Chapter 13 The Red Riot Boss #2
“Of course it is,” he muttered. “At least Molly likes you. She won’t get pissy over closing shop while you’re there. And we’ll have to shut the street down running in front of it. So we’ll need at least three guys on either end of Westward to block traffic, and—“
“I’m bringing enough members to fill the cafe.
They’re gonna pretend to be customers.” I clicked over to my messages and pulled the cafe owner’s number up in a chat.
“Grant’s not dumb. He’s not going to walk into an empty restaurant.
And Molly’s not going to be losing out on profit.
So round up anyone who wants a free meal, they can invite their partners who have been vetted for gatherings. ”
“You want this done in… three hours?”
“Two, actually. I already texted Molly, so don’t worry about that part.”
I smiled into the tense silence on his end. He was trying to keep his cool with some steady breathing. “Fine,” he finally ground out. “Moving on, I have other news for you.”
“Uh-huh. Go on.”
“About the guy you mutilated at Davina,” he began.
“J.J. called me last night, about an hour after you were done working him over. Said he wants to make sure everything is kosher between you two.” I could tell he was trying to keep things vague with Sasha around.
She was on the edge of Riot activities, but Taylor worked hard to keep her out of mob business.
I knew he was talking about the asshole who roughed up Becca.
It was a little surprising J.J. called that quickly.
He was smarter than his father and predecessor when it came to avoiding me.
Generally speaking, he and his guys kept their heads down and didn’t piss me off.
Until now, anyway. “Yeah? Why wouldn’t we be? ”
Taylor sighed. “He just wanted to make sure the bill was settled. Seems like things have been hectic over at the Twisted Sixes with some shit going down, they’ve been real hush-hush about it. Jerel and I ruled them out for shooting up Masked Merrow at least.”
“Oh yeah? Did J.J. have a sleepover in backrooms, too?”
“No, but he gave us full access to his and his underbosses’ phones to check for anything suspicious.
Even the deleted messages were clean. And the phone calls checked out.
They have some internal squabbling after one of his underbosses died from a heart attack, so there’s a little power struggle going on. But nothing that involves us.”
“Good deal.” I tilted my head back to check the Kit Kat Klock ticking away on the kitchen wall. “Oop, gotta run if I’m gonna be ready on time. Love ya, bro!”
“Love you too, brat,” Taylor answered, his raspy voice warm before he disconnected the call.
Heads turned and people waited to cross the sidewalk intersecting the entrance to the garage that my bike rumbled into; one girl even gave a thumbs-up and a huge grin as I passed.
Maybe it wasn’t the smartest strategy for being discreet, riding on a bright red Ducati, but much to Taylor’s dismay my bike was not one of those sacrifices I was willing to make.
His compromise was wearing a dark-tinted, full-face helmet whenever I was out and about.
I pulled into one of the designated bike spots close to the entrance and kicked the stand, pulling the helmet off to shake out my natural curls crushed beneath it before throwing the whole mess up into a sloppy bun.
The Scorching Chick Cafe, one of my favorite local cafes and my proposed meeting place, was just around the corner.
I could afford a couple spare minutes to slap on a layer of lip gloss and pull myself together.
Not that I should give a damn what the likes of Grant Black thought of me.
“Enough,” I gave myself a stern reprimand. “Just another feckin’ guy. You’re a bad bitch, act like it!”
If anyone had been close enough to hear me talking to myself, they’d probably think I was a loon.
It was a fair assumption. I tucked the helmet under my arm and began my short trek up the entrance ramp to the street level, digging around my satchel for the lip gloss blindly tossed into it before leaving the club, grumbling when it didn’t immediately materialize among the jumbled mess.
When I finally pulled it out and realized it was a vibrant red, I sent a Hail Mary to apply it without a mirror and not look like a clown.
Why was I like this?
I could feel my primal pace anxiously beneath my skin, rankling my nerves and making me antsy.
Times like these made me regret deciding to settle in the middle of a fucking desert, when I was much better suited to the forests as a fox shifter.
