It was after ten before Dax made it to Angel’s apartment. She did her best not to worry, but she couldn’t help it. While she waited, she did some research on the Rossi family. David was right; they were all “bad news.” When she’d typed in “Russian Ghost” or “Rossi and ghost” what she got were discussion boards and a whole lot of speculation. He was almost like an urban legend, especially since absolutely no one had reported seeing him in over ten years. It was crazy.

As soon as she opened the door, Dax stepped in and took her in his arms. She melded into his chest and it felt so good to just get lost in his touch. He held her for a long time before holding her back at arm’s length and saying, “I’m sorry, baby.”

“For what?”

He sighed. “Can we sit?”

“Of course.” She took his hand and led him over to the couch. He leaned back into it and stretched his long legs out in front of him and sighed.

“I was suspicious of you. I let my mind think crazy things after that day of the coin heist. I’ve been worrying about it since. I was a little leery of telling you about Canada, and then while I was there I found out some shit that put things in a whole new light.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“Not even a little bit,” he said. “But I wanted to apologize.”

“Apology accepted,” she said, snuggling down into his side. He pulled her up against him, and they both closed their eyes and just spent some time enjoying the warmth of each other’s company. Angel didn’t know how much time had passed, but after a while Dax said:

“Do me a favor?”

“Sure, baby.” She opened her eyes sleepily, realizing that she could have fallen asleep against him, right there on the couch.

“Take off your clothes and lie down with your head on that side of the couch.”

She smiled and sat up. She pulled off her tank top and tossed it in the floor and then pushed down the pajama pants. She wasn’t wearing any underwear. Dax licked his lips as she lay down with her feet toward him. He pulled them up into his lap and began massaging the bottoms of them. Angel let out a deep moan. She loved that.

“Play with your tits for me, baby.” Angel gladly cupped her breasts, one in each palm. She squeezed and massaged them before letting her palms rub gently across her hard, round nipples. She moaned again. “Yeah, baby, that’s it. Make it feel good.” She kept up the massage and fondling, stopping to pinch and rub the nipples. She closed her eyes and bit down on her lip. Each time she pinched her hard nipples, a jolt of pleasure raced down her belly and between her legs. Dax was still massaging her feet but she was bucking her hips up and down and spreading her legs wider as she did.

“You wanna touch that wet pussy, baby?” She nodded and groaned. Dax let go of one of her feet and took a hand off one of her breasts. He guided it between her legs and said, “Rub that pussy for me.”

Angel started with light strokes of her fingers up and down her outer lips. They were soaking wet already and the moisture was even on the insides of her thighs. She left one hand on her pussy and used her other one to trace through the warm, slick juices running down her thighs. Dax moaned as he watched her, and she could feel him flexing his own hips as his erection grew in his pants. She was getting hotter and more excited by the minute. She moved the fingers of her right hand up to cover her engorged clit and began to manipulate it, rubbing it in circles and pinching and pulling on it. Knowing Dax was watching her made it even hotter and she got into it, moaning and whimpering and writhing all over the couch. She could feel herself getting close, and that was when she slipped one of her fingers up inside of her, and then another. She pressed the heels of her feet into Dax’s hard thighs and lifted her ass up as she fucked herself with her own fingers and Dax watched. It was erotic, and it didn’t take her long before she was crying out in a mind-blowing orgasm. It might well be the best orgasm she’d ever given herself.

“You’re so hot, baby.” Dax reached up and took hold of her breasts with his own hands and somewhat roughly he pulled her up into his lap as he held onto them. Angel didn’t care. She liked it when he got rough. It made it more intense and that intensity turned her on. She pressed her wet pussy down onto the bulge in his jeans and began to gyrate against him while he squeezed her tits and ran his rough hands across her already sensitive nipples. Then he finally leaned forward and closed his lips around one of them and began to suck, hard. It was like he was trying to suck it down his throat. He took a break from sucking and bit down on the nipple, almost sending her through the roof. She was soaking the front of his jeans as her own juices leaked out of her.

As Dax sucked on her nipples and licked and bit at them, he let one of his hands slip down between her legs and he began rubbing her clit, hard and fast. She was wriggling, moaning, and whimpering and at just about the time she was ready to come again, he stood up, taking her with him, and then turned and dropped her down on the couch. While she watched, he stripped off his clothes, revealing all the sexy hard lines that she’d come to love so much. When he was as naked as she was, he knelt in front of her, lifted her legs, and rested them on his broad shoulders. Then he buried his face in her pussy and took her to a place that even he had never taken her before. He kissed, licked, sucked, bit, rubbed, and then he did it all again. The whole time he kept his face pressed so tightly into her that his nose was constantly stimulating her clit. She lost count of how many times she came. By the time he lifted his head, his face was covered with her juices and she was completely spent. At least she thought so. Dax grinned at her and stood all the way up. He reached down and lifted her up and turned her over like a doll. “Get on your knees,” he said. “Lift up that ass, high.” Angel pushed her ass up in the air and put her face down into the couch cushion. Dax got up on the couch behind her and she felt him rub the tip of his cock against her lips. “Tell me what you want, Angel.”

