36. Buh Bye

Chapter 36

Buh Bye

S abre

" Thunder and Chef are here," Grace said as she walked into the waiting room, where I'd been holding JR. "The nurse went over the instructions with me, so we're free to go whenever you're ready." She approached me with a mischievous smile on her face.

"What?" I asked her.

"There's just something about a handsome man holding his son that does something to a woman."

"Does this mean you're going to jump my bones later?" I teased. It was fun to play along, even though I wouldn't hold her to any of it. When this was all over, it wouldn't surprise me if we crashed hard.

"You can't say things like that in front of a child," she laughed.

"He's going to see and hear worse things as he grows up," I reminded her.

"I know, but he'll grow up around good men, and that trumps everything else." She kissed me. "The quicker we get this over with, the quicker we can get to bed."

I kissed JR's forehead and placed him in his car seat. Watching as he wiggled, I said, "Take care of your mama."

Grace's hand wrapped around my bicep, and I raised her fingers to kiss the backs of her knuckles. "Stay with Thunder and Chef, and I'll see you later."

"We'll be safe, and I know to call when we get to the clubhouse." She pecked my lips. "We'll see you later."

Thunder reached for JR's car seat, and Chef offered his arm to Grace. The brothers had brought over one of the club's spare cars and parked it on the opposite side of the hospital. Matt would only look for Grace's SUV, and I hoped they could slip away undetected. I'd designed this plan to keep my family safe, but I didn't enjoy watching them walk away from me.

"It's time, Prez," Wreck said.

***

Tilting my head back against the headrest of Grace's SUV, I soaked in the quiet. If I was right, the next few hours would be anything but peaceful. If I was wrong, I'd be spending the next several weeks or months chasing Matt when I needed to be home. This had to end today. A deep melancholy feeling settled into my bones. The thought that if Matt hadn't fucked up, Grace would have never been mine didn't escape me.

Turning on the car, I waited for my cell phone to connect to the Bluetooth network that ran through the brother's helmets. It didn't take long, but as the ready light turned green, Pretty came through loud and clear.

"Hello, Big Daddy," he laughed.

"You're poking the tiger on the wrong day." I heard the disappointment in Wreck's voice.

"Nah, this could work out in my favor. If he beats me today, I'll milk it for all it's worth. When I go on my bender, there will be plenty of people ready to take care of me. Unless, Wreck, you want to play naughty nurse first?"

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" I chimed in.

"Hey, don't knock it until you try it." I could hear the smirk in Pretty's voice through the Bluetooth.

"Alright, focus on something else besides your dick. I am going to pull out of this parking space and see if Matt follows me from his hiding spot. He's here. I feel like he's watching, waiting."

"I do too, Prez," Wreck said. "If he actually buys that you're alone, this is his prime opportunity."

I had made a show of walking out of the hospital, carrying a baby doll in a car seat. If anyone was watching, I looked like a new dad trying to get his family home. I hadn't wanted to ask one of the club girls to pretend to be Grace. I wasn't sure of the level of danger, and I wouldn't put them in the line of fire. Instead, I'd asked Pretty to come up with a plan.

"I dressed the blow-up doll like Flo. It'll be fine." Pretty had sounded impressed with himself.

The doll was sitting in the passenger seat of the car. I didn't know where he'd gotten it from on short notice, but it looked lifelike, and that creeped me out even more.

I tuned them out and headed towards the main road. If Matt was watching, I wanted him to think that we were by ourselves, heading to the clubhouse. If he wanted to run me off the road, the path I'd charted was his best option. Wreck and Pretty would follow at a safe distance behind me, and then How and Zook would pull in front of me before we reached the exit for the highway.

I made a right and then a left, checking the surroundings, but nothing stood out at me. Matt drove a red convertible, but I couldn't see him wanting to stand out. I made another left. This was it. Matt had five miles before I reached the highway. "Is he there?" I asked through the Bluetooth.

"No, Prez. What the fuck is he waiting for?" Wreck said.

"I don't know," I said, looking out the rear-view mirror.

Three miles past and nothing. I made a right.

"How and Zook, checking into the party," I heard How say through the radio.

"You're not missing much. Fucknut hasn't shown," Pretty answered.

