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“Huh?”
“I was telling her about our drive to Waco and how you’d mentioned the club being involved in shady stuff. She thought that meant you’d told me about the cartel. It was an honest mistake.”
“An honest mistake,” he repeated. Shaking his head, he grasped my hand and led me to the couch.
I moved away from him and sat down on the opposite end, as far away from him as I could get.
He raised his eyes. “You scared of me?”
“I—” I cleared my throat. “I don’t want to get distracted by you and forget we need to have this conversation.”
He laced his fingers together and leaned over so his forearms rested on his thighs. “You’re not supposed to know about that kind of shit.”
“Yeah, I know. Rach made that very clear.” I blinked. “Oh my God…Tavy doesn’t know, does she?”
“No, she doesn’t,” he said.
“If she’d known, she would’ve told me,” I said, thinking aloud.
“Which is why she doesn’t know. Among other reasons.”
“What other reasons?”
“It’s in the past. We’re not involved with the cartel anymore.”
“How far in the past?” I asked warily. “Were you guys doing business with the cartel?”
“Fuck,” he said again.
“Fuck like this is going to be hard to explain or fuck, I can’t explain?”
“I can’t explain, because it's club business, but I also know you won’t let this go.”
I waited patiently, my heartbeat thudding in my ears like a drum.
“First thing’s first—whatever I say, you cannot repeat it. Not to Tavy, not even to another Old Lady. You’re not supposed to know shit. Okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered.
“Waco’s been a hotbed of kidnappings. Human trafficking. Women…children…the club was attempting to shut it down. That’s why Raze, Bones, Viper, Kelp and I joined the chapter down here. Colt needed more manpower after it went sideways.”
He scrutinized me for a moment, gauging how I was taking the news.
Nausea swam in my belly and the back of my neck felt hot. “Did you win?”
“No. We didn’t win. You don’t win with the cartel. You just live long enough to keep them at bay, and if you’re really lucky, protect the people you love. Anyway, we’ve been told to stay out of it. To walk away. So we did, and now we’re not involved.”
My brain turned over the cruel reality of what he’d said as silence loomed between us.
Smoke broke the tension, determination in his voice. “Logan, you’ve heard enough now. Just know that we aren’t involved anymore. I need you to trust me on that.”
I rubbed my third eye. “And you were trying to stop it…the human trafficking?”
“We were,” he clipped. “We lost good men trying. But like I said, it’s out of the club’s hands and now we’re trying to clean up Waco in other ways.”
“By opening a clinic and a half-way house,” I said in realization.
“We’ve done a lot of bad shit to make money and provide for our families. Helping the community won’t wipe our souls clean.”