To be fair, this was the absolute last place anyone in my past expected to look for me, and that’s what I wanted.
Hiding in plain sight was my specialty. The only other organize crime group in Vegas was the Twisted Sixes, and after I killed J.J.
's uncle during my escape from Elio they crumbled from the inside like a house of cards.
By the time I made it here, they were easy enough to get under my control.
There was no fucking way I was getting run out of my own home.
I didn’t appreciate the likes of the infamous Bloodhound sniffing around where he didn’t belong.
This wasn’t the first time someone in the hacker community came looking for me, but it was the first time one confronted me in real life.
He flew too close to the sun this time, and I was looking forward to lighting his ass on fire.
“Speaking of sniffing,” I muttered to myself and shoved my hand back into my bag.
The hard plastic bottle was easier to find than the lip gloss, despite its best efforts to hide beneath some random receipts.
Pulling it out, I gave the pheromone blocker a few good shakes before dousing myself liberally with its sweet vanilla scent.
Usually, a few spritzes at pulse points would last me the whole day, but when I rode my bike, it tended to wear off faster.
Plus, Grant had a freakishly good sense of smell, and the last thing I needed was to risk a mating.
The formula was something a friend of Taylor’s cooked up in his home lab as a way to avoid being detected by his unique scent.
It was designed to hide the more prominent scent markers of a shifter in human form so we could blend into the human population better, as well as mask our pheromones from each other.
Using a generic smell like vanilla kept my identity safe from every shifter I’d encountered thus far…
but I had my suspicions it didn’t work as well on Grant as it did on me.
I could hardly smell anything past the artificial sweetness of the blocker.
“Bad bitch,” I muttered again as a last bolster of confidence, and stepped out into the bright mid-morning sun.
The Scorching Chick was a regular haunt for me, a bohemian-chic brunch café I was a silent partner in with a former escort from Masked Merrow, Molly.
In truth, I owed her my life several times over.
She was my body double before Patty, when I had to appear in two places at once.
It was a common tactic among bosses who kept their identities secret.
Like right now, Patty was with Jerel over at the largest Red Riot warehouse, wearing a copy of my signature mask and some of my clothes with a wig.
They were making themselves visible in case anyone was tracking my meeting with Grant under the pretense of checking stock.
Just another precaution Taylor insisted on.
Nodding to one of the Riot members lingering on the corner as a lookout, I stepped into the intersection to make my way over to the café.
Almost every table was full in the outdoor area surrounded by a low wrought-iron fence.
Only one table had a lone customer, his back turned to me as it stretched out a black short-sleeved shirt, his dark hair just barely brushing the collar where it flipped up at the ends.
A black backpack was slung across the back of the iron chair that matched the fencing.
A big grin stretched my face as I slipped through the gate and snuck up behind him. What little wind there was in the stifling summer day was blowing my scent away from us, so he was totally oblivious.
“I’m so glad you could make our little lunch date.”
My hand rested lightly on Grant’s left shoulder, making him tense as I ran my fingers across to the other while I walked around his chair.
My nails dug in just enough to make the hairs rise along the nape of his neck in response.
Obviously, he was uneasy meeting me in the open on my terms. He was the kind of guy who didn’t like being out of control.
Unfortunately for him, all I did was thrive in chaos.
I half expected him to stand me up when I sent the message early this morning to meet in this very public, very busy local café.
I even picked lunch time so I could get some food regardless if he showed.
He stuck out like a sore thumb. This was a particularly artsy part of Vegas, so his all-black button up and jeans combo was a dark spot in a blast of bright colors.
Not to mention how hot he must be, baking under the unforgiving desert sun.
In contrast, this was precisely my scene.
After not having a choice in what I wore under Elio’s control, I reveled in the ability to wear whatever loud patterns and bold colors I wanted.
The neon pink crop top barely stretched to my navel, paired with some black jeans so shredded there was more skin visible than not, and a pair of hot pink Doc Martins.
I kept the tight black riding jacket on but left it unzipped.
It was enough to satisfy my basic requirement to keep my arms—and my scars—covered at all times.