Page 47 of Ridin' True
“One thing you should know—you work for the Stallions, we will keep an eye on you until you earn our trust. Maybe even then. Learned the hard way, never can be too careful.”
I looked at Jed, suddenly horrified that maybe what existed between us wasn’t real after all.
His eyes pinned on me, he spoke directly to my thoughts when he said, “Don’t even think it. Told you before, no games.”
“Almost anyone can be bought, sweetheart,” interjected Bull, earning my attention once more. “Especially when they’ve got a weddin’ to pay for.”
All the air in my lungs left me in awhoosh.
Cora?
“You’re a lawyer, Torres. I’m not dumb, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be fooled. You walk in here and sell yourself, I might just fall for it. I back channel you before you walk through the door, I know when you speak if you’re tellin’ the truth.”
“Okay,” I muttered, trying to reconcile hisback channelingmethods while also trying to find the words to stand up for myself. “It sounds like there’s not much I can say you don’t already know. I will tell you—I’m not completely sure what this job entails, but I was interestedbeforeyou showed up to that storage unit.
“You can try to scare me now—and, I’ll admit, I’m a little freaked—but youdidshow up to that storage unit. And my gut tells me, what you stand for is something worth protecting. If it weren’t, you probably wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of vetting me in the first place.”
This time, when a smile pulled at Bull’s lips, I believed it.
“Alright, here’s what you need to know. The club owns two businesses outright. All of us have a stake in ‘em. Forty-nine percent of Steel Mustang is ours, too. Plenty of legal shit tied up in all that. You take this job, you own that shit.”
I nodded, but he wasn’t finished. Not by a long shot.
“On the flip side of corporate is the club itself and the brothers who make up its membership. They get into trouble, they need representation, that’s you.”
“To be clear,” I interjected, “if I were to take this role, I would represent any Stallion to the best of my ability so long as I’m not asked to skirt the law. I don’t mean to be rude or make assumptions, but Rocco Borrero knew you by name. That tellsmetwo things: the business you do is not exclusive to the garage, the auto parts store, or the biker bar, and there’s much more to the Stallions than meets the eye.”
Bull dipped his chin in a deliberate nod. “You take this role, you can review our non-disclosure, sign it, and we’ll look under that hood together. For now, all you need to know is that the Stallions make our own laws. One of them is don’t get caught bein’ stupid. If one of us does, your job wouldn’t be to skirt the law but to make the law work in our favor. That doesn’t always mean no consequences for the brother. Just means when one of us is in a bind, I’ll expect you to give us a leg up. My boys do their job right, you’ll have time to kill.”
“Jed informed me that might be the case.” I didn’t miss the smirk that lifted one side of his mustache in response to my comment, even though it was there and gone in a flash. Rather than read into it, I continued, “You should know, I intend to hang my own shingle. If there’s time to kill, I want to open my own practice and take on the cases that interest me most.”
“So long as you hold your end of the bargain, and there’s no conflict of interest, we wouldn’t stop you. Works better that way, anyway. We don’t have a dedicated office for you here.”
“Okay,” I murmured.
A lot had been put on the table. I wasn’t quite sure how to process all of it.
“Darlin’, you still interested?”
I looked at Jed then at Bull and back again. The thought of sayingyeswas daunting. I knew, no matter how succinctly he laid out the job description, it wasn’t going to be easy.
“Thought maybe you’d want to talk compensation before you gave me an answer.”
I snapped my gaze back at Bull.
“Base salary starts at a hundred and thirty grand.”
I paused a beat, so as not to embarrass myself—but that was forty-thousand dollars more than I made at the firm. With that money, I could definitely start my own business a whole lot sooner than I planned. I’d have been an idiot to turn it down.
Besides, I was always up for a challenge.
“I would need time to give my notice and to close out a few cases at my current firm.”
“Fine by me. Before you do that, there’s somethin’ I need from you, first,” he said as he stood.
“What’s that?”
“Have a look at the employee agreement Fred Hoffman drew up for himself. I want him gone, but I don’t want to have to pay him out. Soon as you can find a loophole, the job is yours.”
