Hammer & Anvil (Steel Rebels MC #2) [Ongoing]

TWO - The perfect match

Duke

"Hello, officer."

Duke looked up from his laptop to see Vixen stand in the doorway of the shared office. It was late in the evening but he wasn't done working. The last couple of months have been difficult to say at least.

Not only had the club been unable to keep Knuckles from going to prison, they also had failed to protect Babydoll. It had been a major blow for the Steel Rebels, not only for their reputation but also personally. Knuckles and Babydoll were friends and good people. Knuckles had helped build this club up from the ground and Babydoll was probably one of the sweetest persons alive. Despite coming from a vastly different background than anyone else, she had fit in with them and had been the perfect match for their enforcer. The connection the two had shared had been something that could have only been imagined by some cheesy romance novel author.

Simply too good to be true.

Even after two months Duke couldn't imagine the two not being together. 

But unfortunately, Knuckles' and Babydoll's situation wasn't the only thing that had caused club members headache and sleepless nights. 

A few days after Knuckles' arrest, authorities have started to poke their noses into club businesses - almost literally. The first had been an unannounced visit by the food and health authority at the club's bar. This wasn't anything unusual and luckily they didn't find anything major to complain about, but after that it hadn't stopped. 

Occupational health and safety check-ups, tax authorities requesting documentation, people coming in to randomly check the validity of some license have started to become a daily occurrence at at least one of the club's businesses. It was as annoying as it was concerning. 

And slowly it was starting to impact business. Last week Shades' tattoo parlor had been closed for three whole days because the place was turned upside down by a health inspection. The week before Patriot's gas station had been out of order because the environmental agency had ordered some ground water testing on their premises to see if there were any major leakages. 

While all of the requests and concerns were valid, it was obvious that this was targeted to them. Someone was doing this on purpose and it wasn't any of the regular suspects that had something against the Steel Rebels. This was a new opponent.

But who it was, they haven't yet been able to pinpoint.

Duke and the rest of the officers had a rather solid hunch but without any proper evidence there was currently nothing they could do about it.

If they accused the wrong person, it could quite literally mean the end of the Steel Rebels.

And among all of this legal hassles, they had also been unable to figure out who had given the sniper the orders for the shot that should have killed Knuckles. By now everyone that had been there on that evening was sure that the bullet had been meant for their enforcer. 

The officers had confronted Vronikov about it but the drug lord had claimed that he had nothing to do with the guy firing the gun. The kid - who was actually only 17 years old and now sat in juvenile - had acted independently from Vronikov. Duke and the other officers doubted that very much. But for now it had been a dead-end in proving Knuckles' innocence.