“I want you to fuck me, Dax. Fuck me hard, baby.”

He held onto her waist with one hand as he entered her. She loved the way he filled her all the way up. She gasped as he started to thrust in and out of her. She was clawing at the couch underneath her and pushing her ass up even further, moving with him as he plunged in and out. She felt his body cover her back and then his lips on her neck. He bit down into the sensitive flesh and she cried out. That only made him bite harder. The more noise she made, the harder his cock got inside of her and finally he sat back up, took her hips in both of his hands, and began to pound her, relentlessly. He fucked her fast and hard as her head pressed down into the couch and her tits bounced around, rubbing her nipples against the material of the couch and sending sensations of pleasure coursing through her. He let his hands slide up her body, and he grabbed a tit in each hand and cried out her name as he came. She felt him fill her up and when he collapsed down next to her, sweaty and exhausted, and pulled her up against his hard chest, she knew that no man on earth would ever be able to satisfy her the way he did. No man. Ever.

* * *

All the men at the table were staring at Angel the next morning, waiting for her to answer Micah’s question. She’d just finished telling them her suspicions about Dan and the first question Micah asked was, “Why? What could he possibly have to gain by pitting the clubs against each other and starting a war?”

Angel wished that she knew the answer to that question. If she did, she’d probably know Dan. He could be arrested and this could all be over…and finally, she could get on with her life. “I don’t know,” she finally told Micah. He seemed to be staring at her extra hard. She felt like his dark eyes were almost leaving imprints on her face. “I have no idea what he would get out of it, but it makes so much sense that he’s the one pulling all the strings.”

“Because Dax Marshall says so?” he asked, sarcastically. He was in a mood and no matter how much she couldn’t blame him for being pissed, she didn’t want to have to deal with it.

“No, Micah, because I’ve put the pieces together. Remember me? The cop that you all sent in to infiltrate this crew and figure out what we could do about stopping these wars in the street? That’s what I’m trying to do here. Dax doesn’t want a war. He never did. And honestly, think about what Hawk would get if he and the Sinners could win a war against the Skulls. He’d gain some territory; that would really be it. Would that be worth losing men at the rate they’ve both been losing them? I don’t think so. And then there’s Max. Dax had no reason to want his friend dead; and if the Rossis did it, why was he found in a Sinners kutte? Whoever killed him wanted to point a finger somehow at Hawk and went about it in the most obvious way…”

“Dax Marshall’s DNA was found on that kutte.”

She jerked her head up from the notes she’d written down the night before and looked back into Micah’s hard gaze. “What?”

“The lab sent over the results of the DNA testing last night. Dax Marshall’s blood was on that kutte.”

“That’s not even possible. It was a Sinners kutte.”

Micah laughed, and that pissed her off even more than his bad attitude. He said, “It’s entirely possible and you know it. Cutting off that guy’s head and hands couldn’t have been easy. I imagine the man who did it worked up quite a bit of sweat.”

Angel started to retort but then realized they were just wasting time. She looked at Chris and said, “I asked David to see what he might be able to come up with on this Dan guy.” She glanced at Micah and said, “If nothing else, it’s highly improbable that Dax or Hawk have those coins. Dax shares everything with the people at the ranch. If he had a million dollars’ worth of anything, I would have heard about it. And Hawk…well, I just don’t think he’s sophisticated enough to pull it off.”

“Well, we haven’t found him yet,” Kyle said. “He could be living it up on some tropical island somewhere. Unless you saw him on your unscheduled excursion to Canada?”

“No, I didn’t see him,” she lied. She had no idea where the Skulls had taken Hawk, and she wasn’t about to have the FBI breaking down doors at the ranch to find him. She’d tell them when and if she had anything concrete. For now, she took comfort in knowing Dax had had every opportunity that day to kill the man he hated worse than any other, and he didn’t take it. “But the FBI and the Skulls have both gotten reports that he and his crew are in Canada, somewhere.”

“Hey!” David suddenly stuck his head in the door. “Can I join you for a second?”

“Sure,” Chris said, “Come on in.”

“So, I got a little information on this Dan guy, not much, I’m afraid.” Angel was looking at David, but she could see Micah out of the corner of her eye. She could have sworn she saw him smirk.

“Give us what you got, little brother,” Kyle said.

“Okay, so his full name is Daniel Petrov. He is from Kiev and his family immigrated to New York when he was twelve years old. His father worked for the Rossis, busting skulls and taking little Daniel to work with him on occasion until he ended up dead. He was found in an alleyway in Queens in a strange…compromising position with a friend of his from Jersey. They’d both been beaten and shot and the scene was staged to make it look like they were having sex before they died.”

“Staged?”

