“’My bad.’ That’s all you’re gonna say?” Doll lowers her voice, mocking Tank to his face. “‘My bad. It’s a habit.’ Man, fuck you, Tank!”

And before either of us can respond, Doll is off at a slow jog to catch up with her friend. Meanwhile, Tank is still shaking his head, running his hand through his short, dark hair, sighing.

I sigh as well. “Do I even want to know, brother?”

“Nah, man. I fucked up, it’s what I do. Danza is gonna fucking kill me when he finds out,” Tank replies as the relaxed tone of his voice is replaced with tension and something else that might even be sadness.

“She’s an adult. Danza won’t be happy, but I’m sure he’ll understand. She’s the one who’s pissed enough she seems ready to cut your balls off.” I say, thinking, ‘Damn, he really messed this one up.’

“It is what it is. Fuck her, man. Come on, let’s get to sermon.”

3

One Ordinary Day

It’s another day at the office. For a little over two years now, Sass and I have been out of college and playing secretary for the Hellion’s owned businesses. Sass works in the garage next door to my office. She handles customers, phones, ordering parts, and billing. The boys have a three bay motorcycle garage for comprehensive work and two additional lifts in the back to provide maintenance services to the bikes. My dad believes in higher education. The boys that work there all went to school and are ASE (Automotive Service Excellence) certified mechanics, for the boys that work on the few cars that come in. Ruben, known as ‘Ruby’ to everyone, is also certified by MMI, Motorcycle Mechanics Institute. He oversees everything for the garage.

My dad regrets giving me this job. I’m around too much and therefore, I figure out more than he would like for me to know. He didn’t want me off the property, though, so he has to deal. You can’t have it both ways, Roundman.

Looking at my board, there are thirteen available units. Ugh, that number. Superstitions don’t usually get to me, but Friday the thirteenth and anything with that number, always seem to be a bad omen for me.

Running a mini storage facility is a tedious task. Keeping up the accounts, billing the late ones, tracking the people moving in and out, looking for the available units, the repossessions, the auctions, it’s a lot of paperwork. We have one hundred and thirty five regular units broken into seven buildings inside this lot. There are also two additional storage unit buildings available outside of the regular space, adjoined to the Hellions compound area. The Hellions don’t sell drugs. They don’t actively sell guns; the occasional trade or sale, maybe, but not anything on a consistent basis.

Those additional forty units are for special business deals with Hellion connections and range in size from the closet-space-size of a five by ten, to the one-car-garage-size of the ten by twenty units. For these special buildings, the shipments come in on a schedule, and they’re stored appropriately in however many units are needed until the product is ready to be moved again. I don’t know for sure what is stored, though I have my suspicions, we all do. The Hellions provide transportation, storage, and protection after our clients have already sealed and filled the containers. This means we’re responsible for the crates while they’re in our territory, and the contents of the crates don’t matter.