HIS BRANDED BRIDE: Steel Devils MC

by Sophia Gray

  “So, they didn’t kill him there. How do you know it was them who did it at all? Perhaps it was someone from the poker game.”

  “I didn’t. I told you. The cops told me that their investigation indicated it was the work of your motorcycle club.”

  “Right. Based on another similar incident. Do you know who that was?”

  “Yes. It was a man named Diaz Lohman. His wife said that he had borrowed money from the club to help them make ends meet after his injury on the job. They were short on cash and just needed a temporary fix until the disability pension came through. She said he had paid it back the week before he was killed.”

  “None of this makes sense.”

  “There is something else, too. When I was in your office looking around. I pulled my file from the cabinet and saw that there was a file in there on my father as well. Are all of those employee files?”

  “Yes, they are, but employment spans a lot of territory with the MC. It’s not necessarily working for the casino. Could be a groundskeeper at a property we maintain, an informant that we pay off, even just someone who walks a member’s dogs when he’s away on business. Your father is in there?”

  “Yes. I need to know what is in that file.”

  “I know every employee there. I don’t know how I would have missed your father considering his death. I don’t know how I would have missed that he was your father.”

  “It’s not a hard fact to miss. My mother was pregnant with me when he left. She didn’t put him on my birth certificate and gave me her maiden name rather than his last name. So, no reason for you to associate our very different last names with one another.”

  “Okay. I suppose that makes sense. God, this is a lot to sort out. I need to talk to some of the members about it, but now I’m not sure who I can trust. Talking to the wrong ones could just raise more trouble. I don’t want to tip them off that I know anything about anything until the time is right to take action. I can’t risk giving whoever these people are the upper hand.

  “I don’t know either. I’m not exactly skilled in your sort of lifestyle.”

  “Not something we can sort out tonight. Let’s sleep on it. In the morning, we’ll go pull your father’s file. We will look to see if there is one on the other guy too. Then I’ll start looking into things a little closer. It’ll help knowing what I’m looking for instead of just scratching my head over odd things that are happening around me. Perhaps with some more detail, things will begin to fall into place and make a lot more sense.

  “I just really want whoever killed my father to pay for it, D.”

  “And they will, Janessa. There is just one thing. I can’t let you harm this MC. If there are people in my club who are killing innocent people for whatever reasons, I won’t stand for it and I will deal with it, but no police. This stays internal. Tell me about this contact on the outside and what he knows.”

  “D, I can’t.”

  “What do you mean you can’t?”

  “He has helped me when no one else would and I can’t put him in danger. I can’t tell you anything about him other than he doesn’t have enough to do anything to you, and if that changes, it won’t be because of me. I’ve not seen the drug related side of your operation other than the petty dealing the girls do, and he is already well aware of that. It’s of no interest to him. He is looking to bring down much bigger transactions.”

  “As long as he minds his own business from here on out, he won’t be in any danger from me. As far as bigger transactions, he’ll be hard pressed to trace any of those back to me or this club. You know, if there were any to begin with.”

  “Maybe his safety isn’t in question, but you can’t say right now who might be involved. If the wrong people know his name, you can’t protect him.”

  D scowled at me. He was smart. He might not like not knowing who was on his tail, but he knew I was right. After a few moments he looked up at me again

  “I can’t let anyone harm this club, Janessa. You don’t have to give me his name but tell me what he is after. Tell me what I need to cover to protect the club while we find out who did this to your father. It’s a tradeoff, tit for tat. You help me and I’ll help you.”

  “Okay. That seems fair enough. He’s a DEA agent. He doesn’t care about anything but the larger drug trafficking.”

  “What does he know about it already?”

  “I don’t really know. He just told me he would help me if I helped him. He didn’t tell me what he knew, only that I was to give him any information I could come by regarding your drug trade. The deal was never that I would probe into that heavily. I’m not a paid informant or anything like that. He just told me that he would help me as long as I fed him any information that I might happen to become privy to while I was here.”

  “And what have you given him?”

  “Nothing so far. He knows about the deaths of Jack Knife and Ringo. He already knew about the party favors here at the club before I even came here, but he didn’t care about that. He said you were into trafficking big time. That is what he wanted me to gather any intel I could find about.”

  “But you found nothing.”

  “No. I’ve been focusing on my father’s death. I haven’t really come across anyone who talked about the drugs. Other than just the few guests that have requested that I source drugs to them, no one has even mentioned them to me. Certainly the members of the club haven’t.”

