Addictive (Houston Defiance MC #2) - K.E. Osborn Page 0,64
approaches me, I study him carefully. “You only have three?”
He stares at me blankly. “Yeah?”
I turn to Neon, his expression conveying exactly what I’m thinking—Hawke didn’t steal from us. He’s just a puppet in this fucked-up game someone else is playing.
I turn back to Hawke. “Who’s the supplier?”
“I’m not letting you in on this, Wraith.”
“Hawke, that’s our product. Some fucker stole it from our trucks.”
“Nah, I don’t want to get involved in this dispute.”
“Why?”
Hawke takes in a deep breath. “Because I’m having some apprehensions about the supplier and the damage he can cause me.”
My nails bite into my palms as a heat flushes through my body. I narrow my eyes on Hawke knowing exactly who he’s talking about.
There’s only one man in Houston who has the hardest of criminals running scared of him.
The Baron.
I turn my head, looking at my brothers. “I know who it is. Let’s go.”
“Don’t include me in your war, Wraith. I mean it,” Hawke spits out as I turn heading for the door.
“Then don’t accept stolen goods when you don’t know where they come from, Hawke.”
He exhales. “We’re good, right? Our deal still stands?” he yells as I walk out the door not answering him.
Kevlar steps up to my side. “We are keeping our deal with them, right?”
“Oh, fuck, yeah. I just need Hawke to stew on that for a little while.”
Kevlar grins. “You’re an asshole.”
“Yeah, but he’d no doubt do the same to us.”
We hop back on our rides to head back to the clubhouse.
Now we know the Baron is stealing from us, and handing our product off to our frenemies, my next step is to figure out why.
“So, it’s pretty clear to me this can only be the Baron,” I tell my brothers as we sit in the chapel.
Ax rolls his shoulders placing his gun on the table for emphasis. “I say we find the fucking lunatic and end him… painfully.”
“While I want that more than anything, we need to think about why he’s trying to start shit between the Militia and the club again. Obviously, the Baron knew sending the packages to them would cause a reaction from us. Was he hoping we would go back to war?”
“I’ll do some digging, see what I can find out,” Neon offers.
“Do what you can. I want to know what his motives are. He holds a grudge because of Cherry, but I feel like there’s something we’re missing.”
“In the meantime, pres, do we stop our shipments? If we are gonna get robbed, then should we stop it completely, so we don’t keep losing?” Slick asks.
I rub the back of my neck. If we do that, it stops cash flowing into the club. “We need to talk to Cherry, see if she’ll get another shipment of tablets made up for us. If we can do that, get that source of income coming in, then yeah. We stop exports for now, other than the tablets. But, when we ship the tablets out, I might get you, Slick, to transport. I don’t wanna use someone else and risk the Baron sliding in on that, too. We need to get our own legitimate-looking pharmaceutical truck happening sooner rather than later.”
“I’ll talk to Cherry. Organize a night we can get the tablets ready. I’ll also get onto buying that truck,” Neon adds.
“Get it done. For now, everything outgoing stops. We cut this asshole off before he starts something we can’t fucking rectify.”
“Here, here.”
“Okay, it’s been a long-ass day, let’s go out, unwind, and relax for the evening. Tomorrow is a new day with new damn challenges.” I bang the gavel on the table.
Everyone stands as I stretch out my weary body. I want nothing more than to have a good feed, a drink, and to sit down staring at Prinie’s ass for far too long than is inappropriate. But that’s a bad idea. After last night, she’ll be dirty with me. I want to fix that situation, but talking to her will inevitably make the situation worse.
What I should do is check in with Finley. See how things are progressing with Zero. So, pulling out my cell, I send a text.
Me: Any news?
I hit send as my brothers all leave the chapel, the air falling silent.
Finley: Hi Wraith. Hope you’ve had a good day. You bikers are always so straight to the damn point. To answer your question… no, there’s no news on Zero’s case, but health-wise Zero’s recovering. He’s strong, Wraith. He’s going to be just fine.