Chasing Down Changes (Moroad Motorcycle Club) (3 page)

T
he last door upstairs in the Sterling Building closed. Tiff Carter hurried into the main kitchen—half kitchen/half business central—and set the timer for the Blue Room. She had fifteen minutes while Keely entertained a customer to order dinner for the girls. Then it'd be time to usher all the paying customers out of the upstairs, and get ready for the dance show tonight.

For a moment, she thrust her fingers into her messy hair and gazed around the messy room. Going non-stop all afternoon, the girls associated with Red Light refused to pick up after themselves. There were coffee cups scattered over the surface of the large, oval table. Assorted female clothing tossed haphazardly over the back of the chairs. Someone left the microwave door open and a warped Cup-a-noodle inside, which had spilled onto the glass carousel plate.

She let her hands fall to her sides and stepped toward the table. Her toes throbbed from the new heels she'd stupidly decided to wear today.

Tiff pulled out a chair, removed one lone shoe from the seat, and sat. The relief instant and welcoming to her sore feet. Not wasting time, she picked up her cell and ordered dinner from Silver Valley Bar for the four women who lived and worked in the Sterling Building, plus herself and her assistant, Marci.

The delivery would arrive soon, and she'd have time to change her clothes and put on different shoes for the long stretch of work she still needed to finish for the day downstairs in Silver Girls.

Running Red Light upstairs and Silver Girls downstairs made for a long eight-hour shift. Each business brought unique risks and stress to her life.

Heels clicked against the floor, growing louder. Tiff gazed at the door and waved Marci into the room when the woman stuck her head around the corner.

"You're not busy?" Marci placed her bag on the table and sat down opposite Tiff.

She glanced at the timer. "Nope. I have nine minutes."

"How did you manage that?" Marci leaned back in the chair. "I don't think I've seen you sit down the last three days. You're on a one-woman crusade to run the world."

Tiff laughed. "That's too much work. I'll be happy if I conquer Red Light."

Marci waved her hand in front of her. "No one doubts you've nailed running the best damn bordello business in the state. How did today go?"

"It was busy." Tiff glanced at the timer again. Three minutes. "Our last customer is almost done in the Blue Room, dinner is on its way, and its Friday night during tourist season. I expect a full house downstairs, and tips should be good for the dancers."

"Girl, you need to take a night off."

"I can't." Tiff reached across her chest and gripped the tender muscle between her neck and shoulder. "I need to stay ahead of everyone or the place will crumble around me."

Marci shook her head. "The girls can—"

The timer rang.

"Shit." Tiff stood and hurried over to shut off the noise. "I'll be right back."

She always tried to catch the timer thirty seconds before the ring and use that time to walk down the hallway. The women who worked for her deserved every spare second. Thirty seconds with a man, a stranger, a grabber, a pervert, was thirty seconds too long.

At the Blue Room, Tiff knocked and swung the unlocked door open. "Time is up."

Mr. Cochek, Elk member, forty years old, balding, buckled his belt and looked away from Tiff. She caught Keely's gaze and lifted her brows. It was rare for paying customers to last the whole fifteen minutes. The man's confidence bigger than his stamina, he fell victim to all the tricks the Silver Girls played once the door shut and was ready to leave.

Mr. Cochek ducked his chin and squeezed out the door, slipping on his suit jacket. Tiff lifted her arm, pointing the way to the back door, and escorted him to the back of the building and opened the locked exit door.

She stroked the customer's arm and whispered, "Please, visit us again."

"I will," Mr. Cochek said, finally meeting her eyes before leaving as quietly as he came.

The last customer gone for the night, Tiff walked down the hallway opening the color coded doors to the rooms. The signal for Hannah, Keely, Amanda, and Tahleena that they were free to shower before dinner.

Back in the main kitchen, Tiff expected to find Marci and instead she found an empty room. She tidied the area, throwing all the discarded clothes in the corner and wiping down the table. She ran a clean business, despite her inability to make the girls pick up after themselves.

