Chapter Three #2
Something flickered across his face and he glanced at Pippa, then to Gunnar before glancing back at Griffin. “Show me.”
“I ain’t seen it either,” Griffin said, glancing at me. “What do you need for Knuckles to look at what you have?”
“Just a computer.”
Knuckles grunted and turned to the heavily tattooed man from the Bronco. Even the whites of his eyes appeared to be colored in with ink. “Knight?”
“Give me a second.” Knight set a laptop on a workbench and opened it. He powered it on, then held out his hand to me without looking away from the screen. “I’ll need the drive, please.”
I hesitated, then passed it over. Knight opened a small compartment at the end, removed the micro SD card, and slotted it into an adapter. The room went quiet while everyone fixed their attention on the laptop screen.
Knight pulled up a video player and clicked the first file. The footage was shaky but clear enough to see Iron and the men with him. The angle was low, the camera obviously hidden somewhere near floor level. The back office of éclipse filled the screen.
On screen, Iron walked into frame, followed by Carl and two of Iron’s men. I knew what came next, but watching it play out on screen made my stomach churn and I had to swallow back bile.
“That’s Iron,” Knight said, pointing to the screen. “Steel Serpents’ enforcer. Works directly for their president.”
Knuckles nodded once, his eyes never leaving the screen. “Keep going, Knight.”
The footage continued. Iron confronted Carl, accused him of skimming.
Carl denied it, his voice high with fear.
Then Iron slammed Carl’s face into the desk, once, twice.
I flinched with every blow. On the third impact, something gave.
Carl slumped to the floor, and the camera caught the moment when Iron realized there was someone else in the room.
“The manager’s dead,” Griffin said. “But Iron knows there’s someone else. Look.” He pointed at the screen. “He sends his guys to clear the building, but he stays in the room. He’s waiting.”
On screen, Iron paced the length of the office, checking his phone, looking at the door. His face was blank, but there was something in the set of his shoulders that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. He wasn’t just angry. He was hunting.
The other men returned with two workers bound with zip ties -- the same two people I’d watched Iron execute against the far wall.
The woman tried to speak, her words slurred through what was probably a broken jaw.
Then Iron raised his gun and I looked away.
I didn’t need to see him kill a second time.
“What about the ledgers?” Knuckles still studied the screen.
Knight opened the file and clicked through several pages. Columns of numbers filled the screen, along with initials, dates, and what looked like business names.
“Those are routes,” Gunnar said, his voice flat. “Transport schedules. And that’s --” He stopped, his jaw locking.
Griffin nodded. “That’s a judge’s name.” The room went still. The dangerous silence of predators who’d just spotted a threat.
“Keep going,” Knuckles said. “I want to see everything.”
Knight scrolled through everything, pausing on each page long enough for Knuckles and Gunnar to read over his shoulder.
“Stop,” Knuckles said suddenly. “Right there.”
Knuckles stared at the screen for a long moment, his face giving away nothing. Then he turned to look at me, his eyes cold. “You understand what you’re looking at?”
I nodded. “It’s a trafficking operation. My sister worked at éclipse for six weeks. Then she disappeared. The police closed her case two weeks after I reported her missing.”
“They would,” Gunnar said, tapping the screen over an entry name in her file. “Judge Marlin has friends in high places.” The same judge whose name had appeared, next to a five-thousand-dollar payment dated the night Tessa vanished.
Everyone started talking over each other in both anger and disbelief. I watched them from my spot against the wall. Griffin crossed back to where I stood.
“Hey. You OK?” He gave me an assessing look. “You’ve gone kind of pale.”
“Did I make a mistake coming here?”
He gave me a puzzled look. “Veda, no one here is going to hurt you.”
“That’s not what it sounds like.” I nodded toward the group of men where they discussed the situation unfolding in their lap. “They’re planning on killing people.”
“You know who all is in those ledgers. And we’ve barely been looking at all that information for five minutes.
Can you honestly tell me you think the people in those documents deserve to live?
They might not have been the ones to sell those women or to buy them, but you know as well as I do, they looked the other way. For money.”
“Shouldn’t the justice system…” I trailed off, glancing over his shoulder where the others still gathered around the laptop.
