“What if we go to a rescue shelter and get one or two from there? We could use it as an opportunity to give adult cats a new home. You know they’re a lot less likely to get adopted than the kittens are.”
“Oh yeah, Harlow will love that idea,” I chime in, feeling relaxed and happy while surrounded by my brothers. The only thing that could make this better would be Jax and Harlow being here, with the latter tucked in next to me.
“Alright, shall I leave that with you then, big brother?” Holden looks at Declan, who nods, taking out his phone to make a note. “Great, so Oli and I still have the costume wardrobe, the linens, the mattress, the cage bed, and the sex pit to deal with.”
“Cage bed? Sex pit?” I sit up straighter now. “Did you happen to take any photos? I would love to see what you mean.”
Oli grins and pulls out his phone. “Yeah, I did. I knew you guys might want to have a look.”
“How about you drop them onto my laptop?” Declan suggests, opening it up. Of course Dec would bring his laptop to a drinking session with his brothers. “Then we can all get a look at the room without having to gather around your phone.”
The two of them busy themselves with doing that when Tom’s phone rings.
“Is it Harlow?” Holden asks, looking hopeful, but Tom shakes his head. “Nah, it’s just Jake. Let me take this. Don't start the show without me.” He points at the laptop.
My eyes follow him as he wanders away, curious to hear what his spy friend is calling for, but my mind skips back a beat.
“Hey, speaking of cats… What’s happening with the big cats? Who’s looking after them while Harlow is on her cruise?” I ask Declan as a photo of Nyx pops up on his screen while we wait for Oli to send him the photos.
“Doug and Clem have got it all under control. Both of them came to the gala, but we had a driver take them home at the end of the night. Security made sure that they had one guard assigned to the cage the whole night to ensure no one was on the premises just in case.” Declan types a few commands on his keyboard before Oli’s photos air drop in.
“That’s good, one less thing for Harlow to worry about when she’s away. Hopefully, she will actually relax and enjoy herself.” Holden brushes his hair back as the photos pop up on the laptop screen.
“Hurry up, Thomas,“ I call out, not taking my eyes away from the screen, my imagination already running wild at the thought of what Harlow and I can get up to in that room. I shift in my seat, trying to give my rapidly hardening dick some room. When I look up, Oli is smirking at me since the little shit obviously knows what I’m thinking. I flip him off and look for Tom, wondering what the hell is taking him so long.
Thomas
“Hey, Jake, what’s up?” I say into the phone, moving away from my brothers. As I wait for him to reply, I start pacing up and down the length of the bar.
“Thomas, I've got some information on that name you gave me, and you arenotgoing to believe what I was able to dig up. Peitre Baciu is none other than Count Bucataru’s nephew.”
I stop my pacing at this revelation. “I thought he had no other family left except the twins,” I say to my colleague, and I can practically feel him shrug through the phone.
“The Baciu family moved to the US when they were young. His father was Bucataru’s younger brother, and he and his wife and Peitre’s two sisters were killed in a house fire when Peitre was eighteen. He disappeared. The fire was started under suspicious circumstances that local authorities later ruled arson. Peitre was the main suspect for a while, but when he never resurfaced, they ruled that whoever had set the fire must have taken Peitre and that he was most likely dead too.”
“Well, that’s shitty police work,” I grunt.
He snorts. “Tell me about it. I think they just wanted to close the case and be done with it. I have a feeling they may have been pressured from higher up.”
“Or Bucataru greased some wheels. I’ll ask Dad if he knows anything about it. I’m assuming Peitre is around his and Dragos’ age.”
“He’s actually eight years older than your dad. Eventually, there were whispers that he was alive. Rumors say that he became the go-to man for his uncle's business dealings on the East Coast. It was too hard for them to physically get a pin on the guy, and the arson case was never reopened for whatever reason. Possibly because they saw the potential openings for other charges? Who knows. He seemed to be cutting a bloody path through the local gangs and cartels to put his uncle’s business on top, but then the uncle disappeared. Peitre was not as popular as he thought he was, and all of the people he was dealing with closed up business with him once he lost Bucataru’s backing.
“He then reappears years later. What he was doing in the meantime, no one can work out. Maybe he wasn't stateside, but who knows? This time, he’s pledging himself to the Silent Brothers, the MC you visited on the East Coast. He was set to pledge to them, but the MC lost its old president just as he was about to, and he didn't like the direction the new one decided to take the club. Needless to say, he parted ways with them.”
“So the count and his son disappear, and all of his business contacts don’t trust the nephew, so that income dries up. Peitre has nothing, and I can’t imagine he’s particularly popular after killing his way to the top. Where did he go after the MC?”
“Well, I couldn't find any record of Peitre Baciu after that. I thought maybe he had changed his name and gotten a new identity given the lack of a paper trail. I did some digging, poked at a few old informants, and what do you think I found?”
“Just tell me, asshole. Stop fucking with me,” I growl.
“Okay, don't get your boxers in a bunch. Peitre Baciu became Peter Bunch. He dabbled in some petty crimes, enough to support himself but not enough to appear on any big agencies’ radars. For some unknown reason, he decided to go straight for the last three years. He was employed by Chuck Boston as one of his riders/groomers.”
I feel my heart start to pound, and my free hand curls into a fist, tension immediately riding my whole body. “Fuck, that can’t be a coincidence.”
“No, I wouldn't think it was. I’ve passed the information on to the detectives that were in charge of Harlow’s mom’s murder case. They were looking for a female suspect, but this is at least another piece to the puzzle despite us not knowing where it fits.”
“Yeah, but now we have more gaps to fill than we do pieces, and I just can’t see how they all fit together.” I need to get him off the phone, so I can tell the guys what he discovered. Then I need to call Dad and Chuck and tell the guys.