  “Good. At least they are doing something right by not running off at the mouth about club business. Alright. There isn’t a lot we can do about this tonight. Let’s get some sleep and we will sit down in the morning and talk about what we need to do.”

  “Sounds good enough.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  I followed D up the stairs to his bedroom. Like the rest of the house, it was massive and cold. The oversize four-poster bed was beautiful, but somehow didn’t look comfortable. Much to my surprise, it was very much so as I got undressed and snuggled in beside him. He didn’t try to make love to me, instead just kissed me on the cheek and rolled over to go to sleep. I was surprised to find I felt disappointed. Was he just stressed about all that was going on, or was it an indication that he now knew what I was about and that part of us would now be over?

  I tossed and turned a bit before finally settling beneath the covers and drifting off to sleep. When the morning came, I awoke to find D already out of bed and dressed. He was pacing the hallway near the bedroom door and talking to someone on the phone. I could only make out bits and pieces of the conversation.

  “I know. I can’t waste time on this, and you can’t bring anyone else in on it. You are the only one I feel one hundred percent confident that I can trust. Dig and dig deep. Get back to me as soon as you can.”

  I pretended to still be asleep when he came back in, unsure of what I should say after last night’s conversation. He surprised me by sitting on the edge of the bed and smoothing my hair lightly.

  “Wake up, Janessa. We need to get to the casino.”

  I rolled over and looked at him, noting again how gorgeous he was. I wanted him, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen, not now. Maybe not ever again. There was a certain sadness that came with that thought, a sadness I tried to ignore. Nodding at him, I climbed out of bed and got dressed.

  “I laid a clean toothbrush out on the bathroom counter for you. There are plenty of toiletries in the cabinets and on the counter for various uses. Take whatever you need.”

  “Thanks. I’ll hurry as best I can. I just need to freshen up a bit before we go.”

  “Okay. I’ll wait for you downstairs. I can knock out a few more phone calls while I wait.”

  I hated that I wouldn’t be within earshot for those, as I might learn even more than I had already. I let out a huge sigh as he left me alone to finish getting ready for the casino. Fifteen minutes later and we were on the way. D looked incredibly agitated so I refrained from talking to him. No doubt whatever phone conversations he had shared
weren’t ones that had set well with him. When we arrived at the casino, he made a beeline toward his office with me in tow. We went directly to the filing cabinet and pulled my father’s file. D spread it out across his desk to look at.

  “It’s not an employee file.”

  “It looks like one.”

  “Yes, it does. It looks like he was hired to do day labor for the casino.”

  “Yes. You don’t consider that employment?”

  “No. He never worked here. Hold on. I’ll show you.”

  D reached into the filing cabinet and pulled another file, spreading it out alongside my father’s. He looked over at me and waved his hand across it for me to look.

  “See anything odd?”

  I looked at the two files closely. It took a moment, but it quickly became clear what he was talking about. Other than the name and address, the information for both men was identical. I looked at him with a puzzled expression, understanding what I was seeing but not sure why it existed.

  “They are fake employment files?”

  “Yes. That is exactly what they are.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would you have fake employment files on the two men?”

  “Because someone in this organization is trying to cover their tracks. They set up fake employment folders and I’m guessing fake withdrawal entries for cash day labor. It explains some of the missing money.”

  “How did you know that my father’s was fake so quickly, before looking at the other one?”

  “Because I recognize the address used on the form. It’s for an empty building down by the waterfront where day laborers used to congregate in hopes of picking up odd jobs.”

  “Why not just use the men’s real addresses?”

  “The guy I bought the casino from, this was his system. He hid funds by ‘hiring’ fake day labor and paying them cash at the end of the day. Not uncommon in this business, and it hides a long list of activities that are best not traceable. There was a stack of partially filled out ones left behind. Besides, using their real addresses is too traceable. There might be a hundred people by the same name in this town, but narrow it down to an actual address and someone could visit them and ask questions.”

  “Of course. The forms. Let me guess, these are those same ones?”

  “Yep. Someone employed the old method for handing out employee loans.”

  “Who all can do that?”

  “A number of people are set to withdraw funds for day labor, but this is a nail in the coffin. I just need to find out who made these particular two withdrawals.”

  “I don’t mean to be thick, but I still don’t think I completely understand. Why would they do it this way?”

