Chapter 4
4
ASH
I eagerly reached for my phone when my text alert went off late the following morning. But instead of Nora, it was King reminding me about our rescheduled meeting.
“Dammit,” I muttered. I’d been in the middle of an incredible dream starring Nora where I stared at my handprint on her sexy little ass while I fucked her from behind. Stiffly, I climbed out of bed and stomped into the bathroom for an arctic shower.
After grabbing a quick breakfast, I hopped on my hog and rode the short distance to the clubhouse.
Kevlar, Cross, and Shadow sat at the bar with Wizard standing behind it. Shadow—an enforcer and one of the best “cleaners” in the business—saw me first. He lifted his chin in greeting before shooting back his drink.
Wizard cocked his head and stared hard at me. “Don’t look like a man who was up all night fucking,” he said with a grin.
I narrowed my eyes and muttered, “Shut the fuck up, asshole. Not all of us are so hard up we have to go at warp speed.”
Wizard snorted. “Don’t pretend you haven’t been celibate as long as I was before Thea.”
He had a point. This MC was probably weird as shit to outsiders. Most of us older guys had gotten sick of the garbage that went along with dating or friends with benefits. The upside was that it meant our previous actions weren’t gonna bite us in the ass if we finally met the right woman.
“You fuckers gonna stand there or get on with this meeting?” I growled, walking past them to the hallway that led to offices that belonged to King; Blaze, our vice president; Ace, our treasurer and money guy; Wizard; and me.
King was sitting behind his desk when I tapped on the doorjamb before entering at his nod. Blaze lifted his chin from where he was sprawled on a couch in a small sitting area. A large conference table was on the opposite side of the room, and two chairs sat directly in front of King’s desk.
Echo and an enforcer, Cruze, came strolling in as I dropped onto a stuffed chair by Blaze while everyone else found a seat. Wizard sat at the table, then pulled his glasses from his pocket and slipped them on before setting up his laptop.
“Sent you all the dossier,” he grunted as he typed on the keyboard. This meeting was about our newest prospective client. I’d been digging into his legal situation.
King tapped on his iPad, presumably to bring up the document.
“Read it last night,” I muttered. “Lines up with my research, but there’s more. This idiot is in deep shit. Drugs and hookers mostly. But no records of any violence or scamming.”
“Neighbors didn’t have anything bad to say about him,” Echo chimed in. He’d been doing surveillance on the guy, watching him and nosing around to see what the people he interacted with thought of him. “Mostly kept to himself, but friendly if they spoke to him. Never saw the cops there. Basically, he was just a typical guy…forgettable even.”
“Probably because he was an informant,” I remarked.
Wizard and Echo’s eyebrows shot to their hairline as they stared at me.
“No, he wasn’t,” Wizard disagreed vehemently.
“Yup,” I replied, letting the P pop.
“Woulda found the records when I was digging into the legal shit for you,” Wizard argued.
At the same time, Echo protested, “Woulda caught him talking to a cop.”
I rolled my eyes. “Ever hear of the term ‘off the books’? Means there’s no record.”
Wizard narrowed his eyes at me but huffed and started tapping on his keyboard with harder strokes than normal.
“It was lost in a bunch of useless, legal mumbo-jumbo. Codes and shit that would be hard for even a good lawyer to decipher. Lucky for the Hounds”—my expression turned smug—“I’m far better than fucking good.”
Echo huffed, but I ignored his pouting.
“Charges against him aren’t all bullshit, but some of them are obviously meant to be leverage. Gotten himself so deep that it wouldn’t take more than a phone call to put him behind bars for a long stretch.”
“Won’t all that go away if we erase him?”
“Not when some of that leverage includes threats against his daughter.”
“Daughter?” King growled. “He’d be leavin’ his kid behind?”
Wizard looked like he was going to vomit. “He’s got a kid?”
I decided not to mess with him. “Relax, man. It’s in a sealed file, and he’s not even on the original paperwork. He made a request for around thirty sealed adoption files a few years ago. Ostensibly, to help a client find a lost child.”
