Reign of Wrath (Dirty Broken Savages #3)(26)

“Are you okay?” he asks, his voice pitched low to be soft and soothing or whatever. It actually does help.

He doesn’t press me for information or ask what I was dreaming about, and I like that. No one in this room is a stranger to nightmares. Probably not even Dog, who lived his life in an alley by a dumpster before he attached himself to me and became my unofficially adopted pet.

“Yes,” I tell Gage. “I’m okay.”

My voice comes out raspy and hoarse, and my answer probably isn’t even a little bit convincing, but I don’t want to get into it. I don’t want to try to describe the shit I saw in my dream, because then I’ll have to relive it all over again.

I just want to put it behind me, so I take a deep breath and try to let it all go.

“What time is it?” I ask. The light from the windows is all golden, but it doesn’t feel like I was out for that long. Probably because nightmares aren’t fucking restful at all.

“After four,” Gage replies. “You were out for most of the day.”

“Fuck.” I reach up and rub at my face. “I didn’t mean to sleep that long.”

“You needed it,” Priest says. He’s close enough that his lips tickle the skin of my neck, and he slides one hand down my side.

“I know, but we have shit to do,” I tell him. “I’m not going to fuck over Julian in my sleep.”

Knox snorts at that. “That’s what you have us for, little fox. We did research while you were knocked out.”

“We?” Ash asks, looking up at him with a raised eyebrow. “Is that your new nickname for me?”

Knox rolls his eyes. “Fine. Gage and Ash did research. I sharpened my knives. You know, just in case.”

It hits me once again that they’re on board with my plan and want to help me every step of the way. It’s like a mantra that repeats in my head, helping to beat back the pain and grief and nightmares.

I’m not alone.

I’m not alone.

I’m not alone.

“Sharpening knives definitely counts as a useful activity,” I tell Knox, who grins at me. Then I shift my attention to Gage and Ash. “What did you find out?”

“Some interesting things about our friend Julian,” Gage says, and the word friend is laced with so much hate that I can almost taste it. “His main business, on the illegal end anyway, is trafficking cocaine. Detroit’s a hot city for it, and Julian controls a decent-sized chunk of the traffic here.”

“Explains a lot about what he probably would have wanted to use our club for,” Ash says. “If we’d gone through with the whole ‘holy matrimony’ bit with Knox and his sister.”

“Fucking disgusting,” Knox mutters, pulling me closer like I’m some kind of balm against the thought of marrying Natalie Maduro. And honestly, I’m fine with that. I hated the thought of him being with that witch even more than he did.

“I’m just saying. If he’s dealing out cocaine to smaller gangs and the mid-level dealers, then the club would have been perfect for smuggling things through.”

“Or laundering money for him,” Priest chimes in. “It had a lot of benefits.”

“For him,” I say. “Not so many for you guys.”

But we’ve already been down the path of why they were willing to do it in the first place, and I know we don’t need to rehash it, so I move on. “What do we need to know now?” I ask them.

“Where he’s getting his supply,” Gage says. “Who he’s buying from. And who he’s selling to. If we can fuck up both sides of his business, that’ll make the whole thing grind to a halt.”

“How do we do that?” I’ve done some meddling in people’s businesses before, but I’ve never tried to bring a whole operation down like this. Usually I was just there to kill a guy and then move on.

“We have to follow his money,” Priest tells me, and I can still feel his lips moving against my skin. “It’s the best way to track it down. Money never lies, and it’ll help us learn more.”

“There’s another thing,” Ash adds. “Julian’s apparently been trying to level up.”

“As a drug dealer?” I ask, sitting up enough to see him better.

He shakes his head. “No, in the legit world. In society and politics. He’s been trying to kiss the asses of some of the wealthiest players in Detroit. People like Sebastian Raines, Alec Beckham, and Jeffery Warren.”

I frown, turning those names over in my head. I know them by reputation, just like anyone else who does business in Detroit. They’re wealthy as fuck, moving in the kinds of circles that do whatever they want because they have the money to make almost anything happen.

It’s interesting that Julian is trying to cozy up to people like that. Climbing the social ladder and gaining more power on the legit side of things makes sense in a way, but it begs the question of what he wants to do with it.

“I guess it gives us another way to bring him down,” I say with a little shrug. “That sister fucking murderer isn’t getting any higher up in society if I have anything to say about it.”

Knox laughs and drags me back down so he can kiss me firmly on the mouth. His eyes are bright with amusement and something that’s probably bloodlust. His shaggy hair is a mess, and he looks a little feral, but it works for him. Like it always does. Once again, I can only be glad that he didn’t have to end up marrying Natalie after all.