I keep an eye on Anna and when she opens her mouth to speak to me, I shut that shit down with nothing but a look.
Angel sitting on my bed wouldn’t be a deterrent for Anna, she’d probably enjoy the audience.
When she finally leaves, Angel lasts about thirty seconds before snapping, “So do you always have women in here picking up after you?”
I purposefully don’t look up from my own work. “Why would you care?"
She sniffs a little, turning her fucking nose up at me. "I don't. I was just going to say they aren't exactly doing a good job."
Frigid fucking bitch.
The warm and open girl who woke up at the hospital is long gone, the same old Angel back in her place. I go back to ignoring her to work on my own shit but now I'm fucking fuming.
We sit in silence for another hour but it's not as comfortable. She's jittery and twitchy, and I'm one step away from snapping at her, pushing her buttons until she drops back down to her knees for me. Fuck, she sucks dick like a pro and that's the type of release I need right now.
Maybe then she'd calm the hell down.
"Tomi?"
Her voice snaps me out of my little daydream, the hesitant tone wrenching me back into the reality of the situation. "What?"
She flinches at the tone and I grind my teeth together at the sight of it. "Angel, tell me."
She swallows twice before she manages to get the words out. "The guy who does your books... do you trust him?"
And in four simple words, she has my full attention. "What have you found?"
She blanches a little and stumbles over her words. "It's—I mean, it could be nothing—"
"Angel, what the fuck have you found?"
She huffs. "If the IRS checked these books tomorrow your club would be fucked. Also, there's money going missing... a lot of money. It's... I mean, it's clear to me and any auditor but I guess to someone who didn't know—"
"How much money is being taken? Explain it to me."
She does.
She walks me through exactly how Maverick is stealing tens of thousands of dollars each month from the club and the sloppy way he's hiding it. And then she walks me through the hack job he's been doing with our taxes and just how royally fucked over we'll be the second an auditor comes knocking.
More than that, she's given me a fucking lead.
I start tracking his movements for the last month. Easy enough to do now I have the security up everywhere and sure e-fucking-nough, there he is.
Three Demons and a wad of fucking cash.
I call King from my computer. "I've got it. I've found the best drop off route."
I stick to the agreed on code, even with the whole club out there looking for clues about the Demons. Just in case, I don’t want Maverick making a fucking run for it and having to chase the cunt.
I don’t want to leave Speck exposed like that and there’s no fucking way I’m leaving Angel.
I’ve accepted that now.
He grunts down the line and hangs up, two minutes later he comes through the door. Angel startles on the bed but he ignores her. "You sure?"
I nod. "Without a doubt. There's no way anyone could get stopped."
He nods and walks over to look at the screen. I have the still of Mav standing there and King's face turns to fucking stone. "Call Rue and let him know we're going to check it out. Hawk too, but leave Hell to his hangover."
I nod and murmur, "Keely and Trink with Speck?"
He nods. "We have guys coming in from the Bay for backup. I'll station them close by."
I nod and glance at Angel. She's still glaring at the laptop screen. “I’ll get Angel to work, Axe is there to keep an eye on things. I'll catch you up on the drive."
He glances at her too and then nods.
Time for Mav to meet the Captain.
Serves the traitorous cunt right.
We get out to the swamp a little after midnight.
Rue and I drive in my truck together, silence in the cab for the whole drive. Sometimes you just have to get your shit together and spill the blood your club needs you to.
I don’t have any fucking hesitation in me.
Not a fucking drop.
When we pull up, King is already there waiting. Hawk both arrives a minute or so after us, Mav hogtied in the back of their truck, gagged and fucking livid.
Good.
The cunt deserves worse.
"I've been in this club for twenty fucking years! You think I'm the rat?" he says, struggling against Hawk but there's no budging him. King might have gotten huge in prison but my pops has been a brick wall since birth.
King stops in the bayou, his boots slowly sinking just a little into the soft swamp dirt, and I keep an eye out on the water, my hand hovering by my gun. "I don't just think you're the rat, Mav. I fucking know it. You thought you were slick, getting away with shit while I was in lockup, getting fucking sloppy."
Mav wrenches his body, trying desperately to get out of Hawk's grip, and Rue finally fucking snaps and steps forward to punch him in the face. One quick blow has blood pouring out of his nose and a string of vicious curses. Good thing we're out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere because he's squealing like a pig.
"King, I've been loyal the entire fucking time you were gone. I haven't fucking leaked a word to any other club, I've been on every run, spilled blood for my brothers, what else could I possibly fucking do?"
King throws the rope over the tree and starts tying it off. Mav watches him work, the sweat on his forehead running down his face and mixing with the blood pouring out of his nose. He looks worried and a little confused, nowhere near the fucking terrified he should be.
It's fine, he'll figure it out once he's up there.
"We had someone go over the books, Mav, you thieving piece of shit. You've been skimming from the fucking top for years and writing it all off. I always did wonder how you kept your hog looking so fucking good with all of the gambling debts," Rue says, lowering the tailgate on the truck and pulling out the buckets, their contents slopping around.
Now Mav is looking a little more worried.
"Skimming from the top gets me excommunicated, not fucking strung up in some swamp. I had debts, I needed some fucking money and I knew there was no way the club would help me out with that. I saw what happened when Vic asked about getting extra."
King takes a step back from the tree to admire his work. It's good, should be strong enough to hold, even with all of the struggling. I smirk at him, waiting for the signal to get moving but the Prez takes one last moment to study his traitorous brother.
"We have the footage of you making a deal with the Demons. You might not have been a rat this whole time, that might have been the very fucking first, but you sold us out. Coulda gotten a lot of men killed. Fuck, you have my prospect in the fucking hospital getting open fucking heart surgery. I'd have put a bullet in your brain for that alone but the fact he's my blood? A Callaghan, set to take over this club someday? You gotta pay the price and it's gotta be the fucking Captain."
Now he's shaking.
Only the Callaghans know about the Captain, know exactly how we torture and kill the worst of our enemies but there's rumors about her aplenty. Everyone knows something evil happens out here in the swamp.