Chapter 15 Land Holdings
KNUCKLES
“We have a problem,” I told Grease and Dime as I slipped into the room used to house all of our tech gear and security monitors.
“It ain’t my dick size,” Dime threw back and Grease laughed along with him.
Fucker thought he had to take up space as our funny man while Smooth was recovering from being shot.
Poor fucker took a bullet for the Arizona Chapter of the club.
He would be fine and then we’d have to deal with two assholes cracking jokes at every turn.
“My ex-wife seems to have an agenda. I didn’t realize it until Cassidy said something that made me rethink the way I saw her.”
“No offense, Knuckles, but women get catty with others who were there before them,” Grease threw out.
“Cassidy was in my life first, in a far more important way. Let’s get that straight from jump.
Simone was a consequence, not a love match.
Besides, Cassidy isn’t the type to be catty.
She might do it in her own head or the privacy of her home with her trusted friends, but I don’t rank in that category these days.
What she said was innocuous at best until I put certain behaviors together. ”
I gave them the rundown on Simone who apparently wanted Grunt back when he was still Jasper in high school.
He was closer to the club and its members than I was then.
Once I got to her friendship with Roxy and the continued attempts at friendship she kept trying with members and their families, the pattern was well and truly established.
“Seems like your girl, Cassidy was onto something about Grunt. That shit does look suspicious when you put it all together,” Dime said as he typed away into the computer.
“Now, we just need to find out what her deal is with the club and figure out how much damage has been done as a result of her proximity to us.”
“If any,” Grease interjected. “She might just be a patch chaser or something.”
“If that was the case, she wouldn’t have latched onto Roxy. She was cool with being friends with her, probably because Rox was once as close to Baffle as Bigfoot is.”
“Damn, didn’t think of that,” Grease mumbled.
“It’s going to take a minute for me to track down info on her,” Dime said as he turned to look at Grease. “Go grab your brother. I’m going to need his kind of expertise on this one.”
When Dime needed Glitch, it meant there would be some kind of hacking involved. The guy didn’t give a fuck about laws, boundaries, or doing what it took to get the job done and he knew how to cover his tracks.
“You always wondered who Simone’s father was. It’s time to figure that out.”
An hour later, we still didn’t know who Simone’s father was, but we discovered she had obtained her real estate license since we divorced.
That wouldn’t even have sent up a yellow flag, let alone a red one, until we dug into her workload.
She was the realtor listed on a piece of property I knew to be owned by the Billups family and it just happened that the particular stretch in question abutted the land that was used to create the family housing area for our club.
I knew that because if you walked the property line down from where the family housing now stood, for about twenty or thirty minutes, you would come to the fire pit where I used to hang out with Cassidy when we were younger.
I couldn’t believe she lied. Not only was she still in touch with Simone, but she was selling off a chunk of her family’s land and using my ex-wife to do it. Never, in a million-fucking-years did I think Cassidy might be responsible for a bigger mind-fuck than what my wife put me through.
“Don’t jump to conclusions, man.” Dime’s warning rang in my head as I left the security room and headed for the bar.
Fuck conclusions. Cassidy had said herself that she inherited her family’s land.
There was no other explanation for what I’d just seen.
Even if Simone was the only realtor who could handle land sales in the fucking county, Cassidy could have disclosed that information when we talked.
Instead, she made it sound like she hadn’t been in touch with Simone at all since before we graduated.
It was clear she lied, but how much of what she’d said had been bullshit?
My head throbbed with the betrayal I felt.
I wondered, briefly it was how she felt all those years ago when she finally realized that we only ever talked at home, and that I had the stones to point out her best friend was doing the exact same thing to her.
I knocked back a few shots as my brain spun in a fucking whirl of push and pull with the Cassidy I thought I knew and the one who willingly chose to work with Simone.
It was also of note that there was a contingent sale on the land and we couldn’t find out who the buyer was.
Dime was on it because we would need to know how bad it could get and if we needed to fortify the border of our land better to protect the club’s families who lived there.
