I didn’t know if I was surprised or not by Seratelli’s confession, but I met him on the transparency front. “My sister is dating the Ravager Knights’ vice president, Kevin Adams. He reached out to his brother, Jack. He’s some big tech guy in Chicago.”
Seratelli let out a surprised bark of laughter. “Jack Adams is looking for Dax Hillcrest? I’m surprised he hasn’t found him yet.”
“Like I said, Hillcrest is being protected by someone in the FBI—according to Kevin—but he’s going to hack the FBI and see what he can find. I guess it’s why it’s taking so long.”
Seratelli shook his head, falling serious again. “How does a fucking gangbanger get so powerful?”
“No idea. He’d been working with our dead president for the last decade or so. Pushing Maya away, framing Nico, killing Mac Taylor. Whatever deal Buckley and Hillcrest had, it earned Hillcrest a lot of money.”
“Big money and big protection,” Seratelli surmised, shoving his hands into his pockets.
“Yep.”
A lull fell between us and Seratelli looked over at his cousin teaching Luke how to box. “He’s yours?”
I turned to watch the pair as well, nodding. “Yeah. He’s nine.”
“Nico looks good teaching. Relaxed.”
“Yeah.” I huffed out a breath. “He’s been miserable the last ten years. I just hadn’t realized how miserable.”
“Hopefully when Maya is returned, he finds happiness again.”
“Yeah, hopefully.”
Axel Jones
Isurveyedthebustlingwarehouse,my gaze sweeping from the scantily clad women to the shirtless fighters weaving through the crowd near the fighting ring. Men and women offering the promise of something a littlemore, for the right price.
Bookies hung out in the corners making deals and taking bets, while dealers weaved in between the throng of people, offering party favors of the harder variety. Along one wall there was a make-shift bar area, selling overpriced drinks to uncaring patrons.
Over all it was a cluster fuck of epic proportions and my boys and I were right in the middle of it.
Blaze Thomas and Phoenix Kendrick had been by my side since we were kids growing up in a lower middle-class neighborhood in Creekton. In the kind of neighborhood where our parents worked their asses off to provide a roof over our heads and look picture perfect to the public. But things behind closed doors weren’t what they seemed—at least in my case.
I had a picture-perfect home life until I hit high school and my younger brother, Andrew, had been killed by Dax Hillcrest and Las Serpientes. My brother, who had been the light of our family, had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. We had stopped by the convenience store after school, something we probably did almost every day, only to walk into an armed robbery.
Hillcrest had just been an upstart back then, but he had been spooked when the door of the store opened. He shot off two rounds right into Andrew’s chest. My brother had been dead before the ambulance even showed up.
And fucking Hillcrest had ran away.
There had been no camera’s, no proof, and it was mine and my friend’s word against ghosts. Literal ghosts. The police had never found the men that been in the store. It wasn’t until Blaze, Phoenix, and I had joined up with the Devil’s Psychos did I learn the truth. Using the club’s connections and another fight night—similar to this one—did I discover who had killed my brother.
Now we were here to find out anything we could on Hillcrest’s whereabouts.
The underground fighting scene had been around for years, but no one knew who ran it. With how organized everything was, I could only assume they were mafia run, but Nico had never said anything. The fights changed location every month, with the location only being texted out an hour or two before they started.
It was very much awho you knewsituation.
“Spread out.” I kept my voice low, and despite the loud music pumping through the speakers, my brothers heard me. Like a unit, the three of us went our separate ways.
I slid through the crowd toward the bar. Slipping my hands in my pockets, I waited for someone to notice me. I felt naked without my cut, but it was the rules: no colors. No one was allowed to wear anything that showed which gang or MC or crew they were affiliated with. Not that it mattered when half the men in the room had tatted their colors on their bodies.
Listening to the surrounding conversations while I waited, I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to appear nonchalant. My plan was apparently working when I picked up a conversation to my right.
“Yo, have you guys seen the live streams?” a man asked.
Another man laughed heartily. “You mean the whore he kidnapped?”
