Free Throttle MC: A Stepbrother Romance by Daphne Loveling

she’s an addict now.  She’s stole a bunch of money from my aunt Katy. We don’t even know where she is.”
    Shit .  “I’m sorry, Lucy.”  I couldn’t help but feel a little responsible.  My father was the MC president, after all.  He was the one who called the shots. Ultimately, if it was true that the Throttle was into meth, the choice to bring it here had been his.
    “I know,” she said, looking away.  “It’s not like you can do anything about it, anyway.  But... I just thought you should know.”
    “Yeah,” I replied, feeling sad and helpless. “I should know.” 
     
     
     
     

 
 
 

Chapter Ten
Ryker
     
    When I walked into the chapel, most of the brothers were standing around, waiting for it to start.  Small groups of three and four were hanging around, shooting the shit.  Over by the head of the table, Jimmy was in deep conversation with Lon.  Lon’s brow was furrowed slightly.  Once or twice, Jimmy glanced over at me, and Lon’s gaze followed.  I wondered what they were talking about.
    Eventually, Lon banged the gavel, and chapel came to order. There was the usual discussion of club business, some banter back and forth about this and that.  There had been a small garage fire the week before, so we talked about what had caused it and what it was going to cost us.
    Lon usually ran chapel with a strict attention to order, but today the atmosphere was looser, more jovial.  I wondered if it had anything to do with Hadley’s arrival.  Between orders of business, there was more chatter, more joking around.  Jimmy was being even more of a smarmy prick with Lon than he usually was.  I could tell something was up, and at first I thought it was just him trying to ingratiate himself with the prez so he could make a play for Hadley. 
    If that was a reason, though, I soon found out it wasn’t the only one. No, Jimmy had an idea for the club, it turned out.  One that would take us several steps further down a path I didn’t want to be on at all.
    As if meth transportation and distribution wasn’t enough of a sideline for The Throttle, Jimmy wanted us to get into production.
    “Come on,” he said with a persuasive grin, looking around the table.  “It’s a perfect opportunity.  The Chrome Warriors and us are the main sources around here, and we can barely keep up with the demand.  Right now we’re getting our stuff from the Teror cartel.  Why the fuck should we be paying them a cut, when we can get everything we need and make it ourselves?  We got all that land and them outbuildings outside of town, not doing anything with it but storing product. If we started producing ourselves, we could cut out the middle man.  If we can produce big enough, pure enough, we can corner the market and even cut the Warriors out of the game.” 
    He looked expectantly around the table for support.  Sure as shit, Jimmy’s goddamn lap dog Stick piped up and agreed with him.  “Fuck yeah,” he nodded.  “Why the fuck we need to pay someone else for something we can make ourselves?”  Stick wasn’t the brightest bulb.  That’s why he and Jimmy were thick as thieves: Jimmy liked that Stick thought he was some sort of fuckin’ genius. 
    I glanced around the room at my brothers.  Some were nodding slightly, brows furrowed.  Others looked skeptical.  I took that as my cue.  “Jimmy’s suggestion is interesting, but ultimately it’s not worth our time or our effort,” I said. “Why the fuck would we go to all that trouble to build a lab, get the chemicals, go into production, and all that, when we got a steady source of meth already?  Leave the grunt work to someone else.  Gives us more time for the important stuff: riding and fucking.”
    Lon and a couple others laughed appreciatively at this last comment.  “It does seem like a lot of work in exchange for not much,” Lon murmured, his brow creased as he considered Jimmy’s idea. 
    “Fuckin’ dangerous as hell, too,”