Bones: Broken Bones MC by Leah Wilde Page B

my way between the tables and chairs towards the back hallway. An office door was set in the left hand side of the wall. I knocked. A voice bellowed for me to enter.
     
    Sliding inside, I made sure to close the door firmly behind me. Jawbone was seated behind his desk, smoking and brooding over a thin file in front of him.
     
    “Ah, just the man I was waiting for. Take a seat, brother,” he said, pointing with his cigarette at the chair across from him.
     
    I settled into the seat. “Here,” I said. I tossed the pimp’s ID card onto the desktop. Jawbone picked it up and studied it. His face was a maze of scars, tattoos, and skin tanned by years of hard riding. Metal studs jutted out from his eyebrow and nose. Everything about him screamed Do not touch.
     
    He looked up at me. “How’d it go? Any trouble?”
     
    I shrugged. “Went fine. Gordo took his sweet time, so I had to ditch a few cops. Nothing major.”
     
    Jawbone grimaced and dug the heel of his hand into his tired eyes. “I know you well enough to know that when you say ‘Nothing major,’ it means some serious shit went down. How close was it?”
     
    “Like I said, just had to ditch a few cops. I took the alleyway down south that leads from the residential block over towards the junkyard. Lost ’em there.”
     
    He whistled and leaned back in his chair, impressed. “You whipped your car through that little gap?”
     
    I shrugged again. “That’s my job.”
     
    “Where’s the car now?”
     
    “Burned it.”
     
    “Good, good,” he nodded, settling forward onto his elbows. “We made some nice coin from that gig. Shame that Gordo had to draw so much attention to the stiff, but whatever, life goes on.” His cigarette was down to the filter. He stubbed it out in his ashtray and reached into his breast pocket to withdraw his pack and strike up another. I noticed with a frown that the ashtray was brimming with finished butts. Jawbone only chain-smoked when he was thinking about something serious. Not a good sign.
     
    I looked at him. “What’s going on?” I demanded.
     
    Jawbone looked concerned for a moment, then saw me looking at the blooming ashtray and laughed as he connected the dots. “You don’t miss much, do you, Dom?” he asked. He waved a dismissive hand at me. “Don’t worry.”
     
    “What’s the next job?” I pressed. Was it the Capparellis? Finally? I leaned forward, excitement tingling over my skin.
     
    “There aren’t going to be any more driving jobs for you, Dom.” Jawbone looked down at his desk, around the room. Anywhere but at me.
     
    “What the fuck did you just say?”
     
    “No more hits. No more heists. No more driving.”
     
    “Jawbone, are you out of your fucking mind? Why? What the fuck gives?” I was enraged. This had been our plan for years—subtle warfare, chip away at the Capparelli power base. We’d been careful to avoid anything that would ignite a full-out war, but the hope was that by carving away the edges of their empire, we’d eventually come to a point where winning such a war was not only possible, but likely. I’d hoped for so long that we were finally at that point. And now, Jawbone was telling me that we were pulling out instead?
     
    “Do you remember when you first came to us?” Jawbone diverted. His lighter choked, then caught as he held the tip of his cigarette into the flame, hand cupped over it to block the air flowing from the A/C vent overhead.
     
    “Don’t change the fucking subject,” I hissed. “Tell me why.”
     
    “Do you remember?”
     
    I sighed, furious, and leaned back again. Once Jawbone got going on a tangent like this, there was no getting back to the original topic until he decided it was time. He was one stubborn motherfucker. “Yeah, of course,” I answered. “Can’t ever forget some shit like that.”
     
    That was true. I couldn’t. The memory was seared onto my brain.
     
    # # #
     
    Slim’s blood was still on my hands when I