29. Rex
“Are you sure?” I leaned forward, elbows digging into the wood, trying to figure out how the fuck this happened.
“Of course I’m fucking sure,” Kannon growled.
“I get you’re sure, brother. But is she?” We had to make sure what he’d just sprung on us in church was real, because if it was, this just brought a whole new level of shit to our plate.
The road captain looked as worried as I’d ever seen him. “She’s sure, Sarge. And I trust her.”
“Well, hell!” Sonic leaned back in his seat, his head thrown back against the leather and sighed, his eyes closed against the knowledge that the suit guy—the man who had been funding the purchase of our own drugs and bringing them back to our town was none other than the right-hand man of our very own mayor, Frederich Whitmore. “That muthafucker.” Sonic’s fist slammed against the table, the strength of his anger making the wood shake.
“As soon as she saw him she started freaking out, I had to get her outta there,” Kannon started softly. “She was shaking, she didn’t know who he was, just recognized his face as the man that Mickey had met up with.”
“Don’t tell her who he is just yet.” Kannon looked curiously at Cal. “Tell her we’re investigating who he is, we don’t need every Tom, Dick and fucking Harry knowing that Miles fucking Rutter is a drug pusher, not until we know for sure whether he’s working on his own or if the Mayor knows anything.”
“Jesus Christ. That would explain so much,” I muttered. “The Mayor has had it in for us since he took the seat. Bringing our own drugs back into town, contaminating them and having people die on our watch would immediately turn the townsfolk against us.”
“And once the people turn their backs on us, our legitimate business dries up, no more pushing bodies, no more insurance deals, we’d have to figure out another way to clean the money,” Cal said, the brothers looking more and more angry at the realization that our home, our livelihood was in jeopardy. “I ain’t leaving my home that I’ve built, that we’ve built together. And Jenna would have my ass if I even so much as mentioned moving.”
Shouts of aggression followed by slams of hands had us riled up, there was no way we would be pushed out of our home… our town. “The people know us, they know we wouldn’t let these drugs kill our own.” My voice carried over the ruckus, the anger dying down to nods of agreement. “We find this Miles Rutter, we deal with him.”
“We need proof that the mayor is behind it, but knowing that slimy fucking weasel, it’s well hidden. The people won’t believe it without evidence,” Prez started. “Sly’s laid up in bed but he can still use a fucking laptop, get him one and get him into Rutter’s financials. There must be some paper trail linking the two.”
“Of course there is, he’s Whitmore’s lawyer, they’ll just use that to excuse any money transferred between them,” I countered. “We need more proof than that, pictures, witnesses, their drug den… where are they cutting the white stuff? If we can link that place to Whitmore, no one can argue anything.”
“We can’t let them know we’re onto them. We can’t have them shutting down and giving Whitmore more time to try and screw us over, he already has the town eating outta the palm of his hand by donating that sum of money to the elementary school,” Prez raged, his face flushed with his anger. “I wanna know if it was Rutter who put the Sinners up to taking out Nag and Margot, get me anything you can,” he growled.
“What about the sheriff?” Sonic had a good relationship with the current sheriff, and he tended to look away for a lot of things. A little bit of cash kept him sweet, but he was up for retirement soon, and his replacement wasn’t as amenable to a golden handshake. The deputy was as straight as they come, a good man, but good men didn’t help us sell drugs.
“The deputy is friends with Whitmore’s son, they’re tight. It could be a problem.” Threads had grown up here, he was the same age as the younger Whitmore, and he held a deep seated resentment toward the deputy and his friends, a reason that I wasn’t privy to, but then Threads kept a lot of his cards to his chest, he wasn’t an open fucking book. The brother was tried and true, a Street King through and through, but his past was a no-go area.
Cal leant forward, his eyebrows drawn in a frown. “We’ll deal with the deputy when the time comes, for now, we need info on Rutter and the older Whitmore. Hell, the son doesn’t even live in town anymore, he’s a non-issue. Get me everything. I want that prick brought down, I’m not having him fucking us over anymore.”
