Page 15 of Grimm
“Motherfucker!”
I picked up the image and examined the man in the photo. The grainy profile image showed a man with long dark hair partially obscuring his face, but it looked like him even though I hoped it wasn’t.
“This can’t be who I think it is. Why in the hell would he be at our place?”
He has to be the one encroaching on our territory.
I glanced at my watch. River was almost twenty minutes late.
I hated when people wasted my time, but I’d give him a few more minutes before I’d have Joker drag his ass in here to explain himself. However, right now, there was still time to ask questions to the only person I thought might have some insight into the man in the image. I grabbed my phone from my desk and dialed Amelia Grace, my baby sister.
“I don’t have time to talk right now, Tav.” She sighed tiredly. “I’m with a customer.”
“Make time, Gracie!”
“What’s crawled up your ass?”
“Look,” I raked my hand through my hair for what seemed like the millionth time today, “I need to ask you a couple of questions.”
“Chris, let’s take five,” she said to someone in the background.
Shuffling sounded over the receiver.
“You got five minutes,” she huffed. A door slamming sounded over the receiver. “Ask away, asshole. It’s not like I’m trying to run a fucking business here.”
I needed to know if he was still around, and if anyone knew, it would be Amelia, so I ignored her attitude. Amelia was raised privileged, and whatever she wanted, she got, unlike Colin and me. We scraped and scrapped for everything, which was why we were such bastards.
“When’s the last time you saw Alonzo Bianchi?”
“Why?”
“Not important, Amelia.”
She huffed again, but I ignored it. Amelia had become close friends with one of Bianchi’s soldier’s old ladies.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Not sure, but it’s been a while. Definitely sometime after Chad left.”
I heard the emotion bubbling in her throat. Chad was Amelia’s ex-fiancé and a physically and emotionally abusive prick. They had been together since her freshman year of high school to everyone’s dismay. Even after all these years, her love for him remained strong.
It was left up to me and Angus to get rid of him. We gave him warning after warning until we couldn’t listen to her pleas anymore not to hurt him. When he caused her to lose their unborn child, my niece and Angus’s first grandchild, it was the last straw. So, for taking the life of a MacDaniel, we buried him in the desert, leaving his body for the animals to feast on.
But only after we made him feel everything he’d put her through.
That was the day I slit Chad’s throat after removing each of his fingers and teeth one by one while his screams filled the arid desert air. I proved my mercilessness to him, proved I was worthy of leading Sin City MC even when I didn’t want to.
I rubbed my temples. This wasn’t good. If this was Alonzo, David Coleman was tangled up with the Bianchi Syndicate. I hoped I was wrong.
“Is he still around?”
“Yeah, but I haven’t seen him,” she said. “He used to drop by the shop every once in a while to ask me out, saying I shouldn’t waste my time waiting for Chad to come back. Whatever,” she mumbled under her breath.
“He knew Chad?”
“Oh, yeah. They were friends,” she said, like admitting she dated someone connected to an enemy wasn’t a big deal.
I understood Angus shielding her from everyday operations, but to let Chad anywhere near her was reckless since he was connected to the Bianchis. It was bad enough that he allowed her to hang out with the girlfriend of a Bianchi soldier to get close to the Bianchis.
