Page 4 of Kane
Edge’s blade clicked open and shut, the glint catching the light as he spun it between his fingers. “We sure he’s smart? Maybe he’s just lucky.”
“Lucky doesn’t explain how he keeps slipping through,” I grunted. “Three months of tracking. Three setups. And everytime we get close, the money ghosts? If he’s not the brains, then whoever he’s working with is playing him like a puppet.”
“Might explain why he’s also gone,” Edge mused. “Didn’t show up for work three days ago. No phone. No cards. No traffic cams since last week.”
“Think he ran?” Nitro asked.
“Maybe,” Edge drawled. “But rats don’t run unless the ship’s burning. Which means whoever he’s working with is getting nervous. Or could be that's the boss, and he’s cleaning house.”
My jaw ticked. I hated maybes. I built my world on facts. Precision. Control.
People thought racing was chaos—fast cars, loud engines, sharp turns. It wasn’t. Racing was math, physics, breath, and timing. It was knowing the track down to every crack in the asphalt and knowing when to hit the gas and when to let someone else destroy themselves trying to keep up.
Nitro’s voice rumbled low. “Cops don’t usually play this clean.”
“He’s not clean,” I muttered. “He’s trained.”
“Military?” Edge raised his brow and glanced at Jax.
Jax shook his head. “No record. Just another traffic cop in a no-name town west of here. Well, it’s called Wedgewood, but you know what I mean.”
“Which makes it worse,” I said, rising from the chair and wandering over to the window. “He’s a nobody. A uniform with a radar gun. Yet somehow, someone taught him to cover his fucking tracks.”
“Reminds me of that kid we used to run against,” Edge said behind me. “Back in Knoxville. Remember? That scrawny little asshole with the Civic and the muffler that sounded like a pissed-off lawnmower?”
I smirked. “He blew his transmission halfway through a two-lap sprint and still tried to claim he won.”
Edge chuckled. “Because you ‘cheated.’ By driving better.”
“Little shit did have balls, I’ll give him that. Couldn’t seem to stop beggin’ for another race, swearin’ this time he’d win.” I chuckled. “And one of us kicked his ass every single time.”
“Yeah,” Edge snorted. “Right up until Dad caught us watching race replays in the barn and saw his plates on the tape. Thought he was gonna tan our hides.”
My lips curved into a smile at the memory. “He let us keep racing, though.”
“He fucking helped us keep racing. Built that deathtrap of a car from the bones of an old Chevy and told us we could use it. If we waited until we turned sixteen to drive it off the property.”
“Still let us run it on the back field before that.”
In the reflection of the window, I watched my brother grin. “He knew it was either that or find us sneaking out again.”
We’d been born trouble. Raised on twenty acres of Tennessee dirt and backroads, sons of a man who scolded with one hand and handed us a wrench with the other. Edge and I cut our teeth on busted engines and quarter-mile drag runs through the trees.
Racing was all we ever wanted. All we ever needed.
And now I stood at the top of a fucking empire. Legal tracks. Underground circuits. Racing teams, vendor contracts, a professional roster that pulled in national headlines. What I built went deeper than blacktop and prize money. This was control. Territory. A precise network I ran with the same cold focus.
My name meant something. Not just in Crossbend. Not just in Florida. Everywhere from Miami to Memphis, Houston to fucking Atlanta, when people said Kane, they said it with respect. Or fear. Preferably both.
I didn’t take bribes. I didn’t throw races. And I sure as hell didn’t let outsiders grease the wheels behind my back.
Nothing happened without my knowledge. No one got in unless I let them.
So when some outside group thought they could bribe or muscle their way in through my vendors, they weren’t just stupid.
They were suicidal.
The last man who tried to muscle his way into my empire was currently buried under the foundations of a warehouse I owned.