Aftermath

Chapter 22

Ace's POV:

"How did it even happen?" Blair says with mix of confusion and anger. "Whole van was poked with bullets, they must have ducked and then ran to the forest and then must have gotten caught." Mason explains with quiet demeanor.

I pace around the room still not managing to calm down.  "I am gonna kill that fucker." I say and march to the interrogation room.  Our mole was tied down in there. Turns out that it was Harvey, one of our old recruits. Says that he got into crack and needed money that's why he sold us away. But to whom he won't tell.

When me and Max reached Mason, he told us that he saw Harvey going through the van so he knocked him out and went looking for Chance and Jason. He only noticed the bullet holed and broken windows letter.

There were tire signs all around the road. They started to sped up and then suddenly came to stop and that happened multiple times. Whoever they were, they weren't going to get in to contact this easily. They have Rose Rivera after all.

That gives them the advantage of ordering us around. But the kidnappers still haven't contacted or even wanted anything.

Why would they even ask something from this gang, when they already have the most important thing that gang has.

I stood in the farthest corner of the room and looked at Harvey, he was half conscious, because of the beating he has received. "Do you enjoy it Harvey?" I ask him calmly. "Do you enjoy fooling everyone around you?" He doesn't answer.

"Do you know what I enjoy? Torturing idiots like you. The fuckers who think they are clever than everyone by acting like they can work on both sides." I say and fake a laugh.

"The deal, Harvey, is that you can't work for either sides. Not for me, not for who you were working for?" I ask in hopes of making him stutter.  He looks at me but doesn't answer.

"Oh, fuck them. If they valued you, if they need your oh so great hacking, or mind, or skills they would have asked for some kind of meet up, bail, truce or something."

I say, and start to walk around him. "They don't give a fuck about you. You were just a pawn to tell them were Rose was so they could stimulate an attack on her when she is out of sight."  I said and he shook his head.

"You are lying. They must have asked for me, they must have sent you money for my freedom. They promised they would." Harvey said desperately.

I stand right in front of him and smile. "When we got you to this gang you promised to stay loyal. Did you keep that promise? NO. Will they keep their promise? NO"  I said and punched him on stomach before going out and slamming the door.

"Lock him up here, and order someone to stay at the door." I say to Mason and make my way down to the gym. If I tried taking my anger out on Harvey he would be long dead by now.

I take my position in front of the punching sack and start hitting it. I hit it for Harvey's stupid diversion. I hit it and think that I am hitting that fuckers who kidnapped them. I hit them because I blame myself for not going through the plan more carefully.  I hit because I never considered this, I never even thought about extra protection.

I hit it until my arms and legs burn from pain, I hit until I feel like I might just collapse. Because I deserve this, I need this, to remind me how big time we fucked up with this bait plan. It cost me my best friend and.... Chance.

I lay on the ground and consider the last serious conversation I had with Chance. It was really hard for me to hear her speak like that, saying that she can't trust me enough, or she doesn't know me enough.

You didn't need it before.I wanted to scream. You didn't need it when we were making out on the park, or even before when you trusted me with your secret, with your heart. You didn't need to know me better then, Chance. So, why do you say this now?

But, of course I couldn't blame her. Even if she deserved half of the blame at least for making me go on her lead for so long before telling me this. I can't and I will never be able to blame her.

Because after learning that she is dead, I was so sorry, so sorry for all the times we spent being stupidly angry at each other, instead of being together. Now that she is alive I don't want to waste any minute of whatever relationship we have now by being angry at each other.

"Ace, come on get up dude, we need to get you to shower before you stink whole gym." I hear Max's voice and soon he is nudging me with his foot. I sigh and get up.

I go to the showers and spend next hour or so there by just slowly showering and wasting of water. Then Mason comes and makes me focus up to gather myself together.

"We need to figure out where they are and gang needs their leader to keep everything under control. Keep yourself together." Mason warns me and I nod understanding that he is right.

I can't just slump around and wait for something to happen, we need to act and if needed search every gang in order to find Jason and Chance.

"Everyone, please calm down and listen." I say loudly and this shuts them up.  We are in the big conference room, with all of the gang members. I wanted to show them the state of the mole to warn them.

"You might have heard that we had a mole in the gang. Someone was giving our information, shipments, deals to some rival gang. It was Harvey." I pause to see their reactions.

Many of them sit passively because they already heard the news someone mumbles that he didn't look like one. "Oh please, he was wearing same thing for the past month and have been talking about weird stuff all day. He certainly had the looks of a mole." Another person answers.

"What kind of weird stuff?" I ask with interest.  Guy scratches his neck. "He said about going to some club for buying his usual crack. It sounded weird because he was going to the rival's club." He said.

"I think it was Starless Nights." Someone else chimes in and guy nods. "Yes, that place. He once even said that girls were jumping on him there, so he loved that place more than our usual clubs." Guy said and I rolled my eyes.

Starless Nights. Nova's club. They bribed him with cheap crack and paid strippers to entertain him.

"Then you probably one day woke up with a good debt for crack, didn't you?" I re-tell my theory to Harvey. Other were listening from behind the door.

"Didn't you?!" I yelled and Harvey flinched he slowly nodded and I slammed my hand to the table. "Do you even know how fucking stupid this is? How did you even talk with them about it? And in which one of their places did they meet with you?" I asked angrily.

Harvey shook his head. "No place, just club and they offered this to me themselves and I couldn't say no. I need it don't you get it? I  Please, give me some of it please, please."  Harvey haven't had it in nearly a 2 days. It must have been the longest time for him because he was already going crazy.

I ignored him and walked out of the room.

"We can't go out attacking every Nova base, There too much of them." Mason said and he was really right about it.

Nova could have had even more resources than us, but because of poor management, which built small gang buildings nearly all around the England, they can't fight against us.  But they have too many buildings, we could maybe attack 3-4 before word reaches the main guy and he changes the location of Rose and we might lose the trail.

"We need to do it other way. Get in to their main base and send a message. If they don't agree with our terms, it means war. "