"He can't be that stupid. If Prez gets to the clubhouse, it's over for him. Does he really think he's going to walk up to our gates and demand we hand the baby over? Fat fucking chance," Zook said.

"We're down to a mile. Anyone see anything?" I said. My gut was screaming at me. I was right. He was here, but why couldn't we find him? Could he actually have grown a pair?

"Jackpot, motherfucker." How sounded as if he'd pissed his pants with excitement. "Zook and I are in front of him, and he's three car lengths in front of the SUV in the red car. I caught it because he swerves every time he looks out the rear-view mirror at you, Prez."

"If Wreck and Pretty move up, we can drop back and box him in. He won't see it coming if we time it right. Clueless motherfucker," Zook strategized.

"Whatever you do, don't shoot. I am not collecting shell casings off the side of the road. When Pretty and I get close to his back bumper, we'll just pop one of his tires," Wreck said.

"Aye, aye, Captain," Pretty said. "Scratch that. I want to play pirates with sword crossing."

"I don't even want to know what the fuck you're talking about," Zook scoffed.

"No, no, you don't." Pretty laughed through his helmet. "When are we doing this?"

"Go now. You only have about a mile left before we reach the highway," I commanded, speeding up the SUV so that I could pull in behind Matt once he stopped.

"Aye, aye." Pretty laughed again, and I heard the engine of his bike revving up.

My brother cut me off as he sped past me. Fucker was living on borrowed time, and I wasn't sure who was going to get him first. Wreck at least was ahead of me before he switched lanes. I watched as they easily pulled in behind Matt. Pretty knocked on the back of the trunk with his knuckle.

"Stop playing and just do it. He's sweating, and I think he's going to swerve," Wreck scolded Pretty.

"This was supposed to be way more fun," Pretty commented dryly, as he reached for his back pocket, pulling out the knife my father had given him when he'd prospected. "Gotta do what a man's gotta do," he said as he flipped his knife open and stabbed the back tire of Matt's car. The tire went down quickly, and if Matt didn't stop soon, he would tear the rim apart .

This was it, except the fucker sped up, and when Matt put all that pressure on the blown tire, he ended up sliding and flipping the car over onto its roof.

"That was one way to get him to stop." How laughed as he and Zook approached the front of the car.

"I am probably up, considering this is my specialty." Zook took off his cut and handed it to How. Walking over to the driver's side door, he laid in the dirt and shined the flashlight of his phone into the window. "He's alive. Trying to kick out the front window. Give me a minute, and I'll have him out of here."

There were no cameras on this stretch of road, and we pulled the license plates off. City patrol would eventually pick up the car, but with no identification, they'd junk it for parts and move on.

***

"Why the fuck am I here?" Matt tried to spit at me, but I was too far away. It landed on the floor a few feet from where he hung, nailed to the wall, naked. A white wall that I would paint red.

"That's disappointing. I know you're smarter than that. Not bad for a pussy in a leather vest." I smirked at him, and laughter filled the room from the brothers that had been allowed to attend. "You gave me too much time to protect my family." I walked over to him and curled my gloved hand into a fist, hitting Matt in the stomach.

"Hey, Cyph, why don't you explain to our guest where we are," I said, smiling.

"Seriously?" he asked. His eyebrows shot up and his eyes widened like Christmas had come early and I had given him the best gift ever. He clapped his hands and then started talking a mile a minute. "I was curious why the bank fired you so quickly," Cyph directed at Matt. "If you take the timeline, and you deduct the weekend, it was really only a couple of hours. Corporations don't work that quickly. HR has to be involved, and it's a whole thing. The other problem was the bank used the ‘moral turpitude' clause in your contract on every termination document. They stuck to it like peanut butter to jelly. Huge red flag. So I went through your last couple of transactions. You didn't cover your tracks very well." He bounced on his toes. The anticipation was coursing through his veins, and Cyph couldn't stand still.

"They fired me because Grace is a fucking cunt who made a scene in the middle of the bar in front of important clients." Matt was shooting daggers at Cyph.

"Nope. Wrong thing to say." I walked back over to Matt and hit him in the stomach again, following it with an uppercut to his face. The rest of the brothers hadn't liked it either, and there was a low mumble spreading about the room. Grace had earned their respect, and they would protect her with their lives.

