Page 15 of In the Midst of Chaos

“They left something,” Nate replied.

I looked at him, at Andre, and his brother, Ace.

The only things that got left behind were bombs or bodies, and since I didn’t hear an explosion, I could only imagine it was the latter.

“Anyone we know?” Duncan asked as he lit a cigarette.

“Not us,” Andre answered.

Instead of telling Duncan to stop smoking since I knew it was hypocritical, I took the pack away from him and grabbed one myself.

“Let’s go check it out,” I told them, ready to get on my bike again.

“We brought the problem here.” Ace nodded toward the garage.

“How’d you get it here?”

“Called Chops to bring the cage.”

I snorted. “Did you tell him to keep a lid on it?”

Chops tended to run his mouth.

“Come on, we don’t know who he is, but based on the red bottoms and the Audemars Piguet, I’d say you might,” Andre told us.

“Brother, I didn’t know you knew your Walmart from your Armani.” I patted Andre’s shoulder while everyone else laughed. He was a tall motherfucker. The tallest out of everyone here. That’s why we called him Andre, for André the giant.

“Fuck off, Nash.” He pushed me away.

I wasn’t going to lie; that’s what I loved about the club. We were all family. This living between two worlds was bullshit—one foot in the underworld and another with the elites.

Both worlds were full of treachery and lies.

When we came to the garage, Ace opened the van, and right away, I knew the man came from money. He was wearing Christian Louboutin shoes. On his arm was a gold Audemars Piguet watch. The suit he wore was tailored to his frame.

Duncan threw the butt of his cigarette on the floor before he jumped on the van. He turned the man over. From my brother’s reaction, I knew we knew him. Duncan got tense and threw his head back with his eyes closed.

“Who?”

“Joel,” he said somberly.

My brother turned around and gave me a look.

I slammed my fist to the metal of the van door. Pain radiated through my hand, ricocheting up to my arm.

“You’re paying for that hissy fit,” Nate answered ever so calmly.

“He’s one of our board members,” I told him, and understanding dawned on him. We were having a board meeting tomorrow, and one of the members was dead.

“Someone turned rat.” Duncan said what we were all thinking as he got out of the van.

“How does this affect tomorrow’s vote?” Nate asked, looking between the dead man, and my brother and me.

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “He might have been against changing companies, and now we will be a vote short and lose the contract, or he might have been a message.”

Nate pulled his phone out to update Gunner while I told my father we needed to talk.

“Yeah, get them to start preparing. If shit keeps going like this, we are going to have to go on lockdown.” Nate finished his call, then put his phone in his back pocket.

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