Bratva Boss’s Secret Triplets by Bella King
Chapter 26
Rebel
So, last night was fucking insane.
I knew April was a good lay, but I’m kicking myself for not remembering better. It could have something to do with the fact that her apartment was riddled with bullets shortly after we had sex, but I digress. I have business that needs my attention.
Now that I know that Dean is dead, I’m certain that Dr. Ryan is hurting for men, probably scrambling to find someone else to replace him. It won’t be hard, knowing all of the junkies and crackheads in this town who would do basically anything for a taste of a new research chemical.
I’ve arranged a meeting with my two most reliable men, Eric and Luke. They're already in the conference room, I just have to get my ass out of bed. All I need to do is fly through a shower and into some clean clothes, and they’ll never know the difference.
When I stumble into the conference room a bit more sloppily than I had anticipated, Luke glances at Eric knowingly.
“The fuck was that look for? Don’t think I didn’t see that,” I say to Luke half-jokingly. They know I’d never hurt either of them unless they deserved it.
“Nothing, we just didn’t think you’d be hungover this morning,” replies Eric
“I’m not fucking hungover, I just overslept,” I say defensively. Not like either of these two had anything better to be doing for the ten minutes I was late.
“Okay well, I think we should get something out of the way first,” Luke begins with a note of hesitation in his voice. “The clinic was bombed last night.”
“What?! Last night? Why didn’t either of you tell me?” I reply, my blood pressure already rising at an uneasy pace.
“We… we tried, Rebel,” Eric says, exchanging another knowing glance with Luke, who has grown even more uncomfortable since he spoke.
“The fuck you mean you tried?!” I shout. I hadn’t seen either of them all night. Not one text, call or anything. “How do you forget to tell me something like that?”
“You were busy,” Eric replies.
“With what?! What could have possibly been more important than-”
“You were having such loud sex with that girl you brought here that nobody wanted to bother you. It sounded like you were really going wild,” Luke interjects.
“Oh.”
I want to sink into the floor. I’ve embarrassed myself in front of both of them, and now they’ve undoubtedly lost some respect for me. More than anything, I hate it when my ego suffers. Sitting with the shame is worse than any physical pain I’ve ever felt, even this goddamn gunshot wound.
“Okay, well, don’t worry about it. We need to figure out who did it and why,” Eric says. “If it wasn’t one of ours and it wasn’t a lab explosion, there might be a whole other Family trying to get in on the pharmaceutical territory. That’s way scarier than a doctor with too much time on his hands.”
“Shit, you’re right. Were there any casualties?” I ask, investing my energy into the mission as to avoid the sting of awkwardness from before.
“Just some of the clinic staff, unfortunately,” Luke replies, sliding a piece of paper to me from across the table. The paper is a news article written about the bombing early this morning. Within the article are the faces of two staff members who were killed, one of them being the man with dreadlocks that I had seen the first time I tried to get into the lab myself.
“Chandler Sanfelippo,” I say under my breath as I read the name of the dreadlocked man. Something like regret fills me temporarily, or maybe guilt. Whatever it is, it doesn’t feel good. I was hoping that after killing so many people in my life, I would be indifferent to the suffering of others.
“Yeah, it sucks. But we need to go there ourselves and investigate,” Eric replies, taking the paper out of my reach.
“So go then,” I say, trying to shake off all the bad emotions that have been attacking me this morning. It’s not even 9:00 AM and I’m ready to curl up and go back to sleep.
“Don’t you want to come with us? We were positive you’d want to be at the front of everything,” Luke says. “Especially if we’re bringing Damien. I don’t know if I trust him yet, he seems kind of jumpy.”
“Damien is fine, you two are more than capable of handling him and the investigation yourselves. Spend the day around the clinic, keep a close eye on any news reports that might come in about it. Be careful, obviously. With any suggestion of foul play, you know there will be tons of cops for days,” I reply.
Both men look at each other and concede to my orders. “Alright, I guess we’ll let you know if we find anything,” Eric says as he folds the article and puts it in his pocket.
We all exit the room together, but they walk in the opposite direction to me.
I’m glad they’re occupied with something important, because now I can spend the day trying to figure out what the deal was with that receipt in April’s suitcase.
I can just barely make out the name of the pawn shop, but once I look it up, I find the location easily. It’s about thirty minutes from here, and even further from both of April’s old apartments. Why would she go to that shop when there’s one on every street corner for five miles downtown?
