Chapter Ten
I opened up the throttle on my bike, the yellow lines on the road merging beneath the wheels, I was going so fast. I shouldn’t be doing this, going to see him was the wrong thing to do.
I definitely shouldn’t be leaving Waverley alone, but I was able to keep an eye on her through the app on my phone, which was connected to the camera.
After hearing all of that bullshit falling out of Danica’s mouth, Waverley had been shellshocked. I didn’t know her well at all, in fact, I was sure she hated my guts, but I figured she was smart. Smart enough to read through the crap her mother was spewing.
I had no idea if what she said about her sister was true, but there had been another daughter who ran that night.
I hadn’t known what became of her though.
The two of them weren’t really discussed until Danica reappeared.
Some of the things she said that pertained to my club right now, I didn’t know about, and I didn’t like that.
When Danica left, and I’d escorted her back to her room, Waverley stared at me, like she wanted to ask me something.
As far as she was aware I’d been in my room, not standing in the hallway listening in on what Danica was saying.
Waverley wouldn’t discuss their chat with me.
She didn’t trust me, and she was right not to.
I wasn’t lying to Waverley, I didn’t know everything, and it pissed me the fuck off because this is my club. Because of Danica, and that dumbass they put in place of Ranger, it was going to hell.
It took ten minutes to get where I was going, because of the speed I was driving and the fact the apartment we were staying in was close to Haskell.
I was the one who found it, no one questioned me about its location, but that was only because they didn't realise the proximity to Ranger’s place.
I’d paid for it with cash on a short-term lease under an identity no one knew I had.
It was a backup ID that I needed to be cautious about using but if there was to be no trace back to the club, then it was the only way to get her somewhere safe.
No one knew I still talked to Ranger. We didn’t do it often, but he’d been my President for years, a man I worked closely with and respected.
I wanted to know if anything that bitch just said in there was true.
I hadn’t been around when Tank was our President, just a kid at the time.
I knew of him, knew people were scared and heard stories about the shit he got up to but I didn’t know him.
Ranger had though, he’d worked alongside Tank for years. If anyone knew the truth it was him.
Pulling into the long driveway outside of Ranger’s house, I cut the engine and took off my helmet.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out and glanced at the screen, frowning.
This wasn’t the first message from him, they’d been coming periodically over the last few hours, after an initial phone call, but it was another that I deleted without opening.
I scowled as I got off the bike and switched to the surveillance app.
Waverley was pacing. She’d been doing that the last time I checked too. Danica dropped that bombshell on her then told her she needed to leave, said she should take some time to think things over and she would be back to talk soon. She’d barely said two words to me as I saw her out.
No skin of my nose, I hated the bitch. I didn’t know if she had punished Kristy for coming here but what she’d told Waverley was true, taking away her credit card would really piss her off. I didn’t know Kristy well, but what I’d seen of her, I hated instantly.
I glanced up when the door to Ranger’s house opened to show Marla. She was a ballsy bitch, and if she hated you, you knew about it. She hated a lot of people. Fortunately, I wasn’t one of them. She didn’t trust the Kingsmen anymore.
Ranger thought Nytro was responsible for his accident.
I wasn’t sure it was true because I didn’t want to believe my own brothers could do that, and I also hadn’t been able to find any evidence.
As more time went on, and things around me started to change, the more I was starting to suspect he was right.
“What’re you doing here, Dominic?”
I blew out a breath as I approached her. She refused to refer to any of us by our road names, now they were no longer a part of the club.
“Need to talk to him.”
“Seems to be a lot of people showing up here lately. To talk,” she raised a cigarette to her lips and sucked on it so hard her cheeks hollowed.
I got to the steps and walked up them. She held her ground for a few seconds then huffed and moved to let me in. “Anyone I know?” I asked, closing the door behind me and pocketing my phone.
“Oh, I’m sure you do,” she pointed her cigarette at a door. “He’s in there.”
