Just another night at the G-Ring.
Two
ACE
I never had any illusions that I’d go to college, but I was the first person in my family to ever graduate from high school. No one before me had ever done it before, and I always tried to take a path as different from my parents as possible.
The uncle that I borrowed X from got his GED in his twenties when he got out of prison. He had enough sense to use the money he’d made illegally before he went in to take business classes and open his bar.
The goal was to be more like him. Without the stint in a federal pen.
The Monday after the fight at the Ring, I’m sitting outside a coffee shop near my condominium building in uptown Charlotte. My laptop open in front of me, my eyes are glued to my screen. When I’m not helping my uncle at his bar and restaurant, I’m spending my days working on my plan for my future.
Because I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life running an illegal gambling ring. That’s what’s giving me the capital to move me into position to do something really big and incredible…open Charlotte’s first hotel and casino right here in Uptown.
I tear my eyes away from the numbers on the screen when the other chair at my table scrapes across the sidewalk and someone sits down.
“Ace!” His drawl is long and pronounced, and by his greeting you’d never guess that this man was the smartest kid back in our high school. By leaps and bounds.
I sip my coffee, noting the suit that my best friend wears. He’s on his lunch break from his office right down the street. “What’s up, Counts?”
“Counts” is his last name, but it fits him better than his first, which is Sanders. Because the guy knows numbers and math like no other. It’s like they live inside his head, and he’s doing quadratic equations in his sleep at night. He never even had to study that stuff back in school.
“Just grabbing some lunch.”
Nodding, I close my laptop. “That’s what I thought. Busy morning at the office?”
Counts rolls his eyes. “It never ceases to amaze me how little these rich fuckers actually understand their money. If they didn’t have an accountant, they’d be up shit’s creek.”
Chuckling, I scratch my eye behind my shades. “That’s why they pay you the big bucks, buddy.”
He smiles. “You’re damn right. Stopping in at your mom’s today?”
My expression darkens. It’s a question he asks me regularly, and it always brings down my damn mood. We grew up in the same trailer park not too far from here and going back to check on my mom isn’t something I’d planned on doing today.
“Why? ‘Cuz she took such good care of me growing up?”
Counts’ brows climb higher as he runs the palm of one hand over his close-shaved, chocolate-brown head. “Man…she’s shacked up again. And the dude is bad news.”
A tremor of foreboding rolls through me, but it’s just habit. “When is she not shacked up? You find that tidbit out from your dad?”
Counts’ dad is a real asshole. Drinks too much. Doesn’t have a clue that his son is a fucking genius. Basically failed out of parent school the same way my mom did.
“Dad might be a useless piece of shit, but he’s a knowledgeable piece of shit. I trust his intel.”
I don’t know how many times I told Counts when we were teenagers that his ticket out of that trailer park would be his brains. A full-ride academic scholarship would save him. I don’t think he ever really believed me until it happened.
Since I didn’t have anything like that to save me, I had to dig myself out my own way. I never would have made it at a fancy university, but I had brains. After I got out, I never wanted to go back again.
“Check on your mom, dude. Just do it.”
Sighing heavily, I contemplate. Counts will always have a soft spot for family, especially my mom. It’s because he doesn’t have one. His mother left he and his dad to fend for themselves when he was like, two. But I grew up with mine, and I know for a fact that I would have been better off without her.
There’s a heavy, oily feeling snaking into my gut, though, that tells me I should at least check in.
Every month since I left, I’ve sent my mom a check. I include a note, telling her to use it for groceries, bills, whatever she needs. I don’t know what she actually does with it, but I would bet my left nut that it ain’t groceries.
Sighing, I pack my laptop into my backpack and spear Counts with a look of surrender.
“Fine. I’ll poke my head in, make sure she’s alive. Then I’m out. I’ve got the Ring tonight.”
His expression looking relieved, he nods. “Yeah. I’ll come by later. Help you with the books.”
“Countin’ on it.”
Twenty minutes later, I’m sitting astride my jet-black Harley, the one I bought with one of my first earnings I made when I first started running the G-Ring.
The ride to the trailer park is short, less than twenty minutes as I weave through the edge of the city and into the oblivion beyond which they call a “transitional” neighborhood. Turning right past a questionable apartment complex that should be considered a mansion next to the place where I grew up, I follow an unpaved path toward the cluster of trailers hidden back behind a thicket of old oak trees.
Passing the first three, I glance at the bent and dying grass in front of Counts’ dad’s place. The trailer is a dingy white, planted on the ground without any wheels. It’s not even a doublewide. The place just looks…sad.
Every time I pull into this park my hackles rise, my brain goes into overdrive plotting
