43. Dante

Chapter 43

Dante

“ H ere.” Razor slammed another glass of beer in front of me and sat back down. I started to protest, but Razor waved me off. “Nobody’s gonna sit in my clubhouse and talk business and not drink.”

I didn’t bother pointing out that this was my third beer or that I’d been here for over an hour—an hour I could have been spending with Camille. When I got there, Razor had insisted on feeding me first, then plying me with alcohol. We’d discussed some delivery dates and a few other points of business, but I sensed he was holding something back. I'd have to get it out of him later. I chugged down my drink and then stood up.

“Sorry to cut this short, but I really need to go,” I told him.

“Before you do, there’s one more thing I wanted to talk to you about,” Razor announced.

Shit. I fucking knew it.

I crossed my arms and waited for Razor to speak.

“We’ve been approached by some other sellers,” he finally admitted. “They’re offering us a better deal. You either need to up the amount or lower your price, or we’ll have to go with someone else.”

I stared at him in shock. “We had an agreement.”

“Things change,” Razor replied with a shrug, looking unapologetic. “Don’t take it personally. It’s business. We’ve got word of some competition on our end. Just far enough out of our territory that we can’t say someone is encroaching, but they're selling cheap enough that people are willing to travel the distance to get their fix.”

“The Serpents? Even after we fucked them up?”

“This is a different crew. They came out of nowhere, but they have the supply and the connections to make us look like a bunch of chumps.”

“Connections?”

“Someone big is backing them. We get wind of their location. We investigate. They’re in the wind, only to pop up again someplace else. We’ve barely gotten visuals of them. Just a couple of fuckers wearing a logo, some fucked up looking buck with weird antlers. Anyway, since we can’t track them down, we need to stay competitive. I know your story, why you do this, which is why I’m giving you a chance to match what they’re offering. If not, we’ll have to find a supplier who can.”

Fuck.

What I did had nothing to do with making money; it was all about keeping the kids at CU safe. The problem was ensuring my product was clean cost a hell of a lot more than simply buying the cheapest shit out there, which I was pretty sure was what this ‘new’ supplier would be offering.

“Let me see if I can pivot. Keep quality at a cheaper cost.”

Razor shrugged. “Fine, but you’ve only got a week, then we go forward with someone else.”

I left the clubhouse feeling conflicted.

Maybe this was a way out, a way to stop what I was doing. I've hated lying to Camille. I've hated that she'd feel utterly betrayed if she found out. If Razor moved forward with a new seller, then it was over. But if I let that happen, there would be no way to ensure the safety of the kids using the drugs on campus. There had been a handful of drug-related deaths since I started supplying the motorcycle club, but every indication was that those kids had bought their drugs outside of the Devil's Outcasts supply. How many kids would die if I gave up on making things safe for them, all because it was easier?

All because I wanted Camille more than anything else.

Any hope I'd been feeling vanished.

As I reached my bike, I checked my phone and saw a text from Camille.

Camille: Jane is at your house. What should I do?

Fuck. This day just kept getting worse. I tried calling Camille, but there was no answer. My heart thumped as I hopped on my bike.

The first thing I saw when I entered my house was Jane, slumped on the couch, her face streaked with tears. I didn’t even need to look at her glazed eyes to know she was high.

A half-prepared vegetarian lasagna sat on the kitchen countertop, but there was no sign of Camille. I felt sick, imagining her here, cooking for me only for Jane to show up.

I turned my attention back to Jane, trying my hardest to keep my voice even. “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is I’ve been waiting for you to get home, silly.” Jane smiled at me, then went to pull off her shirt. “I figured it was time I repaid you for everything you’ve done for me,” she purred. I grabbed her hands, stopping here.

"You know that’s never going to happen between us again.”

Her expression instantly changed to anger. She pushed me away and grabbed the TV remote and threw it.

“What have you taken, Jane?”

“Why do you care?” Jane screamed as she shoved to her feet and grabbed a book from the bookshelf. I dodged when she threw it. “No need for me now that you have your sweet little blond bitch to keep you happy. I told her everything. You should have seen the crushed look on her face when she found out that you’re a drug dealer.” Jane cackled like…well, like she was high on something. “She’s never going to want you near her again.”

Fuck. Anything but that. Was she lying? I stared back at her, trying to parse out how serious she was. She didn’t break my gaze, her pupils pinned but her gaze steady.

“If you loved her so much, you should’ve told her the truth a long time ago,” Jane snarled.

She was right.

This was my own fault for not being honest in the first place.

Ignoring Jane’s rambling, I grabbed my phone and tried calling Camille. No answer. I tried a few more times. Still no answer. I opened the app to track her phone, the one I'd replaced after she'd gotten her new phone. The one I'd given Kage and Ty access to after the debacle at Silas's dad's house. I stared at the little blue dot, confused. She was still in the house—or at least, her phone was. I raced into my bedroom. I found her phone on the ground, the screen cracked.

