7. Cameron
CAMERON
Iknew the moment Dax left the room I’d be getting my verbal or physical beatdown from the other men who stayed in the living room.
It was to be expected since I was the new guy, and no one trusted me, not that I blamed them.
Nothing about my arrival led them to have faith in anything that came out of my mouth.
Even though I knew it would be easier for me if they all liked me, it wasn’t my goal.
Dax held my leash, and I’d happily be her faithful dog, but it didn’t mean I had to do the same for the others.
Soon they would find out that under the smiles and suave words, I was just as dark as our queen.
Eagle got up and came to stand before me, using his body to tower over me. “Dax might think you aren’t a danger by keeping you around, but that hasn’t been proven to us yet.”
“Mr. President, don’t you think this is a little frat boy of you? I mean, if Dax heard you, we both know she’d be pissed,” I pointed out, leaning back to see him better, folding my hand in my lap. “Besides, what can I do to actually prove to you all I’m not here to take her down for the FBI?”
This question seemed to make the burly president pause, then his road captain stepped up to the plate, pulling him back from me.
Sprocket was one of the men I respected.
His story was like so many others, but he didn’t let that stop him from being brilliant.
Sure, he might be into a life of crime, but he did it with brains more than brawn—not that he couldn’t be lethal.
“I’ll admit you have us there,” Sprocket voiced. “There isn’t anything you can do to prove to us you won’t betray Dax or us. What we can do is make sure your hands are as dirty as ours so when the time comes, you’ll burn with us.”
“What makes you think my hands are clean? Protecting Dax is dirty work. On rare occasions, I get a lead before she does and makes the problem disappear before it ever gets close. Funny thing is when they give you a badge and trust you to take down the worst of the worst, they don’t tend to question your kills.
It’s dangerous work, and I’ve had to protect myself in many situations, leading to the death of the criminal I was chasing.
I always planned on burning in hell with Dax if that’s what she wanted, so I needed to make sure I’d get there all on my own,” I answered with a smile.
Picasso scoffed, shaking his head at me. “You’re batshit crazy. That’s the only explanation.”
“Quite right on that one. Losing Dax broke me free of all the restraints that held my moral compass, so now I’m untethered to do whatever is needed of me,” I agreed. “Now, I believe we were asked to help come up with a plan to clear out the moles in both the Hidden Empire and the Phantom Saints…”
Weston set aside his computer and crossed his arms. “As much as it pains me to say this, Cameron’s right. We need something to bring to Dax so she doesn’t just say fuck it and do it her way. When it comes to inaction, it makes her reckless… well, more reckless than normal.”
“Dealing with the Empire is going to take more work than the Saints since it's much smaller. Seems to reason we start there then,” Sprocket suggested, to which I agreed.
“Dax had the right idea about leaking some information to her top people and seeing who acts on it. If she gave a different location for whatever was going down, it would tell us who ratted,” Cognac offered.
“Ah, the sultry Latin does have some bright ideas. I was personally beginning to worry,” I quipped, wanting to see what it would take to get under his jovial facade.
Cognac just gave me a smirk and a wink. “Sorry, man, I don’t swing that way, but glad to see you noticed.”
Oh, my dad would love playing with him if those kinds of comebacks are normal. Who knows, it might be wise to bring in the trick master himself for this battle. He’d be thrilled.
“How do we know they wouldn’t leak it to each other and find out we gave them all different information?” Weston countered.
“Obviously, we’d need to tell them something that would be important to keep to themselves, like, oh, I don’t know, there’s a mole and we’re trying to find them?” Picasso grumbled.
Clearly, this wasn’t the VP’s game. “What would you do if you were the mole and someone came out and told you this?”
“Make someone else my scapegoat so I didn’t get caught. But then they would all stop looking since they found someone,” Eagle answered, telling me why he was president.
“Exactly. Now we need to come up with something else they’ll want to prevent but feel like they’re the only ones in the know and need to keep it that way,” I pressed, trying to get them to come up with the idea I already had because there’s no way they would be for it if I told them to do it.
Cognac shot up from his seat like a bomb went off under him. “I got it!”
