Fallen Bast*rd

Chapter Three – Things I Should Ignore

Ax 21 Years Old - One Year Later

Listening to my younger brother dissect every conversation he’d ever had with a girl who barely noticed him was becoming an endurance sport.

Unfortunately, being the older brother meant I wasn’t allowed to quit halfway through.

JJ sat opposite me in the common room, slouched so low in the leather chair that only the top half of his body remained visible. He’d been talking for nearly twenty minutes, yet somehow hadn’t provided a single piece of information that suggested the girl from college was interested in him.

Still, he looked happier than I’d seen him in weeks.

Which made telling him the truth more difficult.

“So,” I said, turning my beer bottle between my fingers, “you’ve been dropping her off after class for three weeks, and she’s only just given you her number?”

“Yeah.” JJ paused, a thoughtful expression passing over his face.

For one hopeful second, I thought he’d finally noticed the problem.

“We’re in the same study group,” he continued. “So it made sense.”

Hope died quickly.

“How many people are in this study group?”

He frowned. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Humour me.”

“Seven.”

“There it is.”

“There what is?”

I stared at him. He stared back.

If clueless ever needed a poster boy, my brother would be available for the photoshoot. “She’s got six other people she could exchange notes with.”

“But I’m the one who drives her home.”

Exactly. I took another drink before the words in my head escaped without supervision.

JJ had spent most of his final college year chasing a girl who attended club parties, accepted free drinks and occasionally remembered he existed when she needed a lift.

The most personal thing I’d heard her say to him was, Can I get a beer?

JJ had practically planned their wedding.

“Maybe don’t pin all your hopes on one person,” I suggested. “You’ve got the rest of the year before university. Explore your options.”

He gave me the same look he used whenever Mum told him to clean his room. “I don’t want other options.”

“Of course you don’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re Seventeen, nearly Eighteen years old and behaving like she’s the last woman left in Britain.”

“You don’t know her.”

“I’ve met her.”

“At parties.”

“Where she barely speaks to you.”

“She’s shy.”

“She danced on a table at Christmas.”

“That was different.”

“She climbed onto Angel’s shoulders and tried to steal the mistletoe from the ceiling.”

“She’d been drinking.”

I nodded slowly. “Painfully shy.” JJ glared at me, I tried not to laugh.

He was lovesick, not stupid. At least, not usually.

Whatever he saw in her had taken hold, and all the sensible advice in the world wasn’t going to loosen it until he was ready.

Which meant my only job was to make sure she didn’t break him too badly.

“You know,” he said, settling deeper into the chair, “you give rubbish relationship advice.”

“I give excellent advice.”

“You’ve been single for ages.”

“By choice.”

“Course it is.”

“It is.”

“You’ve ignored every woman who’s flirted with you for months.”

“That’s still a choice.”

A smug smile spread across his face. “Or could it be you have your eye on someone else...”

I stopped with the bottle halfway to my mouth. “Not this again.”

“Oh, come on, Ax.”

“There is no again.”

“There definitely is.”

JJ tipped his head towards the other side of the room. And like an i***t my gaze followed his before remembering that doing so would prove his point.

Too late.

Willa and Georgie stood on either side of Byte’s chair, irritating him with the kind of enthusiasm normally reserved for blood sport.

Byte was trying to work on his laptop. The girls were making that impossible.

Georgie leaned across his shoulder, pointing at something on the screen while Willa argued from the other side. Byte swatted their hands away, only for them to immediately return.

Whatever they were discussing had Willa smiling. Not the little smirk she used when she was about to do something she shouldn’t.

A real smile. Bright enough to make everything around her look dull.

I looked away.

Coincidence, that’s all.

“Six times,” JJ said.

“What?”

“You’ve looked over there six times since we sat down.”

“I’m keeping an eye on them.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re bothering Byte.”

“Byte can handle himself.”

“You haven’t seen what those two can do to a computer.”

“I’ve seen what they can do to grown men.”

I gave him a warning look.

He laughed. “Relax. I meant Kirk. He still checks every beer before opening it.”