Men were required to wear a condom supplied by Red Light. The women placed a rubber-backed throw rug on the always made beds for the men to lay on to keep everything clean. Each month, she or Marci escorted the women to the family doctor in Federal and had them tested for sexually transmitted diseases.

While house rules would protect them if the women obeyed every single one, human nature would often get the best of a lonely and needy woman.

Before she entered into the network and rotated the women, she had a problem once or twice a year when one of the prostitutes would fall for the lines of a returning customer, believing he loved her and allowed him to talk her into going without protection. That's one of the main reasons why she rotated the women every three months. She needed to protect her investments and the women working for the company she hired through took their work more seriously.

When three months were up, the four women would receive an airline ticket to Nevada, where they'd go to work for one of the other bordellos. In return, new ladies would arrive at the Sterling building for their three months of contracted work with Red Light.

The only women who stayed working for her year after year were the Silver Girl dancers. Each one of them linked to the two motorcycle clubs in the area. They were never allowed to spread their legs for money, and the bikers kept them honest.

At one time, she'd danced and enjoyed the comradery with the women and the steady income before she decided to take the leap into ownership.

The two-ding doorbell rang signaling someone at the downstairs door. Tiff tossed the wet kitchen towel on top of the pile of dirty clothes and grabbed money out of the jar on the shelf.

Marci stuck her head around the corner at the end of the hallway. "Dinner arrived."

Tiff waved the cash out in front of her. "I'm coming."

"I'll get it for you. Go, sit down and rest." Marci took the money out of Tiff's hand.

"Thanks, babe." Tiff turned and found Keely and Hannah walking out of their rooms.

Their shift over, they'd taken off their work clothes and each woman wore a pair of yoga pants, a tight Tee that barely covered their flat stomachs, and fuzzy slippers on their feet. Fresh from the shower, Keely wore her wet hair twisted at the back of her head. Hannah's baseball cap held her black hair off her shoulders. If anyone ran into them on the street, they looked like normal twenty-year-old young ladies. The innocent residents of Federal would never suspect the women fucked some of the most prominent men around town including some of their boyfriends, husbands, and daddies for a living.

Tiff followed them into the room. Her stomach gnawed. She'd skipped lunch to set up the music for tonight's show. The more she stayed one step ahead of everything that came with running two businesses in one building, the fewer hang-ups she'd need to deal with later.

"Dinner is served," Marci said, sweeping into the room and placing two plastic bags on the table. "Eat up, ladies. The door downstairs opens in an hour, and that means the upstairs is locked, and you're in for the night."

Tiff skipped the salad bowls and grabbed one of the Styrofoam containers containing roasted chicken strips and a side order of coleslaw. "Remember to put any tips you want me to put in the safe in an envelope and slide it under my door."

"Not me." Keely brought the fork up to her mouth, hesitated, and laughed. "I'm going to pay Amanda to give me a mani and pedi on Thursday."

"Girl, you're never going to save enough money to get out of the business." Hannah picked apart the chicken and put a piece in her mouth. "Once I have thirty-thousand dollars saved up, I'm going to go back to school."

"To do what?" asked Keely.

"I want to be a hygienist." Hannah smiled big, showing off her perfect white teeth. "It'll beat having a dick in my mouth every day."

Tiff laughed, wiping her mouth off with a paper napkin and pushing her empty container to the middle of the table. "All right, I'm going to change clothes and go downstairs. Try to clean up the mess in here. It's getting out of control."

"Sure thing." Tahleena unscrewed a water bottle. "Good luck tonight. I heard you'll have a full house."

Tiff paused at the side of the table. The women of Red Light weren't allowed to socialize with the citizens in town and were under strict rules not to socialize with their customers during visits. "Oh, yeah?"

Tahleena nodded and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. "I was sitting out on the balcony when I overheard one of the dancers standing at the back door talking. Apparently, some member of one of their biker gangs is getting released from prison, and the dancer was excited that the bikers were going to come and celebrate by watching a show."

Tiff's chest squeezed and the rest of the women's voices buzzed in her ears. She shook her head. "Who?"

