Brawn: Lethal Darkness MC by Leah Wilde Page A

was willing to deal with at the present moment.
     
    I was fucked up enough in the head as it was. It had been, what, four months since the strike on Tristan’s warehouse? Four months since the party? God, I couldn’t believe how quickly that time had gone. It seemed like just yesterday that Bolt was dragging huge satchels of cash into my office while we cackled over our good fortune.
     
    Since then, though, it had been a slow unraveling. I knew why, at least in part. I hadn’t said her name out loud since the morning she left, but those eyes stuck with me. They damn near haunted me, showing up every time I managed to grab some shuteye or even just paused to think for a moment. Those grey fucking eyes.
     
    But there were other things bothering me, too, mostly business-related. We hadn’t heard a peep out of the Knives in the days and weeks since their stash got taken. It didn’t make a goddamn bit of sense. Who gave up that much money, over a million in cold, hard cash, without even looking for it? For Christ’s sake, at the very least they could have bothered to put up a fucking “Lost—Please Return” poster. But no, it had been stony silence. All of the gossip channels had fallen dead quiet. I didn’t like that shit at all.
     
    And if I didn’t like something, then Zeke was sure as hell brooding over it. I pictured him as he was waiting for me outside, chain-smoking those Camels like the end was nigh. He had a funny way of being nervous. Looking at his face, you’d think he was at a funeral, but I knew damn well that his leg started bouncing frantically whenever he thought no one could see him.
     
    Then again, it was his job to worry. In this case, it was justified. Men with a reputation for bloody retribution—men like Tristan Jenison—didn’t just let things go . They didn’t simply allow their money to walk out the door and say, “Aw, shucks, shouldn’t have let that happen.” No. What they did was strike back with double the strength, inflict double the pain. We’d been braced for it, on the off chance that he had discovered who was responsible for the theft. But the weeks of tension were starting to take their toll on my nerves.
     
    “So, Micah, tell me: what is it that brings you here today?” Sergei’s eyes were glinting an icy blue. He picked up a switchblade knife from his desktop, flicked it open, and began shaving down his fingernails.
     
    I glanced down at my hands in my lap before clearing my throat and launching into the spiel we’d rehearsed. “We’ve been giving this some thought, Sergei,” I began. “We think that there’s been, let’s say, a little bit of unrest in the city as of late. Nothing major, nothing to be too worried about, but definitely some tremors here and there. Little upstarts. Guys edging in on each other’s turf. Some illicit business that no one in charge ever condoned.”
     
    The things I was saying were true, to a certain extent. There’d been a prostitution ring shipping in hookers from Eastern Europe that got some unpleasant attention from the local PD with the full backing of the feds. I looked down on that as much as the next man, but the fact of the matter was that any extra focus on organized crime put a crosshair on the back of me and the men in my MC. We preferred to stay under the radar rather than star on the six o’clock news.
     
    Along with the heavily publicized bust of that particular organization, there’d been the usual spate of shootings, stabbings, and bodies left to hang as some of the lower level gangs duked it out for control of one or two city blocks.
     
    Taken altogether, it was nothing too far out of the norm, but Zeke and I had agreed that this was the best angle to drum up. We had one goal in mind for this meeting, and it depended on us convincing Sergei that he needed us as much as we needed him.
     
    “Sure, sure.” He nodded. “And?”
     
    “It makes us a little, oh, I don’t know…uncomfortable,” I