“He should.”

“Not the point.” He sighs. “Since her seventeenth birthday, you’ve been acting weird.”

“I have not.”

“You stop talking whenever she walks into a room.”

“I stop talking when lots of people walk into rooms.”

“You threatened a prospect for flirting with her.”

“He was an idiot.”

“He asked if she wanted a drink.”

“He was holding two.”

JJ stared at me. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

“It made sense at the time.”

“It made sense because you wanted an excuse.”

I took another drink.

Across the room, Willa laughed at something Georgie said and nudged Byte with her hip until he shifted his chair.

The truth was, I had noticed her long before her seventeenth birthday. Just not in the way JJ meant.

I’d noticed the way she watched everything, from how she remembered details other people forgot.

How she could walk into a room full of patched brothers twice her size and argue without hesitation.

I’d noticed she no longer followed conversations from the edges. She led them.

Somewhere between sixteen and seventeen, she’d stopped asking permission to take up space. She stood taller. Spoke louder. Trusted herself more.

People gravitated towards her without realising they were doing it.

The rest of it—the curves she hadn’t possessed a year ago, the way her jeans fitted differently, the fact that my eyes now had to be dragged back towards her face—

I had been trying very hard not to notice.

JJ leaned forward. “You’re doing it again.”

“I’m doing nothing.”

“Your eyes are glued to her arse.”

“They aren’t.” Willa bent to pick up a cable Byte had dropped and I immediately looked at the ceiling.

JJ laughed so loudly that Willa glanced towards us. Our eyes met, she smiled and my chest tightened.

I nodded once before looking back at my brother. Arsehole looked pleased with himself.

“She’s Dex’s little sister,” I said quietly.

“She’s seventeen, not seven.”

“Exactly.”

JJ’s smile faded slightly.

That, at least, he understood.

There were rules, though technically they didn’t apply here, I had no interest in being the i***t who crossed them either because I’d suddenly forgotten how to control my own eyes.

“You’re protesting a lot for someone who doesn’t fancy her.”

“I don’t.”

“Sure.”

“I don’t.”

“Keep saying it. It might become true.”

I threw a beer mat at his head.

He caught it and grinned. “Still making more progress than you.”

“With the girl who took three weeks to give you her number?”

His grin disappeared. “f**k off.”

“Gladly.”

Three Weeks Later

The documents scattered across the meeting-room table made less sense the longer I stared at them.

Three businesses, multiple ledgers, bank statements, printed transaction histories and Numbers that should’ve matched but didn’t.

Byte sat at the far end of the table with the expression of a man personally betrayed by technology.

Remi, my VP, looked entertained. Stray, our accountant, looked almost impressed.

That worried me more.

I pushed one of the ledgers away. “Byte, walk me through what the f**k I’m looking at.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Honestly, boss, we should get the girls in here. They’re the ones who found it.”

“No.” Willa and Georgie weren’t patched. They didn’t attend club meetings, regardless of what they had uncovered.

Rules didn’t become optional because the information was interesting.

“Explain it yourself.”

Byte muttered something under his breath before reaching for the remote. A screen descended from the ceiling.

“These”—he gestured towards the documents—“are the ledgers from the dockside bar and restaurant.”

He clicked again. Another set of figures appeared.

“These are from Kings.”

Remi smirked. “Our respectable gentlemen’s establishment.”

“Right,” Byte said dryly. “The respectable one with private rooms and three bouncers named Dave.”

He turned towards Stray. “These are last month’s filings?”

Stray leafed through the paperwork before nodding. “They look right at first glance.”

“At first glance,” Byte repeated. “That’s the problem.” He brought another window onto the screen.

Rows of transactions appeared, each followed by a second figure so small it could easily have been missed.

“One penny here. Five there. Occasionally a pound when the original transaction is large enough.”

Remi leaned forward. “Someone’s skimming.”

“Someone’s been skimming,” Byte corrected. “Across multiple businesses.”

“How long?”

“Don’t know yet.”

