Chapter 36
thirty-six
COLE
It had been a long first night in my cell. My lawyer was working as fast as she could to get my bail hearing set up. Right now, I was staring at the wall and zoning out. There wasn’t much else to do in here.
Sure, things weren’t going to plan, but I’d known something was going to happen. I just hadn’t expected them to take it this far. The mole in the MC. The Iron Vultures. Grant Elwick’s death. And considering what I’d learned from my conversation on the burner phone, there was only one reason.
Grant Elwick was somehow involved in MC business, and there was only one explanation that made sense.
Grant Elwick was The Lion. The shady, upper-crust fuck who drugged and tried to assault my woman.
The guy my dad owed money to. The fucker I’d been doing dirty work for, for years.
I wished he wasn’t dead, so I could kill him myself.
“Bailey. You’re being released,” a cop said, arriving at my cell and unlocking the door. I unfolded slowly from my prone position and looked at him.
My lawyer hurried in after. “You heard him, Cole. You’re out. The cops fucked up and followed the most basic line of thinking in this incident and embarrassed themselves. You’ve got an alibi.”
“An alibi for sleeping?” I wondered.
“Yeah, an alibi for sleeping. There’s a recording. It’s complicated, but it’s enough to get you out of here while the police work out who really did it.”
“Yeah, it might still be you,” the cop at the door muttered under his breath as I passed by.
I ignored him. I had no patience for one more word from a cop today. We got out to the main area, and I took my belongings, wrapped in a plastic bag.
“The recording device,” I said in wonder after my lawyer filled me in on the latest events. With all the craziness lately, I’d completely forgotten about the little spy device Goldilocks had brought into my bar, the one that led to her discovery of a mole in my MC.
My little Goldilocks’ scheming had saved the day after all.
I’d expect nothing less.
I left the station to find Gage and Maddox waiting outside. A sudden movement at the corner of my eye made me tense, but it was just Finn, throwing skinny arms around me fiercely.
“Hey, buddy. Everything’s ok,” I told him.
He nodded. “I’m your alibi now, you know?” He pulled back and looked up at me. “I saved you.”
“Noted. Thank you very much,” I said with a grin.
I scanned the street. No Goldilocks. I couldn’t lie. I was disappointed.
“She went down to HHU to pull the newspapers off every desk she can find,” Maddox said, perfectly understanding my feeling.
“Makes sense,” I murmured, though I wished it didn’t. I wanted her here, now.
“Brought you your ride,” Gage murmured.
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Thanks, but how are you getting back?” My eyes shot to Maddox. “Looks like you two are in for a romantic ride.”
“Get fucked,” Gage protested as Finn burst out laughing. “I’ll take the bus.”
Maddox straightened up and slapped Gage on the shoulder. “Don’t be so fragile. You’re man enough to cuddle into my back. I believe in you.”
I headed over to my bike and ran my hand along the handlebars. “You guys seen any Iron Vultures around? Teddy still underground? I like him for this.”
“Teddy, really? This is serious shit. Killing some random rich guy?” Gage protested.
“He’s not random. He’s The Lion, or maybe his father was, and now, he’s inherited the business.” I leaned against my bike and crossed my arms.
My men were taken aback for a moment.
“You telling me that we’ve been paying through the nose, fucking scraping and hustling every single month to pay that super rich motherfucker his crazy inflated interest? So he can go and pay for golf memberships and Wall Street hookers?”
I just nodded. The gravity of finally unmasking our mysterious loan shark was working through all of us.
Since we’d barely been men, we’d been laboring to pay that debt.
All three of us, united in the shared loss of our futures, scrambling to keep the MC alive, to protect our brothers.
I’d never forgotten the feeling of Finn’s dad’s blood drying on my hands.
The cost of crossing The Lion. And now, he was dead.
His father wouldn’t be coming after us. He’d passed a few years before, my lawyer had told me.
We didn’t have to pay the debt anymore. Whoever had killed Grant Elwick had ended up doing the Hounds a fucking favor, until they’d tried to frame me for it, that was.
Maddox yawned, and it dawned on me how tired my men were. It had been a long twenty-four hours, and I’d slept at least eight of them on the hard bench in my cell. My men hadn’t.
“You guys need to take your romantic ride, and go and get some shut-eye.”
“We’ll come with you back to The Clutch.”
“No. We all need some shut-eye. That’s not a request. I appreciate you all working hard to figure this out, and keeping the lights on… but I need you sharp. Whoever is behind all of this is working on the next step, whatever that is. We need to be ready.”
Gage snorted. “You could try to look like you care if it ends up with you in jail, or in the ground—”
“I do care. I don’t want to die, and I don’t want to end up like my father. I want to change our lives, and have something real. I want to make the MC into something real, something respectable. Without the debt, we don’t need to do shit that could get us killed anymore.”
Maddox watched me with a thoughtful expression, like he was trying to see right into my head.
“You love her, don’t you? You really love her.”
My eyes cut to him. I saw in his gaze that he had me figured out. My sudden optimism was pretty fucking obvious when looked at through the lens of the most powerful driver in the world.
Love.
“Shit, seriously?” Gage muttered and then laughed incredulously. “I never thought I’d see the day.”
“Yeah, well. It’s here. Get used to it. Go home, get some sleep. Then come and meet me at The Clutch and let’s figure this out.”
“Isabelle played us the recording from the night of the shipyard. You’re not going to want to hear this, but we recognized the voice.”
Tension gathered in my gut.
“Who?”
Gage swallowed hard, and then looked disappointed when he spoke. “Errol. It was Errol.”
Errol. My father’s right-hand man. His best friend. Travis’ father.
Marcus’ godfather.
The mole.