Page 69 of In Pieces

When I settled on the rental lease for the warehouse, I spun the laptop toward the guys to see.

“She wasn’t lying about that. She helped him rent the warehouse. It’s not in her name, but a shell company I tied to her earlier.”

Aiden bent and quickly took in the information on the lease agreement. He stood and nodded curtly.

“We need to go there.”

“Going tonight would be better, yeah?”I said.

I could see the indecision on their faces. Without Gideon there to talk strategy, all of their decisions were being based on emotion now. Even with the slight obsession I was harboring myself, my thoughts were based on fact and planning thatwouldn’t end up killing us all. There was more to me than the drug dealer the Knights thought they were calling.

“Give me the day. I’ll call my guys. Lyle could have more people working with him,”I said.

“How many men can you really trust, Cain?”Aiden’s voice was speculative, as he pinned me with a questioning stare.

“More than you would assume, man,”I replied.

Aiden was one of the biggest question marks for me in the group. Jaxon, Oliver and I grew up together. And though I got out for a short time with my mom, I fell right back where we left off after she died. But by then, the two of them had created an unbreakable bond with Aiden and Gideon. At the time, I felt abandoned and probably a little jealous. Now, I couldn’t blame them. Finding your crew in my world should be a top priority.

“Without Randy catching wind of it?”Jaxon’s voice was quiet from his place by the counter. He didn’t look up with the question.

“My men are separate from Randy’s operation. They are paid by me.”

That caused Jaxon to glance up, his eyebrow up in question.

“There’s a lot for us to catch up on.”I nodded, acknowledging his unspoken question.

Truth was, I still reported to Randy on paper, and as far as he knew, I was a loyal soldier. He hadn’t figured out yet that I was working to carve out my own space in the city. Something I could run on my own, without his tight fist around my neck. It had taken time for me to work through the men I worked with, to recruit the ones I could trust to keep their mouths shut and have loyalty to me and not the most powerful drug kingpin in the city.

“I see that,”Jaxon said.

For the next thirty minutes, I ran through my ideas of the best way to breach the warehouse. We would all have to go in armed and that definitely made at least Oliver uncomfortable.The rumble of my Charger announced Gideon’s return, and we had to recap for him. He immediately agreed with my plan to go to the warehouse under the cover of night.

As the discussion continued, Oliver shot out of his chair, the offending furniture falling back and bouncing off the linoleum floor. Everyone’s eyes shot to him, his curly hair tousled and standing on end from his pulling on it.

“I can’t wait. What if they’re gone by the time we get there? We’re only giving more time for Lyle to hurt her, or worse, kill her.”His voice cracked on the last words and I knew it was cutting deep for his mind to be jumping to worse case scenarios.

Jaxon moved toward Oliver, putting a brotherly arm around his shoulders. For some reason, I felt as if I was spying on a private moment and the discomfort made me look away. Jaxon’s voice was only a murmur, but Oliver nodded and turned to pick up the chair he had knocked down. When he sat again, he held his head in his hands, as he had been since we came up from the basement.

Clearing my throat, I sat back in my own chair.“Uh ok, so that’s it. I think we would do best going in with minimal numbers, unless something indicates Lyle has a bigger team. I’ll have my men on standby, on the off chance this fucker found loyal soldiers somewhere.”

I watched as Jaxon and Aiden shared a look. Before Jaxon spoke, I already had a good idea of what he was going to say.

“Cain, this isn’t your fight. We appreciate everything you’ve done to help us get this close. But you can bow out now, not put yourself or your men at risk.”

There was no way I could tell Jaxon that it wasn’t just about the favor he had asked me for now. I couldn’t tell him I badly wanted to see Brooklyn, in the flesh, with my own eyes. My protective instincts were deafening in my mind. I would cut off my own trigger finger before backing off. I was also pretty surethe Knights wouldn’t be pleased with my new obsession with their woman, so I had to keep that to myself.

“You’re basically blood, man. There’s no way I’m not helping you get her back.”And that wasn’t a lie either, just not all the reasons I wanted to help.

Jaxon jerked his chin in a nod and we decided to go back to their house to wait out the day. I had packed a duffel for my move over to my work house. I hadn’t had a moment to unpack and settle in, so I grabbed it and followed the Knights out. They climbed into Jaxon’s Tesla and I threw my duffel into the back of my Charger. Before following the guys, I turned back to my man that was standing at the door of the house.

“Pull together the team, just the main guys. I don’t want anything loud, yeah?”

“Got it, boss,”my man said before disappearing back into the house, shutting the door with a click behind him.

During the drive to the damn mansion the guys lived in, I went over the roster of men in my mind. I definitely trusted them to not alert Randy to what we were working on. I would have to pay them handsomely to get involved with something that could be risking their lives. My hope was this bastard Lyle didn’t have a bigger team than just the Knights and I could handle. I had no problem putting my life on the line and I knew none of Brooklyn’s men did either.

The gate was open when I arrived, and Jaxon stood by the garage. He motioned toward an empty spot in the huge building that should have been called a hanger and not a garage. I pulled the Charger in, the deep sound of the modified exhaust reverberating inside until I switched off the engine. Jaxon came in and shut the door behind us.

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