Stray studied the figures. “It’s clever.”

I looked at him. “That sounded suspiciously like admiration.”

“It’s not sustainable,” he said. “Too many points of exposure. But whoever built it understood how little people would notice when the amount disappears inside legitimate transactions.”

Byte clicked the remote. A model began running across the screen.

Thousands of small payments gathered into a separate total. The amount increased faster than I expected.

Remi let out a low whistle. “That adds up.”

“It’s designed to,” Byte said.

“How did the girls find it?”

His expression soured. “Because they’re vindictive little criminals.”

Remi laughed. “Be specific.”

“Last week I caught them testing a siphoning programme.”

The room went quiet.

I stared at him. “They were stealing from the club?”

“No.” Byte held up both hands. “Nothing tied to the club, family or allies. I checked.”

“Who, then?”

“Non-allied businesses. People they’d decided wouldn’t notice or didn’t deserve sympathy.”

I closed my eyes briefly. Bear was going to kill them and Butch would probably help.

“They built it?”

“With what they learnt from me and Zero.”

That explained the expression. Byte wasn’t only angry, embarrassed and possibly a little proud.

He’d rather eat the remote than admit to either.

“I warned them their online activities were becoming questionable,” he continued. “Threatened to bring it up with Bear and Butch.”

“And?”

“As payback, they broke into my system.”

Remi’s grin widened. “Your unhackable system?”

“Shut up.”

“Built by the great Byte himself?”

“I can still remove your access to the p**n servers.”

Remi immediately straightened. “Continue.”

Byte pointed towards the screen. “They found a pattern in the club records that resembled their programme. Same basic principle, but noticeable if the right person looked.”

Stray leaned closer. “So they didn’t create this.”

“No. They exposed it.”

“How much is missing?” I asked.

“We don’t know.” The humour vanished from Byte’s face. “Not yet.”

I studied the growing total on the screen.

Willa and Georgie had been playing with a skimming model and accidentally uncovered someone stealing from us.

That was the problem with clever people. Eventually, they find something they ain’t supposed to.

“Remi, you and Byte round up everyone with access to the accounts and anyone responsible for bookkeeping across all three businesses. Keep it quiet.”

Remi nodded.

“Stray, you and your assistant go through the paper and electronic records. I want to know when the shadow ledger started and how far it spreads.”

“If I need a forensic accountant?”

“Get one.”

I stood.

“No accusations until we have proof. Nobody outside this room hears about the investigation.”

“What about the girls?” Byte asked.

“They’re not coming into the meeting.”

“I meant what do we tell them?”

“Nothing yet.”

He didn’t look pleased; neither was I.

But two seventeen-year-olds had already gone far enough into business that needn’t concern them.

The fact that one of them was Willa made no difference. At least, it shouldn’t have.

“How am I supposed to tell Bear and Butch their angels built a skimming programme?” Byte asked.

“You’re not.”

He grinned.

“Good. I quite like my face.”

“I’ll handle them.”

That earned a murmur of sympathy from Stray.

Coward.

I left the meeting room before anyone volunteered further support.

The common room was quieter than usual.

Sandy intercepted me halfway across it, sliding one hand over my arm.

“You look tense.”

“I am.”

“I could help with that.”

Six months earlier, I might’ve accepted. Tonight, the idea felt exhausting.

My head was full of missing money, corrupted ledgers and a seventeen-year-old girl who had apparently used everything Byte and Zero taught her to build a programme capable of robbing people without leaving fingerprints.

“Rain check,” I said.

Sandy looked surprised but recovered quickly. “Your loss.”

“Probably.”

She walked away.

I headed towards the bar, then changed direction before reaching it. A beer wouldn’t fix this and neither would company.

What I needed was my bike, an empty road and enough distance to work out how to tell our parents that their princesses were well on their way to becoming goddamn outlaws.

The worst part was that I wasn’t entirely angry.

Somewhere beneath the frustration, rules and inevitable family explosion, I was impressed.

And there it was another thing about Willa I had no business noticing.