Page 102 of Outcast

"And you are?"

"Dingo." His face and voice were void of any inflection. He was a robot.

"Real name?" I squinted. I didn’t care about Matthrews’ research, but I’d happily do my own.

He grinned. "No."

"Tell me who the rat is?"

"I can tell you who he's not," Matthews interjected, bringing the conversation back to him.

"And who would those people be?" I already knew his answer, but I played along.

"Neither of you."

"That's not good enough."

"It will have to be. You've been around a long time. You wouldn't give up your best intel for nothing." He raised his brows as if he was willing to keep talking.

"You want to negotiate?"Fuck that.

"Of course." Now he rocked back and forth in his chair.

"Rita would be the one to negotiate with, but I can tell you right now, she probably won't give you what you want," Esteban said.

"IfRita takes over the club."

"Why wouldn't she?" Esteban sat forward.

Matthews shrugged and exchanged glances with his men. "That's not ours to say."

I reached over and pressed a hand into Esteban's chest to stop him. His charm dropped away in a blink of an eye as his face darkened in anger and his eyes drilled holes in Matthews.

"If there's a plan to hurt Rita and you know about it, I–"

"What do you want?" I made sure Esteban was going to stay quiet before I removed my hand.

"I want a home for my brothers. We want to operate our businesses without any trouble."

"That will never happen. Even if the Dirty Dogs allowed you to take over the businesses they dropped, my brothers wouldn't allow it. Between the two, you'd never get the businesses going, and you wouldn't leave town alive." I paused tolet the weight of my words settle between us. "What else do you want?"

Matthews cursed. Glancing out the window, he worked his jaw back and forth.

The man really thought he’d be able to work it all out. It was clear now, he wasn’t a player. He wasn’t even on the board, not really.

Our issues were inside our own house.

"We're done here. You don't have anything I want, and I'm not willing to part with my secrets for shit." Matthews stood up.

Canting my head, I tried to figure him out. He seemed like a smart man. He'd done so much research, but had thought it would be a real possibility to pick up skins and drugs. "Why come here?"

"What do you mean?"

"Of all the places you could have gone, why did you move to our territory?"

"The Dirty Dogs and the Institution co-exist here just fine."

I shook my head. "Not really. The territories don't overlap, and there was never peace between the two. If you knew who my father had been, you'd understand that. The Dirty Dogs had only existed because he allowed it for his pleasure and his amusement."

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