Ghost (A Steele Riders MC #6) - C.M. Steele Page 0,1

with the Villanueva Cartel. We already have an agent on the inside, but he’s not getting far with them.”

I found it rather odd that they’d want two different sets of undercover teams in the same place. People tended to get suspicious if we spoke to each other. Before you knew it, your cover and the damn operation were blown. You’d be lucky to get out alive. The last one had been close for a group of our guys. Only one agent died, but it had been one too many.

“And when do I need to report?” With everything going nuts in Steeleville, leaving seemed counterproductive and foolish. However, if we got one cartel’s tendrils out of the area, then maybe the others would back off. I doubted it, to be honest, but I had to trust that my brothers would be fine without me.

“The day after Christmas. You’ll need to be in the town for a bit before you can work your way in. Understood?” I nodded. It was smart to ingratiate myself with the town and get my name out there before I approached them.

“Yes.”

“Your packet and residence are already being prepared as we speak. Remember, keep us informed—and if it gets too dangerous, don’t hesitate to pull out.” I nodded, so he continued with the rest of the plan.

“You’ll need to make contact with the other undercover agent on the inside so that you can work together.” We spent another twenty minutes going over the finer details and the true objective. I had so much to do before splitting, so the next few weeks were going to be hellish. Especially when it came to saying goodbye to my family.

“Understood.” I left his office with a thick sense of foreboding. My meeting with the informants was a bust, so I prepared to hand over my cases for the rest of the day.

When I finally arrived at my house, I popped open a beer and sat down on my sofa. So many thoughts crossed my mind as I considered all the people who’d freak when they learned of my assignment. The sound of silence hit me harder than I expected. I needed to see my siblings and let them know the situation, but first, I had to eat. I opened the fridge, only to slam it shut a second later. Nothing in there but beer and some old-ass milk.

My doorbell rang, and the smell of food wafting through it won me over. I opened it to find my twin siblings there with pizza. “We brought food.”

“Damn miracle workers. My fridge is ass empty.”

“I told you,” Demi said, setting the drinks down on the coffee table.

“So how’s the shop?”

“It’s good. You know Mick is itching to get his hands on the needle again.” Mick owned the tattoo shop they worked at, but the wounds he sustained from the Cortes attack on the club had been nearly fatal. We were thankful that he finally pulled through.

“I bet.”

We enjoyed a fun night of bullshitting. They came from my mother’s second baby daddy, so they were over a decade younger than me. They were twins about five minutes apart and Demi lorded over Asher, reminding him that he was the baby of the family. Suddenly, I felt the weight of leaving them. I knew he’d take care of her and so would the Riders, but I worried.

“Demi, why are you looking at me like that?”

“Bro, you’ve got something on your mind. You went from smiling to looking like someone’s shit on your parade. What’s up?”

“Something’s up, isn’t it?” Asher added.

“Don’t be doing that double-team shit on me.” They had a knack of doing that very often. They worked so well together that I wondered what would happen if they didn’t find a significant other at the same time.

“Then don’t keep shit from us. We can see it in your eyes. You have Mom’s eyes.”

“They’re sending me on an undercover assignment.” For a minute, there was nothing but an uncomfortable silence bouncing around the room. Then, Demi threw her arms around me, sensing the same thing I did. It wouldn’t end well.

“Can’t you refuse it? I’ve got a bad feeling about it,” Asher remarked, slowly shaking his head.

“I know, but it’s for the best. You know that we need to get rid of these cartels any way we can.” They had been a bane to our existence for as long as we could remember. Their parents were killed by a drug mule whose car broke down,