Shattered Dreams (Boys of Bellerose, #3)(65)
“Now?” Billie squeaked, wriggling free of Rhett’s possessive grip.
Angelo shrugged. “Seize the day, Bella. Come on.” He extended a hand, and she took it without hesitation. Their kiss at the club last night had really changed things between them. Jealousy burned in my chest, but the gaping chasm between Billie and I was entirely my own fault.
Just as they started to walk away, my gaze caught on a tattoo on the back of Angelo’s arm. Frowning, I pulled out the empty coke baggie from the bathroom to compare the symbol.
Sure enough, it was the same scorpion in a spider web.
“What the fuck?” I muttered to myself.
“Hitting the hard shit, Gray?” Jace asked with a pointed look at the bag in my hand.
I shrugged because, in the grand scheme of things, none of us really considered coke to be hard shit anymore. “Hey, does this logo look familiar?” I showed him the bag.
Jace wrinkled his nose, thinking. “Maybe? I dunno; I don’t pay much attention when I’m racking up lines. Rhett might know.”
Our party-boy guitarist glanced up from the phone in his hand, then peered at the bag. “Dunno. Actually, it does seem similar to what I got in Dublin. Lemme check.” He patted down his pockets and muttered a curse. “I’m all out. Hang on. Kristie! Come here!” He beckoned over one of the girls in our road crew who’d been on the original tour.
Kristie hurried over with an eager-to-please look on her face. When Rhett asked if she had any coke leftover from Dublin, she produced an almost empty bag from her bra.
“Hah! Knew it.” He tossed the bag to me. “Same.”
Jace arched a brow with curiosity. “Something we need to know, Gray?”
I frowned down at the two identical logos in my hand. “Maybe. Probably. I’ll let you know when I have something more than a hunch, though.” I tucked both bags into my pocket. “You guys going to party?” I nodded toward Vee, who was hanging out nearby while chatting to one of the groupie girls. “She probably needs someone to keep an eye on her if you hit the clubs.”
Jace and Rhett exchanged a look, then Rhett shook his head. “I’m heading to the hotel; I’ll take Vee.”
“Guess it’s just the Jace show tonight, then,” our lead singer said with a forced grin. “Unless you’re joining me, Gray?”
“Not tonight,” I replied, then left them to it. I wanted to take a shower and change, but I also had a nagging feeling that I needed to investigate this link between the coke bags and Angelo’s tattoo.
In the dressing room, I took my sweet-ass time showering—drumming was hot work, even in winter and the stage lights were scorching—then got dressed into clean clothes. By the time I exited the dressing room, most of the crew were busy with packing up all our shit. The tour schedule they’d forced us into was insanely tight, so our guys were being pushed to their limit to make sure all the equipment got packed, moved, and delivered to the next country and city in time.
Dressed in my usual black-on-black clothing, I slipped into the shadows to poke around. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the same drugs were being sold at our Dublin and Edinburgh concerts. Or that Angelo mysteriously had the same design tattooed on his arm. It wasn’t the official Ricci family symbol; I knew that one well. But it was clearly connected to an arm of their operation. An arm that had followed us to Europe… Something in my gut told me to snoop around a bit, so that’s what I did.
An hour later, though, the whole venue was nearly cleared, and I was starting to think I was just being paranoid because I needed a project to keep my mind off Billie and my crushing guilt. With a sigh, I pushed open the fire escape door and headed out onto the loading docks. I’d shot a message to my driver to meet me around back, and he said he’d be there in five.
Everything was quiet when I got out there, but one of our equipment trucks stood waiting at the dock with the trailer door rolled up. A couple of “Bellerose Grassroots Tour” equipment cases sat nearby, waiting to be loaded, but no crew were around that I could see. Which was weird. Our security was tight enough that nothing, not even equipment, should be left unattended. Ever.
Moving closer, I looked around. Surely there was someone here.
No one appeared, and the dock remained silent, causing a thread of unease to curl around my chest. Needing to satisfy my own suspicious mind, I unlatched the closest equipment case and lifted the lid.
“Shit,” I muttered, staring down at the massive quantity of cocaine, all packaged up in—I assumed—one-gram bags. All marked with the same logo.
Now it was starting to make sense. With a frustrated sigh, I boosted myself into the truck to see just how bad things really were. There were several more cases of drugs, not all coke, and the other cases were full of cash. Not nice, neat stacks, either. Nope, this cash was dirty, crumpled, rolled… it was the cash of drug deals.
“Goddamn it,” I said out loud, tucking my phone into my pocket after taking multiple pictures as evidence. Now I was surer than ever someone had wandered off the job, but they’d be back any second. I didn’t need to get caught up in this mess, so I jumped out of the truck and pretended to mind my own fucking business as I exited the loading dock.
I made it all of about ten paces outside in the dark when I stumbled across two rough-looking guys who were probably supposed to be guarding the truck. Instead, they were smoking a joint around the corner from the dock, and when I interrupted them, they panicked.