Chapter 28
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
Logan
A bullet flies past my head as a giant hand grabs me in the nick of time, pulling me back. “Holy shit,” I mutter, pointing my gun as I shoot.
The fucker goes down, holding his neck as he wails.
I turn to see who just saved my life.
“You sure the almighty didn’t send me to watch your back?” Viking smirks.
“The bastards are shootin’ through the fuckin’ gates.”
“Yeah, they’re not gonna get through them, their grenade didn’t do shit.” He thumps his chest with one fist, looking quite proud of himself. “Put it up myself.”
“Jesus.”
He turns to whack me on the back. “You good?”
“Yeah.”
“Can thank me later.” He takes off to grab the assailant—a Skeleton—and yanks him up by his feet.
Blood is pissing out all over the place.
“Nice shot!” Hornet calls over to me.
I give him a chin lift. That was a little too close for comfort.
There are bikers running everywhere. The Skeletons chose today to attack because Bane and Shadow are both gone, along with a string of others, but they certainly didn’t leave the clubhouse unprotected.
This is the last fucking thing we need, and my mind flicks back to Payden as I remember how frightened she looked before I took off. She’s been through so much these last few days. I told her I’d keep her safe. How is this attack doing that?
Without any time to ponder my dark thoughts, we dodge another stray bullet and I aim for the back of one of the cuts reading Skeleton Prospect, and fire.
Typical. They sent the lowest members to do the dirty work.
Schmuck. He goes down, the weapon falling from his hand into the dirt.
The gate may be intact, but they were still able to breach it by a far wall and that won’t sit well with any of the men.
At least for now the danger seems to be contained as motorcycles go roaring away from the other side of the gate.
My phone buzzes. “The fuck is goin’ on?” Haze yells down the phone.
“Skeletons,” I say. “Just attacked us and a couple got through.”
“I have a live one right here,” Haze replies. “Hustler has him in a choke hold. The rest fled just as we were gettin’ closer.”
“I’ll tell the boys to let you in once the coast is clear. Might be a few because the grenade did some damage to the electronics, unless you wanna scale the wall.”
Who in the fuck has a bomb-proof fucking gate?
“Fuck that,” Hustler says in the background.
“Still, didn’t blow a fuckin’ hole in the joint. They shoulda had better aim,” Haze grumbles.
“Or not,” I reply. “Because then we’d be hit.”
“Didn’t we tell you this place doubles as a bomb shelter?” Viper grins at me, heading to the gate. “I’m on it. I’ll get them inside in a few.”
I give him a chin lift as he runs by.
“Fuckin’ assholes have it comin’,” Haze says, hanging up.
I’m about to tell him not to take off and do anything stupid, but Haze wouldn’t listen to me anyway. He never has, but I trust his judge of character and the boys will be happy they have at least one asswipe to question. Sucks to be him.
“They never attack in daylight,” Savage says, sidling up beside me. “Fuckers caught us offguard.”
“Well, my brothers have one of them alive,” I tell him. “This should be interesting.”
Savage cracks his knuckles. “Haven’t had a decent torture session in a while. I’ll have to flip him with Choker.”
I swallow hard. Yeah, it sure as shit sucks to be this fool right now.
Declan appears by my side and he’s bleeding. “Fuck, don’t tell me you’re shot?” I say, glancing down at his body ready to check him over.
“Not my blood,” he replies. “Man, that was pretty fucked up.”
“Can say that again,” Max agrees, sidling up next to him, gun still drawn. “Those fuckers have it comin’.”
“Bane is gonna be pissed,” Savage goes on. “For fuckin’ real.”
I need to see my brothers, then head back to Payden to check on her.
The last thing I want is for her to feel unsafe, but I don’t see how this is anything different to being back in NOLA. Sure, we haven’t had a grenade thrown at us in a long while, but this is supposed to be a place of refuge.
Whatever it takes. I told her that, and I meant it. I mean everything I say to her. If we have to leave, that’s what we’ll do. There is no place I won’t go in order to keep her from harm’s way.
“What in the ever living fuck?” Bane yells down the phone.
We’ve learned a lot over the last half an hour. Yeah, it didn’t take long with Choker and Savage dishing out their own form of punishment. I wince at the pain that motherfucker was in after they were done with him, but it worked.
“This is fucked,” Shadow agrees. “Those assholes are involved with the mess in New Orleans?”
“They were involved with the Cut City Boys—or should I say, the fake rival gang pretending to be Cut City over a year ago. They were involved with the Disciples,” Hustler says.
“Long story. You know more about that than we do. In any case, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Skeletons involved themselves with the Cini Group, which we now know to be linked to the Mancini mafia, Chicago. ”
“Holy shit,” numerous voices say in unison down the phone.
“Traced it all the way back to the Windy City,” Sawyer goes on.
“The main honcho Mancini had connections everywhere, but when the Russians took over we assumed they were all dead. Turns out, Mancini Jr., Donnie to be precise, was only fifteen at the time and away at boarding school. He’s his stepson. ”
“And he’s behind all of this?” I balk.
“He’s the CEO of Cini Media, New Orleans,” Sawyer says.
“Ryan was being bribed, we’ve confirmed that now.
They threatened his family. All he was doin’ was makin’ sure nobody else saw the footage.
No harm, no foul. Except when he saw the actual footage, he panicked.
Ryan wasn’t responsible for the shooting in the building where he and Payden worked, but he was paid to intercept that email and protect the Cini group. ”
I glance at Sawyer. “So do we know if it was the Cini group who shot the senator?”
