Page 112 of The Devil's Reward
Time to take donations for the bail fund.
Church is in session, but I’m still glancing at my phone. I can’t believe that Quinn snuck out of here with Rose and Sage. Bullet and King were not pleased, while the rest of the brothers are grinning. “You’re fucked, brother,” Timber teases. “Your woman and those two, you’ll be lucky if they aren’t calling to get bailed out in a couple of hours.”
“Don’t jinx me,” I warn him. “Quinn’s told me that her mother and sister are only slightly tamer versions of Rose.”
Everyone looks at me in panic.Yeah, that’s what I thought, assholes,I think smugly.
Bullet bangs the gavel, bringing our attention back to him. He looks around the room and says, “We’re here to discuss a few things today. We are going to hold a service for Hammer tomorrow, and some of our allies will be here. A few may even arrive tonight. The club girls are back and I have them readying some rooms, but they’ll be scarce until tonight. Shadow, you may want to take Macy and Quinn back to her place. You know how rowdy it can be.”
I nod. “I’ll talk to her. She may want to spend some time with her family anyway.” And hopefully, keep the women from all flocking together.
“Hammer wouldn’t want a big thing, but we’re going to give him one anyway,” Bullet says gruffly. “Our brother lost his life in a search for the truth. We’ve taken care of his killer, and he’d be happy with that. After the funeral, we’ll be back here for our celebration of his life.”
“To Hammer,” Sniper says, pounding his fist on the table. “A damn good brother.” We all echo the sentiment, pounding our fists on the table. I look over at his empty chair, and it’s a punch in the gut to know that he won’t be the one to fill it.
Fucking Dagger.
Before we killed him, we got all the information out of Dagger we could. He admitted to Hammer following him and confronting him. Told us how he died in that cabin, and then he had Dmitri and his men throw his body at the gate as a message. Bullet had pounded on him at that admission. He didn’t care about his own wounds, he wanted justice for his best friend and longest brother.
Dagger also told us where to find the journal with all the information on Dmitri’s operation, not that he had any choice. We’d all had a turn at him by then, and he was long past holding anything in. He knew it was the end, and what was the point in hiding anything more?
Finally, Bullet killed him, a bullet to the middle of his forehead, the same way Hammer died. I didn’t stick around to worry about his body after that. I needed Quinn and spent most of the night holding her close, reassuring myself that she was safe.
“The other piece of business is what we know about Dagger’s information.” He pulls out the journal that we found in Dagger’s room, in a secret compartment under his bed. “We need to go to each of these locations to make sure those places are still in use, and then we need to decide what we do with the information.”
“I say we tip off the feds and let them handle it,” Viper suggests. “We’ve cut off the head of the snake, they can deal with the fallout.”
“Can we make sure they don’t come back to us?” Titan asks Cryos.
He gives him an affronted look. “Do you even know who you’re talking to?” he sniffs. “That’s child’s play.”
Titan rolls his eyes. “Whatever, I was just being sure.”
“Everyone in agreement?” Bullet asks. We pass it with a unanimous vote.
“What are we going to do about Isidor? I think the mafia is going to notice that their number one hitman is missing,” Viper points out.
Isidor was like a vault, but with some creative questioning from myself, Frost, and Bowie, he finally admitted that the higher-ups were eyeing this area for distribution and that they would send someone else to finish the job. Everything else was the same as Dagger had said, so we got rid of him.
Good riddance, I say.
“Let them think that he ran off,” Bullet says with a shrug of his shoulders.
“Might bring some retaliation,” Viper warns.
“Then we’ll deal with it,” Bullet replies. “It’s going to take some time for them to get themselves back in business, and hopefully with us giving the info to the feds it will make them think twice about continuing to operate around here.”
“There is chatter already that they’re wondering where he is,” Cryos says as he looks at his computer. “Dmitri’s uncle is the right-hand man to the Pakhan overseas, and he’s not happy that his nephew is gone. There is chatter about someone else, but I can’t figure out who they’re discussing yet. If I get a name, we can pass that along too.”
Bullet nods. “I looked through the journal, and Dagger did make a few notes of his own but nothing that makes any sense.”
“I’ll have a look,” Cryos offers. “Run it through some software I’m working on. Maybe it can pick up anything important.”
“I want to know what that fucker meant before he died,” I say darkly. Just before Bullet killed him, Dagger had looked at Bullet and asked him how it felt to be so stupid and not realize who he was. That he had no clue what was coming. And that it was only a matter of time before the club was gone.
“A bunch of bullshit,” Hulk grunts. “Fucker was just trying to get under our skin.”
“Maybe,” I say with a sigh. “Still, we should keep our ears to the ground. I wouldn’t have put it past him to have dealt with someone else that we don’t know about yet.”
