The CEO's Regret: Darling, Don’t Leave Me novel Chapter 168

Chapter 168

Xavier POV

The wedding was better than I could have imagined: fast-paced, getting there, then the clothing,

the celebrant, the whole atmosphere was fantastic, and the girls made all this special. Seeing

them laughing and being together was good. Stories of stepmothers or in-laws scared the heck

out of me, but I am lucky; I get along with Ruby, and I am bonding with Demetri. I am one very lucky

guy.

But all good things come to an end, and it was my phone that stopped our enjoyment of the day

I picked it up and looked at the name.

ODDBALL.

Pushed to accept the speaker and placed it on the table.

“Oddball, I am not coming back,” I said as a greeting.

“I know. Hacker shared the footage that Cora forwarded. I owe you an apology.”

“You do, but an apology won’t fix the damage you caused to our friendship.” I barked back, a little

harsher than I intended.

“Understood. The guys nabbed two more men; they are in our cells. Some are singing, while others

prefer the comfort of the cells. I have been recording the interviews and will forward them to Cora

in a secure place on the server. Dormouse has been moved from the hospital; did you make that

change? Bluey is in the cells. After a huge fight with Scrubs, she stormed out; we nabbed her while

off the property. Only three of us know she’s in the cells, because we don’t know who else is in on

this. Hacker had just started a search for club members.” Oddball stopped to take a breath.

“Cancel the club check. Cora’s already done that. I’ll send it to you. Hang up, and I’ll call back in five

minutes when we are in the office,” Demetri suggested.

“I’ll go to Hacker’s office and talk on speaker so he can hear this; he needs all this. Hacker is the

one who’s keeping all this together; without him, I would have lost it by now. Strikes had found a

cottage, had moved in; she didn’t need to see all this happening.” Oddball hung up, and we headed

to the office.

“How much do you want me to send to Hacker and Oddball?” Cora asked when we reached the

office, sitting behind her desk and powering up the computer. Demetri opened his laptop and started it up too.

“All of it; he needs to be able to make a sound judgment call, and if he doesn’t have all the

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Chapter 168

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information, he can’t make the correct one,” Demetri answered logically, and I agreed; the more

Oddball understands, the better, and hopefully he has an open mind this time.

Cora was busy, on the computer uploading some of the work on the special link. Ruby and I

watched; there was little we could do but listen and add our feedback. This was something that

should have been done days ago, if Oddball hadn’t trusted the wrong person. We might have

managed to get more done, with two heads together, two being Cora and Hacker, although I feel

Cora was still in contact with Hacker, even with all this going on.

Ruby left to make us all drinks, and while she was gone, Cora’s phone rang.

“Hi Hacker, you are on speaker. Did you get the information?” Cora asked, putting the call on

speaker; I guess they couldn’t wait for us to call back.

“My god, what the heck, eight club members? I want to give them a new one, and they are still

actively on the black market. If I had researched the club members when all this started, we might

have saved a life or two. This is beyond believable. All that damage.” Hacker was shouting over the

phone as he went through the information. I could hear Oddball swearing and banging things as

they digested it all.

“I can see why you moved Dormouse. Where is he? Or is it best I don’t know?” Oddball asked once

he settled down a little.

“For now, it might be better if you don’t know. The reports are on the members, but you have a

number of visitors and girls with loose lips that might be there to pick up information. Unless you

start taking names and IDs, we won’t know if you have spies entering the place.” Demetri was

trying to be honest, but also careful. Oddball needed to hear the bad; he had been too trusting with

the wrong people. Some of the retired members were from before Oddball became president, and

you trust your members to have your back.

“Gunner, the guy that shot at.”

“Xavier, I have dropped the club name. When I join Demetri’s club, I will gain a new name.” I stopped

Hacker before he went any further. I didn’t want to hear that name again.

“Sorry to hear that, but I understand. Anyway, that guy died. Scrubs went to check on the prisoner

and found him dead. Poison, according to Scrubs, is not in the food, and he didn’t have it on him

when he arrived. We are reviewing who had access to the cells, because we can’t have all the

prisoners killed before we get information from them.”

“Did he die before or after Bluey was taken to the cells?” Cora asked as Ruby arrived with drinks.

Obscenities were shouted out again, as the penny dropped that it might have been Bluey.

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“Will check the footage; we hadn’t thought of her being bad till you sent the footage to prove

otherwise. She was a good twister of the truth, had most of us believing you were picking on her

because of Cora being sacked. It sounded plausible.” Hacker mumbled; we could hear his fingers

hitting the keyboard while Oddball fumed in the background.

“Demetri, your men are on the way back to you; we didn’t need them to stay, plus with the ones

here that were traitors, we didn’t want them in danger. Bad enough, we are.” Oddball’s calmer voice

came over the phone.

“We have Dormouse; you have Bluey in the cells. What about Taser? Have you taken him to the

cells yet?” I asked. Taser was the club’s head bartender, and the last person I would have thought

was a traitor.

“Yes, same time we took Bluey, we didn’t know he was a traitor when we threw him in there. He

caused a lot of trouble when Bluey stormed out, picking on Scrubs, blaming him. We thought it

was odd and threw him in the cells to calm down. Then, when we read the report, we were glad

that was where we sent him. I am unsure what to do about the ex-members, how to handle that.”

Oddball was pacing; we could tell, but the sound of his voice got louder and softer as he moved to

and from the phone.

“That’s going to be tricky; we need concrete evidence to send to the police, if we can trust them to

do the job, or once we find out the goal of these shooters, and solve that problem, we can work on

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