by Sassie Lewis
Chapter Fourteen
“I’ve been thinking. . .” Blake hated when Zane started a sentence like that. One of two things was about to happen. He was going to suggest something that would get them into shit, or shit was about to happen.
Blake spun the chair around and around. They’d been discussing options with Boris; one being Quin coming to Reno. Blake was as unsold on the idea as Boris was, but Zane believed the two men needed to band together, it was probably the only way they were going to get the princess back to Boulder. And while Blake enjoyed the time away from his responsibilities to the club, at having time to just hang out with Zane and Becca, he missed home. Missed the boisterous bustle of the clubhouse; missed his brothers. Although there was a great possibility that Quin would either kick him out or kill him the moment Blake told him he’d claimed the princess.
On his next spin, he spotted the conference room table still full of the food they had ordered in during the meeting. Stopping the spinning chair, he grabbed a medovik—Russian honey cake. And took a bit before asking, “Are you going to tell me what you’re thinking, or you just going to keep stuffing your face?”
Putting the pastry on a plate and wiping his face with a napkin, Zane gave Blake his full focus. “Where did the stalker go?”
“What?”
“When I first arrived, you told me Becca had a stalker. Someone following her. Where did they go?”
“Shit!” With everything else going on, he’d completely forgotten about the person who’d been following Becca around the casino. Hell, he’d even acted as her bodyguard while she worked to make sure no one got to her. But in all that, he’d forgotten that her having a stalker was why they’d put close guards on her in the first place. If they were only dealing with the shit that had gone down at home, the security cameras would have been enough.
“I forgot.” He admitted.
“Figured as much. Honestly, so did I, but I still would have noticed if someone was shadowing her. I’m not sure about Abram and Danil, but I know you and your brother would have felt it if someone was watching you. So, again I ask, where’d the fucker go?”
Dropping his medovik, Blake raced out of the conference room and up to the shack, Zane hot on his heals.
“Get me all footage of Becca from last week.” The guys working the shack all looked up at him in shock. “Now,” he growled. Tapping followed, and Blake moved closer to the wall of monitors.
“There,” Zane said. “Slow it down a little.”
For over an hour they watched the princess move around the casino. At one-point, Blake saw him pinning her against the wall, his cock shafting in and out of her. Shit, he’d have to get that deleted, and he was pretty sure there’d be more video evidence of their loving. The princess was quite the little nympho, and Blake couldn’t keep his hands off her.
“I’m not seeing anything, Blake.” Neither was he.
Not once did he see anyone following Becca. “We can keep watching, but I’m betting we’re not going to find anything.”
Turning from the monitors, Blake paced back and forth across the small space. Something about the situation bothered him. . . “You asked ‘where did the stalker go?’ Zane, I think the question should have been, why did the stalker stop?” What did Blake know about the situation? He knew that the stalker had been following her weeks before the body dump at Chase’s. He knew that Boris’s men hadn’t been able to find anything out. He now knew the stalker had stopped the day Blake arrived in Reno. He also knew the stalker was aware of the layout and security setup at the Kazino Royale—not once had he revealed his face to the camera. The answer was there he just couldn’t put his. . . “Fuck me. They work here. It’s someone she knows.”
He needed to speak with the princess. A quick look at his watch showed she was due back from her workout and training session. He’d sparred with her a few times and was impressed with her knife skills. She flowed around the mat like some exotic dancer.
The door opened behind him, and Blake spun, expecting to see his woman. His growl came involuntarily.
The little shit standing at the door had both a hard-on and hate-on for Becca. A few times now, Blake had pulled the guy aside and put him in his place. Something the other man didn’t appreciate, seeing as he thought Blake was just some biker that Boris stupidly allowed into the casino. He’d been tempted to tell the little snot exactly who he was, Bear had stopped him. Yeah, with everything going on, it was better to keep his association to the Kuznetsov Brotherhood unknown. Most who’d known Blake from back in the day were either blood relatives, Boris’s inner circle, dead, or in jail.
