Chapter 2
KANE
T he bastard we were hunting had vanished.
It was silent in my office, except for the low hum of the vents blowing in cold air. I stared out the window on my left and watched the Florida heat ripple across the sunbaked asphalt.
When I leaned back in my chair, it groaned beneath me, the leather worn smooth from years of decisions that built empires and buried enemies.
My boots were planted wide on the floor, and my hands were fisted on top of my custom, hand-carved, solid walnut desk.
The piece suited me, expensive but understated and strong.
Heavy enough that you could slam a man’s face into the surface and it wouldn’t so much as leave a splinter. Something I knew from experience.
As the president of the Redline Kings Motorcycle Club, I was the face of the brotherhood. The image that told people not to fuck with us unless they had a damn death wish.
Edge sat across from me, one boot kicked up on the edge of my desk like he owned the place. He didn’t, but he was the only bastard I let act like he did. My younger brother by eighteen months, vice president of the club, and the only man on this planet who could read me without needing words.
He was sprawled in his chair with one hand lazily turning a switchblade between his fingers like a drummer twirling a stick.
To most, he looked like he didn’t give a damn.
He did, of course—more than most—but he hid it better.
That laid-back grin of his always threw people off.
They didn’t see the blade underneath until they were already bleeding.
His road name fit. Edge had always been just this side of unhinged, walking that fine fucking line between charming and psychotic.
Nitro, our sergeant at arms, stood with his arms crossed near the door.
He didn’t like sitting. Said it made him feel caged.
His frame blocked most of the entrance, like a wall of ink and muscle daring anyone dumb enough to interrupt.
The man looked carved from stone, athletic, but built to fight and made to endure.
He had a temper that made people rethink breathing wrong around him, but it took a lot to light his fuse.
Jax perched on the leather arm of the couch across the room, tapping in a steady rhythm on the keyboard of his laptop.
His blond hair was shoved under a backward ball cap, and his black-rimmed glasses somehow made him look more dangerous, not less.
That was Jax for you—genius brain, twitchy fingers, always ten steps ahead of the digital world and three steps ahead of ours.
People underestimated Jax because he was younger. Quieter. Smarter. The man could hack into a Pentagon satellite before you blinked and still have time to reroute your bank account and reprogram your car stereo to play Taylor Swift on loop. He’d done it once, just to prove a point.
“Tell me,” I said, voice low and dark. “How the hell does a nobody traffic cop outsmart all of us?”
Edge chuckled. “You’re not pissed he slipped through. You’re pissed you didn’t see it sooner.”
Fair enough , I thought, tilting my head.
“Who is this guy?” Nitro asked. He’d been out on a run for a couple of months and wasn’t caught up on the shit going down.
“Devon Quincy,” Jax muttered, dragging the name like it left a bitter taste.
“Thirty-two. Works traffic in Wedgewood. Lived in the same rented house for six years. Used to be clean—boring as shit. Past several months, the pattern started to change. The asshole decided to get his hands dirty and has the balls to try and go up against us.”
“Maybe he got a sugar mama,” Nitro grunted, scratching at the edge of his chin. “Those small-town women get real generous when a man fills out the uniform.”
“He didn’t get paid in blow jobs and casseroles,” I said flatly.
Edge grinned. “Shame. That’d be easier to trace.”
I didn’t smile. Not because it wasn’t funny, but because this wasn’t just another dirty cop with a padded wallet. Someone out there was trying to buy their way into my world. My tracks. My races. My territory.
And they were using a fucking traffic cop to do it. He might be low on the totem pole, but he had access.
Jax’s fingers flew across his tablet. “We set traps across every payment channel. Dummy shell accounts, fake vendor contracts. Every time we get close, the money evaporates. Every account Devon touched scrubbed. No IPs. No traceable vendors. All offshore. Shells inside shells. And the trail’s cold again. ”
I exhaled through my nose. “You said the same thing last week.”
Jax’s mouth twitched. “Yeah, well. The bastard’s consistent. He’s smart. Or scared. Probably both.”
Edge’s blade clicked open and shut, the glint catching the light as he spun it between his fingers. “We sure he’s smart? Maybe he’s just lucky.”
“Lucky doesn’t explain how he keeps slipping through,” I grunted. “Three months of tracking. Three setups. And every time we get close, the money ghosts? If he’s not the brains, then whoever he’s working with is playing him like a puppet.”
“Might explain why he’s also gone,” Edge mused. “Didn’t show up for work three days ago. No phone. No cards. No traffic cams since last week.”
“Think he ran?” Nitro asked.
“Maybe,” Edge drawled. “But rats don’t run unless the ship’s burning. Which means whoever he’s working with is getting nervous. Or could be that's the boss, and he’s cleaning house.”
My jaw ticked. I hated maybes. I built my world on facts. Precision. Control.
People thought racing was chaos—fast cars, loud engines, sharp turns. It wasn’t. Racing was math, physics, breath, and timing. It was knowing the track down to every crack in the asphalt and knowing when to hit the gas and when to let someone else destroy themselves trying to keep up.
