Page 3 of Bad Ruck

I love you. Heart emoji

With any luck, he'd see them. I hoped like hell hecould. I wiped my eyes and put my phone away.

"Just to clear it up, you're not working with Otis Skinner?" Storm squinted at Ramsey.

"Absolutely not," Ramsey said, his mouth twisted to the side in disgust. "I reached out when he first joined the team, trying to figure out his angle. So far, he's kept me at arm's length. Today I was finally getting somewhere. He doesn't trust me, but he's starting to rely on me for information."

"Which you're not giving to him?" Storm's jaw worked, his annoyance clear.

"Just enough to make him think I'm reliable," Ramsey said, staring him down. "The names of a couple of contacts we already know are quietly working against us. Times and places of shipment arrivals. Nothing major. Nothing to indicate we have anything other than a professional relationship."

"He has no idea you're working for Daze?" I asked.

"He knows, but he thinks I'm disgruntled," Ramsey said. "That I'm looking for a bigger score."

"Are you?" Storm asked.

"I'm looking to stop him and Dominic King from getting a foothold in Dusk Bay." Ramsey tilted his head and looked back at Storm, his gaze unwavering. "It's not good for the city and it's not good for the team. We have enough people already vying for power, we don't need another one. Especially one as unscrupulous as Dominic King."

"How bad is he?" I asked. If he was unscrupulous compared to the other operators in the city, he must be terrible. That yardstick was extremely high.

"He's as ambitious as they come," Ramsey said. "At least as bad as the Fiorelli family were." Most of them were killed years ago, after trying to seize a bigger chunk of power. They wouldhave started an all out war and not cared who got caught up in the crossfire.

"Why don't we kill them both?" Frost asked. Did he have to sound so enthusiastic about it? Yes, I supposed he did. That would solve some problems. Although, it would likely create others.

"That would be like playing whack-a-mole," Ramsey said. "Whatever they're up to, they're not doing it alone. If we kill them, whoever they're working with will come after us. I'm not convinced Dominic King is the head of all of this. He might think he is, but I believe someone else is pulling the strings."

"Who?" I asked. "The Fiorellis are gone, for the most part. The Bell family has more or less been absorbed into the Brantley family, thanks to the twins. No one has heard from Kurt Lasalle in years."

Kurt made a bid for power of his own, even going as far as to attack the Brantley family directly. There was more to the story, probably a lot more, but that was all I knew personally. That and somehow the attack involved Reuben's girlfriend, Mina DiMarco. I never dared ask her about it. We weren't particularly close, and I suspected she wouldn't tell me anyway. She was the ultimate closed book.

"I don't know," Ramsey said. "There's several possibilities I can think of off the top of my head. It might not even be anyone in Australia."

"But you have a suspicion," Jay said. He stood with his arms crossed, white cat fur decorating the front of his shirt.

Ramsey rubbed his chin. "The Crimson Vipers have been particularly active recently. Carlos Jones was never going to sit back and take the crumbs the Brantley family threw to him."

"The cartel." I leaned my head against Frost's shoulder. "They're the definition of unscrupulous. They deal in drugs andpeople. Carlos Jones would literally sell his own sister if it benefited him."

He tried to, but she ran off with her lover. I wouldn't necessarily call her my friend, but Angelina Ramirez-Jones was a woman I admired. We'd met a few times and always got along, but she was as wild as they came. She took absolutely no shit from anyone. If Mina was a closed book, Angie was a wide open one.

"It makes sense," I said finally. "Why would someone like Carlos Jones be content to be a small fish, even if it means working with people like Dominic King and Otis Skinner?"

Chances were, he'd been planning this for a long time, maybe years. Men like him lurked in the shadows, waiting and watching before they struck. His cartel wasn't called the Crimson Vipers for nothing. People on the receiving end of their bite, usually didn't live to talk about it.

"Carlos wouldn't give a shit who he's working with, as long as he got power out of it," Ramsey said. "Like you said, he'd sell his own sister. He'd sell anyone's sister. And buy them too." He pressed his lips together in disgust.

"He sounds like a hell of a guy," Frost said sarcastically. "If this asshole is behind everything, then…what does that mean?" He looked around at all of us, green eyes wide.

Sometimes, like right now, he looked much too innocent to be involved in any of this. Yeah, okay he was far from innocent, but I still wondered what his life would have been like if he hadn't gotten involved with me. Same with Storm and Dallas.

Before I came along, they were happily playing rugby and living their lives. I turned everything upside down. Introduced them to a whole new world of darkness. They deserved better than this.

If I could turn the clock back and undo all of this, would I? I'd certainly give it serious consideration.

"It means there's nothing he wouldn't do to stop us from getting in his way," I said. "I meannothing. He wouldn't hesitate to kill all of us just for having this conversation if he thought he'd get away with it. At the moment, he's reliant on the Brantley family for shipments. They could stop them at any time." That would serve as a deterrent for now, but for how long?

"If he could get around them, he could do some harm," Atlas guessed.

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