Chapter Twelve
Nero
Blaze sits down at the table beside me looking less grim than most of my officers have the last few days.
I’m fucking exhausted but I don’t have the luxury of taking a break.
I’ve found one of our regular buyers is breaking off a deal.
We’ve had a relationship for five years.
We supply them with all their drugs but they called off the next buy.
No reason, in fact the asshole hasn’t been responding.
The plan is to go see him tomorrow. He doesn’t know that. Or that half the club is gonna roll up at his shitty little nightclub and fucking ruin his day.
This shit is getting out of hand. Chains is proving to be more difficult to crack than any of us thought. Not even Ellie has got him to open up. I tried to call her off a couple of days ago but she is determined and has been spending most of her spare time with him.
She even told me he is thinking of her as his girl, which makes her want to vomit, but no man has ever beaten her in this game.
“What have you got?” I ask Blaze.
“Something good. Finally.” That perks me up. “Ellie came through.”
“Seriously?”
“Chains has a burner phone. While she was fucking him senseless, she slipped it to me and I cloned it, got it back to her before his dick was barely out of her.”
“Not a visual I needed.”
“You and me both. Ellie can be very descriptive.”
“What’s on the phone?”
“It’s been quiet for a couple of days, but some texts came through last night. They were about Cannon.” The club owner who pulled out of our deal. “I’ve not been able to trace the number he’s talking to and they erase their texts straight after they go through but I got screen shots.”
He hands over the phone and I read through the messages, my jaw clenching. I should be happy, this is the fucking break we needed as far as Chains is concerned.
Blaze sits silently and watches me as I think.
Rebel has been telling me for a few days that sitting back and waiting isn’t working.
He’s still worried about the trial run at the warehouse and expecting something to go down.
We’ve stepped up security there, and at some of our other businesses to be safe.
With this new information, we have something we can confront him with. “Get Fury in here.”
Blaze nods and I hand him the phone. He leaves me alone and I rub at the headache growing in my temples.
There is no evidence he’s communicating with Storm, but it makes sense.
Watching him has shown us he’s gathering men around him.
Assholes and ex-cons, people you can’t trust further than you can throw them, but he somehow has their trust.
All the evidence is mounting up against him.
This text exchange means we can get Chains locked up and find out what the fuck is going on.
Blaze calls to say Fury is in the city but he’s heading back.
I head downstairs instead of moping upstairs.
The big screen TV is on and Zephyr, one of the old timers is dozing on the couch.
He is well past being able to be a part of anything that happens in the club but he is such a fixture here, I’ve not had the heart to tell him it’s time to step back. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go, always sitting here watching TV.
A news report is on as I grab a bottle of water from the fridge, I glance up at it as a reporter is talking about another motorcycle attack. That piques my interest and I walk closer, not that I need to the size of the fucking screen. Motorcycle attacks, what the fuck does that even mean?
A roll of photographs show people who’ve been hit, and at the scenes as they talk about smash and grab attackers, pouncing on unsuspecting pedestrians, stealing phones mostly.
Fucking assholes, that pisses me off. Gives us motorcycle riders a bad name. I almost laugh at my own joke when they talk about their latest victim. A photo comes up. It’s not a close up, and I’m not even sure she knows it’s been taken.
My heart pounds and I hurry closer grabbing the remote. Just before the story goes off I pause it. “What the fuck?” I grind out, making Zephyr snort awake.
He looks up at me and sees the rage pouring off me. It’s nothing new, but this is a different kind of rage. This has consumed me as I look at Taylor sitting in the back of an ambulance with blood running down her face and her eye swelling. This happened two days ago.
I toss the remote and pull out my keys. “Tell Fury I’ll text him later,” I call out to Zephyr.
The club should come first, there is a lot of shit about to go down but I can’t stop myself from going to her.
I barely know her and this is insane, but I’m so fucking angry.
I have her address from the file Garrett gave me and don’t care she might ask how I know where she lives.
All I care about is getting to her and finding out what the fuck happened.
Before I pull away I text Blaze asking him to find out everything about this.
When I find the little asshole who did this, he’s going to fucking pay.
