Page 40 of Savage Heart

“They’re dead,” Hell Hound growled, the menace in his voice matching the same rage boiling in the room.

His brothers all snapped and grumbled, enraged by what happened to Liz.

Finally, Odin snapped, “Enough! We’re all pissed the fuck off, what we have to focus on is what to do next.”

“We find the fuckers who touched her, and we break every bone in their bodies,” Hawk supplied. While Trouble agreed with that idea, he knew there had to be more.

“As satisfying as that sounds,” Trouble assented, “we can’t just take out one of their men without getting blow back we might not be ready for.”

More grumbling and cursing sounded.

“Liz was attacked because her business partner, Dr. Lyle Pace, got himself mixed up with the Bratva fucks, then stole their money. They came to Liz to deliver a message.”

“Is she involved?” Fang asked, his brows furrowed.

Trouble shook his head. “No. She was just as fucking surprised by that as she was by her beatdown. She said shenoticed issues with the clinic financials and that Pace was getting skittish about money, but she never thought it was as bad as Bratva bad.”

“How much the doctor steal?” Hawk asked.

“Five million,” Trouble answered, inwardly cringing at the grunts of shock.

Fang whistled. “Fuck. They must be running their money through the clinic; there’s no other reason for them to have that much money lying around.”

That made sense, and that also made things more dangerous. No one was more rabid about their money and operations than the Russians, and if the doctor stole their money and fucked up their money laundering through the clinic, it was a double whammy. Trouble wouldn’t be surprised if the doctor’s head showed up separate from the rest of his body…which would probably show up on the front porch of his mother’s house.

Russians were sick fucks.

“How would they launder money through a high-end medical clinic?” Grimm asked, finally breaking the broody silence he’d been wearing like a fucking cloak.

“Mark up on supplies, medicines, and procedures—anything that can be paid for in cash. More and more patients come through looking for…off the books services.”

“Like the Italians, the cartels, and street thugs who need a bullet removed but don’t want police attention,” Odin observed.

Nodding, AFK remarked, “It’s fucked, but the doctor had a good thing going—using all those services for the other families to funnel money for the Russians.”

“Fucked is right,” Trouble agreed, not with a little disgust. “While Liz was out visiting patients all day, Dr. Pace was welcoming the undesirables through the back door of the clinic, and using that cash to help the Russian’s launder their money.”

Fang cursed. “So, beating the doc…what kind of message was she supposed to send? They must think she’s involved, or they wouldn’t have bothered with her.”

AFK interjected, “Not true. She’s his business partner, that’s enough for the Russian fucks. The guy’s in the wind, they want their money back, so they go for the most likely person who can contact him.”

“Yeah, but she has no idea where the fucknut is,” Trouble spat. “If she did, she’d have given him up in a second to keep her daughter safe.”

The men, who’d been grumbling and snarling, all stopped and stared.

“Yeah,” Hawk began, “what’s up with that? How did we not know she had a kid?”

“Obviously, she didn’t want anyone to know,” Fang supplied, his words dripping with resentment. Fang’s woman, Tessa, was good friends with Liz—most of the club women liked Liz—so it wasn’t a surprise that Fang would be angry.

“Don’t take that tone, brother,” Trouble warned. “She had a good reason to keep it from us.”

Odin, silent through the back and forth, cast Trouble a long, speaking gaze. He was silently telling Trouble to sack the fuck up and tell his brothers the truth. Thathewas a father. To Liz’s kid.

“Oh?” Hound barked, his mouth curled into a sneer. “And what reason is that? Are we such bastards that she couldn’t trust us with her kid?” Hell Hound, who’d been there that day at Tipped, when Trouble had fucked shit up with Liz, had grown to like and respect Liz, despite what he’d initially thought about Liz ten years ago…because of what Trouble let him assume.

“No,” Trouble barked back.

“So, what reason was there?” Hawk asked, his gray eyes too knowing.

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