Nitro’s voice rumbled low. “Cops don’t usually play this clean.”
“He’s not clean,” I muttered. “He’s trained.”
“Military?” Edge raised his brow and glanced at Jax.
Jax shook his head. “No record. Just another traffic cop in a no-name town west of here. Well, it’s called Wedgewood, but you know what I mean.”
“Which makes it worse,” I said, rising from the chair and wandering over to the window. “He’s a nobody. A uniform with a radar gun. Yet somehow, someone taught him to cover his fucking tracks.”
“Reminds me of that kid we used to run against,” Edge said behind me. “Back in Knoxville. Remember? That scrawny little asshole with the Civic and the muffler that sounded like a pissed-off lawnmower?”
I smirked. “He blew his transmission halfway through a two-lap sprint and still tried to claim he won.”
Edge chuckled. “Because you ‘cheated.’ By driving better.”
“Little shit did have balls, I’ll give him that. Couldn’t seem to stop beggin’ for another race, swearin’ this time he’d win.” I chuckled. “And one of us kicked his ass every single time.”
“Yeah,” Edge snorted. “Right up until Dad caught us watching race replays in the barn and saw his plates on the tape. Thought he was gonna tan our hides.”
My lips curved into a smile at the memory. “He let us keep racing, though.”
“He fucking helped us keep racing. Built that deathtrap of a car from the bones of an old Chevy and told us we could use it. If we waited until we turned sixteen to drive it off the property.”
“Still let us run it on the back field before that.”
In the reflection of the window, I watched my brother grin. “He knew it was either that or find us sneaking out again.”
We’d been born trouble. Raised on twenty acres of Tennessee dirt and backroads, sons of a man who scolded with one hand and handed us a wrench with the other. Edge and I cut our teeth on busted engines and quarter-mile drag runs through the trees.
Racing was all we ever wanted. All we ever needed.
And now I stood at the top of a fucking empire.
Legal tracks. Underground circuits. Racing teams, vendor contracts, a professional roster that pulled in national headlines.
What I built went deeper than blacktop and prize money.
This was control. Territory. A precise network I ran with the same cold focus.
My name meant something. Not just in Crossbend. Not just in Florida. Everywhere from Miami to Memphis, Houston to fucking Atlanta, when people said Kane, they said it with respect. Or fear. Preferably both.
I didn’t take bribes. I didn’t throw races. And I sure as hell didn’t let outsiders grease the wheels behind my back.
Nothing happened without my knowledge. No one got in unless I let them.
So when some outside group thought they could bribe or muscle their way in through my vendors, they weren’t just stupid.
They were suicidal.
The last man who tried to muscle his way into my empire was currently buried under the foundations of a warehouse I owned.
“You think this guy’s the endgame?” Nitro queried. “Or just the delivery boy?”
“Delivery boy,” I said with a shake of my head. “My gut says someone’s feeding him. Coaching him.”
Edge dropped his boot from my desk, leaning forward, all lazy charm gone. “So what’s the play?”
“I want him found,” I ordered, voice flat, final. “Yesterday.”
“You want him questioned or disappeared?” Edge questioned as he stood and stretched, spine cracking.
I turned and met my brother’s gaze. Calm. Even. That stillness was often mistook for passivity. But Edge knew better.
“We flush him out.”
“And if we can’t?” Nitro asked.
I didn’t answer, and a heavy silence settled. They knew what that meant. This wasn’t about payback. It was about principle. No one crossed the Redline Kings and walked away whole.
“Pull the bank records again,” I told Jax. “I don’t care how deep you have to dig. If someone’s paying him, there’s a trail.”
Jax nodded, already typing. “I’ll double the traps.
Encrypt the vendor shell again, throw some bait into the payout stream.
If someone’s still pulling his strings, they’ll tug.
” Then he paused and looked up at me. “You think this ties to the offers you’ve been getting?
The ones trying to ‘partner’ on Redline Speedway? ”
“They’ve been getting bolder,” Edge mentioned casually. “The subtle threats aren’t so subtle anymore. Idiots think they can scare Kane into selling. Much to my amusement.”
I grunted, not a trace of humor in my tone.
Edge pushed his hands into his pockets, lips twitching into a crooked grin. “You know…for someone who’s got a billion-dollar racing empire, you’re awfully cranky when someone tries to break the rules.”
My eyes narrowed. “It’s not the rules getting broken that I mind so much.”
Edge lifted a brow. “No?”
“I mind when they think I won’t notice.”
Nitro smirked, dragging his fingers through his hair. “You wanna put out feelers? Shake the trees? Got snitches who owe me favors.”
I chewed on the options for a moment, then shook my head. “Not yet. Let’s not show our hand. Let ’em get comfortable. And stupid. Think we’re chasing shadows.”
Edge tilted his head. “And then?”
I met his eyes.
“Then we light ’em up and burn them to the fucking ground.”