"That's not actually true. Would you like me to explain?" Cyph paused for dramatic effect, rocking on the backs of his heels.

"The floor's yours until they call," I said.

"Flo unknowingly set your downfall into motion. She's a badass." Cyph shifted to the tips of his toes.

Matt lunged at Cyph, but he wasn't able to release the nails in his hands. When we had brought him to this office building, Grizz had handled the rest. I thought it was a nice touch, considering Matt wanted to play God.

"The client that she made a scene in front of was none other than Diego Lopez, third-in-command to his brother, Manuel. There's no way you didn't know that. He's here in the states to build the Lopez Cartel's businesses and make contacts, legit and otherwise." Cyph ran a hand through his hair. "For the rest of the class, the men that have been visiting our tit show fall under Diego's authority."

Matt's face wasn't pale. He bypassed that shade and went straight to white. I wanted to make a wisecrack about him blending into the wall. Cyph was getting closer to unraveling Matt's mysteries, and I couldn't tell if we were about to uncover something damaging or if Matt was simply an incompetent criminal.

"I wish I had an energy drink," Cyph said. "Anyway, I thought it would be poetic justice to bring you here, and I talked Prez into it. This is the first building that Diego purchased five years ago, but he fucked up and paid cash with cartel money. No one wanted to touch this place, and he couldn 't get the permits to renovate it into offices. It's been empty ever since."

Cyph pointed at Matt. "That's until you came along and talked him into a refinance. He'd be able to use the bank's name for legitimacy, and they would give him the equity, which he didn't need, but it was a perk. You didn't know that Brandon was putting a percentage of each transaction into Meredith's name, did you? There's a paper trail a mile long."

"What in the fuck?" Grizz launched himself at Matt, hitting him in the mouth. I grabbed him before he could take another swing.

"If you do that again, you'll break your knuckles open, leaving DNA. Meredith needs you more than this fucker does." I let Grizz go when I thought he wouldn't attack Matt again.

Cyph turned towards Grizz. "You were right. Brandon didn't care about Meredith. She was a means to an end, but he fucked up and got himself killed."

Matt spit the blood from his lip at his feet. "Brandon was a fucking dumbass. He would have inherited his family's money, but he wanted to build his name up quickly. The only way to do that is to have a bankroll." He spit another glob of blood. "That's why they canned me so quickly. Brandon was taking real estate, but I took cash for each transaction."

"You both were stealing from the cartel?" Someone asked what we were all thinking, but none of us could believe what we were hearing.

"They were," Cyph answered for him. "That's why Matt was so keen to give them the baby. It would seal the last deal, and the cartel wouldn't go looking for his missing percentage." He smiled and clapped his hands. "That's where Flo fucked you over. When she prepared for the divorce, she logged into the bank accounts from an unsecure network. Just the logins triggered internal audits, and the bank finally figured out what was going on. You shouldn't shit where you eat."

"Cyph, how deep are Grace and Meredith involved in this?" I asked. I couldn't fight a two-front war when it had just been Matt and the cartel. If the bank came for the girls, I didn't know what I would do. This was out of our league.

"Well, the bank has been foreclosing on anything and everything they can claim fraud on. I've been helping them along the way with accounts and transactions they've missed that didn't affect anyone. Fucknuts can't give Flo a divorce because he can't sign over half of the accounts. The ones under investigation are probably going to roll back to the bank, if not all of them. The bank knows Flo is not involved, and they're not pursuing her. However, the jury is out on how much of the funds they're going to take from her."

"What about Meredith?" Grizz asked. He was popping his knuckles.

"That one is a little harder. Brandon was signing Meredith's name to the paperwork, so it appears she's actually involved. When the bank walks the transactions back, they are technically foreclosing on the properties. With her name on the paperwork, Meredith's taking the hits for the percentages Brandon signed over to her. They've done it three times already, but I am watching it. We might have to claim fraud, so that she's not financially ruined. However, they may claim that she's a co-conspirator in this mess and then it becomes a legal battle. They could take everything from her as they clean house."

"You motherfucker," Grizz yelled at Matt.

As he went to take another swing, my phone rang.