Chapter 18 #2
I toss my hands up in the air. “First off, don’t talk about my wife’s pussy. And second, why can’t I be in a good mood because it’s a nice day?”
The three guys in the room look at each other.
“He definitely fucked,” Salv says.
They laugh.
“Who fucked?” Mason walks into the room followed by Grant and two other guards carrying a large crate.
“Saint,” Kaz answers.
Mason stands over me, looking down at me.
“It better have been with his wife.”
I roll my eyes. “If you must know, it was.”
Mason’s brow lifts before he turns and takes a seat on the other accent table. His men place the crate down on Salv’s marble coffee table.
“Hey,” Salv, scolds. “Be gentle; that’s custom-made.”
“Why are you in your underwear?” Mason looks at his youngest brother with his nose turned up.
“I slept late.” Salv shrugs.
“Go get dressed.” Kaz shakes his head.
Salv looks down at his body as if he doesn’t understand our issue.
“What, is my dick print intimidating you?” The grin on his face is typical Salv behavior. Always ready to make a joke.
Mason pinches the bridge of his nose. “Salvito, go put some fucking clothes on.”
“Ugh, fine.” He places his water bottle down on the counter before heading up the stairs to his bedroom.
I turn my attention back to the crate. Grant and Ghost are leaning against the wall. The other two men that came with Mason are near the door.
“What’s this?” I ask, pointing at the wooden crate that’s a little too familiar.
Mason leans up. “This is a problem. Three nights ago, the DEA did a raid on the south side. They’ve been investigating a drug house for six months. Inside the house they found 156 pounds of fentanyl and 44 pounds of meth.”
I look over at Kazimir, and he looks just as confused as me. Salv deals with the drugs, not me.
“How is that my problem?”
The drug game is lucrative. Even with a bust like this, it won’t even put a dent in Salv’s pocket. Most of the time, with Mason’s connection with the police force, Salv ends up getting his drugs back after a raid.
“They also found two crates of guns.”
“Bullshit,” I say out loud.
I’ve been doing this gun shit for years. Nobody I do business with would sell crates to small dealers. They would sell them a few guns individually, but no one is giving them full got damn crates of weapons. Not to mention, one crate is worth $250,000.
“Are they Saints?” Salv asks, coming down the stairs dressed in a pair of sweats.
“That’s what I want to know.” Mason turns back to me.
I frown. Standing from my seat, I go over to the crate on the table. I don’t mark my weapons. Once they are out of my hands, there is no way for me to track them. That’s part of the draw of my guns; they can’t be traced. But there are ways I can track whether a shipment belongs to me.
I pull the top off the crate and look under the lid. Serial numbers are carved into the top right corner. To anyone else, these numbers mean nothing. But to me, they are how I keep up with my shipment. Each serial number can be traced back to a specific container and cargo ship.
I look over at Mason. “They’re mine.”
Ghost comes over and grabs the lid from me. He checks the numbers too.
“Let me run the numbers. I’ll see which shipment they came from and who you sold them to,” he says, replacing the lid and walking off with his phone in his hand.
“Who the fuck are you doing business with that would supply that many guns to a low-level dealer?”
Mason asked a valid question. I distribute crates only to a small number of people in the US.
My three gun runners being one, a few private organizations like the Royal Crown and the Church, and then a hand full of high-powered crime syndicates.
Only the runners sell the merchandise; the others keep every crate they buy for their own personal arsenal.
“No one,” I say, shaking my head. “Rome, Kingston, and Thiago have been running guns for me for years. They’d never do anything this stupid.”
“He’s right.” Salv plops down beside Kaz. “Kingston and the DV move drugs for me through their gang. He moves like us, cautiously and with precision. He wouldn’t risk something like this.”
I agree. Rome, who is president of the Outlaw Brotherhood, Kingston, the leader of the Den of Vipers gang, nor Thiago—the head of the Mexican gang, Concrete Kings—wouldn’t be stupid enough to sell this number of guns to a street dealer.
The issue with this is that small-time criminals are more likely to get picked up by the cops.
And despite what everyone says, when they’re facing jail time, they sing like fucking pop divas.
And getting caught with one or two unregistered guns could get you at the most, ten years.
But a crate full of military-grade weapons that have no serial numbers will land you with FED charges.
And muthafuckers talk quick when faced with those numbers.
“Someone put these on the street,” Mason says. “I don’t like holes in my organization, and this is a got damn crater.”
Fuck. I run my hand through my hair.
“Boss,” Ghost calls out to me. The look on his face tells me I’m not going to like what he’s about to tell me. “Those guns, they weren’t given to any of your runners.” I felt confident about that. “They are part of the missing shipping container.”
This changes things. When my guns were lost in the fucking ocean and burned up, I assumed the missing guns were part of the same scheme. I believed that whoever was attacking my guns was only coming for my pockets. But this isn’t the same MO.
“Fuck,” I shout, turning away from him, I run my hands through my hair and pace.
“How many crates did you say they found?” Kaz asks.
“Two.” Mason’s dry tone belies his frustration.
“That means there are 398 crates still missing,” I say.
“Someone is trying to take your spot.”
I cut my eyes at Kazimir before turning back to Mason. “I want to talk to the guy that got raided.”
He shakes his head. “He’s too hot. The DEA has been trying to crack down on the rise of fentanyl for almost a year. Any interference with that will be risky.”
That makes sense. Getting anywhere close to that investigation isn’t smart.
Especially since my brother is the man they’re really looking for, if they knew he existed.
However, talking to him would be the only lead to finding out who stole my guns.
As of now, we haven’t been lucky. We still can’t locate the damn captain of that ship.