“I’ve given the footage to Willow.” Sawyer shrugs.
“Not much we can do with it so the cops may as well have at it, but I hacked into the police database to check on their progress and they found DNA matching one of the cronies who works for Cini security. An ex marksman called Rex, and turns out fuckin’ Cristoph—the hacker— was on the payroll, go figure. ”
“Of course he was,” I say. “He not only wanted that footage back from the server, but he wanted it deleted from the source. No doubt they were the ones who also attacked Becca.”
“Holy fuck,” Bane mutters.
“This is sounding an awful lot like what happened to Senator Cartwright,” Haze interrupts. “He was killed a few years ago when it came to light that he had money tied up in drug trafficking and worked for Mancini’s mob. So now they’re back at it again? What the fuck is wrong with that family?”
“A lot,” Hustler replies. “Obviously it runs in the family genes.”
“Who took Cartwright out?” Bane asks. “Not that it really matters now.”
“Shade, the assassin who killed everyone as a revenge tactic. Her vendetta was lethal,” I say, glancing at Hustler who suffered because of her almost-fatal shot at him at the cafe. He dived over Audrina, and some say that’s when their real love story began.
“Can say that again,” Hustler mutters.
“Can’t keep up with this,” Shadow says, sounding exasperated. “But what we do have is the fuckin’ Skeletons on our backs.”
“Good news is they didn’t get to Payden,” I say. “They wanted her, Molly, and Ryan dead. We managed to encrypt the files and make a copy before Cristoph was able to erase everything. It’s in the cops’ hands now.” I turn to Haze and Sawyer. “Did you keep Ryan alive?”
Haze nods. “When we realized they’d threatened his family and he was really only deleting an email, we kept him alive, plus it would’ve been harder to explain to Willow where he ended up. Molly is under police guard. We believe they have enough to go on to arrest Donnie.”
“Was he stupid enough to show his fucking face?” Bane scoffs.
“Not exactly,” Sawyer goes on . “But he did have a meeting with Senator Douglas a month prior to his death in secret. They had an ad campaign lined up for the election. I’m guessing it didn’t all go to plan, hence he was dead a month later.
Then the incriminating evidence of Cristoph being on the payroll and this Rex dude bein’ sloppy, I’d say they have enough to go on. ”
A few scoffs and chuckles chorus around the room.
“Holy fuck, this is a goddamn mess,” I say, running both hands through my hair.
So the Cini group is being dealt with by the cops, but that leaves the Skeletons.
As if reading my mind, Bane pipes up and says, “Leave the Skeletons to us. I’m gonna use every fuckin’ piece of manpower I have to seek my revenge. If the Cini group is now under the cops’ radar, then the Skeletons are on mine.”
“They’ll be after Donnie Mancini for payment,” Sawyer adds. “Half when they took the job, half when it was completed.”
“Won’t that mean they’ll just take half the cash because they took the job, they just didn’t complete it?” Hustler asks.
“Nah, it means they took the money for a half-assed job and got to ram your gate for the fun of it. They have nothin’ to gain goin’ after Payden now when Donnie will likely be arrested,” Sawyer says. “They won’t be gettin’ any more dough.”
All they’ve done is wage a turf war on the Hellions, and I have no doubt Bane will be calling on the favors when it’s time to seek out their revenge.
“I’ll be back tonight,” Bane barks down the phone. “Becca and her kid are with us.”
Kid?
“What kid?” Viking asks, speaking for the first time.
Bane sighs. “She has a little boy nobody informed us about—Connor, he’s five.”
“What the fuck?” Hornet puts in. “Now we’re babysittin’ this chick and her kid?”
“More to the point, how did you pull off kidnappin’ her?” I ask, intrigued but not surprised.
“Asshole cops never saw us comin’,” Bane says. “Plus I have a secret weapon.”
“You had time to slip her some dick?” Panic scoffs.
“Jesus,” Haze mutters, shaking his head.
“And the point of her bein’ here now?” Hustler asks, ignoring them. “Once Donnie and the Cini group are arrested, she’ll be in the clear.”
Bane clears his throat. “There’s more to it than that,” he says. “Too much to go into over the phone. For now, she’s enroute with us back to Mississippi, but she’s gonna be listed as missing, so there’s that to deal with. And Haze? No shootin’ your mouth off to your ol’ lady.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” He smirks.
Willow is on a need-to-know basis, and somehow her and Haze make it work.
Right now? I need to get to Payden.
There’s a knock at the door. Declan appears. I texted Payden before the meeting and she told me he was there, along with Ivy and Chloe.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he says. “Me and Max are takin’ turns to secure the back boundary with the prospects. The security company is here to reconfigure the gate.”
“Got it,” Hornet says, gesturing to Viking. “We’ll head out front.”
“Looks like the money for the gate was worth it,” Viking says. “I don’t wanna blow my own horn on that one, but this clubhouse is literally indestructible.”
“Famous last words.” Panic grins, earning a slap upside the head as they leave.
“We’ll be a few hours,” Bane continues. “Make sure it’s back to normal by then, and don’t go anywhere until we debrief.” He hangs up.
I run a hand over my face.
I know Payden wants to get home, but this entire situation feels surreal. I’m certainly glad this unseemingly safe clubhouse doubles as a bomb shelter, but I doubt the Skeletons knew that or they wouldn’t have exhausted expensive explosives.
“Got any grub around here?” Haze asks, looking around as if food will just jump out and bite him.
I pat him on the back hard. “I know just the person.”