We all stared at him in stunned silence as we waited for his revelation to be spoken out loud.
“What if we tell them that for retaliation, we’re going after one of the drug meets, and we need to keep it quiet so no one can leak it and have it get back to the Mad Dogs?
That would totally work since they’re in Nevada.
We could say it’s coming from Canada since she’s blocking Mexico for those who are in the north and pick a spot to tell them.
We’ll say something else for those down here,” Cognac blurted, looking at all of us like a kid on Christmas morning.
I had to admit, I was impressed he was the one to come up with the idea I’d been thinking about.
The one thing the Mad Dogs couldn’t allow was to have a shipment of drugs stopped.
Their contact in the group would know it would have to be handled.
Another handy thing was we could potentially use this to hit both parts of the problem at once.
Letting the information slip in the compound and through the Empire would clean this up nicely.
“Okay, so let’s say this will work. Who in the Empire do we tell?” Sprocket asked Weston.
One secret Dax still kept close to her chest was just how big the Hidden Empire was.
It was a strategy that had done well for her since no one person outside of Weston knew just who played for her team.
It kept the others from ratting each other out if they got caught by the feds or police.
A double-blind was something I’m sure she learned from someone like my dad, if not the man himself.
More than once, I had a feeling those two talked even after she left me behind.
“The idea is solid, but I’ll leave that question up to Dax in how she wants to answer it,” Weston answered like the good dog he was.
Really, if I was being honest with myself, I wasn’t mad at Weston. It was the fact he was everything I wanted to be. Just looking at him made me mad, but I was going to have to find some way to settle things between us since I knew there was no way to get rid of her so-called shadow.
“It’s amazing you have managed to keep such a large secret from everyone,” I commented, feeling the need to throw a little lighter fluid on the fire I was about to cause.
“I get it, though. Keeping that information to just the two of you is smart but rather reckless since the information put a bounty on your heads.”
He leveled me with a look, his eyes narrowing, and I knew he saw right through what I was trying to do.
It seemed I’d have to come up with some new tricks to get under his skin.
Time with Dax had taught him well. “We all know it’s not the size of the Empire that started all this.
From what Marco said, it’s the fact we rule the import-export business to and from Mexico.
It’s much harder to get shipments in the major ports on the East Coast since they’re looking for it. ”
“Enough, you two,” Eagle snapped. “I know you have a beef with each other, but now isn’t the time or place to work that shit out.”
My brows rose in surprise, but I nodded and decided to remove myself from the situation.
Silently, I made my way back to the bedroom and stepped into the room to see Dax passed out and Void wrapped around her like an anaconda.
He glared at me as I approached the bed and sat on the edge, looking down at her sleeping face with her brow scrunched up in worry.
Reaching out a hand to brush away some hair, I was brought to an abrupt halt when a knife appeared, cutting into the skin of my throat.
“Place one hand on her while she’s sleeping, and I’ll end you,” Void growled. “The only reason she hasn’t woken up yet is because of the drugs. I won’t have you disturbing her when she needs to heal.”
“Killing me would get you into so much trouble, Enforcer,” I pointed out.
“My little demon will forget you soon enough. The six of us are more than enough to take care of her.”
Slowly, I pulled my hand away and sat back, meeting his gaze. “What makes you so sure?”
“We’re soul mates, her and I,” Void answered.
“The same darkness lives in both of us, and we don’t hide from it.
We thrive in it. The others have it too, but they don’t embrace it the same way.
They don’t know the rush you get with a kill, watching the life bleed out of a person.
You might have owned up to your heritage, but you don’t revel in it, and I’m not sure you ever will.
Which is why she needs me more than you. ”
“I’m finding it hard to argue with that logic,” I mused out loud as I stood.
“But I want to be perfectly clear with you. I’m.
Not. Going. Anywhere. Dax needs something from us all.
Just as she needs you to embrace the darkness together, she needs me to push her mind.
I present a challenge to her that causes her to dive deeper into herself than she realizes, and that will save us all. ”
With a grunt from the beast guarding his queen, I left the room, mulling over what he’d said about me. Would I ever be able to revel in my darkness? No, I don’t know if that was something I could do no matter how hard I tried.