Page 36 of Iggy

Rain rattled the clubhouse windows like thrown gravel. Beyond the office door, the old building groaned around the low murmur of engines cooling in the garage.

She refreshed the account again. She’d change access and passwords so that Tank could no longer see the numbers. The balance did not change enough to matter.

Her pulse hammered in her throat, and she pressed two fingers there as if she could force it to slow. The office seemed to tilt whenever the red numbers moved, leaving her with the sick certainty that everyone beyond the door was standing on a floor she had already allowed to collapse.

Three suppliers wanted payment by morning, not to mention the Swamp Rats. Two riders were waiting on hospital money, men who had bled for her and up until recently, had believed her word meant safety.

The property tax notice lay open beneath her hand, its final warning stamped in a red so bright it looked wet. She imagined the locks changed, the patches stripped from the walls, and every loyal face turning toward her when they learned she had failed them.

Neela had sold the spare bikes, stripped the storage lockers, and leaned on every debtor who still feared the club’s name. Fear had produced promises, excuses, and one envelope containing four hundred dollars.

She had tried legitimate loans under shell companies. She had tried illegitimate loans under names that carried interest like a blade. She had even called people she had sworn never to owe.

Now the market was eating the last of the club’s reserve while she watched.

A green arrow jumped. Hope rose before she could stop it, fierce and humiliating, and for one breath she saw every debt paid and every accusing voice silenced. Then the price dropped past where it had started. Her stomach clenched. She tasted metal and realized she had bitten the inside of her cheek hard enough to bleed.

She pushed back from the desk and stared at the locked filing cabinet in the corner. The black metal reflected a warped shadow of her face.

Inside were contracts, deeds, licensing papers, old incorporation records, and signatures that had once seemed like clever protection. Everything tied to the club’s name belonged, legally and irrevocably, to Olive.

Her daughter owned the trademarks, the land options, the accounts they could not touch, the rights to every patch, logo, and business connected to the club.

Olive had been an infant when those protections were built around her, a living vault no enemy could seize. Neela had lied to her former husband and former president of the club.

“She’s yours. I swear it. You fucked me at that party.”

She thought it would prompt him to leave it all to her. He left a title. That’s all. And it wasn’t nearly enough.

Now it felt like a curse that had been fastened around her daughter’s name, proof that even her attempts at protecting herself had been shaped by fear.

You did this. The accusation arrived in her own voice, colder than any rival’s. You put the club in Olive’s hands because you thought paper could protect you. You built a kingdom around an assumption, a perceived promise.

She wanted to argue with herself, to say she had been careful, that no one could have predicted what happened. The excuses sounded weak before they were fully formed.

Then Olive had vanished.

Neela had spent more than twenty years following rumors across state lines, paying informants, threatening liars, and arriving hours or years too late.

Every false lead had taken money. Every dead end had taken something harder to replace. Leverage, patience, and the appearance of control.

Olive had never been a child Neela missed. She had been an asset that had slipped beyond reach, carrying signatures and ownership rights worth more than affection ever could. The failure that followed Neela through the years was not maternal guilt. It was the humiliation of having designed the perfect tool and then losing possession of it.

She opened the desk drawer. The pistol rested beneath a stack of invoices.

For a long moment, she looked at it without touching it. Her hands trembled anyway. She curled them into fists beneath the desk, ashamed of the weakness and more ashamed of the relief the weapon seemed to promise. One decisive act, one irreversible silence, and the panic might finally stop asking her what came next.

There were people she could rob. People she could hurt. People whose disappearance would solve one problem and create five more.

The thought that frightened her most was not that she could do something terrible. It was how quickly her mind began arranging the details.

Pick one. Rob someone. Betray someone. Put the barrel beneath her own chin and leave the club to choke on the ruin.

The thoughts came in her voice but did not feel like hers. No. Not that. Not yet. She fixed her eyes on the rain-streaked window and counted each breath, terrified that the part of her doing the counting was no longer the part making decisions.

She closed the drawer hard enough to rattle the monitor.

Her phone vibrated beside the keyboard.