I gave her a chin nod then headed to the sitting room. Ranger didn’t seem in the least bit surprised to see me. He wasn’t in his wheelchair, he was propped up on the sofa, watching an old episode of Home Improvement.
He had a blanket over his legs, but he was wearing a sleeveless top that did nothing to hide the burn marks and scars all down his left arm, where he had skidded along the road after he was knocked off his bike.
He gave me a wary look but indicated the chair opposite. I went over and sat on the edge of the seat, my legs spread and my elbows on my knees. “I’m going to assume your visitors are what triggered the messages I’m getting?”
“Two Devil’s show up at my door, I had to act quickly, you think I told them anything that would actually help them.”
“The phone call and four text messages I’ve got in the last few hours say something different.”
I stared at him. He looked like half the man he used to be and a sweep of sympathy for him rolled through me.
He’d lost everything. He never left this house, as far as I knew, I’m the only person he really speaks to besides Marla, and that was enough to drive anyone insane.
He’d always been sharp, but the accident had done something to him, he had a severe head injury and for a long time after he woke up he couldn’t talk.
I don’t believe for a second Ranger would throw me to the wolves but he’d said something. Enough that the Devil’s Chaos VP was sending me messages and that irritated me.
He picked up the remote and flicked off the TV, not a moment too soon, the sound of Tim Allan’s laugh was grating on my nerves.
“Look, all I said was you were a good guy.”
“A good guy?” I questioned. He nodded. We both knew that wasn’t true. “And they read into that what you wanted them to, I guess.”
“They read whatever they wanted to read into it.”
“That is a problem for me, Ranger.”
“When Randy Beillo shows up at my door I know shit has hit the fan,” he snapped.
“Nytro is fucking everything up,” he said angrily, then started to cough.
I waited him out. I knew from experience he wouldn’t want me to attempt to help him.
He was too proud for that. He usually got a handle on it pretty quickly. “They took King’s daughter.”
I grimaced, so they’d come to him to find out what he knew about that and they’d sent their Enforcer. And he gave them my damn name. Fuck. I didn’t have all night so I decided to get down to why I was really here.
“How much do you know about what happened when the Cartel hit us.”
“Why are you bringing that up?”
I arched a brow and he used his good arm to wipe away some spittle that had landed on his chin.
“They were tipped off about something?” I said.
“The Cartel? Tipped off about what?”
“That Tank wasn’t going to pay them, that they could get a better deal elsewhere.”
Ranger stared at me. He may not be as quick as he was before, but he wasn’t stupid. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Answer the question.”
He was about to give me hell for saying that but then he remembered, he wasn’t my President anymore and I watched with a heaviness inside me as he completely deflated before my eyes. I hated doing this to him but he started it, when he gave the fucking Devil’s Chaos my name.
“I don’t know anything about that. Tank was a dark fucking stain on the club. You know I hated his guts. He deserved what he got for the shit he brought down on us.”
The story went the Cartel killed him. It was months after the whole shit show of owing them money and selling off family members to repay the debt. I’d never been sure it wasn’t an inside job or if the Cartel really had just waited. That wasn’t their style.
There were a lot of secrets and lies hanging around my club and I didn’t like it. Under Ranger, I’d worked with him to try and fix things. Everything we’d done to make the club better was being systematically unpicked with Nytro at the helm. And Danica in his ear.
“But in answer to your question, no…I don’t think anyone tipped them off. You mess with the Cartel, your whole family winds up decapitated on the front lawn. They wipe everyone out, no questions asked. If they thought we were backstabbing them, no one would be alive to tell the tale.”
Thought as much. Danica clearly didn’t know everything.
Like how bloodthirsty and vengeful a Mexican Drug Cartel could be.
So that begged the question, was she lying, or did she really believe it?
I debated whether to ask questions about her, or her sister, but in the end decided to leave it.
Ranger didn’t know I was the one sitting on Waverley and that line of questioning would give too much away.