Chapter 29
Bolo
“You mind if I clean up in your apartment?” I asked Relay. There was blood all over my t-shirt, but the bullet had only grazed me. “I don’t want to freak Devyn out.”
He shook his head. “You’re such a bitch. All that blood from a little scratch.”
“Fuck off. Not my fault I got so much blood pumping through these puppies.” I flexed my arms, causing the wound to start trickling again.
“It’s open. Go on in.” He waved dismissively. “Just don’t bleed on anything.”
“Finally,” I said with a grin. “An open invitation into your place.” I thought about waving my arm around and flinging some blood toward him, but decided against it. Best not to spoil this ‘good’ mood of his.
He narrowed his eyes. “Into my apartment. Not into my house. Don’t be going in my house, fucker.”
Shaking my head, I took the elevator up and went into Relay’s place.
I shucked my t-shirt, leaving it on his kitchen counter because it would bother the shit out of him, then grabbed a new one from his bedroom.
It looked like I was one of those gym bros who liked to wear their shirts too small to show off how ripped they were, but it’d do for now.
I lifted it and shoved some paper towels against the thin gash in my side. It had mostly stopped bleeding on the way up, but this would keep it from soaking through the shirt if it started up again.
We’d been back at the clubhouse for over an hour, unloading the cages. We were a lot more careful this time. Ruck and Flir had taken inventory as we unloaded.
I went back downstairs and laughed. Flir was sitting on the floor, looking like an eight-year old at Christmas. He looked up at me, eyes shining as he counted out bills. “You going to count all of those?”
He shook his head. “Just getting a baseline on denominations.”
“The fuck?”
He ignored me and went back to counting. I looked around at the bags. The guys were pulling bills out of them and stacking them in rows against the wall.
There had to be thousands of dollars in here. Maybe hundreds of thousands considering how many damn bags there were. It wasn’t as many as we’d left behind, but we’d been in a time—and space—crunch and had done the best we could.
“How the fuck?” I asked. “I mean, we know that they are into all kinds of shit, but…these guys are what? Just printing money.” Which explained all the chemicals that had been in the apartment.
I hadn’t really stopped to ask Flir about it while we’d been there because he would’ve gotten going on one of his rants, and we didn’t have the luxury of letting him go on and on like a damn wind-up toy.
Flir popped up from the floor. “Yeah, that’s exactly what they’re doing. Come with me.”
Everyone paused what they were doing and went over to the machines stacked in the corner.
Behind me Kilo whistled as he walked in. He looked like shit. I was pretty sure he hadn’t slept in days. Or that was what it looked like. “Sweet. Daddy needs a new motorcycle. Car. Hell, a yacht.”
“You look like hell,” OD said, echoing my thoughts. He grinned when Kilo flipped him off.
“Counterfeiting,” Ruck said, nodding toward the machines as he crossed his arms over his chest. “They were running a counterfeiting operation. Using the rest of the apartments as a blind for it.”
Flir nodded, running his hand over one of the machines, then he grimaced and wiped his hand on his jeans.
“In that shitty apartment? To what, the tune of millions?” Strike asked.
“Depending on the denomination of bills,” Flir answered. “That’s what I was checking. They’re all twenty, ten, and five dollar bills. I haven’t counted them all yet, but if they packed each duffel bag with the same stacks of bills I can estimate.”
“Means they had to have somewhere that was laundering that shit,” Ruck replied in a tone that said he was thinking out loud. “Get all those bills out into circulation where it didn’t come back on them.”
Flir nodded and continued, “That looked like it was three studio apartments with the main walls taken out to make one space. So, I’m approximating twenty to thirty million. Give or take.”
“Dollars?” Kilo sputtered, eyes wide.
Drifter and Strike both whistled at the same time because that meant we’d destroyed approximately double that amount back in those apartments. The Collective was going to be pissed. Someone's ass was going to be on the line for that fuck up. I grinned at the thought.
“Shit,” OD muttered. “Million? With a fucking M?”
None of us were rich. We all did alright for ourselves, but not millions of dollars alright. Especially not after we’d funded building the damn apartments. That had taken up the majority of our liquid cash that we’d saved.
Flir nodded.
“How the fuck do you figure that?” Relay asked.
“It’s not hard, there are seventy-five duffel bags. They banded them in stacks of one hundred bills despite the denomination. So that’s about half an inch tall and three and a half ounces or so. That’s about four million physical bills.”
Our mouths were hanging open as he rattled all this out. That didn’t deter him in the least. He was on a roll now.
“That’s about five hundred and forty-four stacks in a bag. Those military style duffel bags hold one hundred and fifty liters of volume, so those stacks fit easily enough with a little extra room.”
Jesus. My eyes were starting to cross.
“That’s just under half a mil in each bag.
” He paused to double check his math, then nodded to himself before continuing.
“They only filled them to about eighty percent capacity. Makes them easier to move quickly. They’re about one hundred to one hundred and twenty pounds per bag.
Which is why we were able to get them out of there a lot faster. ”
“This one was carrying them lined up on his arms,” Strike said, slapping me on the back and grinning at Ruck. When we returned, Ruck had sent Merc to join the others, out patrolling the compound perimeter, but they were going to lose their shit when they saw this.
“All that is going to add up to around thirty-five million,” Flir said, getting back to the matter at hand. “Give or take a couple mil. And again, that’s assuming they used an equal amount of denominations. I won’t know for sure until we count them all.”
“You’re going to count all of them?” Strike asked, arching a brow.
