Twenty-Eight
TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAOS
Shit falls apart around here quicker than an overstuffed taco in a toddler’s hands. I run rough fingers through my hair and glare at the bullshit spread out before us.
“You know they’ll twist this shit until they can pin us for it and then make out it was an insurance job, right?” Jinx scowls at the mixture of legal documents scattered over the meeting table.
“The loading dock is the least of our worries.” It’s the bodies they found under the destroyed foundations.
The children’s bodies.
At this point, moving rural does fuck all to save us. We need to move countries. Planets. Fucking vaporize and find a new dimension or some shit. Fuck. “What did Fang find out?”
“Taylor is incarcerated, so we’re trying to get an audience with him to detail what we’re dealin’ with.”
I run a hand over my face at the news that the sole remaining member of the crew we inherited the yard from is unreachable. My heart hopes there’s a simple explanation for this, some way to point the finger of blame elsewhere. But my gut says it’s fucking kids; there’s nowhere right to point the finger when the shit’s that fucked up.
My eyes glaze over as I stare at the farm's sale contract slipped beneath the loading dock's title deed. What’s fucking with my head worse is the aching need I have to crawl back to Vanessa. To fucking kneel at her feet and rest my head in her lap. Let her pet my hair and fucking rub my back like the simp I am.
I’ve never needed coddling before. Reassurance that what I do is right. That I’m a good man. Fuck me—my momma complains I hated being cuddled as a baby, preferring to be left alone.
What the fuck is in that woman’s water to make me act this way?
“You need to tell the brothers where you’ve been,” Jinx states quietly when the silence stretches too long. “Shit’s gettin’ weird. First, you’re disappearing at night, and now you lose your goddamn shirt.” He nods to my bare arms.
“Didn’t lose it.” I stare at the table to avoid his eye. “I know exactly where it is.”
“They’re starting to talk amongst themselves.”
“So do your job and tell them to fucking stop.” I snatch up the title deed. “Why doesn’t this go back farther than 1994?”
“It was part of the surrounding property then.” Jinx rustles through the mess to find what he needs, handing me a larger map of the area.
“Would that first transfer not be recorded?”
“Not if it was a handshake deal. A gift.” He points to a name in the bottom right corner. “That was the guy who owned the whole place. Grain farm that went belly up, so he divided off the land for commercial purposes. The weird thing is, this whole section here”—he uses his index finger to circle several acres that encompass the yard—“was passed along undocumented to three main beneficiaries.”
“Who?”
“We’re working on that.”
I drop the map to the table. “This research is all shit my old man should have done before he fucking took the place.”
“He’s not the only one who should have thought to do it.”
I glance at my Vice, the shared suspicion passing between us.
“You want me to talk to my old man about it?” Jinx frowns.
I shrug. “He’d know best why the fuck they accepted the place without doing their due diligence, but it could raise questions about what’s going on here.”
“You don’t trust him either?” He lifts an eyebrow.
“He sat at the same table as my father, man. He was part of the fucking decisions that almost handed the Kings to the goddamn DEA. He had to have some idea shit wasn’t straight at the time, and this,” I say, gesturing to the spread of papers, “should have been a giant fucking red flag.”
Mouth twisted, my oldest friend glares at the incriminating evidence of corruption. I hate hurting his pride—he’s still tight with his old man—but it must be said.
I’m not the only member who was born into this role.
“Let’s see what comes from Taylor before you’ve gotta have that conversation with him, yeah?”
Jinx nods, fingertips drumming the edge of the table. “Sure.” He sighs out his nose, shaking his head. “It’s gotta be a shitty coincidence. Men too busy trying to hold this place together to do a thorough job before agreeing to the trade. I can’t imagine the DEA going to this much trouble to stitch them up for something, especially if they never did.”
“Not that any of it matters.” My ass hits the chair with a whoosh as air escapes the leather cushion. “It’s our fucking issue now.”
“Any noise from Matthias?” He lowers himself into the seat adjacent to mine, an elbow on the table.
“Nothing. But I gave him two weeks.” I rest my head against my right hand, elbow propped on the arm of the chair. “We’re fucking drowning, man. Gasping for air since that fucking bill passed.”
“That’s the problem when a business doesn’t diversify.” He taps his fingers on the table, focusing on the movement. “We’ve got the right idea, but we started too little, too late.”
“I ain’t returning the club to peddling hard drugs, man.” I draw the line there. Seen firsthand too many times the rot and heartache it causes. “We’re fighting the effects enough as it is.” Zombies, we call them. The fuckers who show up glazed and high, struggling to control their bodies as they seek out their next hit. “I won’t have that shit on our streets.”
