Cruz (Dark and Dirty Sinners' MC #5) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,162

on her, and a biker visited her."

"That was probably him."

"I’ve sent you a photo."

Grunting, I looked at my messages, saw my man riding down a residential street, and confirmed, "Yeah, that’s Cruz."

"Jesus, it would have been helpful if you’d informed us you had an in with the Feds."

Despite myself, I snorted because everyone knew the Feds were in the Westies’ pocket. "Like you tell us about your ins? Yeah, I'm sure. We’re friends, Declan, family, even, but let's not be ridiculous now." He wasn’t to know that Caroline Dunbar wasn’t exactly an ‘in,’ was he? She was more of a fucking albatross around our neck…

My retort had him hissing under his breath. "Why do you want to talk to her?"

"That day, when Cruz went to visit her, she asked about a murder that took place in West Orange."

"Christ. That fits. Look, Dunbar is in the hospital right now. We only just let her go."

My brows rose. "She's alive though?"

"She might wish she wasn't, but yeah, she's breathing, but a lot bruised."

"Torture?"

"You bet your ass," he said, his tone oozing satisfaction that I could empathize with. "She's the reason the Italians knew about my kid. They targeted him because of her."

It fit. All of this fucking fit. Not only had Fieri tried to have the kid killed to cover up his involvement in my ma’s death, he’d fucked with my father’s hog and sent him into the compound like a Trojan fucking horse.

Even though my blood sang with the confirmation, I whistled under my breath. "She's lucky to be alive."

"You're telling me. It wasn't easy," he admitted carefully. "But for the greater good, she'll make it worth our while along the way."

"How?"

"Do you know who the woman is? The murder victim?"

Because I knew this conversation required some give and take, I told him, "I do." I cleared my throat, trying to reduce some of the rasp. "It’s my mother."

"Shit."

"That about sums it up."

A heavy sigh sounded down the line. “I’m sorry, Rex.”

“Yeah, me fucking too. But at least I have some answers now. That’s something.”

He grunted. "Look, what I'm about to tell you might sound insane, but Dunbar confirmed it.

"We don't know how big, but there’s a number of law enforcement officers who are dirty."

"No shit, Sherlock."

Declan snorted. "Yeah, the average dirty pig is nothing in comparison to this. These are a unit. They're all over the US, but they work together, have the same end goals in mind. What those goals are, we don't know yet, and maybe we never will. What we do know is how they operate."

I thought about what Dad had told me, my uncle’s file, thought about how someone had delivered it to me, then chased off like a bat out of hell, and pieced shit together fast.

"They bring someone in, someone innocent of the crime they’re investigating, tell them to do something, and if they don't, they'll send them down for what they hauled their asses in on."

"Fuck, Rex. Talk about spoiling my surprise."

I grimaced, looking down at my uncle’s young face, aware that it would be old and craggy from a wasted life spent in prison for a murder he didn't commit. As I ruffled through the papers again, scanning pieces of reports along the way, I saw how they’d packed so much dirt against him that they’d convinced a jury of his guilt when he’d spent all that day with his sister who was in labor. How they’d achieved that? A forty-minute window of time where no doctor or nurse had seen him in her ward and my mom was asleep.

"Dunbar said they work behind the scenes, stitching up poor bastards into doing all their dirty work, earning them a fortune while they never get their hands bloody."

"Sounds about right."

"Seriously, how did you know that?"

I explained about the package, and the odd behavior of the driver who'd delivered it. I told him about the blast, about how we were lucky to be alive, lucky to only have lost the family we did. I told him everything. What dad told me, even though it was very little in the grand scheme of things, and I shared more. How the Feds had found nothing at the blast, about anything and everything I could think of, all in the vain hope that he would keep me in the loop in future.

After ten minutes of nonstop talking, I knew it was worth it, knew he’d taken pity on me, when he rasped, "Rex, there's going to be