Chapter Four
“What exactly do you want me to do?” Harlow asked.
“I don’t fucking know. Look at them, and you tell me if you’ve got a hunch or a feeling.”
Big Dick looked toward his sister as she looked at the camera in his hand. She took a deep breath and expelled it slowly, pursing her lips as she did so.
“You do realize you sound like a crazy person.”
“I need something to go on and seeing as Cadeon pretty much picked you to torment, you’re my best option. You’ve had more contact with this asshole than I have.”
She frowned at him. “You’re scared.”
“I’m not scared, Squirt. I’m pissed the fuck off.”
“Wow.” She put a hand to her stomach. “You don’t think my precious angel is going to pick up any bad habits from hearing you in the womb, do you?”
He stared at her and she rolled her eyes.
She reached out and took the camera from him, and looked it over. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to figure out.”
“Anything you can deduce from that thing.”
“I thought you had this special gift.”
He glared at her.
“Is something wrong with my big brother?” she asked.
“You’re not funny. You know that, right?”
She chuckled and then started to look over the device. “It’s not branded, so it’s probably cheap. It has a battery attached, and that is going to run out soon.” She frowned.
“What?”
“Batteries only have so long,” Harlow said. “You might want to take this to Erick.”
“I’m not taking this to that fucker,” Big Dick said, talking about their brother who was a piece of shit. Sure, he came to the hospital and acted the part of dutiful son, but he had never gotten along with Erick.
His brother was a liar and a manipulator.
More often than not, he got out of the bad shit with their mother just by giving her little puppy-dog eyes and pretending to be the helpless victim.
Big Dick had lost count of the number of times he’d wanted to beat the ever-loving shit out of Erick.
The moment he got into the Hell’s Bastards MC, Erick had kept his distance. They never spoke.
Now, he had no issue with his other brothers, Callum, Michael, Bernard, and Jude. Erick was the computer nerd.
“Then, I don’t know what else to suggest. He’s a computer whiz, unless you’ve got someone else you can use.” Harlow shrugged. “What’s up with you?”
“Huh?”
“You seem ... distracted.”
He thought about Larissa. That was twice he nearly broke through her exterior, and each time he’d been thwarted, and it was grating on his nerves. Add to the mix the camera and invasion of privacy from the Twisted Bastards MC, and he was not in the best of moods.
“You ever know if Larissa had a long-term boyfriend?” Big Dick asked.
“Why?”
“One of these cameras was put in the bakery.”
“No, I don’t think Larissa has ever had a long-term thing with anyone. I mean, there was Andrew, but that seems to have fizzled out to nothing.”
“Andrew?”
“Yeah.”
Big Dick looked at the devices and then thought about Andrew. “Thanks,” he said. This was a hunch, far-fetched, but a hunch.
“Hey, what the hell, George?” Harlow said.
“I’m sorry, Squirt, but I’ve got shit I need to do.”
“You know, I’m worried about Larissa.”
This made him stop. “You are?”
“Yeah, don’t you think she seems a little different after ... well, you know...?”
“Getting shot?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t have put it that way.”
“Getting shot can mess with your head, and getting stabbed can as well.”
Big Dick went to his sister and pulled her into his arms.
“I’m fine now, and I think having you and the club at my back means something. Larissa doesn’t really have anyone, though. Just her dad, but he’s not club.”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said.
“When are you going to realize that you can’t take care of everything?” Harlow said. “Larissa is different.”
“But she’s still one of us, and I know everyone at the club would care and would want to know she’s fine.” He kissed her head. “I’ve got to go now, but we’ll talk later.”
She waved her hand in the air. “Yeah, yeah, go. Try not to hurt anyone.”
Now that, he couldn’t promise, and he made his way out of Harlow and Hunter’s home, and toward the small home where Andrew Lowe lived.
Big Dick had known his brother, Kenny, who had become a repairman and a plumber.
He’d turned his life around. Big Dick respected him for it, and like most kids that had been friends, they had grown apart.
Now, wasn’t it interesting that Andrew was an electrician and a plumber, and at times, had access to the bakery as well as the fucking beauty parlor?
Andrew had been the one they had called to check the wiring.
Knocking on the door, he waited.
He didn’t have to wait long before Andrew answered the door, and he looked terrible. He hadn’t shaved in several days, his clothes had food stains on them, and his eyes were red-rimmed.