“Don’t worry,” Salv says. “I’ll have some of my guys check into that house. I promise you, if a muthafucker bought that many guns, he talked about the shit. Someone knows something.”
“Alright.” Mason leans forward in his seat. “Salv and Kaz, I want you two to find someone connected to that house. If we can talk to them, maybe we can figure out who sold the crate to him.”
“We got you,” Salv says with a nod.
“Nic, I want you to reach out to your runners, see if you can have them ask around in the streets. If someone is undermining you, they for damn sure are cutting into their pockets as well.”
“I’ll call them as soon as I leave and set something up.”
Just like when dealing with my brothers, conversations like this aren’t dealt with over the phone. We need to meet face-to-face.
He nods, leaning back. “Let’s stay vigilant. Someone is coming for our empire. We don’t let that shit fly.”
We went our separate ways shortly after. Ghost and I climb into the back of the SUV. Roc pulls away from the curb and heads to my warehouse.
“The fuck is going on?” I snarl.
“We’re going to sort this out, Saint. I promise.” Ghost sounds just as pissed as me.
Although Mason is my brother and we run this organization together, I still hated to disappoint him.
And although he didn’t say it, I know this disappointed him.
It made it look as if I couldn’t control my shit.
My job was to make sure I ran my part of the organization smoothly.
Because even though I’m over the guns, we all eat off the same plate.
“We need to put all our efforts into finding the captain of that cargo ship. The fact that he’s in hiding tells me he knows something and is being protected by someone.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Roc volunteers. “I’ll find that muthafucker.”
I dip my chin.
“I’ll get with Maseo,” Ghost adds. “See if he can dig up some more stuff on the captain.”
Pulling out my phone to send a message to Rome, Kingston, and Thiago, I noticed I had an email. This is my Saint phone. The phone I use for my arms business. People who deal with Saint don’t usually send emails. Going to the message, my heart beats double time.
Hello again Nicholas,
I guess you’re wondering why I changed my communication methods. I just want to keep you on your toes.
You have so much going on around you. A marriage on the way to divorce, missing guns, water and fire damage at your hotels. I bet you and your brothers are busy trying to figure out where I will attack next.
Brotherhood is a funny thing, isn’t it, Nicholas? Especially when it’s not blood related. Tell me, which one of your brothers came up with the idea to leave William Bone’s and abandon those poor defenseless boys? Was it you? No, you were too weak for that, weren’t you, Nicholas?
My thoughts leave the back seat of the SUV. I’m transported back to hell. The dingy white walls of William Bone’s school for boys. The smell of bleach, sweat, and desperation clogs my nostrils.
My breath comes rapidly; my eyes are shut. My hands are balled so tight down by my side my knuckles hurt. Even though I’ve showered, my skin still feels as if it’s crawling. His scent seems to cling to my skin.
“I’m done,” Anthony says. I open my eyes to find him staring at me.
Anthony is older than us and has been at the school much longer. We weren’t sure how long he'd been here, but he’s been here for a while.
His face is gaunt, and his black hair is shaved low in a military-style haircut. Those steely blue eyes are narrow but stern.
“We're going to leave this place.”
“But…. how are we going to do that, Ant?” Sergio’s little baby voice asks. He’s the youngest of the group. From the moment they tossed him in the unit with us, we took him under our wings.
His dark brown hair was already growing out. His hair grew fast no matter how many times they cut it, it seemed to always spring back up.
“By any means necessary,” Lucas says.
His freshly busted lip causes him to talk with a slight lisp. His black eye was healing, but it was in the early stages. He was so skinny you could see the indent in his collarbones.
“But if we do this,” Anthony goes on to say. “We do it together. Just the four of us.”
“I’m in.” Lucas places his hand out in front of him, palm down.
Anthony places his hand on top of Lucas’ and looks at Sergio. Shorter than all of us, Sergio looks at all our faces, his large hazel eyes too big for his small face, glances around. He’s scared.
“What if we get caught?” he whispers.
“We won’t,” Anthony says with more confidence than I know he has. There’s a huge possibility we will get caught and end up in the white house.
None of us wanted to end up in the white house.
“Come on, Serg,” Lucas pleads. He was always Sergio’s protector. “Put your hand in. I’ll keep you safe.”
That was all the assurance Sergio needed. He immediately placed his hand on top of Anthony’s. Now it was my turn. Ant turns to me. I can see the moment he remembers what he walked in on today. His eyes flare with anger. The same look he had when he came back into the room.
My stomach rolls, and bile rises in my throat. The memory of his hot breath on the back of my neck and his hands on my shoulders makes me feel sick. I swallow it back down as my body grows hot. Molten lava fills my veins. I shut my eyes and breath trying to calm the storm brewing inside me.
“What do you say, Nic?” Anthony asks. “Are you coming with us?”
I open my eyes and glare at him. I place my hand on top of Serg’s.
The difference between me and the others is I wasn’t doing this to get away.
I didn’t care if we were free or not. I knew that if they caught us and sent us to the white house, we wouldn’t be coming back out this time.
And I was okay with that. Because I’d rather be dead than go through what almost happened today.
“Then it’s set,” Anthony says. “We can’t tell anyone. Not even a hint.”
“Okay.” Lucas lifts his chin.
I only nod.
We all turned to Sergio.
“I won’t tell,” he says.
That night we set in motion something that would change our lives forever.
I come back to reality, sitting back in the SUV. The feeling of that day washes back over me. The disgust, the filth, the anger, all rush over me, reminding me of exactly who I am.
“No, you were too weak for that, weren’t you, Nicholas?”
Weak.