The Biker’s Ruthless Queen

They buried my husband, handed me a pension, and gave me a chair I am not allowed to sit in.

Five years later I choose the man who wears it. I choose the men who vote with him. Ninety matters decided at that table and eighty-two came out my way, and I have never once put a hand up.

One line in that book protects me. No woman sits at the table and no woman is named at it. Nothing I do can be voted on, so nothing I do can be punished.

Then a new patch read the charter all the way through, which nobody had done in sixty years, and he stood up at that table and said my name.

Now thirteen men can weigh me in a room I may not enter, and vote on me once, finally, forever.

Let them. There is one permanent thing in that world and it is a final vote, and I have something that needs closing.

Five years ago my husband shook on a deal in a yard that would have ended this club. I found out in the week and I did not go to him. I killed it in a fortnight without ever touching the man.

And the way I killed it put a stranger on a road nine miles out of his way.

I did not kill him. I built four links of the five that did.

So I am going to walk into that room and say it out loud and let them close it forever.

The trouble is that if I win, I lose. A thing that falls at that table may never be brought again by anybody. The night they clear me is the night the door welds shut behind me.

My husband called me his ruthless queen once, over a chess board, in the week before he died. He was laughing.

It stopped being a joke.