Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 72931 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72931 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
“I swear to God, I will tape your mouths shut,” Payne warns, snarling like a rabid wolf at Gibson and Bizzy. They live to torment him. If they weren’t loyal as fuck and great marksmen, I would’ve kicked their asses out long ago. But, like two goddamn eager puppies, they like to annoy the shit out of me and would lick my ass if I’d let them. They’d take a bullet for me and that fucking matters to me.
Church, for our chapter, is a massive boardroom-style room with a huge window that overlooks a thicket of trees. The room is outfitted with Wi-Fi, a Keurig, and a sixty-inch TV hanging on the wall. We take our meetings seriously. Well, most of us.
Gibson and Bizzy continue to snigger like a couple of girls, but I ignore them. Bermuda has my focus. He clears his throat and taps on his computer. Then, he grins at us. Bermuda is thirty something and a former ranch hand from Dallas. He ran the books for the ranch owner, but when the guy died, the kids took over, leaving him shit. The ranch filed bankruptcy not long after he left and they begged him to come back. By then, though, he’d already patched in under me and I was giving him the acknowledgments he deserved.
“I’ve been following that lead Drake gave us,” Bermuda says. “You know he hates those human traffickers, but even crazy ass Drake can’t kill everyone. He hooked me up with a few names there in Georgia. Followed the money. Siphoned a shitload out of three players’ shell accounts.”
“No shit?” I say, leaning forward in my chair. At one time, I sat in a boardroom just like this one but wearing a suit and a smile that made deals happen. Now, my smiles are evil and sinister. Vindictive. I roll my cigarette between my finger and thumb, itching to light it up. But per my own rules, no smoking in the goddamn house.
“Bannon White, some dude named Will Dartmouth, and Grady Anderson.” He turns his laptop around to show me his spreadsheet. “Two mil, six mil, and half a mil.”
Several guys slap the table and holler out praise for Bermuda.
“Good fucking work,” I tell him. “Any of it trace back to us?”
He rolls his eyes. “Koyn, you know me better than that. I ran it through so many loops, it’d take a whole damn team of digital experts and fucking Snowden to make any sense of it.”
“Good. Looks like everyone’s getting an early Christmas thanks to Bermuda.”
Bermuda scratches at his close-shaved beard and then twists the laptop around again. “I moved some of last quarter’s profit into the stock market. Been doing a little day trading to turn a quick dollar.”
Day trading is exhausting and will give you ulcers, but Bermuda lives for this shit. I trust him implicitly, so I know he won’t fuck us.
“Great, we’re rolling in the dough,” Payne says, slapping the table with his huge, tattooed hand. “Next order of business.” His eyes cut to me, imploring to move the meeting along.
It’s always the second thing we go over after finances.
Revenge.
Always revenge.
“Anything on Bastards in Blade Blood?” I ask, my voice tight as I rein in the violence thrumming through me.
Several guys shake their heads, but Dragon slaps Katana on his shoulder before leaning in. Katana—a small, quiet Asian guy who’s a fucking ninja with a blade, but can’t grow a single hair on his face to save his life—remains emotionless despite Dragon grinning in his face.
“We heard some things today,” Dragon reveals, his voice low and wicked like he’s a character on stage at the fucking performing arts center.
I don’t have patience for his theatrics when it comes to this. Never this. My blood boils and before I can punch him in his pretty fucking face, Filter smooths shit out like always.
“Dude, spit it out. Prez has been working on this shit for a decade. If you have something, fucking tell us already.”
Dragon has the sense to look ashamed. “Right. Sorry, Koyn. Katana and I rode to McHenry’s downtown. Some old biker was there we didn’t know named Bison. Bought him some drinks and he got to talking when we inquired about the BBBs.”
Katana nods, his nearly black eyes gleaming. “He’d heard of them. Started telling stories about what a bad gang of bikers they were, especially this one guy named Randall Putnam.”
I remain still, my blood freezing in my veins. Randall. The name—though I never knew it before—causes a ripple of malevolence to shudder through me.
“Bison said he was thinking of joining their club because they were out of El Paso where he lived, but then he got bad vibes. He’s one of those do-gooders,” Dragon says, rolling his green eyes. “It ended up he joined a gang out of Austin. When he asked about the BBBs again later on down the road, he learned they’d simply vanished. Every single member.” His eyes dart to mine in a knowing way.