Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77043 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77043 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Their gazes turned in my direction.
“It’s opening day,” I reminded them.
“Oh, shit. We should have thrown a party or something, right?” Sully asked, always looking for a reason to do so.
“We did, remember?” Nave asked, shaking his head. “For the soft launch? Beer, babes, a piñata filled with joints and edibles?”
“Well, with those contents you can surmise why I don’t remember,” Sully said, smirking. “Have I mentioned how glad I am to be prospecting in a state that has legalized?” he asked, pressing a hand to his chest like he was saying the Pledge of Allegiance. “God bless New Jersey.”
“Were any of us supposed to be there today?” Callow asked, momentarily serious at the idea of fucking off on a day of work, all thoughts of the beach disappearing.
“No,” I said, shaking my head, deciding not to clarify further.
Like how I didn’t currently have plans to have a bunch of the guys working at my shooting range, though I had trained a few of them on it, just in case.
The reason was two-fold, really.
First, when Fallon and I had talked about it, it made sense not to have a bunch of well-known arms-dealing bikers frequenting my legal business.
Second, well, I was okay with one aspect of my life not having all the guys in the club hanging around it.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved my brothers. But I was getting older. And the nonstop partying and fucking around didn’t hold the same appeal that it used to. So I was happy to have something more serious going on in my life. Especially after pouring so much money and work into it.
I owned it outright, no partners, even though we planned to use it to funnel club money through, make it legitimate, that sort of shit. I didn’t know the details. That was what we had our special accountant for.
So, yeah, it was important to me.
“Speaking of, I gotta get going,” I said, grabbing the bag of cash I had stopped by the club for in the first place.
A shooting range wasn’t exactly an early morning activity, so I’d opted to open mostly in the afternoons and evenings. At least for the time being. Until business picked up and I decided to hire someone else to help out, take on the hours I didn’t want.
“Come for some drinks after,” Sully invited. “I’m gonna buy a Slip-N-Slide for the pretty ladies in an attempt to convince Brooks that we need a pool.”
“Good luck with that,” I said, smirking as I walked away.
It was no secret that Brooks wasn’t much of a partyer. And while, yeah, he occasionally took a woman to bed, it wasn’t a regular thing with him. So I doubted bikini-clad club girls were going to convince him to talk to Fallon about it.
Though, honestly, I might talk to Fallon about it.
I wouldn’t mind a pool.
My place didn’t have one. And I didn’t need one more thing I had to do upkeep on. So a club pool made the most sense. Fallon and Brooks could task the prospects with the job of keeping it clean and closing and opening it seasonally.
That was what my mind was on as I pulled my bike into the lot of my new business.
I’d gone to dozens of ranges before I started my plans, wanting to figure out what I did, and didn’t, want to emulate.
There was a fuckuva lot that I didn’t want, as it turned out.
A solid three-fourths of the places I’d visited for research were dark and seedy, a place any woman in her right mind would walk into, get creepy/rapey vibes, and hoof it the fuck right back out of it.
And my business plan actually was focusing a lot on women. I mean, nothing was pink or anything like that, but my aunts and cousins and sister all voted that women would be really open to learning how to shoot for self-defense purposes, or simply for fun, if the arena to do so in was welcoming to them.
This meant that I’d stayed clear of the dark, box-like buildings, and had gone with an architecture style that said something more like “health club” than “shooting range.”
It was a tall blue brick and white stone building with a slanted roof that allowed for a row of windows underneath, up high, since you couldn’t have windows on the side of a range. The front vestibule was also all glass, open and welcoming.
I’d even made sure to have the prospects pull their weight and do some landscaping up the sides.
Everything about the outside said, “Hey, this place isn’t scary.”
The look continued on the inside.
You walked into an open space where the counter ran along one wall with locked glass-fronted gun cages behind it. For rentals. Sure, the serious gun enthusiasts would all bring their own weapons, but I was hoping to attract a lot of people who were new to and curious about shooting. Which meant I needed rentals. Lots of them.