“It’s already here,” he says somberly. “You can’t avoid it. Not when we’re this close to the trade routes.”
Like pushing shit uphill. I lean forward and prop both arms on the table, burying my face in my hands. I need a break from this shit.
I need Vanessa.
She didn’t answer any of my fucking messages. I sat glued to that fucking feed for fifteen minutes before I got off my goddamn bike and came inside the clubhouse, fucking certain it’d be curtains for us when Marianna spilled the tea.
“Is this a bad time?”
I jerk back and draw a deep breath. “What’s up?”
Selena enters the room; her footsteps quiet on the polished concrete as she crosses behind Jinx. “I need this signed for school.” She slides a form onto the table beside me.
I shove the rest of the paperwork aside with my forearm, Jinx reaching to assemble it in some semblance of order out of view of innocent eyes. “What is it?”
“Field trip.” She points to the bullet point details. “We’re doing a study for geography, and they want to incorporate actual time outdoors, putting the theory into practice.”
“Fair enough.” I scribble my signature in the required space and hand it back. “When?”
Selena frowns. “Do you even read these things?”
“Why, when you do such a great job telling me what’s in them?” I smirk, noting Jinx hiding a grin in my periphery.
My baby sister rolls her eyes. “Friday.”
“Put it in the shared calendar, yeah?” The only way I can keep track of shit around here.
“It costs twenty-five dollars.”
Fuck’s sake. I probably should start reading the fucking things. “Wallet’s on the top of my dresser.” I narrow my eyes. “Don’t think about taking tax; I know how much is in there.”
“Sure.” She heads for the door, bopping Jinx on the head as she passes.
He watches her leave before turning to me with a sly smile. “You know she’s gonna be a ball-breaker when she patches in.”
“She ain’t doing that.” I nod toward the stack of paperwork as I push to my feet. “Tell Fang to come find me as soon as he has details about Taylor. You seen Darko around lately?”
“He’s at the strip club.” Jinx stands with a sigh, tucking the paperwork under his arm. “He’s about as distracted as you are of late.”
“Not much else he can be doing.”
“Except this.” He lifts the documents briefly.
“And then what would you do with yourself, huh?” I bop his head, same as Selena, as I pass him heading for the door.
He catches a lock at the back of my head and tugs.
It’s the same petty shit we did as kids, and it twangs something in my heart that yearns for the safety of nostalgia. When everything made sense. And what didn’t wasn’t our problem.
“Where you going now?” The hesitation is evident in his voice.
He doesn’t know if I’ll tell him the truth, which worries him. “To see Andy about the barn.” Because if I’m keeping secrets, then who else is too? And if we’re all lying to one another, the fucking foundation of our club crumbles.
Same as it threatened to do when our fathers sat at the table.
“You seen your old man lately?” I ask as we cross through the main hangout.
“Why?”
I shrug. “Curious, is all. Talking about Mongrel made me realize you haven’t said anything about him for a while.”
“Because you’ve been too busy to share a drink and shoot the shit with me.” He hitches an eyebrow, hesitating outside the office door. “But yeah, I saw him last week. He asked how you were doing.”
“What did you say?”
“Said you were the same pig-headed asshole as always.”
I smile, nodding. “Bet you did.”
“He said I should kick your ass and remind you whose bitch you are.”
“Did he now?” I hitch an eyebrow.
Mongrel was always one for fists over words, but beatdowns between brothers went by the wayside in the nineties once the club realized they caused more harm than good. The original thought was that any brother seen placing himself above his peers would be swiftly brought down to earth and reminded that he was no more special than anyone else who wore the patch. But after years of infighting and secrecy, the heads at the table figured the acts of violence had the opposite effect on the club, inciting distrust and jealousy between men—a divide between those who’d been publicly humiliated and those who hadn’t.
“You think I’m getting too big for my boots?” I fold my arms and tilt my head to study his reaction.
Jinx wets his lips—the first tell I don’t like—and looks away . “Nah, man.” Liar. He shifts his attention back to me. “You need to be honest about where you are, is all.”
“You know where Highway is right now?” I test.
Jinx flexes his jaw. “Nope.”
“Crow?”
“Some idea, but not for sure.”
“Thought so.” I spin and head for my bike, already over his bullshit for another day.
Different strokes for different folks.
It’s okay for the other officers to do what the fuck they want and when as long as they answer the club’s call. But when the president goes offline for a few hours? Fucking all hell breaks loose.
And I bet they’d still say my fucking last name doesn’t have shit to do with it.
Bullshit.