The guy was a PI, or he played at being one anyway. He’d closed a case or two. But even a broken clock was right twice a day.
“There was no reason for you to go deep into his client files,” I told Wizard with a shrug. “Only reason I found it was because he’d paid some halfwit lawyer to come up with a bullshit reason to get a court order for the DNA of one of the girls in one of those files. It was denied. But Wizard included the whole dossier when he sent me the legal files. I noticed that shortly after that debacle, he opened an account on a genealogy site.”
“That’s why you asked me to hack that account?” Wizard queried. “I couldn’t figure out what the fuck you were looking for on there.”
I nodded. “He’d had his DNA done. I noticed that he was watching another public ‘tree,’ and he had a suggestion from the site that he might be related to someone on there. When I realized the suggestion was a young girl whose birthday matched that other file, I started comparing life events. I was eighty percent sure he was trying to find his kid who’d been put up for adoption. After looking through the list of places he’d lived since she was born, I was convinced.”
“Like you said, you’re better than fucking good,” Blaze said. “How the hell would the fuckers blackmailing him find the connection?”
“Just because I’m the best doesn’t mean there aren’t a few who are almost as good,” I offered. “Anyway, there were references to his collateral in the paperwork, but I couldn’t find a single asset, hidden or otherwise. There were a few other hints, so I connected the dots.”
King rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “If he goes to jail?—”
“Or dies,” Kevlar interjected.
King nodded. “Yeah. The daughter will be next in line to take on his shit?”
“Looks like it,” I confirmed. “He wants the legal stuff wiped out so they have nothin’ on her. Including scrubbing his DNA everywhere.”
Cruze, one of the best thieves in the world, looked at me incredulously. “Everywhere?”
I nodded. “Everything that could lead back to him or his daughter. I’m talking about finding his childhood home and making sure we get rid of anything they might have kept.”
“Seriously? Like they would have kept his baby toothbrush or something?” Cross suggested in a mocking tone, obviously of the opinion that it was a ridiculous idea.
“Baby teeth,” Cruze suggested. “My mom kept all of mine.”
Blaze nodded. “As fucked up as my situation was at home, I think my mom still has mine.”
Echo’s face skewed up in disgust. “That’s some serial killer kind of shit…keeping people’s teeth.”
“Not ‘people,’ shithead,” King grunted. “Parents and their kids. You’ll understand when Violet has yours.” After rolling his eyes, King turned his gaze back to me, clearly done with that conversation. “Is it possible?”
I sighed and rubbed a hand over my buzzed head. “Probably is the best I can give you right now.”
“Same,” added Wizard.
Shadow nodded. “Yeah. The circumstances aren’t?—”
There was a loud bang, cutting him off. Then someone shouted, “Where are your doctors? Get their asses here now!”
“Who the hell is ordering my men around?” King snarled as he jumped out of his chair and stalked to the front of the clubhouse.
I quickly followed, and when I got there, I muttered, “Fucking hell,” as I rushed over to help.
Raffaele DeLuca, the head of the southern area of the DeLuca Crime Family, was holding one of Ink’s arms while his lieutenant—and brother—Dacio, had a grip on his other. Ink was limping, favoring his right leg, which was bleeding profusely from a bullet hole in his upper thigh.
“Shit!” King roared. “Where the fuck is Razor or Flint?”
I pointed at a hallway across the lounge. “Medical site is at the end of the hall,” I told them as I whipped out my phone and dialed Flint’s number. “Son of a bitch,” I snapped when it went to voicemail. “Where the fuck are you? Get your ass to the medical clinic ASAP.” Then I hung up and tried Razor, but I knew he was on shift in the ER at the local hospital.
“No answer from either,” I told Blaze, who had caught up as I rushed after the men. King led the way while barking out orders.
Blaze shook his head. “Me either.”
“What the fuck happened?” King roared at the brothers.
“Matteo è proprio un cagacazzo,” Rafa snapped.
Ink raised an eyebrow at his cousin. “ Gielo dirai, stronzo? ”
“Tell me what?” King seethed.
