“Who will be there?”
“Just the three of us.”
Fuck.
It was always better to have a few extra people around when my dad and I got together to act as buffers. The two of us had a history of arguing and ruining family events. I didn’t want to do that to my mom.
“Be at Ocean’s Edge at seven.”
He hung up before I even responded. He was such a damn ball of sunshine.
I opened my dresser drawers, randomly pulling out clothing. Yanking on my jeans, I scoured my mind, trying to figure out what my mom might want as a gift. If I remembered correctly, she was turning fifty, which was a big deal.
I was close to my mom. While I didn’t get along well with my dad, my mom provided me with the unconditional love that one would expect from a parent. Sometimes I felt like a screw-up, and my dad hardly ever discouraged that thinking, but my mom was never like that. I might not deserve it, but she was my biggest fan.
When I was dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt, I went into the kitchen to scrounge up some breakfast. My brown hair was so short that it was already dry, and there wasn’t anything there to style. That was the main reason that I had trimmed it so short with an electric razor. I wasn’t interested in messing with it every day.
I poured myself a bowl of sugary cereal and thought about last night while I ate it at the kitchen table. Normally, Axel and I weren’t directly involved in club business. I thought of our duties as bitch-work, but I never said that out loud.
But last night, when the meeting had broken up, Trainer had pulled me aside, telling me to stick around. I did, and when everyone else had left, the president of the club, Ryder, had come to get us. I was led into the room at the back of the bar where they had their meetings.
I’d never been in there before. It was a simple space, almost bare except for a couple of long wooden tables and the trash can that was now overflowing with beer cans and bottles. Ryder closed the door behind us, and when I turned, I saw that there was one more thing in the room. Hanging on the wall by the door was the club’s insignia. The wordsOutlaw Soulscurved around the image of a motorcycle, forming a circular shape.
Trainer took a seat at a table, so I followed suit, wondering what the hell this was about as I planted my ass in the seat beside him. When Ryder sat down across from me, his expression was solemn.
“What can you tell me about Luca Bianchi?” he asked.
I couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d slapped me. Luca? Why would they want to know about him?
“Uh…I don’t know much.”
“But you’ve been participating in that fighting ring he has in the warehouse by the docks?”
“Yeah.” I’d made no secret of it. Hell, I came to the Blue Dog right after my last fight. “But I don’t exactly hang with the guy. He pays me when I win. That’s it.”
Ryder and Trainer exchanged a long look.
“What’s going on?” I asked, trying not to sound impatient.
“He’s a new player in town,” Ryder said, leaning his elbows on the table, “and we have concerns about his activities.”
“You know that we’ve taken strides to be a more legitimate organization in the last few years,” Trainer added. “We don’t deal drugs or sell guns in La Playa, and we try to stop others from doing it.”
“We’ve had a lot of success with it,” Ryder continued. “But that means that someone could see an opening, an untapped potential to peddle their product.”
“And that’s what you think Luca is doing?” I asked.
“I’m sure of it,” Ryder answered confidently. “But my greater concern is that he might be involved in the murder of Raymond Groves.”
The surprises kept on coming. Raymond was a developer that owned a lot of land on the outer edge of La Playa, where he was building new homes in subdivisions to sell. The man had money, and it was assumed that money had something to do with his death.
But I didn’t understand what Luca or the Outlaw Souls had to do with this.
“Raymond wasn’t just a developer, he was a realtor. He worked with us to obtain the apartment complex and was a friend of the club.”
I knew what that meant. He was under the club’s protection.
“So,” Ryder said, “his death is an insult to us, and we are responsible for keeping his wife safe. We have reason to believe that Luca is the killer, and we need to know what he’s up to.”
