Page 57 of Wild Ride
Ralph doesn’t say anything from the back seat for a while, then all of a sudden, he sits up, and the move causes me to jerk the wheel slightly, not because he scares me in any way, but honest to fuck, I forgot his ass was back there.
“What?” I demand.
He clears his throat, and when he speaks, I’m a bit surprised by his question. “If I wanted my sister to have complete and total protection, what would that look like?”
“Are you asking me what would have to be done in order for her to have the whole club at her back?”
He hums but doesn’t say anything else.
“She’d have to be an old lady. Essentially claimed and married to one of the men. For her, that would be the only way. Why?” I ask.
Ralph shrugs a shoulder. “I think she’s mixed up with the wrong people in college. I was wondering how to get her out of that situation.”
“What kind of wrong people?”
I’m wondering what the fuck else this asshole hasn’t told me. He clears his throat, and I’m tempted to pull over and beat the answer out of him, but I decide against it. And the only reason I do is because I don’t want anything to keep me from getting to Dakota as quickly as fucking possible.
“More of these assholes?” I ask.
He doesn’t say anything immediately, then he clears his throat again, taking his fucking sweet time. I grip my steering wheel again, wondering how in the hell I’ve ended up with this guy who doesn’t just spit it the fuck out.
But when he finally does, my spine straightens, and every single nerve ending in my body goes on high alert. This is not good. Not good at all. In fact, this is really fucking bad. Not just for his sister but for us, too.
Being connected to this is not something I anticipated, and if Shade knew anything about it, as his vice president, he should have told me, but like other parts of his life, it seems as though he kept this a secret.
“What do you mean you’re washing money for the goddamn cartel?”
The silence in the cab is deafening. “I lied. It’s not that I’m worried about friends in college. It’s about me. It’s about the cartel. I don’t know how it started. They came to me for supplies, and then it turned into that, but my contact has mentioned my sister a few times. He saw her once when she was on break and came into my warehouse. I’m worried he’s going to do something radical.”
“So, you aren’t concerned about the Bloodhounds. You’re worried about the cartel instead?” I ask, needing clarification. Because I now have a feeling that the Bloodhounds don’t even know this girl exists.
“If I told you it was about them, you wouldn’t have sent anyone to protect her.”
Fuck. If I could scream the word right now, I would, but that would show far too much emotion, and I’m not showing an ounce of weakness to this fuck. As far as I’m concerned, he can go down with the Bloodhounds today for lying to me.
The last thing we need is a war at all, let alone one with both the cartel and the Bloodhounds. I want to beat the absolute shit out of this man. He’s lucky as fuck that my desire to get to Dakota outweighs my desire to pummel the absolute hell out of him right now.
I should call off her protection right now and force him to listen to it. I don’t, partially because it’s not her fault and partially because I still need his fucking ass until I have a new supplier for my own shit.
Lifting my eyes to the sky, I let out a heavy exhale and wonder what in the absolute fuck Shade was thinking with any of this shit. I thought we were a well-oiled machine, and now everything is falling apart in my lap, and I’m not equipped to fix it.
But I don’t have a choice.
Right now, it’s everything that is falling apart and everything that I need to finish disassembling and then putting back together again. Or rather, what the club needs to disassemble and put back together again because this is something we’re going to do together—as a family.
No more secrets, no more hidden truths, no more blindsides.
We’re a chosen family for a reason, and without trust, we don’t have shit. Shade not trusting us with this shit has made it to where we’re walking into half of this shit blind. It also made it to where I personally didn’t believe Dakota was deserving of shit.
I’m not saying that all those feelings I had about her when she arrived could have been avoided, but it would have made everything at least a bit more tolerable. The pill would have gone down easier had I known of her existence beforehand.
Instead of giving Ralph a free pass for his omissions, I decide to play this as simply and calmly as I can. Which is to say that I hold back every fucking ounce of my real feelings and instead put on a calm front while inside, I’m raging.
“She has our protection until we get done with the Bloodhounds. Then we are going to have a conversation on the cartel and what the future looks like.”
“Understandable,” he mutters, but I have a feeling that this man understands nothing. He’s been playing too many fucking sides to understand anything. He’s going to comprehend, though—soon.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