“We’re so sure it’s the mayor and not just Rutter taking things into his own hands?” Gauge chimed in, normally the listener, he sat back, watching intently.
“We’d be stupid not to assume it’s the old man controlling the strings. Rutter earns good money as a lawyer, but it’s not enough for him to bankroll this entire operation,” I said, thoughts and pieces coming together. “Unless Rutter has a contributor somewhere else… but that doesn’t make sense because he never leaves town and he’s always up the mayor’s ass. Besides, Whitmore was the one that tried to shut the funeral business down, wanting the town to use the city’s larger mortician. He kicked up a fuss when the council refused.”
The townsfolk were hard working, and they were mostly lifers, they didn’t want a stranger handling their loved ones after their death. They wanted someone they knew, someone they trusted to carry out the preparations… that wasn’t some cold asshole in Akron.
“I’ll get Sly on it… once he’s finished…” muffled laughter broke through the icy rage, we all knew what Sly was up to, or rather, what the club pussy was up to, making the poor bastard feel better.
“Keep the girls inside for now, at least until we’ve figured out what Rutter’s up to, he’s probably still looking for his money,” Prez gritted out. “Where did you stash it?” He turned to Kannon, the man had found it in a plastic wrap and buried beneath a pile of some girly shit that they used to wrap the flowers in, deep in the back of the drawer Millie had said it was in. They destroyed the interior of the shop, turning everything over to look for the missing money, but didn’t find it in one of the most obvious places, instead looking in every flower bucket and bed. Millie had spilled all to Kannon after she’d left in tears and he’d gone back when she was asleep to dig it up.
“It’s downstairs in the safe,” Kannon muttered. “Ten thousand dollars. It’s a decent amount but not worth killing someone over, or even chasing someone for it. The lawyer earns more than that a month, I’m sure.”
“You’re right, but it’s the principal, isn’t it. Rutter was cheated out of some of his money and he’ll want it back. He’s probably still chasing Mickey down not knowing the fucker is worm food.” Millie had thought Mickey was helping out by giving her that money to save, not knowing that he had willingly put her life in danger. Now, she was stuck here until we got Rutter to back off… or dead, whichever was the easiest option.
“We know where Rutter lives, right? It’s that new build development on the edge of town, those big ugly ass houses with all that glass.” Link was out of his seat, leaning on the wood to stare down at us all. “We can just go there and do what he did to Nag… to Margot. A bullet in the head, maybe one for his wife just to make it even.”
“NO,” Sonic shouted. “Sit the fuck down. No one’s killing anyone, dammit.” He raked his hand across his face, stress lined his face as he glared at Link. “We get the evidence, then we’ll decide as a club what we do next.”
Callahan nodded in agreement. “Sonic’s right, no one does anything to the lawyer without a vote.” His phone vibrated with a text, and he read it with a pinched look on his face. “The doc’s here to check on Sly, meeting’s over.” He slammed the gavel down, finishing off our heated debate on what to do with the lawyer. I thought Link had a point, take him out and get a little payback at the same time, but we were a democracy, and we prided ourselves on being able to have a say in all major decisions.
Pushing his chair back, the prez stood and rounded the table, heading for the door. Link opened his mouth again for the second time. “Why we letting this prick in for? He didn’t show up when we needed him yesterday, we should just keep the princess, she can fix us up when we get hurt, plus Rex can just pay her in dick.” Link was really fucking chatty today, but his words pinched at the thick muscle in my chest.
As he walked past me, I slapped the back of his head, the smack on his hard skull a satisfying sound. “Ow, man, it was a joke.” Link turned affronted.
“You deserved that,” Gauge muttered as he walked past, following Cal out of the room.
He did fuckin’ deserve it for saying out loud what we were all thinking, but no one was stupid enough to say it to my face. Not after her shoot down earlier, one that some of my brother’s witnessed, and those that didn’t, knew from those that had spread it because they were big-mouthed assholes.
They were like gossiping old women and I couldn’t blame them. The infamous Rex, who could get pussy with a click of my finger, was being rejected by the one woman I’d shown any interest in throughout the whole of my 36 years on this godforsaken earth—surely this was karma.