Page 106 of Cole

“Get fucked,” Gage protested as Finn burst out laughing. “I’ll take the bus.”

Maddox straightened up and slapped Gage on the shoulder. “Don’t be so fragile. You’re man enough to cuddle into my back. I believe in you.”

I headed over to my bike and ran my hand along the handlebars. “You guys seen any Iron Vultures around? Teddy still underground? I like him for this.”

“Teddy, really? This is serious shit. Killing some random rich guy?” Gage protested.

“He’s not random. He’s The Lion, or maybe his father was, and now, he’s inherited the business.” I leaned against my bike and crossed my arms.

My men were taken aback for a moment.

“You telling me that we’ve been paying through the nose, fucking scraping and hustling every single month to pay that super rich motherfucker his crazy inflated interest? So he can go and pay for golf memberships and Wall Street hookers?”

I just nodded. The gravity of finally unmasking our mysterious loan shark was working through all of us.

Since we’d barely been men, we’d been laboring to pay that debt. All three of us, united in the shared loss of our futures, scrambling to keep the MC alive, to protect our brothers. I’d never forgotten the feeling of Finn’s dad’s blood drying on my hands. The cost of crossing The Lion. And now, he was dead.

His father wouldn’t be coming after us. He’d passed a few years before, my lawyer had told me.

We didn’t have to pay the debt anymore. Whoever had killed Grant Elwick had ended up doing the Hounds a fucking favor, until they’d tried to frame me for it, that was.

Maddox yawned, and it dawned on me how tired my men were. It had been a long twenty-four hours, and I’d slept at least eight of them on the hard bench in my cell. My men hadn’t.

“You guys need to take your romantic ride, and go and get some shut-eye.”

“We’ll come with you back to The Clutch.”

“No. We all need some shut-eye. That’s not a request. I appreciate you all working hard to figure this out, and keeping the lights on… but I need you sharp. Whoever is behind all of this is working on the next step, whatever that is. We need to be ready.”

Gage snorted. “You could try to look like you care if it ends up with you in jail, or in the ground⁠—”

“I do care. I don’t want to die, and I don’t want to end up like my father. I want to change our lives, and have something real. I want to make the MC into something real, something respectable. Without the debt, we don’t need to do shit that could get us killed anymore.”

Maddox watched me with a thoughtful expression, like he was trying to see right into my head.

“You love her, don’t you? You really love her.”

My eyes cut to him. I saw in his gaze that he had me figured out. My sudden optimism was pretty fucking obvious when looked at through the lens of the most powerful driver in the world.

Love.

“Shit, seriously?” Gage muttered and then laughed incredulously. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

“Yeah, well. It’s here. Get used to it. Go home, get some sleep. Then come and meet me at The Clutch and let’s figure this out.”

“Isabelle played us the recording from the night of the shipyard. You’re not going to want to hear this, but we recognized the voice.”

Tension gathered in my gut.

“Who?”

Gage swallowed hard, and then looked disappointed when he spoke. “Errol. It was Errol.”

Errol. My father’s right-hand man. His best friend. Travis’ father.

Marcus’ godfather.

The mole.