Chapter 2 - The Steel Door
Mason placed himself in front of the door.
“No one goes through.”
Walt stepped away from the bar.
“You told us the lower garage was condemned.”
“It is.”
“Then why is an engine running underneath it?”
Mason looked toward the members.
“This is private club business.”
Lena almost laughed.
Her brother had spent eighteen years repairing club motorcycles, organizing charity rides and helping stranded members without charging them.
Yet whenever ownership was discussed, Mason called Luke a mechanic.
Not a founder.
Not a partner.
A mechanic.
Someone valuable enough to work beneath the building but never important enough to vote above it.
Lena held up the radio.
“My brother is club business.”
Mason lowered his voice.
“You are not a member.”
There it was.
Lena had managed registration tables, cooked at fundraisers and handled Luke’s medical bills after their mother died.
But because she did not wear an Iron Ridge patch, Mason believed she had no right to ask where her brother had gone.
Walt reached into his work shirt and removed an old brass key.
“I manage the building.”
Mason stared at him.
“You answer to me.”
“No.”
Walt looked around at the silent members.
“I answer to the property trust.”
That distinction changed the room.
The old garage belonged not to Mason personally, but to a cooperative formed by the original mechanics and riders who built Iron Ridge forty years earlier.
Mason had told everyone the trust expired.
Walt inserted the key.
Before he turned it, Lena noticed a fresh contract peeking from Mason’s vest.
A land-sale agreement.
The buyer was Lone Star Meridian Development.
May you like
The purchase price was forty-eight million dollars.
And the closing date was the next morning.