Dime put in the call to Bigfoot and told him he needed to ask Cassidy up front about that shit, so we could get the buyer’s information.
That meant she’d probably end up stopping by the club at some point, and I didn’t want to see her.
Not when I wanted to kiss her and bury her in a deep fucking hole all at the same time.
I grabbed a bottle of Jack from the bar and wobbled my way across the clubhouse toward the room I stayed in. On the way, Tay-Tay came over to give me a hug. “Hey, Tay,” I cackled over the rhyme because - drunk and silly went hand in hand, even when I was angry.
“You’re not afraid to talk to me today?” She asked with a pout.
“Never afraid to talk to you, babe. Some of the club business ain’t yours to witness, though.
” She didn’t need to know that the ‘club business’ I referred to from the other night with Cass was also very much personal.
The less people knew about what went down between me and Cass, the better - especially considering it was looking more and more like she had become a person I could never trust. And she might just be a security issue, too.
“Wanna come kill this bottle with me?”
“If by kill that bottle, you mean take another shot and put it down so we can fuck, then yes, I would be happy to join you.” I laughed and she chuckled along. “I’m serious. You’re already tipsy and that’s a full bottle. I won’t sign off to watch you drown your liver.”
“Come on buzzkill, let’s go fuck. I need some stress relief.” Cassidy was no longer an option, and I needed to forget about her for the night before I had to deal with the fallout of whatever the hell she and my ex-wife were up to.
“What in the hell were you thinking?” Grunt asked me two days later when I finally saw him again.
“Can’t say there was much thinking involved. Still have a fucking hangover,” I grumbled as I threw back the black coffee to try to get my sluggish brain to compute any fucking thing.
“I got back from New York, a run you were supposed to go on, and find out that you were here drinking it up and fucking Tay-Tay. I thought you wanted Cass?”
“I do. I did. Fuck, I don’t even know anymore.
And no, I wasn’t fucking Tay. I’m not saying it wasn’t headed in that direction when I took her to my room, but nothing happened beyond a kiss or two before I passed the fuck out.
You can ask her, if you don’t believe me.
” I was quick to add the last part when his face projected his disbelief.
“Why? I don’t fucking understand.”
“She’s selling her land. At least part of it, anyway.” I told him. It felt like just as much of a kick in the gut as it had the minute Dime discovered it. “And she’s using Simone as her realtor to get the job done.”
“Bullshit,” Grunt growled.
“Swear to the fucking heavens, man. Go ask Dime. He’s the one who discovered it.”
“Dime discovered that Cassidy Billups is selling a chunk of her land and using Simone Galloway to do it?” He asked, still unable to believe it.
“That’s what I fucking said and it’s not the whole story. The land she’s selling is adjacent to the family housing property for the club that used to belong to my grandfather.”
“No fucking way. I do not believe any of that for a single second and the fact that you did and obviously still do means maybe you haven’t learned a fucking lesson yet about having some faith in the woman you claim is your future.”
“She can’t be my future because she obviously lied about her involvement with Simone.”
Grunt shook his head and walked away from me.
Later, when I saw him in the bar area of the clubhouse, I grabbed Tay-Tay and pulled her on my lap as I stared in his direction.
Grunt looked like he was ready to skin me alive, but he didn’t understand what Dime had found.
It was a clear betrayal and damn if it wasn’t more like a double betrayal.
She was still linked to Simone and lied about it, and she was selling property that was adjacent to the club.
I glanced down at my phone when it buzzed to find a text from him.
Grunt: You’re about to eat your words and wish you weren’t such a fucking hothead.
Knuckles: How do you figure?
Grunt: Because you can’t help yourself - you’re a fuck up when it counts the most.
Knuckles: Never let the club down, asshole.
Grunt: No, but you sure as fuck have a history of letting the woman you claimed to love down.
Knuckles: What are you talking about?
Grunt: Head’s up, asshole.
I lifted my head to look across the room where Grunt sat at the bar. He had his back turned to me as he nursed a beer. Before I could glance around and take stock of the room, I heard her voice.