Page 50 of Scorched King

“I wouldn’t go quite that far.” Tel grinned. “I’ve narrowed it down to three. Well, technically it was four, but I feel comfortable eliminating Bear from the pool, if that’s okay with you.”

“Agreed,” I said, pulling up a chair to take a seat next to the man who was an actual genius and who I trusted implicitly with every bit of information this club had to hide. At least from this era. There were things Pop and I did back in the early days that not only had no records, but no one else knew and that’s where that shit would stay. Some things should never be mentioned again. My point being, if I couldn’t trust Tel then it was time to get out of the illegal anything business.

I had to admit I still didn’t hate that idea. We were more than halfway there. But some activities were both lucrative and immensely satisfying. Those would be the hardest to give up. All of the club loved the big paydays, and then there were some of us who needed those other missions in an attempt to scrub our souls clean.

A futile exercise maybe, but I kept trying anyway.

Tonight’s mission, however, it could be our last of this kind and I’d be more than happy to never do another. Since getting our hooks into legal weed after Washington state legalized it, I preferred keeping us away from the harder shit. The competition for the supply of heroin into Seattle remained stiff and it brought out the worst of the worst, making it dangerous as fuck.

It would take a goddamned miracle to get through tonight without at least one gangbanger trying to double cross us. But it was also our best bet on smoking out a fucking rat.

The Mazzeo mafia group based in Seattle preferred to keep control of anything illegal in their city, and since we’d gotten shot of them, we did our best to stay out of their business.

Killing the last male heir of that family seemed to have worked in our favor. We’d come to an agreement and all gotten what wewanted. We’d leave the guns and drugs to them, and the new club they had under their thumbs, and we got the satisfaction of destroying the psycho fucking killer who’d targeted people under our protection.

My stomach roiled at the image of Sasha the night she’d gotten caught up in the explosion. He’d nearly killed her. My muscles tightened at the thought. It seemed that killing him had not fully satisfied the thirst I harbored for revenge. In all honesty, I’d say he’d gotten off too easy. I’d just as soon dig his ass up, torture him for a week, and then bury him in the ground all over again.

When my time to die arrived, and I found out Purgatory didn’t have a special level for men like him, I was gonna be fucking livid.

“So give me the word. I want to hear all the details no matter how trivial.”

“That would take all night. The whole point of computers is to deal with all of the minutiae so you don’t have to.”

“You ever heard the saying that the devil is in the details?” I smirked.

Tel laughed and turned back to his computer. “You might have mentioned that a time or two.” He tapped at a series of keys and three faces popped up on the screen. “We don’t have time to go over all the details before the meeting as to why these three, but each one of them has something in their background that could fit the profile. It’s not new information, or even hard evidence, but it’s all we’ve got for now.”

I stared at the images of Cash, Cain and Zook. Just seeing them like this burned through my blood. If it was one of them then it was my responsibility to figure out which one and take themdown. Hopefully, without tearing down the rest of the club. That was just one of the problems at the moment.

Casting suspicion on an innocent man didn’t sit well with me either. These were all brothers that were hand picked by me. I vouched for each of them and swore they were perfect for our club. If this was true, then I’d have more to answer to than I already did.

“Why these three?”

“Like I said. They’re long shots. On the surface there are no major problems.”

“And below the surface?”

“Each one has some sort of connection that could lead in a negative direction.”

“We all have that. What the fuck?”

“Oh I know. Your propensity to take in strays and fixer uppers is well documented.”

I shot him a glare that told him I’d happily kick his ass if he wasn’t careful.

“No offense, boss. But you definitely have a type,” Tel said, a shit eating grin crossing his face when he did.

“This isn’t some kind of game or bad reality show and I sure as hell ain’t dating any of them. Get to the point, Tel, before you piss me off.”

“Since we don’t have a lot of time, how about we just skip to the good parts then.”

I glanced down at my cell phone and saw that we had about twenty minutes before the meeting started and he was right, I wanted to be in the meeting room ahead of everyone else.

“Do it,” I ordered.

“Cash, as you know, has a greedy bitch of an ex who’s constantly hounding him for money.”

“Yeah, Chel is a real bitch and I’m glad he got shot of her. Too bad about the kid though. Still think he’d be better off with his dad.”

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