“That’s going to make him blow a load in his pants,” I muttered.
Flir scowled at me. “No. Some of those machines we grabbed were money counters. I’ll use those for that job. It would take me far too long to count four million bills. Probably around-”
“Shut the fuck up, nerd,” Relay barked, shaking his head. “This was all mostly rhetorical. Shit. I think you just melted my fucking brain.”
“It’s seventh grade math, you neanderthal.”
“Seventh grade for robots maybe, but not humans.”
“That…seems excessive. How can this outfit print that many fakes? It’s too much, it’s going to bring attention,” Drifter said, getting the conversation back on track.
“That’s where the laundering comes in,” Ruck told him.
“That’s still a lot of damn laundering,” I pointed out. “More than can be done in this city. Maybe even the state.
Ruck sighed. “I’ll have to do some more digging, but likely it’s more than just laundering money through their own businesses.
This probably has international connections.
Something like run the counterfeits through the legit businesses and then do transactions with other, cartel owned, legit businesses outside the U.S.
Or sell the fakes at discount, ten dollars to every hundred, then the cartel launders it themselves through their own businesses.
Other things that I can’t think of right now.
This is way more complicated than I thought.
The good news is we just dealt them a massive blow. ”
I finished the thought for him. “The bad news is we just made an international enemies list.”
Everyone went silent at that, thinking about what the ramifications of taking all this shit from The Collective was going to be. We’d just made a lot more enemies. Fuck me.
“I also need to point out that the thirty-five million is like pennies to these guys,” Strike said.
“Well, there’s the thirty-five, but then there was the additional fifty to sixty million we destroyed back at the apartments.”
We all glared at Flir.
He just shrugged. “The money is one thing, but the true hit came in taking these machines. They probably have at least one more operation like this somewhere in the city, but we just cut their product in half. That’s going to piss off their clients.
And drug lords and cartels don’t like it when you fuck with their cash supply.
The Collective is going to be gunning hard to get these machines back. ”
“We should destroy them,” OD said, giving Ruck a meaningful look. “Make sure they don’t get their hands on them.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Kilo said, holding hands up. “That’s insane. This is free money for us.”
“Kilo,” Ruck said with a sigh. “We’re not using these machines.”
“Why not?” Kilo asked in an incredulous tone.
Ruck chuckled. “Because we may be vigilantes, but we’re not criminals.”
“Ehhhhhh…” Kilo countered, making us all laugh. “We kinda are.”
“If we destroy them, we can’t use them for leverage,” Flir pointed out.
“I’m not negotiating with these bastards.
I don’t give a fuck what’s on the line,” Ruck said with a scowl.
“I want to bring them down and make them hurt while we do. If that means letting their own clientele rip off a few chunks because they’re pissed off at The Collective?
That’s fine by me. But they aren’t getting these machines back. ”
“And if we keep them here,” OD said, glaring at Kilo, “it’ll lead them straight to us.”
“Oh,” Kilo huffed out. “Well, fuck.”
“It’s already going to lead them here,” Strike said. “They’re going to come here looking for all this shit we took.”
“We didn’t leave anyone alive to tell them who attacked them,” Relay said.
“No, but we’re likely to be their number one target right now,” Ruck said. “They’ll assume it was us if they don’t have any other leads.”
“So, what do you want to do?” Drifter asked.
“Everything stays here tonight. In the morning we move it all to a more secure location. Somewhere away from our families. Double the patrols tonight.”
“Doubt they’ll get organized to hit us tonight,” I told him.
“I know, but I don’t care. I want eyes all over this compound. I’m not taking the chance that they slip in while we’re fucking sleeping.”
We all nodded in agreement with Ruck’s orders.
“So…do we get to keep this money at least?” Kilo asked after we all fell silent.
The guys all groaned. I ignored them as they started heckling Kilo because my phone was buzzing. Pulling it out of my pocket, I saw it was Dev calling. “Hey, Baby Girl.”
“Hey, Biker Boy,” she teased. “It’s later than usual…”
I grinned, moving away from the group so I could talk to her without having to shout over them. “You worried about me?”
“Nooo,” she said, mocking me. “I just have some news.”
I tensed. “Everything okay?”
“I don’t know. I’m waiting for you so we can open the email from the OBGYN. It’s the results of the NIPT test.”
Damn. That meant we’d find out if the initial screenings looked good for the baby, and whether we were having a girl or boy. “Give me ten minutes,” I told her. “We’re finishing up some club shit then I’ll be up there.”
“Okay, see you in a bit.”
Grinning, I disconnected the call and headed back over to my brothers. We needed to figure out shifts for guarding our home for the rest of the night. Then I was heading up to see my girl.
Dev met me at the door by the time I made it upstairs. “Sorry, I’m excited.”
“Yeah, me too.”
We sat down on the couch and she pulled the laptop closer and clicked on an email from Dr. Natalie. She opened up the portal and clicked another link. Smiling over at me, she asked, “What’s your guess?”
I shrugged, then said, “Girl.”
“I think boy. You ready?”
“Yeah.”
My heart was pounding in my chest. I didn’t care whether our baby was a girl or boy. A grin broke out over my face as we both read the results. We were having a boy. “You were right.” I reached over and pulled her into my lap, computer and all.
“A boy,” she said, reclining against me. She scrolled down a bit more and I let out a relieved breath as I saw that all the testing had come back as low risk for any kind of problems. We were having a son and, at least for now, he was healthy. That was all that mattered.