rich person loved than fucking money, and they would tend to do just about anything to keep said fucking money right where they wanted it the most – in their pocket.

That typically meant screaming bloody murder about illegals soaking up resources like a sponge across the land, while simultaneously seeking them out to employ them at bargain basement prices to the point that it ensures they have to get on assistance just to make it. It was a vicious circle these people were trapped in and forced to walk… and the path they had to follow was typically painted in red.

“So let me see if I’ve got this straight,” I said, and I was just plain showing off that I was not as dumb as she likely believed. “You’re low on staff, Bailey’s being stubborn and her brother Philip is the type to get real nasty over this; so you want to kill two birds with one stone. You want to hire a big bad biker who isn’t afraid of the pussy real estate developer and so you went to Dragon to see if he had any guys available. Come to find out, you lucked out and one of them, that’d be me, actually has experience working a dude ranch on his resume. Even better, am I right?”

She blinked and nodded slowly, I smiled and it wasn’t friendly, “Well it’s going to cost you, because I don’t work for peanuts and I damn sure don’t put my ass on the line for the kind of money these guys are working for around here.” I gestured to a few of the dudes visibly sweating their ass off in the sun.

“I see,” she said plainly.

“Got plenty of guys willin’ to work at the shop; I’m pretty sure Blue and Cell would do anything to get off that road crew,” Dray supplied.

“Name your price,” his aunt said without any hesitation. I thought about it a minute and figured that even if Dray hated the woman, now wasn’t a time to get greedy. We were out here because Dragon had sent us out and I knew Dragon. She may be a major pain in the ass, but she was his wife’s sister and when it came down to that… pain in the ass or not, she was still familia and you didn’t dick over family, even if they maybe did deserve it.

I named a figure that was a pretty substantial raise from what I was making at the garage, but wasn’t so big as to make someone choke on it. In fact, with the relief that washed over Trudy’s face, I probably could have stood to go a little higher, but that was okay. The number seemed to please Dray, he knew what I made at the shop being my boss and all. He gave a curt nod in my direction and Trudy said, “Just let me find Bailey and we can finalize things.”

I was curious, so I asked, “Dragon and Dray did tell you what I did to lose my job at that ranch, didn’t they?” I asked.

Trudy’s dark eyes met mine and some of the ruthlessness peeked out, the calculation clear in her eyes, “Yes, and I’m afraid before all is said and done, that that is precisely the kind of man I will need on my daughter’s farm.”

She saw some kind of writing on the wall when it came to her kid and it wasn’t pretty. I filed that away for later and perked up when she looked past me saying, “Here comes Bailey now.”

I turned and swear to whatever fucking god there was, my stomach hit the insides of the soles of my boots. Long dark hair was braided in pigtails on either side of a pretty and familiar face. It made her look innocent, but I knew that she was far from it. Innocent girls didn’t like to fuck in the back of a bar where anyone could catch ‘em.

At least she’d traded out that short denim skirt for jeans and scuffed cowboy boots made for kicking shit around the farm… still, would have been nice to know she was the president’s niece before I’d stuck my cock in her.

Fuck. My. Life.

What had I just agreed to?

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