Taking a deep breath, I hit the green button to go live.
“Hiiiii, babes! Let’s try this again,” I chirp, wearing my brightest smile. “Today, we’re doing something special. I’m at an undisclosed location with some new friends, and I’m going to show you how to achieve the perfect smokey eye on my gorgeous model, Frankie!”
Chapter Nine
Journey
Tacoma bangs the gavel on the table, and the chatter in the chapel stops immediately. “Let’s get into it.”
He nods at our tech man, hunched over his laptop at the end of the table. “Cyber, you want to bring everyone up to speed?”
I can hear the tension in Prez’s voice, which has me sitting up in my chair. Tacoma doesn’t get rattled. Ever. And yet…
My eyes move to Cyber. Fuck. Tacoma wouldn’t have sent Gator and Bash to June’s apartment armed to the teeth if Cyber hadn’t found something big.
Cyber finally looks up from his computer screen. His blue eyes find mine from beneath the bill of his hat and the hair on my neck stands on end. “You’re not gonna like this.”
I pull in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I don’t like where this is going already.”
He squeezes the bill of his hat. “Those accounts that have been messaging your girl,” he starts, turning his laptop around so everyone at the table can see the screen, “Frankie and I traced them through several VPNs and encrypted channels. They were going through a lot of trouble trying to hide their footprint.”
“Dude,” Bane groans, scrubbing his hands over his face. “We don’t know what the fuck any of that means.”
Cyber raises his middle finger at Bane. With Bane’s ol’ lady being a computer genius and helping with the club with tech shit, it definitely shows that these two have been spending a lot more time together lately. “It means that we followed the trail back through servers linked to the Valenciaga Cartel.”
“The cartel?” I rise from my seat.Fucking fuck fuck FUCK!I adjust my hat, feeling the tension tightening in my shoulders. How the fuck did sweet as pie June Calloway get on the cartel’s radar?
“Sit down,” Tacoma orders, his eyes hard.
Rolling my head on my shoulders, I drop back into my seat as my mind races a million miles a minute. The Valenciaga Cartel are some really sick fuckers. And to make matters even worse, they’re now in bed with the Sinners, trafficking women and children across state lines. The horrors their victims suffer through… There are no goddamn words for it.
“Yeah, bro. And there’s more,” Cyber says. “Frankie and I dug deeper, and found communication on the dark web between a Valenciaga lieutenant and someone inside the Sinners. That attack on Stella at the movie theater? That shit wasn’t random.”
My blood runs cold as I process what he’s saying. “The cartel was after my fucking sister? But why?” This doesn’t make any sense.
“They’re targeting all the women,” Bash cuts in, answering the question on all of our faces. “Not just Stella.”
I shake my head, unsure how to believe what I’m hearing. “So this has nothing to do with June? She’s just—what—collateral damage? A target by association?”
“Yeah. Exactly that.” Cyber turns the laptop back around and types something on the keyboard. “Once we knew where to look, we found a whole network. They’ve been surveilling all the women connected to the club. When June got in the way of them taking Stella, she put a big red target on her back.”
“How the fuck did we not know about this sooner?” Bane asks, looking a little pale.
“Because they’re good,” Cyber sighs. “And they’ve got money to hire the best in the business to hide their tracks. If they hadn’t gotten sloppy with the DMs to June, we might still be in the dark.”
Tacoma brings his arm back and yeets his phone at the wall. It hits with a loud crack, and pieces of it go skidding across the floor.
“You okay, bro?” Bane asks.
“My woman is pregnant,” Prez growls, turning to face his brother by blood. “So, no. I ain’t fucking good.” His face is a mask of murderous fury.
“This is war.” His voice is eerily calm. “They don’t know it yet, but they’ve all signed their goddamn death warrants.”
My mind flashes to June down the hall—sweet, innocent, a beautiful woman who is now caught in the middle of a cartel war because of her association with the club.
“We’re going into lockdown,” Tacoma continues. “Every woman with ties to the club gets a shadow. Nobody moves alone.” He looks at his younger brother. “Double the guards on the gate.”
Bane nods.
