Gypsy King (Tin Gypsy, #1)(42)

Even though we’d been small compared to other clubs around the nation, we’d been powerful. Dad had wanted to grow and expand all the way through the Northwest. He would have done it had we not decided to disband. But his ambition had made us targets.

Made our families targets.

“Off the record?” I waited for her to nod before I continued. “Money came from drug protection. Sometimes we smuggled the drugs ourselves, but mostly we made sure mules made it to their destination safely. Kept trucks from getting hijacked from either the cops or another dealer.”

“What kind of drugs?”

“Meth mostly. We ran whatever the suppliers cooked in Canada. Some pot. Some cocaine and heroin. I don’t know what else there was, but does it matter?”

“No.” The disappointment in her eyes made my stomach fall. “I guess it doesn’t.”

For her, I wanted to be better. Do better. Why? It was the question I’d wrestled with since the beginning. But there was something about her, this woman, that made me want to make her proud. And I’d give all the money in my safe not to see that look on her face again.

“That was how we made most of our money,” I said. “It was easier years ago before border patrol started cracking down. We could slip through the cracks because Montana has a big border and they can’t watch it all.”

“So you worked for drug dealers?”

I nodded. “Among other things.”

“What other things? Be specific.”

“Protection. A business in town could hire us and we made sure they didn’t have any trouble. We made sure their competitors did. We had an underground fight circuit too. Got to be pretty big. We’d have fighters come from all over the Northwest. We’d organize it, some of us would fight, and the club would take a rake off all the bets. Made damn good money too.”

Had Emmett and I had our way against Dad, we’d still be running the fights. But Dad had insisted it all had to stop. He’d been right. It was better this way.

“It doesn’t make sense. If you made good money, why quit?”

“Can’t spend money in prison, Bryce. And turns out, we make damn good money on custom cars too.”

She studied my face. “That’s it?”

“That’s it. Sorry to disappoint you, but we closed down the club for noble reasons. It wasn’t worth putting members or their families in danger anymore.”

“In danger from whom?”

“Rival clubs. Old enemies. And my guess is one of those enemies is Amina’s murderer.”





Chapter Twelve





Bryce





The urge to pinch myself was overwhelming. Part of my brain was sure I’d fallen asleep on the rock-hard cot in the jail cell and this was all a dream. I couldn’t believe I was standing across from Dash in his high school’s empty parking lot as the sun faded from yellow to tangerine in the distance. The cool Montana evening breeze blew a strand of hair across Dash’s forehead. The green treetops that bordered the school rustled in the distance.

It was almost too serene. It was nearly too pretty to be real. But if this was a dream, I wasn’t ready to wake up.

Hungry for more, I stood still, watching as he sat propped against his motorcycle and told me about his former club.

This might all be a lie and another betrayal. While I was still livid at Dash for the past twenty-four hours, I wanted the story badly enough to listen and pretend that, as his eyes brightened, it was from honesty.

God, I was stupid. But did I leave? No. True or false, I licked up every one of his words. Questions popped into my head faster than a string of exploding Black Cat fireworks.

“So you think one of your club’s former enemies killed Amina?”

He nodded. “They’re the most likely. Someone is looking to take revenge against Dad. They waited until we let down our guard. Got comfortable. Took a chance to set him up for murder.”

“Who?”

“Probably another club.”

“But there is no such thing as the Tin Gypsies anymore. Unless that’s a lie.”

“No, the club is over.”

“Then without a club, you aren’t a threat anymore.”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Vengeance doesn’t care if we’re wearing patches or not. Someone wants it bad enough, they’ll wait.”

This was true. When revenge consumed people, it was amazing the incredible patience they could summon. If Draven was being set up, the person responsible was smart. They’d waited, like Dash assumed, until the Slaters were unprepared to face a threat.

“So you suspect it was another club. Which one?” I’d caught some names in my research. There were a surprising number of motorcycle gangs, or members at least, who were in Montana.

“Our biggest rivalry in recent years was with the Arrowhead Warriors. They weren’t as big as us but their president was and still is ambitious. Not afraid to pull a trigger. For a while, he made it a habit to go after our prospects, promising them money and power. He’d manipulate the weaker ones. He convinced younger guys to join his club instead of ours.”

“You probably didn’t want them anyway.”

He chuckled. “No skin off our nose to lose guys who weren’t loyal.”