Their Queenpin (The Ridge MC #6)

Chapter 3Graff

Chapter Three

Graff

I had an earbud in as Wilde called church to order. Miracle of Sound crooned in my ear—not something most would recognize, but the lyrics to “Only Us” were super poignant. As far as I was concerned, this Mafia world surrounding what we were starting to find could definitely burn.

Leaving . . . only us.

Sas.

Rafe—because Adelina needed him as much as he needed her.

Adelina.

And me.

We had just started clicking when the world came down around us.

Wilde and Teller sat across from each other at the table, and I moved from the windowsill to sit two chairs down from our road captain. My hand moved as I dragged a pen over a small Parisi Hotel–branded notepad.

The connection between my fingers, the pen, the paper, and an abstract image of Sas’s arrest eased the pressure off my chest, pushing it from my mind. I wanted to move, to paint this on the side of a building rather than on this tiny piece of paper. Perhaps I should brand the side of the Parisi Hotel as a giant fuck you to Adelina’s asshole father.

Although, I didn’t have the time or space when church was in order.

The vibe in the room buzzed so loudly it nearly drowned out my music. We all needed action. To solve this mess. But we were stuck, huddled down without our bikes and away from our territory.

Wilde, after allowing Adelina into church, looked at the screen where the video conference played out. He’d already given the Warden and Angel the low-down before Adelina and Rafe arrived.

So, he picked right up where he left off, asking Ward, “We got any options?”

The club hacker looked off to the right, the blue light from his wall of computer screens casting a ghostly hue across his face. “I’m working on the police records now, but there’s nothing for Simeon Tate yet. Las Vegas Metro PD website says they have ten days to release the arrest report, so I’m working on getting past their firewalls. Someone said drugs?”

Rafe chimed in. “Massimo said the police found five kilos of coke on Sas’s bike.”

“Why would Sas bring coke to Vegas?” Adelina’s brows drew together.

Her uncle rested a hand on her shoulder. “I doubt he did, tesoro.”

They had to allow Rafe in church, because they’d made him an officer, but I could read Wilde’s disdain for the whole situation. Prez, however, didn’t know Rafe like I did. For Adelina, he was the equivalent of her Belgian Malinois. He would lay down his life to protect that little woman without question. But he would be a good soldier for the MC too.

All that earned him an A plus in my book.

“Sas isn’t the most predictable, but Rafe’s right. That’s stupid even for him,” mused Wilde.

“Think there’s any on our other rides?” Teller scratched the scruff at his jawline. “They were searching them when we left.”

I kept sketching—jagged lines showing the lights flashing on the tops of the cop cars.

“Five kilos sounds too big to fit in his bags.” Adelina gathered the train of her dress and tossed it over the side of the chair, leaning forward.

Wilde stiffened, then forced himself to recline in his chair, holding his hands in a block shape. “One is only the size of an eight-inch two-by-four.”

“Oh.” Our princess’s eyebrows bunched together, and her eyes shifted as though she calculated something in her head.

“They’d fit,” I assured her from prior experience.

She shot me a small, all-business smile of thanks.

Wilde turned back to the laptop. “Angel, Sas needs legal help. Your ol’ lady on the way?”

The VP in our Park Ridge chapter nodded. “Lanie’s loading up her Mini now and we’ll be on the road within the hour.”

Adelina clasped her hands on the table. “You’re saying we have to wait four hours for this lawyer to come? That’s crap. I could?—”

“No.” Prez swiveled in the chair to pin her with his ice-cold glare, one brow quirked.

I smiled while she waited for him to continue without moving a muscle. Damn, Wilde was someone I wouldn’t want to go toe-to-toe with, but he didn’t seem to shake Adelina. Though I understood his mistrust for her, she, above anyone else, deserved to be part of the solution.

“ This lawyer, ” growled Wilde after a few beats, “is our best defense for Sas.”

“What’s her resume? My father has good lawyers, but he’ll...” Adelina snapped her lips shut, hanging her head. Her shoulders rose and fell with deep, frustrated breaths. The conclusion she likely drew—the same thing we all worried about—thickened the air.

“My Lanie had the best record in the LA DA’s office,” Angel answered her question at the same time his ol’ lady appeared at his side.

“Maddie?” Adelina squinted at the screen.

“That’s my sister,” Lanie said, leaning closer to the camera. “You must be Adelina?”

“What gave it away?” She indicated her wedding dress, then planted her elbows on the table again.

I scanned the faces in the room, hearing the TV blaring from the other side of the door, then my hand stopped mid-sketch. I hovered the pen over the scribbles representing the cops around our bikes and took a mental inventory of everything and everyone I remembered and had sketched. Everyone except the Rojas brothers had been accounted for.

“We should see Sas and get the contact info for Cazador Rojas,” I suggested.

If the guys heard, they didn’t show it.

Adelina had her hands on the table, drumming her freshly manicured nails. I had seen her pace when she became stressed, needing to move like I did. Like most of my brothers in the MC. It may have been the reason she seemed to fit so tightly with us.

She took a step back and groaned, kicking her voluminous skirt out of the way. I wondered if she still had the vibrator inside her pussy—the one I had placed there myself. Or had she or Rafe taken it out?

“Did anyone see Sas pack coke into his bags?” asked Rafe, a scowl deepening on his face like he still questioned it even after reassuring Adelina. “It doesn’t make sense that he would bring it here when we’d discussed moving it to Park Ridge to lace the marijuana.”

