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“To take over North Quay?” I wiped my eyes, smearing my makeup. “Get out from under your rule?”
He nodded. “Over the last few months, there have been attacks on my businesses. My warehouses raided by cops with anonymous tips. My trucks run off the road. A massive shipment that never got to the customer. It just disappeared. It’s been costing me money and trust like you wouldn’t believe, Angel, and the distrust it’s brewing among my guys is worse.”
“Why are your guys looking at each other?”
“The locations of my warehouses are a secret I’ve kept for five years. Suddenly they’re blown. The routes too. I randomly change them to stop this from happening, and again it’s worked for five years—”
“Until now,” I finished. “You have a rat.”
“That’s what my boys are thinking, but I’m not sure it’s that simple.”
I sat up, leaning over the table. “Why not?”
“Because it’s not just me. Shit’s been going wrong for Genny, Liam, and Bane too. We kept our businesses separate, so a rat in my crew wouldn’t know anything that affects them too. That’s not it, or that’s not only it. If we all have a rat problem, for this to go down at the same time, someone must’ve kicked it off. Approached them.”
I bobbed along, putting the pieces together. “And this doesn’t truly stop until you find the one pulling their strings.”
He tapped his nose. “You are an educated bum.”
The reply got him a swat across the arm. “So what does that mean for the night you were attacked?”
“You gotta understand, Kenzie. Decades ago, when my parents brought Cinco under their fist, they had trouble from leaders who wouldn’t go down easy. By the time the second generation took over, those guys had been put down. My boys know the score. They know who is in charge. I’ve been working with them for half a decade, if I thought a single one of them would go behind my back...”
He didn’t need to finish the sentence. Obviously, if Sunny suspected a rat, they would’ve been taken care of with the ruthless efficiency that ended Kingston.
“Most of those guys I trust with my life. I decided not to get loud and violent to flush out the rat. Torturing friends tends to put a kink in the relationship.” He raised his arms like who knew? “Instead, I had them watched. My right-hand men. Everywhere they went. Everyone they talked to.
“Thatcher clocked multiple calls from one of my guys, Xander, to the number for the club, Laser. Before it opened. A little bit of digging and Thatcher turned up the owner was busted for bootlegging in another state,” he said. “That wasn’t suspicious on its own. I didn’t have proof he was resorting to his old ways, or that Xander was trying to start up a side business. Something my guys are forbidden to do. All rackets run through me. All the cash ends up in my pocket first,” he said, voice hard.
I shivered. That was the first Sunny sounded like what he was, a gang leader.
“I went to the club that night to find out.”
“Xander knew you were coming.”
He shook his head. “He couldn’t have, Kenzie. That’s what I’m saying. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. Not even Thatcher. That’s why I rolled out of here without guards or backup. No one knew I would be at Laser that night, and with it packed for the club opening, I’d get lost in the crowd. It gave me the chance to scope out the place and find out if it was a front.”
“Was it?”
Another headshake. “I never got that far. I was in the VIP room, like I said. The drinks were flowing, next thing I know I’m waking up next to you.”
“I get it. Drugging you, getting you out unseen, dumping you. How did the rat pull that together so fast when he didn’t know you’d be there?”
Sunny tapped his nose and pointed at me. Got it in one.
I chewed my lip, thinking. “What about the owner? Maybe he spotted you, or his bouncers did. He could’ve called Xander saying he feared you were onto them, and Xander ordered him to put something in the bartender’s next round, then he’d send someone to take care of the rest.”
“If he did, there’s a lot more going on here than bootlegging, and I need to find out what.” Sunny leaned in. “That’s where you come in.”
“Me?”
“Right now, the only people I know for certain don’t want me dead, are you and Sienna. Fuck knows, you could’ve left me to bleed into my lungs if that was the case. I need people I trust around me right now.” Flinty silver bore into me. “Someone’s coming after my family. Someone’s coming after me, and they almost succeeded. Kenzie, if you help me find out who, I’ll give you anything you ask.”
