CHAPTER 10
NICKEL
With construction on the kids’ nursery school starting next week, Coal has split the brothers up today. Half are at the paintball doing maintenance and getting it ready for opening day, and the rest of us are breaking ground for the wet room.
We’ll receive the first delivery tomorrow with supplies to shore up the sides, including hydraulic struts to support the walls while we strengthen them. We’ll have to add drainage before pouring the concrete floor, but Cross has a plan and knows what he’s doing.
I’m just the muscle, but it feels good to be working with my hands. I love numbers, but now and then, mindless manual labour like this is just what I need. It gives me time to sort through all my thoughts and what’s happening in my life.
Nora and I have settled into life together as if we’ve always been a couple. It helps that she’s easy to live with.
Then there are the nights and the mornings. There’s nothing better than falling asleep and waking up with Nora. I love both equally: one day ending and another day dawning with the woman I love. Sliding inside my woman, my favourite place on earth. If we didn’t have responsibilities, we’d never leave the bed.
“Hey, Nickel!” Cross shouts, pulling me from my thoughts of Nora.
I look up to see him gesturing for me to get out of the foundation we’re digging for the room we’ll be using for future interrogations.
Climbing the ladder, I step out of the hole. “What’s up?”
“Church. Sterling found something.”
“Fuck. Okay.” I remove my shirt and use it to wipe away the dirt clinging to my skin. “I need to shower. I’ll meet you there. Let Coal know I’ll be a little late,” I say over my shoulder as I jog towards home.
He gives me a thumbs up, so I know he’s heard.
Twenty minutes later, I walk into Church to find everyone waiting for me. I slip into the seat next to Nora and take her hand in mine, wrapping my fingers around her cold ones. She’s taken care of the man who hurt her sister, but I know this is hitting close to home if Sterling has found Miles Burres.
My arse is barely on my seat before Coal slams the gavel to the table.
“Church in session. Sterling?”
“Pres.” Sterling acknowledges Coal’s order and presses a key on his laptop.
An image appears on the screen of a man in his early sixties, tall, well-groomed, not bad-looking, dressed in a suit at some swanky function.
“This is Miles Burres, or rather Andrew Miles Burres-Winston,” Sterling explains. “It took me some time, but I eventually found him. He’s the CEO of several companies and is extremely wealthy. Married to his fourth wife, no children. Once I figured out his legal name, it was easy to track him via his money.”
“Always follow the money,” Cross mumbles with disgust. “Gets them every time.”
“Now we know who he is, how do we get to him?” Bolt asks.
That’s something I’d like to know too. Given his high profile, we’ll have to be careful.
“I guess we could follow the motherfucker and run him off the road,” Blue growls. “Or if he goes somewhere on the regular, Nora or I could take him out.”
Coal shakes his head. “As much as I’d like to do that, we can’t. We need to interrogate him to see if he’s the last of this line of traffickers or if there are more. I mean, we know there are others, but if he’s the head of this snake, we need to cut it off completely. Someone else always has a finger in the pie. We’ll go over all the information Sterling has uncovered piece by piece and make a solid plan.”
Coal eyes our tech expert. “Sterling, start at the top from when this fucker was born until today.”
“That’s a lot, Pres,” Sterling replies with surprise. “It’s going to take hours.”
Coal shrugs and looks around the table. “Any of you got anything on today that can’t wait until tomorrow?”
When we all shake our heads.
Coal nods at Sterling. “Get to it.”
“Okay.” Sterling turns to his screen and starts pulling up data—and there’s a lot of fucking data.
