Cruz (Dark and Dirty Sinners' MC #5) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,50

a woman had died.

She’d died and she’d changed the face of the club and my home life.

Mom.

It had seemed like a random accident. So fucking random, which was what had sent my father on a wild goose chase. Looking for answers. Looking for enemies where there were none.

She’d been found on a road. Crumpled up in a heap. Tire tracks on the tarmac where a car had braked at speed, before taking off at greater speed.

Dad had said it wasn’t an accident.

He’d refused to believe the coroner’s findings. Had disregarded the autopsy…

We’d been lied to.

And the lie ran deep.

Sin’s hand came to my shoulder, and Maverick’s gaze was steady but welling with emotions he rarely let show from behind the mask he wore to get through every fucking day. I was with family. Not all of them. But most.

Steel was at work at the strip joint, Storm was in goddamn Ohio, and Nyx had to head into the city to deal with the Demonios Bandidos who needed our help with a distribution problem they were having. Sin, Mav, and Link were here, watching with empathy in their eyes, and hurt in their hearts.

My mom hadn’t just been mine. She’d mothered all these fuckers here. Even if, like with Mav, they had good moms of their own, she’d been there. For all of us. No matter what we did, no matter where we went, she’d had our back, and she’d died like fucking roadkill—

Or so we’d been led to believe.

I gritted my teeth as Sin muttered, “It might not be her.”

“She said it herself,” Link argued, his voice low. “We have very few murders around here.”

“Hit and runs aren’t murders,” Sin agreed. “Not the regular kind.” A grunt escaped him. “If some fucker targeted Rene, then I, as much as you, Rex, want the cunt to pay, but we only know what some nutjob dirty Fed told Cruz.”

“We need more information,” I concurred, my voice laced with hell.

“How do we get it? She shared shit with him.”

“She told us enough. She mentioned the Farquar estate. When Rene died, that was back before any of those fancy fuckers were even living up there. They’d only just cracked the ground at that point,” Maverick remarked, and he stretched out his arms, bridging his fingers together before he cracked his knuckles. “Barely any were fully constructed at that time. But I’ll find out what I can, Rex. You know I will. And what I don’t, Lodestar will pick up the slack.”

My jaw felt like it was clamped together, to the point where I was pretty sure I’d crack my goddamn teeth if I didn’t let up, but—

Jesus.

“Who’d have wanted her dead?” I rasped, even though it was a stupid question.

Our women were as much a part of the game of chess that was this life as the men sitting and standing in front of me.

We never targeted an enemy’s woman, because my father had raised me with honor. Bear might not have seemed that way, but he was an honorable man. And I was too, as a result. But learning this?

What honor I had left withered some.

Because what Bear had taught me, my mom had only compounded. She was the one who’d instilled his lessons, turning me into the man I was, because she was the one who’d made me me.

“You know the Italians have had beef with us for a while,” Sin rumbled. “That’s probably why they got Tiffany’s dad to build his estate here. Each house is probably owned by a Famiglia crony.”

I couldn’t argue with that, but then, I wasn’t capable of much right now. There was too much white noise crackling between my ears, and before I could think rationally, I needed it to go. I needed it to abate.

“You think the Italians killed her?” Link asked softly, his voice low, like that would stop me from hearing it.

“Who else?” Sin argued. “It fits. Especially when she mentioned the estate. But why then?”

I rasped, “That’s what we need to find out.”

“I hate to mention it, bro, but I just got a message from Steel. The funeral director’s taken possession of Dog’s body.”

I blinked at Sin, my brain slow to drift from thoughts of my mom’s murder to Dog’s.

“Fuck’s sake, Sin,” Link groused. “Now isn’t the time.”

Sin winced. “I know, but he needs confirmation. Is it okay to go ahead with the funeral by the end of the week?”

“Yeah. Whatever. Whenever,” I rasped, reaching for my phone and seeing Steel had