“And yet if anyone finds out what they’re up to, they could target my boys. Not to mention they’d be held liable if they were caught doing illegal shit.And,” we all grimaced as his voice continued to get louder as he spoke, “no one has pointed out what would happen once Rue finds out we’ve roped two teenagers into our fucking messes.Herteenagers at that.”
“Messes?” Flir asked, looking horrified. “Our missions aren’t messes.” There wasn’t really a more offensive thing to say to Flir than to imply anything he was involved with was a mess.
“And that’s why I didn’t suggest we use the teenagers,” Ruck said. He shot OD a look, which had our VP shutting his mouth even though it looked like he wanted to rip us all new assholes. “Flir, run us down the latest intel on The Collective.”
Flir nodded, then tapped at his laptop. “From a legal standpoint these guys are good, but not creative. Part of their money laundering is real estate purchases. Rather than hide out in abandoned warehouses like vagrants, they buy properties under an LLC.”
“So they’re…setting up shop in the suburbs?” Strike asked.
“No, I told you they’re clever. They buy commercial properties, or in some cases, apartment buildings. All in the shady parts of town. Apartment buildings work well, for one, they can house their guys, kinda like we do with the apartments.”
“More apartment buildings, means more civilians,” Drifter said miserably. “That’s a lot of potential for collateral damage. Are we sure Glitch is right?”
Flir smirked. “He’s right. Like I said, they’re unimaginative. Corner Stone Collective. Collective Property Ventures. TheCollective Family Investment Group. Every new property and account is listed under these names and more of the same.”
“Are you fucking serious?” I asked. “That’s…ridiculous. Did they really think no one would notice that?”
“If they have police involved in this shit, then they probably don’t care,” Ruck replied.
Flir nodded in agreement. “Nationwide there are hundreds of ‘Collective’ LLCs. And honestly, it works. Go to one real estate multi-level marketing website and you’ll see the absolutely ridiculous names people come up with. It’s like a competition between dorks for the worst LLC names.”
Ruck shook his head. “The assholes can’t help but advertise. It’s like they’re bragging to anyone who dares to look into them. I think most of what we’ve found is a complex tax evasion and money laundering scam. Pay imaginary employees through a legit business, write off the payroll, vehicles, everything. In essence, launder the drugs, counterfeit, and other money through all their LLCs multiple times to mask the trail. Who cares if you lose thirty to fifty percent to taxes when you have a literal money printer. By time they’re done selling the clean money to cartels, mafia, and other pieces of shit, they may only be keeping five to ten percent of what they printed, but it’s clean money. And at this volume, well worth it.”
“When the fuck did these guys get smart?” Relay asked.
“I think we’ve just scratched the surface,” Ruck muttered. “We’re going to find more as we go. Remember this has only been three factions of the entire operation. Carrick was involved in a little bit of everything, but he was bottom of the barrel. I’m guessing as we go up the ladder we’re going to find that each faction has their own piece of the overall pie they deal with.”
“Fuck,” I muttered. “This is going to end up being a shit show.”
Everyone nodded in agreement. “It’s taken some work to unravel it all,” Ruck said in a determined voice. “But now?” He grinned around the table at us all. “Now we know where they are.”
“We do?” I asked.
Ruck’s grin grew. “Yeah, we do. We start with these two factions. Take them out. And then we dismantle the whole fucking operation.”
Our families were the most important thing in all of this. But The Collective was a dangerous entity to this entire city, and it was possible it was spreading outside of Phoenix, or even Arizona. We were all eager to fuck them up. I glanced around the room and saw that everyone was wearing matching grins now. We were finally ready to make a real move.
CHAPTER 32
Bolo
“You sure you’re okay with this?” I asked, looking down at Devyn.
She smiled at me and nodded. “Honestly? Joining the dinners together means one less night out. That’s more than okay with me.”
I frowned, but bit my tongue. She was getting more and more tired as the pregnancy went on. She’d just hit nineteen weeks and most days she couldn’t make it to dinnertime without a nap. I didn’t know jack shit about pregnancy, but just judging by what Dev was going through it was tough.
Which was why when my mom called and asked if she could maybe talk to Hope, Devyn’s mom, about combining the dinners I’d been all for it. I wasn’t a stupid man though, and I’d run it by Devyn first.
There was some risk, of course. A family of seven, with all daughters, meeting a family of five with all sons was potentiallya disaster waiting to happen. The sisters meeting all my MC brothers would be more than a disaster—it would be a wave of potential pregnancies—so I was glad we were holding off on that for now. But I suspected our two moms were going to keep everyone in line tonight.
There was one more surprise waiting for Devyn inside, but this one I didn’t ruin. I opened the door to my parents’ house and let her go in first.
There was a soft chorus of ‘surprise!’ called out, mostly in female voices because my brothers were grumpy as fuck to be at a baby shower. It was obvious my parents hadn’t told them that they’d made this dinner into a shower as well.
At every doctor’s appointment, which was happening fairly frequently to keep an eye on Dev’s blood pressure, Dr. Natalie kept moving the goal post for the birth. When we first saw her, it was ‘we’re hoping to have this baby anywhere from thirty-eight to forty weeks’. Then it was ‘I’m hoping to get you to thirty-six weeks’. The last appointment had been a slightly strained smile as she said, “I’m still hoping for thirty-six but I’ll take thirty-four.”
I’d asked her why she kept saying that and she’d explained that with Dev’s blood pressure still going higher, and needing higher dosages of the medication to bring it down, we could be looking at pre-eclampsia later in the pregnancy. I’d made the mistake of looking that up later, even after Dr. Natalie had explained that it was hypertension with signs of damage in other organs, like the liver and kidneys.
