Fuck.
Fuck!
I stopped dead and looked at him. “What?”
I asked the question even though I knew the answer.
Last night, Knight had told Rhash and me he’d heard rumblings of trouble. A takeover.
The work I did for Knight was rarely trouble. It was legwork, checks on clients and girls. Providing security, presence, escorting girls to and from appointments. Sometimes stuff went down in his club and he needed a team to take care of. Shit happened and did, if someone was stupid enough to try it or thought they could pay or bully the girls into keeping their mouths shut after they’d misused them. But usually work for Knight was a mundane payday.
The meeting that included the boys had mostly been Knight wanting to know how the shit with Serena got so f**ked. Live had reported he’d done the routine and didn’t cut corners. Knight had interrogated the rest of the team about all new clients and their background checks.
After that, he’d dismissed everyone but Rhash and me and shared that he had a gut feeling Serena was the beginning. He’d had someone come to him on the hush-hush saying they were hearing something was brewing. An old nemesis was back in town, Knight had f**ked him over years ago and he was setting up to f**k back. Knight’s brother was also back in town and although he seemed to be towing the family line, they’d had issues and Nick, Knight’s brother, used to work for Knight. He knew the operation and Knight wouldn’t put it past him to sell information.
Knight was also concerned about a mole.
That meant, he’d told us, he’d brought in outside talent. Someone objective. Someone not on the team.
Someone Knight wanted me to partner with to investigate Knight’s operation and assess the danger, inside and out, and neutralize it if we found something while Rhash kept an eye on business.
The outside talent Knight brought in was Tucker Creed.
“Talked with Sebring after your meeting earlier,” he stated, confirming what I knew. “He told me he told you. After that, I shared with him we had history and I was gonna have a word with you ‘cause if we’re gonna work together, we need to talk about that history.”
I stared at him, my brain moving fast.
I did what I did for Knight Sebring because I knew how it felt, to spread your legs for someone because you were forced to take him for whatever reason forcing you to do it. I had no Knight Sebring to protect me from his bullshit, his demands, his temper. I had no Rhash or Live or Tiny to swoop in and teach him a lesson on one of the numerous occasions he did something I did not like.
There was no denying Knight and his boys operated outside the bounds of law.
In my mind, there was also no denying what they did was providing a needed service.
Until I learned the hard way how to protect myself, I would have done anything for the kind of protection they provided the girls.
Now I provided that protection. I got paid for it. I broke the law to do it. I conspired to break the law, making it safe for them to do it. And I did not give one f**k.
This meant, if there was some ass**le out there that wanted to take over Knight’s operation, I had to do what I had to do to stop it.
Even take a partner.
I was down with that.
Until now.
“We’re not working together,” I told him, moving out of the room and feeling him following me.
“He considered assigning this to you but you’re tight with his team, might not be able to be objective but more, Sebring doesn’t want you out there on your own,” Creed said to my back.
“He’s protective. He’ll get over it,” I said to the bathroom as I walked into it.
I went right to my toothbrush.
Creed stopped in the doorway and leaned a shoulder against the jamb.
“Sebring strikes me as a man who likes things to go the way he wants ‘em to go,” Creed noted and he was not wrong.
“I’ll have a chat with him,” I muttered to the basin as I grabbed my toothbrush and turned on the faucet.