“Fuck,” I yelled, slamming my fist against the wall. It broke through the sheeting, leaving a gaping hole in the wall. I ignored the stinging pain surging through my hand and paced the room, warm blood dripping from my knuckles. Shit, this was bad. This was the worst possible outcome. There was no way in hell Camille was going to forgive me.

Ty

“Have you heard from Camille?”

Dante’s voice sounded desperate. Putting the phone on speaker, I tossed it on the table and glanced at Kage, who sat across from me. We'd already tracked her phone and thought she was still there, giving Dante hell.

"What do you mean? Her phone says she’s at your place.”

"Her phone’s here but she’s not.”

"Motherfucker," Kage said, slapping the table.

“She called us. Both me and Kage.”

“She’s pissed at all of us,” Kage snarled. “You should have told her about you selling drugs to Devil’s Outcasts weeks ago."

“She would’ve hated me for it,” Dante muttered.

“She hates you more finding out this way,” I snapped, my own anger flaring. “And now you’ve pushed her away from all of us.”

“We need to find her, and we need to find her now," Kage said. "I'll start by calling around—Simone, Bianca, maybe even her dad."

"I’ll check the lookout and a few other places she might be," Dante said.

“I’ve got somewhere I can check too,” I said.

After I ended the call, I headed to where it began for us here in Crimsonvale—the same place that had ended Kage's sister and started this whole fucking mess. I jogged along the path to the river, keeping an eye out for Camille. There was nobody around. The silence was deafening, the cool air sending a chill through my body. I imagined Ava’s spirit hovering over me, dripping wet and dead-eyed like she’d been when I'd pulled her from the water. But all I cared about was finding Camille. I needed to know she was okay.

I stopped suddenly, staring at the dirt track beneath me. There were footprints, small enough to be Camille’s. But what worried me was the second set of footprints, which were much larger. With the rain last night, I knew both sets of prints had to be recent. Was someone following her? I sped up, jogging through the thick scrub, calling out her name. Just as I was starting to lose hope, I spotted her ahead of me, sitting by the river.

Relief crashed through me as I took her in. She was sitting with her back to me, near the water’s edge, in the exact spot where I’d tried to resuscitate Ava. I walked toward her, feeling her pain. There was no worse feeling than that of betrayal. It’s how I’d felt when I realized what kind of family I really came from—and probably how I’d made Camille feel when I ended things with her so suddenly two years ago. Not for the first time, doubt rippled through me that I’d done the right thing in pushing her away, but I couldn’t think about that now.

I’d almost reached her when, from the reeds surrounding the river, a man emerged. How long had he been there? He was dressed in dark pants and a hooded top covering his face, and I watched in horror as he plunged a syringe into Camille’s neck. Her body went limp in his arms as he lifted her over his shoulder and took off.

“Hey! Stop! Put her the fuck down,” I yelled at him. He turned to face me, Camille's arms knocking against his back as she lay limply over his shoulder.

Adrenaline pumped through me as I raced after him. The guy was fast, even carrying Camille, but too bad for him I was faster. I gained on him quickly, then jumped on his back, tackling him and knocking her from his grip. Camille rolled sideways as I drew my fist back and slammed it into his jaw. His head spun to the side from the force of my blow, splitting his scalp open on a large rock on the side of the path. A gurgling sound escaped from his throat as blood seeped into the dirt around him. Within seconds, he was gone, staring up at me with lifeless eyes. I had never seen him before.

Well, shit. That didn’t go as planned. I had been hoping he’d stick around long enough for us to interrogate him, but the thick welts of blood pooling around his head said otherwise.

I wiped my hands on my pants, ignoring how hard they were shaking. I checked Camille’s pulse, fucking relieved when I felt it, thready as it was.

“Camille?” I said, gently shaking her. “Wake up, my sweet swan. I need you to look at me.”

She didn’t respond. I needed to get her help.

I raced back to her attacker, emptied his pockets, and found the syringe. I pocketed it, hoping it might help the hospital identify what she’d been shot up with since there was no sign of what he’d used. Pulling out my phone, I called Kage.

“I’ve found her,” I told him.

“Where?” Kage barked.

“By the river. Some guy attacked her. He’s dead. Send some of your guys to see if they can ID him while I take Camille to the hospital.”

“Hospital?”

“He injected her with something,” I gritted out. Anxiety ate at my stomach. “She’s unconscious but breathing. Look, I have to go. Get someone down here to take care of this guy now.”

I ended the call and shoved my phone back in my pocket, then scooped Camille into my arms. As I stepped over her attacker’s body, something caught my eye. It was a tattoo on the inside of his left wrist. I frowned, sure that I’d seen it somewhere before. I grabbed my phone from my pocket, snapped a photo, and then kept walking. All I could think about was how hard we’d fucked up. Dante, Kage, and me. We’d vowed to protect her, to keep her safe, and we failed.