“Have you come to gloat?” Andrew asked. “My brother always called me a coward and a fucking pussy, and guess what, I am exactly that.”
“You recognize these?” Big Dick asked.
Andrew looked at them and frowned. “Yeah, what about them?”
He smirked and shoved Andrew hard, forcing him to fall back on his ass. “You think you want to take that tone with me, when you’ve just admitted putting this shit into the club’s businesses? Are you fucking stupid and just asking for a fucking beatdown?”
Andrew scrambled to his feet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. The club asked me to install these.”
Big Dick lashed out, slamming his fist into the man’s face. “Try again.”
The other man let out a cry, putting his fingers to his nose. He hadn’t broken it yet, he was going easy on the coward. He needed him to start talking, and the only way to do that was if he was still able to speak. It was taking every ounce of control he possessed to keep his shit together.
Andrew put his hands out, and Big Dick grabbed a wrist, twisting it, The other man went straight to his knees, crying out.
“I don’t know what this is about, but I was working at the bakery when one of the guys came to me.
He was wearing your leather cut, he told me you wanted extra security, and to install them.
” He let out a cry. “He even wanted me to remove the screws from one of the vents, so they were easily changed.”
“And you didn’t think to take this up with Smokey?”
“I was told Smokey was busy, and this rule came from him. Also, I had to give him the set of keys as well, because you had lost a set.”
Big Dick didn’t like this. This was horseshit. He looked down at Andrew and just knew the man wasn’t lying.
“You gave them the spare keys?” he asked.
“Well, yeah, it was an instruction to do so.”
“Fuck!” He ran fingers through his hair. The Twisted Bastards MC hadn’t gone at all. They were playing with them. “You ever seen this guy at the club?”
“What? No, he said he was new and talking about working through his time of being a prospect and stuff like that. I didn’t understand it. I don’t do club politics, man. That is not my job. I was asked to do a job, that was it. That is all it was, I swear.”
Big Dick looked at him and finally let his wrist go. “He say anything else?”
“What? No. I haven’t seen him since. Why would I? I’ve got different jobs to do.”
“And you’re doing them now?” Big Dick asked, looking around at the state of Andrew’s place.
“You caught me at a bad time. With Larissa—”
“Don’t say her name.”
“I liked her, okay? I ... wanted to be with her.”
“Even after you pursued my sister?” he asked.
“Harlow never saw me as anything other than a friend. I swear I didn’t cheat on her, but Larissa is different. She has this smile that just lights up your world, and you know she is pretty damn special. She is going to make a wonderful mother and a wife, and I blew it.”
“You ran away after she had gotten shot. No woman wants a coward, not even Larissa.”
“I never thought I was a coward. I just ... I got scared.”
He glared at him, because no matter his excuses, he still ran away.
“I suggest you move on,” Big Dick said.
With that, he turned on his heel and walked out of the house.
There was no way he could kill Andrew. First, Kenny didn’t deserve to find his brother dead.
Second, he needed to tell Smokey the bad fucking news that right under their noses, the Twisted Bastards MC had been functioning this whole time.
He needed to get his head out of the fucking clouds and back on the game. He had to stop thinking about Larissa and focus on the club.
If he didn’t do that soon, it was going to cost them, big time.
****
It was a warm night. The summer was truly holding its grip in Fort Clover, but that didn’t stop Larissa from heading downstairs to make one of her favorite drinks of all time, hot chocolate.
She poured the milk into a saucepan.
Now, she had come to love chocolate bombs, they were the best. All she had to do was put the milk in a saucepan, let it come to a bubble, add the chocolate bomb in the mug, pour hot milk over, and ta-da, hot chocolate.
Sometimes she would whip up some sweetened heavy cream, other times, she would just enjoy the hot chocolate.
It had been a long day at the bakery. It was also a busy one that had ended with Ava coming into the bakery and letting her know she had the rest of the week off.
Larissa didn’t like this, but she was going to enjoy the break.
Unfortunately, it had coincided with her father’s trip out of town.
He told her he was going to a convention.
He’d been a little hazy on the details, but it was too late to get a ticket to join him.
So, she was on her own until he came back in a couple of weeks.
When she had been too young to stay home alone, he’d taken her along.
In recent years, with work obligations, she had stayed home.