Blaze’s phone rang, and he answered immediately. “Where the fuck are you? Fucking hell. Ink’s been shot. I don’t know. Yeah. No, go and help Flint. Yeah. Call me when you’re on your way.”
“Motherfucker,” he swore as he shoved his phone back into his pocket. “There was a fucking shoot-out on the south side of town. They’re bringing in over twenty stupid punks, at least half are critical. They called Flint in to help.”
“Don’t Tomcat or Fallon have medical training from the Navy?” Rafa asked.
“Combat medicine maybe,” King answered as he put gauze over the wound to stanch the bleeding. “But they spent most of their time in the air.”
Rafa glanced at Dacio. “How long would it take to get Doc Franklin out here?”
Dacio shook his head. “He’s got his hands full with our injured men. I don’t think he can get here any time soon.”
“Well, somebody needs to fix my damn thigh!” Ink shouted, then groaned when the movement caused his leg to jerk. “Shit!”
“Let’s check the damage level,” I suggested, an idea forming. Rafa and I moved Ink as carefully as we could, turning him just enough for me to look over the back of his leg.
“Son of a bitch, that hurts!”
“Stop being such a baby,” I grunted. “I was shot in the shoulder and didn’t whine this much about it.”
Ink shot me a scathing glare. “You had a damn flesh wound. A few inches higher, and I’d be singing soprano!”
Okay, he had me there. Still… “Flint had to dig the slug out, motherfucker,” I muttered. “You can whine when he’s got a scalpel playing hide-and-seek with a bullet.”
Ink flinched, then groaned when we turned him back over.
“There’s an exit wound, so he probably won’t need surgery.” I glanced at my watch and saw that it was after three. “I could call Nora,” I proposed, looking at King.
He stared at me, thinking over my suggestion. This was club business…and apparently mafia-related. We didn’t tell our women much about club business, but more importantly, Nora wasn’t my old lady.
Yet .
“Do I need to have a vest sent out for stitching?” he asked, referring to the stash of female vests we kept on hand. We sent one out to have our name embroidered on the property patch when we were ready to give it to a woman.
“Absolutely,” I answered immediately, without a shred of doubt in my voice.
King nodded. “Call her.”
I pivoted on my heel to leave the room as I reached into my pocket for my phone again.
Nora picked up after a couple of rings. “Hi,” she said softly.
Her voice washed over me, causing warmth to spread through my chest and streaks of lust to shoot to my groin.
I fucking hated that I was calling her to ask a favor. One that could blow up her plans for the future. But she was really our only option outside of the club or Rafa’s organization.
“Hey, baby girl. Before I get to why I’m calling, I want you to know that I’ve missed you all fucking day.”
Nora sighed, her happiness at my admission clear in her tone. “You just saw me last night,” she giggled.
“Yeah, a whole night and morning without seeing you, kissing you…I don’t like it,” I confessed. I was surprised at how easy that had been to say.
“I missed you, too.”
“Which makes the favor I’m about to ask so much harder.”
“Favor?”
“I wouldn’t ask if I had any other choice at all. But Razor and Flint are stuck at the hospital, and the other doctor our…friends…use isn’t available either.”
“You need a doctor?” she clarified.
“We need the next best thing. That’s you, baby girl.”
“What happened?” Her voice was wary, and I winced before telling her the truth.
“One of my brothers took a bullet. He needs medical attention.”
“A bullet?” she squeaked.
“The bullet went straight through, and he’s stable, but the wound needs attention, and no one here has enough medical knowledge to make sure it’s treated right so it heals properly and doesn’t get infected. One of our doctors will be here as soon as they can, but it could be several hours.”
“Um…I’ll see what I can do.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. It’s one of your brothers. I want to help.”
“Damn, you’re amazing,” I uttered. If I hadn’t already been obsessed with her, I would have fallen hard and fast at that moment.
“So you’ve said,” she sassed with a giggle.
Chuckling, I teased, “You just might work off a few of those spankings I owe you.”
“Um…I…”
A laugh rumbled in my chest as I knocked on the doorframe and gave King a thumbs-up. “I’ll be there as fast as I can, baby girl,” I told her and headed to the garage where I’d parked my bike.