“Yeah, that’s what forensics thought. They thought both men had been killed somewhere else, stripped down, and arranged to look like they had been enjoying each other’s company in that alley. As far as the community was concerned, however…Daniel’s tough-ass father was having gay sex with a guy from Jersey when he died. Making things worse, or at least more complicated, was the fact that this guy from Jersey was the brother of the VP of the Black Widows.”

Kyle sat up straighter. “Wait! You mean the one that Hawk supposedly had murdered back in the day?”

“Yep, that one. The rumors waffled between his being in town to look for his brother’s killer and being there to seal a gun deal with the Skulls. The two guys they eventually arrested for his murder, both Skulls, confessed to the gun deal angle and the police left it at that.”

“Fuck,” Kyle said. “What a mess.”

David nodded. “So little Daniel was left without a father in the midst of all this, and his father’s reputation was dirt at that point because of the way his body was found. I’m just taking a wild guess here, but for a tough guy in Queens that seemed to aspire to becoming a wise guy for the Rossis, I’d bet that didn’t sit too well. Daniel had to work harder than Dad[?] did to prove himself. His murders were more gruesome—the stuff legends were made of by the time he was twenty-one…and that was about the same time he vanished from sight.”

“He vanished?” Sheriff Zandt asked.

“Well, everyone said that he was still around and still doing jobs for the Rossis and anyone else that could get in contact with him. But he became a ghost. He didn’t leave any evidence—just a mutilated body—or he’d slip in and pull off a robbery and leave no trace that he was ever there. He knows something about forensics and he’s smart; he would have to be in order to evade even being sighted all this time. Anyone that has actually seen him in the past twelve or thirteen years is no longer alive to talk about it. My guess…he changed his name, legally, at least. He’s got to be living a double life, unless he really is some hermit, living in the pipes under the city.”

“That’s doubtful, since he seems to keep his hands in things he can make a lot of quick money off,” Angel said. “How old would he be now?”

“I’m still waiting on birth documents from Kiev to confirm, but my best estimate would be thirty-two or thirty-three.”

“The mutilation of Mad Max’s body fits,” Chris said. “Were there other bodies, mutilations, that were thought to be his work?”

David nodded. “About ten years ago the NYPD thought they were working a random serial killer case until they discovered that all the mutilated victims had one thing in common: they had all done business with the Rossis. As usual, they couldn’t come up with any evidence to charge Tony and Theo with, and they both had rock-solid alibis. They claimed no knowledge of the killings or of this ‘ghost assassin’ that people whispered about. Nothing ever came of it…but the killings stopped. Maybe the heat got to be too much and he came up with a different MO. Or he learned how to hide his victims better. It’s hard to imagine that he just stopped. He wasn’t your ordinary assassin. He took a lot of pleasure in his work.”

“So what’s his connection here, though?” Micah asked. “Just because the guy that Marshall and Hawk talk to is named Dan? That’s an awfully common name.”

“I think the connection is becoming even more clear,” Angel said. “His father was loosely connected to both Hawk and Dax’s father, and then there are the Rossis, who Mad Max was on the run from. He ended up dead in the way this ghost likes to kill. Meanwhile this ‘Dan’ person was also causing chaos within the MCs.”

“It’s weak. I mean why would he want to fuck with two piddly-ass MC clubs? Why put a kutte on a dead man? There are too many variables that just don’t fit,” Micah said. Angel glanced at Kyle. Even her brother was looking at her ex-fiancé now with annoyance.

“It’s a starting point,” Kyle told him. “Maybe he’s looking for some way to avenge his father’s death in all of this. I’d like to talk to Grant Benning/Hawk again. He was around back then when all of this was going on. I’ll bet he knows most of the stories.”

“Good luck getting that old man to tell you anything,” Chris snorted. “I interrogated that guy for over twenty hours once and he didn’t even break a sweat.”

Kyle nodded. “We’ll have to have something on him before he’ll give us anything, I’m sure. But I’m very interested in this new information anyways. Angel’s been undercover now for over four months and we haven’t gotten anything on either club. Maybe she’s right. Maybe Marshall is trying to go legit and for some reason this Dan guy doesn’t want that to happen.” That was the first thing Angel had ever heard Kyle say that led her to believe there was hope that someday he would forgive her for what she planned on doing.

“Far-fetched,” Micah mumbled. Angel took satisfaction in the fact that every man at the table was looking annoyed with him then. Micah didn’t say another word through the meeting then, as Chris talked about getting in touch with his contacts in New York and David gave them what bits and pieces he’d gotten about a physical description, but when the meeting broke up, he followed Angel out into the hallway and said, “Hey, can we talk?”

With a heavy sigh that she tried not to let him hear she turned to face him. “Okay, but only if you’re going to play nice.”

Micah smiled. It was his gentle, genuine smile. “I guess I had that coming. I’m sorry, Angel. It’s been a rough four months.”

Guilt replaced her annoyance and she said, “I know. You want to get some lunch?”