Tahleena lifted her shoulder, not answering.

Bantorus Motorcycle Club members often visited Silver Girls, but she'd never heard of any of them being arrested and sent to prison. Unlike the Moroad Motorcycle Club, which every member had a felony record and spent time in prison. Moroad usually sent a couple of members over every night to escort their women who danced for her home. She leaned over and planted her hands on the table.

"Who was released from prison?" In her panic, her voice rose higher and louder than she intended.

"Honey..." Marci laid her hand on Tiff's back.

"Don't." Tiff shrugged her friend away and faced Tahleena. "Answer me, Tahleena."

"Honest to God. I don't know. I don't even know the dancers by name, and I was following the rules for being outside. I don't even know who she was talking about, and it only grabbed my attention because she and another girl were excited." Tahleena looked around the table, widening her eyes. "I'm telling the truth."

Tiff straightened and marched out of the room, down the hallway, and ignored Marci calling after her. She unlocked her suite at the end of the hallway and went straight to her bedroom. Her heart raced. What day was it?

She shuffled through the drawer of her nightstand, found the white slip of paper shoved into a Ziploc bag, and pulled it out.

"April 25
^th
...," she whispered, closing her eyes.

She pressed the paper to her chest as her blood pulsed through her veins filling her head with the frantic pace of her heart. How had she lost track of time?

Just the other week, she'd counted the days until Jeremy Aldridge's release from prison, and he had six months left. She opened her hand and shoved the paper back in the bag, and hid everything she held dear to her back in the drawer. Caught up in work and running two businesses, she'd lost track of time.

She wasn't ready to face the only man she'd ever loved.

Kicking off her heels, she walked to her closet and dressed for work downstairs with the dancers. She wouldn't worry about which Moroad members came tonight. If Jeremy happened to be with them, she'd pretend not to recognize him.

Fifteen years was a long time.

He probably changed completely.

She slipped a red dress over her head, tugged the tight material down her body, over her hips, and sighed. She'd changed, too.

She was no longer a nineteen-year-old girl in love with a boy from the wrong side of the tracks. She groaned. Federal didn't even have a railroad track. Where Jeremy came from was worse, and now he was a felon like the rest of his club.

Fifteen years in the Idaho State Penitentiary would strip everything away from the young man she once thought was her soul mate and turn him into a replica of every other Moroad member. Scary. Evil. Selfish.

She hooked the silver choker around her neck, pushed her shoulders back, and headed downstairs. No, she wasn't the same person Jeremy would remember. She didn't start running the most popular illegal bordello in the Silver Valley under the noses of the Feds with a sweet personality.

She got everything she owned by standing up for herself and fighting for her independence, and she wasn't changing for anyone.

T
he air outside the Sterling Building vibrated with music leaking out of the building into the alley. Jeremy stood on the sidewalk, his head tilted back, and stared at the door to the upstairs. Merk filled him in on the changes, the expansion, the prostitutes. The illegal activities that so far had gone unnoticed by the community and Bantorus Motorcycle Club.

He had a hard time wrapping his head around Tiff pointing her middle finger at the law and running a business that if caught, she'd be seeing the inside of the woman's prison for a long time. Everyone in Federal knew the history of Silver Girls. At one time a prosperous bordello, until the owner committed murder and the Feds raided the place, shutting it down.

During his childhood, the daughter of the madam who was responsible for the murders bought the building and turned it into a strip joint. Later, the owner hooked up with the president of Bantorus MC and after a fire, restored the building bigger and better, hiring the Moroad women to dance. The merge to keep their females happy worked out for both clubs, and business stayed within the boundaries of what was legal.

Now Tiff outdid them all, running the dancers downstairs and having women upstairs spread their legs to take dick for money. He walked to the downstairs door and stepped inside, surprised to find the back unlocked.

His MC brothers had gone inside an hour ago, and the show had already started. He'd held back because he wasn't ready to see Tiff yet. Not in a crowd. Not with everyone watching him for a reaction.