The silence in the room had me looking up from my sketch to find all eyes on me.

I hadn’t been babysitting Sas before we left. In fact, I’d been rushing to get myself cleaned up and out the door after that amazing morning fuck with Adelina.

“He wasn’t carrying,” I said definitively. “Sas may be wound tight, but he’s not stupid. He wouldn’t carry that much on his bike. Maybe one kilo, but not five.”

“Fine,” said Wilde. “Let’s assume someone’s setting him up. How did Massimo know this was going down?”

I had my lips pursed together, thinking just that.

“I don’t know,” murmured Rafe.

“Horseshit,” accused Angel from the video.

Wilde held up his hand. “What do you know, Rafe?”

The Marine, because that once-and-always shit about being a Marine, shook his head. “My brother doesn’t cross information between different areas of the business. So, I only have suspicions.”

A muscle jumped in Wilde’s jawline, just above his rose tat. “Then what the fuck do you suspect?”

“I assume”—Rafe spread his hands, palms up—“he has cops inside LVMPD.”

“Which is how he knew they were coming,” Wilde stated his conclusion. “So much for partners.”

“Like I said, my brother doesn’t cross business lines. At all.” Rafe returned to his military stance.

“Why would Papà care about us?” asked Adelina, her words harsh. It cut off anyone yelling about Massimo further. “My father always has a plan. What does he want with Sas in jail, though?” She seemed to only be asking herself.

Rafe looked like he was choking on a secret. Eventually, he said in a tone that sounded chagrinned, “Massimo told me he wants us to continue with the operation to intercept the shipment.”

Adelina’s eyes snapped up to him, accusingly.

But before she spat out anything, Wilde snapped, “Fuck no. We have other shit to deal with now.”

“I agree,” said Rafe, “but my brother has already decided we’re doing this. We won’t be able to get out of it.”

“We don’t answer to him any goddamn more than he answers to us,” argued Wilde. “And sure as fuck not after he got us into legal trouble. This had to be Parisi’s doing. He’s manipulating Sas the same way he used Cook to worm his way into church at Bou’s shop.”

“The coke had to be planted,” I muttered, and Adelina grimaced.

“You think my father did it?” she asked, glancing from me over her shoulder to Rafe.

He gave a one-sided shrug.

We needed him to say something more about this. Rafe knew Massimo the best and was acting as the liaison between the Mafia and us. However, I’d seen the shift in the man in the last couple hours. He was truly becoming one of us, like Adelina was. And I trusted him. More with Adelina’s life than my own, but the rest would follow.

“Put words to that shrug, brother,” I said to encourage him. He had a shit ton of knowledge from growing up around this family and then skills from his training in the military. He had to get his head and heart in the fucking game.

“I don’t put anything past Massimo,” he answered, teeth clenched. “But?—”

“But nothin’. Who the fuck else?” asked Wilde.

“Cartel?” I asked. El Tigre from the Medellín Cartel had it in for us and had already sent the Rojas brothers as a threat. But surely, they wouldn’t risk our mission with stealing the diamonds from the Barranquilla Cartel.

Prez shook his head. “They wouldn’t bring the cops into it. They would come at us with full force like they did when we met in Bou’s shop. It would be a bloodbath.”

“Someone has to tell the pigs something,” I argued.

The Prez had his lips pinched together, thinking.

So, I hit Rafe up again. “What kind of connections does Massimo have to the police?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Truly.”

“What if it was the police?” asked Adelina. “Could they somehow be in on it? Like my father has something on them, so he used them to... what?”

Wilde chewed on his thumbnail, his eyes distant and working out possibilities. “Why would Don Parisi go to those lengths when he had the opportunity to take us all out at the rehearsal dinner?”

“Good point.” Rafe shifted his weight. “Planting drugs doesn’t sound like my brother. He favors more direct methods to get his message across.”

“No shit,” Wilde drawled, seeming to sink deeper into his internal thoughts.

They were right. Don Parisi had no good reason to work that hard when he had the Prez and Sas in a vulnerable situation. And the last time, they just had an old-fashioned shootout to prove the point. However, out of all our leadership, why take out Sas?

Silence settled over the room and those on the screen until Prez flashed his eyes around at those of us gathered. “That deal we made, though... it allowed Parisi’s men to transport arms across the border.”

I sucked in a breath. “To a cartel.”

“Anyone know which one?” Adelina asked.

Everyone looked at her then abruptly turned to face the screen.

Ward pecked away on his keyboard. “On it.”

We all waited for something. Anything.

Finally, Prez snapped his gaze over to the computer screen. “Melanie, get your ass up here now. We need you to go in and talk to the veep.” He planted his hands on the table, pushing himself up from the chair. “Ward?”

“Yeah, Prez?” asked the hacker without looking at the camera.

“Text me if you find something.” Wilde slammed the laptop lid shut.

Standing, Adelina grabbed her train and marched for the exit, Rafe immediately on her heels.

I pushed back my chair, intent on following her too.

Wilde held up his hand to me and pointed me back into my seat. “Hey,” he barked at Adelina and waited for her to turn. “Where you goin’?”

She pinned the Prez with her dark stare. One that screamed, This is my world you’ve come to play in, little man. But she didn’t say those words.

Throwing the door open, she answered, “To figure out how the fuck to get my husband out of jail.”

My eyes fell to where her ass was wrapped in the layers of fabric. As she left, I recalled the vibrator and wondered how the hell she was getting that thing out.