“Right.” He gave me a wry grin. “You see the conundrum.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m asking you to trust me long enough for Knuckles to figure out what we need to do.” His voice was steady. “That’s all. Just long enough to figure out who knew what and who’s going to pay for it.”
One of the men still poring over the computer screen suddenly pointed. “You see that?” He stabbed the computer screen a couple times. “Knuckles, if Tonio or Seth know about this…”
“I know, Gunnar,” Knuckles sounded calm, but the look on his face said he was anything but. Hannah put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed as if in support. “Just because it’s Tonio’s business doesn’t mean he knows what’s going on.”
“Tonio or Seth?” I looked at Griffin in confusion. Griffin’s attention had swung back to Knuckles and Gunnar. “Who’s that?”
Pippa stood close to us and she gave me a pained look. “The Miles family. Seth and his son, Antonio.”
“Yeah,” Griffin said slowly. “Guess we’ll need to get that sorted out.”
The Miles family. And one of Tonio’s businesses had appeared in Carl’s ledger.
The same Miles family that Kiss of Death had been running muscle for.
Everyone in the city knew the connection though no one spoke about either group.
The Miles family were prominent in Nashville, but it was rumored they controlled a very large portion of the city’s underground and ruled it with an iron fist.
“What does ‘sorting it out’ look like for a club like this?” I asked.
Griffin didn’t dress it up. “Knuckles finds out who knew what, then we take care of it appropriately.”
Knuckles turned back to us, his face hard. “She’s your responsibility until we know exactly what Iron knows about her and whether Steel Serpents are already looking for her.”
I straightened away from the wall. “I’m not anyone’s responsibility.”
Griffin looked at me, his expression unreadable. “You’re right. You’re not. But until every Steel Serpent is accounted for, I’m standing between you and them whether you like it or not. And you can be pissed about it the whole time if you want.”
“OK, people,” Knuckles raised his voice so the gathering crowd of men and women in the garage could hear him. “We might have a situation. I want everyone confined to the inner warehouses. There’s plenty of space for the kids so they don’t feel like they’re trapped inside.”
“Knuckles, we’ve got a new resident and five traumatized kids.
” Hannah spoke softly. “And no, I’m not suggesting we not help Veda.
She needs our help just as much as the women at Haven do.
But this might not be the best place at the moment.
The club’s attention would be divided and that’s not good for anyone. ”
“Hannah…” Knuckles gave his wife a hard look. The two stared at each other for a long moment like they were having a whole-ass conversation without saying a word.
“I’ve got a place,” Griffin said, suddenly. “It’s in the middle of nowhere but it’s comfortable and on the high ground, so it’s defensible.”
Knuckles held his gaze. “Are you sure, Griffin? I still want to circle the wagons, so to speak. Keep everyone here.”
“You know Hannah’s right.” Griffin lowered his voice. “Send a couple guys with me and we’ll be fine, but keep most everyone here to guard the women and kids.”
“Give me a couple days. I need to know what we’re dealing with,” Knuckles said.
Griffin nodded. “Understood.”
Men in the garage spoke in a low rumble as most of them left the building from a couple of different exits. I stood there, wide-eyed and growing more alarmed by the minute.
Griffin turned to me. “We need to move.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s happening.”
“You know as well as I do that the people who burned down éclipse and executed three people in cold blood probably know you were there. Given they tailed us all the way here, they may not know who you are, but they know where you are. They know you have things you shouldn’t.
And they’ll probably be pulling up outside our gate soon, deciding whether to come in shooting or wait for you to come out.
We need to get you somewhere they can’t find you. ”
“You’ll be safe with Griffin,” Pippa said, giving me a concerned look.
“I’ll go with you if you want,” Hannah spoke as she walked in our direction. Knuckles and Knight huddled over the laptop, with Knight studying the files I’d given them. “Knuckles knows I can take care of both of us if the guys have to fight off a threat.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want anyone hurt because of me.
” I glanced up at Griffin, then back to Hannah.
“If you guys think Iron will come looking for me here, then I’ll go.
” I looked back at Griffin. “But if this is some kind of elaborate plot to get me to go quietly and you give me to these people, I will find a way to cut off your balls and feed them to you before I die.”
Griffin gave me a serious nod. “I’d expect nothing less.”