Chapter 46
CHAPTER
FORTY-SIX
LOOT
“We need to talk to the Russians,” Hound announces.
Church. Sometimes I fucking love coming down here. Sometimes I would rather be anywhere else. Hound’s words make me feel the latter. I don’t think I want to be here. I’d personally rather be at home with Juliette and Cade.
I felt bad leaving them anyway. They’re still getting to know one another. They only met yesterday as it is. Hound’s announcement is met with silence. Nobody wants to deal with the Russians, and I don’t blame them, because I don’t either.
But if Hound is saying that, then I know it’s something that has to happen. There must be no other way around it. Sinking my teeth into the corner of my bottom lip, I lean back in my chair and wait.
He’s got to have a decent plan if he’s bringing it to the whole club. “We’ve worked with them, and while I know it was out of necessity, they respect us for what we did by coming to them with the issues.”
Hound isn’t wrong about any of this. But he’s not getting to the plan either. Dare grunts, then he leans back in his chair, but it’s Wrath who speaks next. “What kind of deal are we bringing to the table with them?”
Hound clears his throat. He places his hands on the table, bending over slightly. “I know none of us want to get into bed with the Russians. It’s something we’ve been able to avoid for years, but I think this might actually be unavoidable.”
“What the hell do we do?” I ask.
“We go to them, offer them a cut. They are in bed with every fucking major player in Vegas. They know who owes whom, and who is about to lose every fucking thing they have.”
“But we can’t find that out?” I ask.
He dips his chin once, his gaze searching mine, then his lips curve up into a grin. Oh, he’s been waiting to explain this. He probably fucking practiced it before he walked in here. I can tell he’s beyond fucking jazzed. This is his moment to shine, and I can’t help but chuckle.
“We could get the names. That part is easy as fuck. What we don’t have are the contacts. We can’t talk to these people. They are beyond anyone we could ever attempt to get into contact with.”
I know he’s right. There is no way some of those people will ever talk to us, and we’ll never get close enough to speak to them. They’re all swimming in debt, waiting for deals to come through and shit like that. Whatever the fuck the rich worry about.
“Then we meet with the Russians,” Dare announces. “I’ll set it up.”
And that’s that. “We got any other leads?” I ask. “Anything we can get done before we talk to them?”
Hound shakes his head. “There’s a house under construction, a big fucking bitch on the outskirts of town. They seem to be struggling. That might float us for a month. I’m waiting to hear back.”
“The economy isn’t that good,” Hippie calls out. “There is no way nobody else is struggling enough they want their shit burned to the fucking ground for some insurance money.”
He’s right. The economy is shit, and there is no way that people don’t want to use our services. But I do know that getting it from people swimming in money is a hell of a lot better.
“At this point, we can’t keep working small jobs. We need to land some bigger ones and diversify,” Dare murmurs.
“Diversify?” I ask. “How?”
“We need a new avenue of income. It needs to fucking flow, not trickle,” Sparrow announces.
He’s not wrong. As much as I want to tell him that it doesn’t matter, that the fires are what we’re not only good at, but what we love, I don’t. We need to do this because there is no way we can pay our bills trickling in from home insurance fraud cases.
“Agreed,” I call out. “I got an old lady and a kid to take care of full-time now.”
There is a moment of silence, and then the room erupts in applause. Bounce slaps his hand down on my shoulder. “An old lady?” he asks.
Nodding a couple of times, I press my lips together, unable to hide my smile. Fuck me, but yeah, I got an old lady. Only took me fifty fucking years to get one, but here she is, and I’ve never fucking been happier. Not ever. My kid and my woman. I don’t think life gets better than this.