“Yes, sir, I mean Mica.”
I jerk my chin at Nova. “Let’s hole up in my office. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
My hands move across the desk to cover hers. The moment we’re sitting across from each other, I ask, “How are you holding up, sweetheart?”
“I’m hanging on by a thread. It feels like everything I wanted to save from my grandfather is slowly slipping away.”
“This fire came out of nowhere. None of us saw it coming. Trust me, if I had, I would have done something to stop it.”
She nods, fighting back tears. “What I need right now is to figure out what went wrong, how this happened, and if it was really arson, who did it.”
I give her hands a squeeze before pulling out my laptop and setting it up. Nova does the same.
“Seeing Vulture’s trucking company burning reminds me that someone set fire to his clubhouse a while back. Unfortunately, that someone was Viper, and he’s pushing up daisies right now.”
She glances away and rubs her hands down the front of her jeans. “I suspected as much when you said he faced club justice.” After a brief pause, she adds, “It’s weird that Viper is long gone, but shit belonging to my family is still getting burned to the ground.”
“We need to think about who benefits if your trucking business fails.”
After a pensive pause, she shakes her head. “No one. Everybody associated with the trucking company loses. I lose the opportunity to inherit early, and the drivers lose their jobs. The estate attorney doesn’t have anything to gain personally.”
“Think about the performance clause in the estate documents, the twenty percent revenue decline trigger, the twelve-month marriage requirement, the man tasked with monitoring compliance.”
“What about it?” she asks innocently.
“What about Cray? What does he stand to gain?”
“I don’t know that he has anything, but walk through this with me. What could be construed as motive in his world? If the businesses fail, the estate reverts back to his oversight and control for ten years. The same thing happens if our marriage dissolves before the one-year mark.”
“No. I clearly remember the attorney saying the businesses would be sold, and the money would be held in trust and released to me when I turned thirty.”
“But we don’t know the specific conditions of when the sale has to take place. He might be planning to get a gigantic kickback from the buyer or some other shady shit going on.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Nova insists.
“Look, Cray is the one who contacted my father and set the whole arranged marriage up. He’s a club president. How many people could have pulled off a fire with double explosions? This has MC written all over it.”
“He advocated for our marriage because he wanted me to be protected and because he’s got his own businesses to worry about. He’s got no time to worry about running ours too. If he wanted to sell the businesses, it doesn’t make sense to burn them down.”
“You’re making good sense here, but maybe the value of the business is the property, not the buildings. Setting the trucking company on fire is the fastest way to force you off the property and trigger the reversion clause.”
“Anything is possible,” Nova finally admits.
“Here’s the rub. We can’t just call up a club president and accuse him of arson.”
“He’s my uncle. I can call him up and ask anything I want,” she insists.
“No,” I tell her. “You’re my old lady. Whatever you do blows back on me. That’s how the MC world works.”
“I need to meet with my father. He’s the only one in our club with the kind of clout to approach Cray without it looking like a personal insult.”
“Alright, if that’s what you want to do, I’m in. But I want to tell you right now that Cray’s got nothing to do with this. Make sure he knows I vouched for him.”
“We’ll be careful to be respectful,” I tell her. “I’m not trying to alienate the only family you have left.”
Her shoulders relax as she glances around the office. “You have a nice space here. I noticed it the first time we met. Do you really own this entire building?”
“Yes, I bought it fresh out of college and set it up on a ten-year mortgage,” I tell her. “The other office rentals pay the mortgage. In two years, the building will be paid off, and I’ll own it free and clear.”