  “Simple. They loaned the money to the two men, but logged it as day labor pay instead of a loan. So, when the money was paid back, there was no need to return it. You aren’t going to get day labor pay back. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. The old casino owner did it to divert the money to things he didn’t want on the books. Someone now is using the system to divert money to themselves, I would assume.”

  “Does that explain all of your missing money?”

  “No. If you hadn’t brought this up, I would have most likely never caught it. I trust these guys and it’s not unusual for them to hire actual day laborers to take care of things like property care, plumbing, things like that. There is no reason for me to miss money that is showing up on the books as paid out to laborers. I’m guessing that there are more of these in that file cabinet and I’m going to find them all. Then the question is going to be whether anyone else died and why. If no one else did, then why those two?”

  “The other missing money, it isn’t accounted for in this manner?”

  “No. It has just been taken. I’m not really even sure how. It is just missing.”

  “Why account for only part of what was taken?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe more than one person and one isn’t as smart as the other? Perhaps someone trying to tip me off that something is amiss. It could even be that someone took it for some legitimate club business and just never got the opportunity to account for it to me or Simon.”

  “Someone like Jack Knife.”

  “Yes. It stands to reason that he was pulling money for something. It might have been legit, and he just hadn’t had a chance to clear it up with me or he could have been rogue, though I find that hard to believe, especially since someone wanted him out of the way very badly. Whoever that person was not only wanted him out of the picture, they wanted him to suffer. They did a very good job of making sure that he did.”

  “So, where does all this leave us?”

  “Follow the trail. I’m going to go through these files and see who else has ‘worked’ for cash and check it against the cash withdrawals to see who pulled the money. It should give us the answer to at least one portion of my missing money.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to get out there behind the bar and work.”

  “D, let me help you.”

  “No, Janessa. Go do your job.”

  I sensed that there was no use arguing with him about it. It was killing me to know who those withdrawals traced back to, but I would have to wait until he was ready to tell me. I tried to put it out of my mind as I went to work behind the bar and made small talk with the members and guests. The day seemed like it crawled by, and I grew antsier by the moment.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Janessa, my office. Now.”

  I looked up toward the sound of D’s voice and then over toward Knuckles. He grimaced and nodded toward me to go. Walking out the swing gate on one side of the bar, I made my way hurriedly to D’s office and stepped inside, closing the door behind me. I could tell he was frustrated just from the look on his face.

  “Did you find out?”

  “Yep, not that it does us any good.”

  He didn’t offer any more than that, even though I waited. I didn’t understand at first, but then it hit me.

  “Ringo?”

  “That’s right. I found ten incidents of faked employment documents. All were paid out by Ringo.”

  “Which leaves us nowhere. Ringo said he would be second in command, so we know he wasn’t running the show. So who was, or should I say is?”

  “I don’t know, but until I find out, everyone is suspect.”

  “I guess they would have to be.”

  “One more thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t want you at home alone.”

  “It’s the only home I have, D.”

  “Then you will stay with me until we sort this out.”

  “D, I can’t be a prisoner in your house.”

  “A prisoner? Is that how you see staying with me?”

  “You know what I mean, D.”

  “It’s not optional, Janessa. I’m taking you home to pack some things, and we are going to my house.”

  “I suppose it would just be a waste of my breath to continue protesting, huh? Fine.”

  “You are absolutely correct about that. Let’s go.”

  “My shift isn’t done. I can’t leave Knuckles hanging.”

  “Yes, it is. Knuckles will manage just fine without you. The way you run circles around him, he’ll probably be glad to have you not making him look bad for a while.”

  I sighed and followed him out of his office, shrugging toward Knuckles as I left. He shook his head in my direction with a scowl and went back to working the busy bar, now short one bartender. D and I made our way wordlessly to my house and went inside. He waited until I had my suitcase packed and then took it out to the car. Though there was a part of me that wasn’t very happy about being carted off to his house to be watched over, another part was very interested in how living with him, even temporarily, was going to pan out.

  “Come on, and we’ll get your things settled into one of the guest rooms,” he said as we arrived an hour or so later.

  My heart sank as
I realized he had no intention of sharing his bed with me again. Though D might very well want and need to know what was going on at his club and be willing to help me in my efforts to find who murdered my father in the process, he was now well aware that I had come here to take him down. A man like him would not take that lightly, nor would he just forget about it. I had to resign myself to the fact that if there had ever been anything developing between us, it now stood zero chance.