Her dad’s house is about twenty minutes north in Hampden and I make good time getting there because I’m breaking all kinds of laws. It’s difficult to disguise my arrival given it’s a quiet residential street.
Taylor’s car is parked out front, there is no driveway and the front lawn is a little overgrown, separated from her neighbor with a chain-link fence. Before I get off the bike my phone rings.
“I’ve got footage of the incident,” Blaze says. “It’s bad, fucker attacks this woman like he enjoys it.”
“Send it to me. I want to watch it.”
“I’ll condense the file.”
“Whatever with the tech stuff.”
He agrees and while I watch the house, an email comes. I open the video and watch, there are a few camera angles as it plays. First Taylor is walking up the street, she is in her nurses uniform and she looks happy, carefree. She takes out her phone and smiles broader as she is texting.
Then the motorcycle comes into view. Blaze has put it together so I can watch him coming, see how he stops and takes note of her. Then it switches to another angle, the back of Taylor as she approaches the end of the sidewalk, waiting to cross.
The bike races forward and stops right in front of her.
According to the news these crimes are about opportunity.
He snatches her phone and reaches for her purse, shocking her.
He should leave but Taylor puts up a fight.
Part of me is proud, but another is telling her to let the shit go, it’s material things, her safety matters.
“Fuck,” I growl as he gets off the bike and grapples with her. Then he hits her in the face. Her head is knocked sideways. Rage like I’ve never experienced fills my body as I watch him hit her again and again. The people around stand and fucking watch as Taylor falls to the ground.
I can watch that part later, I keep my eyes on him as he grabs her things and runs back to the bike. Blaze followed his escape for a while with CCTV footage. Then it goes back to her. Passersby are helping her now. And she’s fucking crying.
I’m going to tear his head from his fucking neck. It takes a moment for me to calm down, as I pocket the phone. Taylor doesn’t need to see me like this.
I get off the bike, walk up the path and jog up the steps onto the porch.
Now that I’m standing here, I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to say to her about why I’m here. I can’t stop re-running the image of him hitting her beautiful face. Without a second thought that it’s a woman, or that he has fucked this up and should run. No, he got off his bike and…
A curtain behind a small window on the front door moves and Taylor peers out. Her eyes widen when she sees me. The glass is opaque but I can still make out most of her features.
“Open the door,” I tell her.
“What you are doing here?” she asks.
“Do you really want to have this conversation through a door?”
“You should leave, Noah.”
Hearing her call me that kick starts a heavy beat in my chest. Only Jesse calls me by that name these days. Even Phoenix and my mother call me Nero.
“Open up Cherry, I’m not going anywhere.”
Her head lowers, and she doesn’t move for a moment.
“Cherry, you either open up or I’m going to let myself in.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
I reach up above the door and feel around, then look at the planters on the window and go toward them. If I know these kinds of houses and the type of man her dad was, there is a spare key here.
“Okay,” she calls out.
The sound of locks undoing and a chain sliding make me stop searching. We’ll be having words about that too. It’s not the sixties anymore, it’s not fucking safe to leave a way into her house when she lives alone.
The door opens a crack, she still isn’t letting me in.
“Cherry,” I lean an arm on the doorframe and try to see her but she is hiding her face.
“Noah, please leave.”
“You know why I’m here.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re really gonna leave me standing out here? I’m not going away. And your neighbors won’t be too happy when I bang on the door, or rev the bike to get your atten-”
“Fine,” she cuts me off. “Don’t do that.”
“All you gotta do is let me in.”
She steps back and opens the door and I walk inside before she can change her mind. I close the door and she wraps an arm around her middle, looking toward the back of the house. The front door opens up right into the living room with a staircase on the right.
It looks like a guy lived here with an old but comfortable looking dark couch, and matching chair. There is a large TV facing the couch, a coffee table and rugs. But I’m not interested in the fucking décor.
Taylor is still not looking at me. There is a heavy bandage on her wrist and hand, only her thumb and tips of her fingers sticking out and I see red.
Tamping down the rage, I step closer, she still refuses to look at me, so I reach out carefully and touch her chin. “Look at me.”
“It looks worse than it is.”
“Cherry, look at me.”