Chapter 23
23
Trigger
I hadn’t slept worth a shit the night before, too agitated and pissed off that the fucking Pakhan had slipped through my fingers. So, when Scorpion knocked on the door early that morning and announced Chase and I needed to get downstairs for church, I was already wide awake. Chase, however, was not.
His pain levels were finally simmering down, which meant he could finally get some decent rest. When Scorpion knocked on the door, he’d shouted for him to fuck off, to which Scorpion reminded him of his position as VP and to get his ass on the move. Normally, I would’ve been amused, but I couldn’t muster it.
Blayke breezed into the room five minutes late with papers in one hand and a mug of coffee in another. Scorpion had just been giving a debriefing and what to expect moving forward, which was the same old shit. Stick together. Don’t go anywhere alone. Keep our heads on a swivel. Stay up to date on weapons training and self-defense.
Because we all knew it was only a matter of time before the Russians regrouped and made another move.
“I got some info,” Blayke announced, interrupting Scorpion. Scorpion sighed and scowled at him. Blayke ignored him, making me snicker. He literally did not give a shit about hierarchy. He set the papers in front of Scorpion. “I went back out last night and dug around.”
“By yourself?” Lawson asked, frowning at him. “Are you out of your fucking mind, Blayke?” I was hoping that was a rhetorical question because everyone knew Blayke was built differently.
Blayke shot him the middle finger. I stayed silent, waiting to see what he had for us. “There’s a crew on the rise in Mexico. We’re talking something that might become as big as the cartel. And the Russians have paired with them. I’m guessing they forgot to take this contract with them when they dipped.”
Scorpion immediately began flipping through, gritting his teeth as he read. Finally, he pushed the papers away, blowing out a harsh breath. Chase pulled them toward him, quickly flipping through them. Leaning over his shoulder, I read with him. It was laid out there in black and white—a goddamn business deal to expand the skin trade between the states, Mexico, and down into South America.
Jesus fucking Christ.
This was bigger than we thought it was. The Russians were not only wanting to expand, but they had their fingers dug into the skin trade. We had to put an end to this. But how the fuck were we meant to do that?
“As much as I don’t like this, I need to touch base with Alejandro,” Scorpion announced.
Dom winced. “Johnston is gonna lose his shit, Prez.”
Scorpion sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face. “What choice do we have, Dom? We’ve got numbers, but we don’t have the numbers we need. We’re already struggling to match the Russians step for fucking step. And Alejandro has pull in Mexico. He can work on shutting shit down in that direction while we work up here in the states.”
“I’ll get him on the phone,” Blayke said. He disappeared out of the chapel, returning a minute later with a second cup of coffee. He slid it to Chase. “Sophia said to give this to you.”
Chase’s lips quirked in a smile. I huffed. “I don’t get coffee?” I playfully asked. I wasn’t truly bothered. This was their thing. Sophia always brought Chase coffee in the mornings.
Silently, Chase lifted the mug to me. I hummed in appreciation, taking the offered cup so I could get a couple of swallows in, even if I did burn my tongue and the roof of my mouth.
That woman of ours was a fucking coffee goddess.
Blayke pulled his burner phone out of his pocket. After a moment, it started ringing, and he set it on the table. Johnston’s voice came through a moment later.
“What?” he growled.
“Good morning to you, too, sunshine,” Blayke sassed. Halo snorted. Gidget rolled his eyes at Halo, making my lips twitch in amusement. It’d taken a while for those two to get along. After Gidget hospitalized Halo with a severe concussion that put him in ICU for days during a drunken brawl, Halo and Gidget had been cold toward each other. Though it seemed Halo was letting that tension bleed away some. Gidget was still a bit of an asshole, but it was hard to judge him properly when he never said much.
I had a feeling one day, all that animosity between the two of them would explode into something hot and fiery, and they’d be attacking each other for entirely new reasons.
“Don’t play fucking games with me, Blayke. It’s barely seven in the morning.”
“No shit,” Chase muttered, shooting Scorpion an annoyed look. Scorpion pointedly ignored him.
“We’ve got some new intel,” Scorpion said so everyone would stop bickering like children. Johnston stayed quiet, waiting for whatever it was Scorpion now knew. “There’s a new crew building up in Mexico.”
“I talked to some of my connections down in Mexico early this morning,” Blayke added. “Looks like this crew is building connections and people to be as big as the cartel, if not bigger. And they’re in negotiations with the Russians to expand the skin trade into our territory.”
“Like fuck,” Johnston snapped. “Not while there’s breath in my fucking body.”
“I’ll touch base with Alejandro,” Scorpion stated.
“I don’t fucking like this,” Johnston said, irritation lining his words. “I don’t like that bastard. He’s slimy and greedy. He’s going to want something out of this.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But if he wants something, I feel like whatever it might be is a small price to pay to protect our communities. If this shit happens, people will start going missing at an alarming rate. The skin trade makes me fucking sick to my stomach,” Scorpion growled. “Look what happened to Sophia. Look what happened to Chase, Johnston. We can’t let this shit happen.”
I gripped Chase’s shoulders and dug my fingers in—not only to settle me, but to settle him. He and I could cope with what happened to him. But what happened to our woman? The horror she still lived through?
It was much harder to cope with that.
“Christ,” Johnston muttered, sounding tired. “Is the current, immediate threat taken care of?”
“Yes,” Trigger said. “They’ve gone underground. It’ll take them a little bit of time to recoup and figure out their next plan of action. That gives us a little bit of time to figure out our own course of action.”
“Good. Then I want you home.”
All eyes in the room went to me and Chase. When I looked down at him, he had his jaw clenched. He closed his eyes and rubbed at the bridge of his nose before he nodded once, silently letting me know he and Sophia would be okay.
We knew this would happen. This was how it always happened. And until the Russians could be taken care of once and for all, this was how it was going to continue to be. I couldn’t abandon the mother charter when we were at war.
“We’ll head out in a bit,” I assured him.
Johnston ended the call after telling Scorpion he’d touch base with him later today once he’d held church himself. Scorpion leaned back in his chair. “For now, we lay low and wait,” Scorpion said. “This shit’s going to be a long game. Patience is going to need to be a virtue we all have. Got it?”
A round of affirmatives went around the room. Scorpion slammed the gavel on the table, adjourning church. Chase stood and turned to face me.
“Sophia isn’t going to like this.” What he left unsaid was that he didn’t like it either. But our loyalty was to the club. We understood this life.
I sighed. “I know,” I murmured. “But she’ll be okay. We’ll navigate this just like we always do.”
Because what other choice did we have right then?