Page 54 of White Rabbit

And there was something to be said about post-sex cuddling. It was the perfect opportunity to make sure she kept my cum inside her and leave her thoroughly claimed. I make a mental note to buy some toys when I get out. Love was clearly making me soft.

We were getting closer to my freedom, I could taste it. Jules and Cato had found some interesting leads when they started pulling apart the evidence. It felt almost like I had my own little network of spies trying to figure out what had gone wrong that night.

It had been a relatively straightforward job. Go in, torture the guy a little, find out where he was hiding the money he’d been skimming off us, and then get rid of him.

Clean.

Easy.

No fuss, no muss.

We’d wiped everything down afterwards. Bleached the place and then torched it. So how the hell had some of my DNA turned up on a crow bar found near the scene?

I like to switch up my methods even though I prefer guns, so that I’m harder to trace or profile, and I can’t even remember if I’d used a crowbar that night. Blood spatters turned up elsewhere too. That just wasn’t possible. I didn’t leave a single drop of blood—I wasn’t an amateur. I’d been set up and betrayed, but there was no proof of it.

Until Julian went back and re-interviewed the cops who'd investigated the crime scene. One of them was dead, another missing, and a third had transferred to a different city, but his bank records had shown a sizable deposit shortly before his departure. It was almost laughable.

Crooked, bent coppers uncovered brought the entire case under scrutiny and Jules was milking the ‘innocent man jailed’ card for all it was worth, even though we both knew how bloodstained my hands really were.

Cato, on the other hand, had tracked down one Andrew Bass—formerly Bishop—registered at birth as Walters. Although that little fact had been buried so deep, Cato practically made a journey to the center of the earth to uncover it.

The interesting thing about Andrew Bass is that he’s not unknown to us. Five years ago, he’d approached us about a business opportunity and Jules had welcomed him into The Family like a long-lost relative.

One of the problems with outsiders joining The Family is that they think they can run things better. They see Julian Asaro, and his family's wealth, and they assume he’s a lazy, pretty boy who simply didn’t have the guts to rule. While he hates conflict and will put the work in to find a less violent resolution, he’s just as ruthless as the rest of us. It didn’t take Andrew Bass long to test boundaries.

He was brought in as a soldier, under a Captain to prove his loyalty. All outsiders who joined The Family had to kneel before the table, no exceptions. Until they could be trusted, they got little more than scraps. That wasn’t enough. He wanted to be a Captain, with his own people underneath him.

But Jules didn’t trust him, his gut instinct warning him that Andrew was trouble, and I certainly didn’t give him any consideration. I trust no one besides Jules. Until her.

Bass must have thought he was clever, assuming that once you get the Left Hand out of the way, you would be free to work your way up the chain, clawing at every bit of power you can, hoping to be somebody with influence. In his mind, I was the only thing standing between him and Julian. It was well known that I would never let anyone harm Jules, he was always my first priority. My loyalty always lay with him.

The man was a slimeball. Couldn’t keep his nose out of the product, couldn’t keep his mouth shut and while I’d been inside, he’d been trying to gather supporters behind Julian’s back, claiming weakness in the hierarchy. Cato had unearthed a hot, sticky mess. Bass is lucky Rosie didn’t get to him yet, because she’d skin him alive and use his pale ass as a bathroom mat.

I refused to credit Andrew with this scheme. Despite being sloppy, it was still more than the bastard was capable of concocting. My suspicions told me that daddy dearest was behind the whole thing. I’d be willing to bet my left kidney on it.

Judge Walters had been only happy to convict me, despite my alibi and the fact that the blood sample was contaminated, rendering it virtually useless according to Jules. The partial print was also sketchy business, but Walters wouldn’t listen. He thought people like me were the ones ruining Newtown? What a filthy fucking hypocrite.

Walters had it out for me through the whole trial and I don’t know why I didn’t realize he played a much larger role in my incarceration until Ava. He had his fat fucking fingers in an awful lot of pies and I was willing to bet he had been the one bankrolling the payouts to the cops.

Now that I knew his son Andrew was also a slimy motherfucker, it was slotting together. Who else was involved? What did I need to expose the dirty dealings and end my false imprisonment?

“Kal, any fresh news?” I ask, passing the contraband king in the dinner queue. If Beans didn’t have the latest information, Kal did. Between the two of them, I had an instant flow of intelligence.

He grins, and it makes my skin crawl as he exposes his rotting teeth. While Kal was useful and pretty resourceful, he was the type of guy whose loyalty could be bought or threatened. Those kinds of men make me uneasy, because there is no loyalty, only backstabbing, greed and climbing over one another to get to the top.

“Not about that...but dude, I just heard Officer Bishop left with a box full of her shit.” His eyes are lit up with the juicy gossip, and I know that he knows about the rumors of Bishop and I. He’s deliberately trying to gauge my response and bait me.

I know it, and yet I still react.

“Left?” I stop in my tracks with a growl. That isn’t right. I was with her earlier and she didn’t mention any of this to me.

He leans in and whispers, “Yep. Marcus from cell block B saw her emptying the desk in her classroom and then Houdini saw her with Office Gibbs, heading out to the car park with all her stuff.”

All her belongings?

“Break apart you two,” Officer Foxx shouts and we both step back.

What the fuck was going on?

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