Page 28 of Medusa's Revenge

“Sorry. I’m on edge. Luca showed up at the club last night and tried to get Amelia to sell.” I sit up straight and regret it the moment I do. It feels like my skin is ripping off my body.

“God damn it!” I yelled out in pain. “I need to stop moving so fast while the skin is healing.” TJ keeps quiet. I notice as we talk, he keeps watching me. “I’m fine. The doctor said this is normal. The old skin they tore off needs to form new skin. I move, and ittugs. It sucks. I forget it sometimes because all I’m doing is lying around here.”

“Well, let's do some work.” We spend the next two hours working on this and when the architect came in, it was fun watching him work on his iPad to see our wants and needs come alive.” He would turn it around every once in a while, to get our approval. His realtor even contacted us about the building. When the architect left, I called my mom about doing a transfer to TJ so we can buy the building. “Now that we have the store, we will need to research what are best sellers and what are hard to find parts, too. I want us to be the go to shop in the area. Fuck the internet shopping for parts.”

“The computer should’ve backed up, right? We can use those to track what we did and go through different cars in the area.” TJ nods. I look around near the door to see if anyone is close by and I everyone seems to be busy. It’s almost time for a vital check, so we have limited time to talk. “Do you know if Amelia found the guy?”

“She doesn’t talk about club business. If she did, she won’t tell me until it’s over. So your guess is as good as mine.”

“I told her I wanted my turn with him. I don’t think she’ll let me do anything.” I sigh. TJ goes to say something, but I shake my head as I see a couple of people walking this way. “We’ve got company.”

“Mr. Cameron—Tanner Baxter, nice to see you.” Luca stands there with two black eyes. “What happened to your face?” The question comes out before I could stop myself. Luca shrugs. “What do you want?”

“I wanted to check in on you. I heard last night you were in the building when it exploded. We got to talking and wanted to take care of your medical bills.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.” I want to cross my arms, but I’m not showing this jackass weakness.

“Do you need anything from us?” He asked looking between TJ and me.

“No. We want nothing from you. We’re good here so you can go back to whatever rock you crawled out from.” TJ spoke up. “We are not selling. My partners and I are rebuilding.” Luca’s green eyes darken to almost black. He’s not happy we aren’t giving in to his demands. He nodded before turning around on heels to stalk out of the room.

“He’s not done. He’ll figure out ways to get to us. With my parents in town, I need to warn them to only talk to people I trust.” TJ nods. “Do you think I should ask Amelia for some protection for them?”

“It wouldn’t hurt to ask. This bombing is bringing out the cockroaches, that’s for sure.” I stare at him not really understanding the cockroaches comment. I can’t ask him about it because physical therapy arrives. He stays until my parents show up. He’s laughing as I stumble around at first. I flipped him off almost a dozen times before he left. I took a nap after lunch as I’m worn the fuck out. I’m hoping Amelia will be here in my hospital bed with me. I miss having her in my arms.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Medusa

Derby and I are the last to walk into Church. It’s just my officers. I hate keeping my members out of this, but I need to plan, and these women have been with me since my Dad died or somehow have been affected by the DeMarcos. They know what’s on the line and why we are known as the Valkyries.

“Sorry for the late notice on this early morning meeting.” I walk to my chair and collapse on it. “Things are moving fast after last night and we need to plan quickly and execute it even faster than that.”

“What’s going on?” Rosemary “Shrink” Howard asks. She’s our Chaplain, not a priest or anything like that, but she’s often the one we go to for advice. She has this Zen quality about herself. We often joke that instead of being named Rosemary, her parents should’ve named her Mary Jane with how chill she is.

“We have identified the bomber thanks to Tripline and her love of all things going boom.” The room laughs, even Tripline can’t help but smile. “With her brains and Joker’s fingers on the keyboard, we found out that Richie Jr. is our bomber. His father was the original enforcer for Tommy when they killed my dad.” The room goes quiet as they all look around at each other. “DaVinci, were you able to get anything?”

“The DNA test is still running. Fingers crossed it will be done by tonight.” DaVinci frowns and knowing her like I do, she’s more upset with herself not having the results we need.

“Luca Rossi paid me a visit at Temptation Tease last night. He drank some beer. I took his mug.” I shrugged. “He is wanting to buy the land TJ’s body shop is on. Joker’s running land deeds on the address to see if we missed anything. Bubbles was able to get some of our members to sit on three residences we know of for Richie Sr. and his son. Even though Senior is dead, he still had property in his name.”

“When we get confirmation of Richie Jr., we will be kidnapping him then having some fun.” Bubbles rubs her hands together. One thing I can say about my girls is, we love to bring down those who have wronged us.

“Luca is also Lucas, Michelle’s boyfriend. We don’t know if he’s using her or if he really cares about her. I’m going to reach out to her to see if she’ll talk to me.” Joker speaks up. “I know I didn’t talk to you about this, Medusa, but I figured since we’ve been cool, I can get a grasp on things.”

“I’d appreciate that a lot.” I nod at her. “Now was that everything? DNA, Luca, Richie Jr., land deeds. Am I forgetting anything?”

Shrink raises her hand and I nod at her to talk, “Are you going to allow Noah to take a turn on Richie Jr.?”

“I honestly don’t know. He’s still recovering from his injuries. He started physical therapy today. I haven’t seen him in a couple of days. His parents are in town right now. With TJ being bored out of his mind, he’s been there when his parents can’t.”

“In my opinion, I think he needs to deal the fatal blow.” Shrink sits back in her chair.

“Would anyone object to this?” The question is in the air. Seven heads shaking no. “Okay. When we get Richie Jr., he will be a part of it.”

“Good. I think he needs this to make sure he gets the closer too.” Shrink smiles at me. “It will do him good, plus he’s our club lawyer right?”

“He is. Bubbles paid his one dollar retainer.” I laugh. “He turned in all of the information to change to the state, so he can practice here. I know TJ is making Noah a 20 percent owner in the body shop.” Derby bites her bottom lip. “Something wrong?”

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