“Where’s Becca?” Zane pushed past him, asking the question also on his mind.
“She should be here.” Danil placed a bag of food on the counter. Blake was on him quicker than he could blink.
“You are supposed to be watching her. Guarding her.” Danil gulped. “So why are you here without her?”
Danil raised his hands in surrender. “She was having a shower after her workout. Figured she’d be hungry, so I went and grabbed her some food. Chill, man, she’s with Abram.”
There was no falsity to Danil’s words, but the back of Blake’s neck itched like a motherfucker. “How long ago did you leave her?” he asked, releasing the other man and making his way to the door. Zane followed, pulling Danil along with them.
“About twenty minutes, thirty tops. I’m sure she’s fine. Abram thinks of her like a niece or something.”
While Blake didn’t have a problem with Abram, the man was pretty decent at his job, and Boris said he’d been with the brotherhood for about fifteen years. That itch at the back of his neck got worse.
Breaking into a run, Blake bypassed the lift, and pushed the fire escape doors open and took the stairs down two at a time.
Over the past week and a half they’d fallen into a pattern. Every morning she woke with Blake buried inside of her. Sometimes he’d make love to her, others he’d leave her wanting until she tracked him down and pinned him against the closest hard surface. She was sure that at some point they’d been seen by one of the casino’s security cameras, but she didn’t care. Of a night, he introduced her to new things—sexual things that left her rung out and confused. Confused because the things he did to her just flat out worked—got her off big time. Blake had explained that while he wasn’t into the full BDSM lifestyle—she called bullshit on that; he was a bossy mofo who loved telling her what to do—he liked to dominate in bed. Liked to pick how, where, and when ‘play’ happened. Explained that while he was the one directing a scene, she was actually the one in charge, the one who could call stop at any time the play went further than she was comfortable with. Discovering she was a sexual submissive had been a real eye-opener. Still, Blake had quickly learned that while she more than liked being dominated in the bedroom, outside of it his domination got him nothing but attitude and a few punches from her. Becca’s knife had made more than one appearance over the past week.
They also talked. She’d discovered Bear, or Borya as Boris called him, was Blakes half brother, why he’d left his mafioso family—or Brotherhood, as the Russian’s referred to themselves—and why Boris had named him. Turns out, Blake’s parental unit was worse than Nessa’s. She’d been surprised to discover how much they actually had in common. The highlight of the week came when Blake got antsy for a ride. Every biker she knew could only go so long without feeling the wind on their face and the rumble between their legs. His “Wanna come?” had been music to her ears. She sat wrapped around him, Zane cruising at their side, and ate up the experience. The sun and wind pelting down on her reviving her in a way nothing else could. The more time she spent with Blake, the more she missed home, her daily chats with Nessa added fuel to that sense of loss. The daily calls, or rather, calls she ignored from Quin, confused her. Seven months, a birthday and Christmas passed without a word, and now he was calling her daily? Yeah, that baffled the ever loving shit out of her. But most shocking of a
ll, was the more time she spent with Blake, the deeper her feelings for him grew. And she wasn’t sure what she should do about that. Lust was one thing, emotions were a whole other bag of crap.
Time was running out for her to get her shit together, Quin was getting pissy with her not coming home, and having both his enforcers out of town. Yet, for someone who desperately wanted her home, he hadn’t actually told the boys to drag her butt there. Was that something she appreciated, or regretted? Thoughts raced around her head. . .
“Everything okay, Rebecca?” Abram asked. They were in the workout room, she’d been sparring with Nikolić, one of Boris’s men. Currently she was on her back staring up at the ceiling. Not by choice. The bastard had caught her with a leg sweep, sending her flat on her ass.
Abram was acting as one of her guards today. Normally she’d also have either Blake, Zane or Bear working with Abram, and Danil, today there was only Abram and Danil. While she didn’t like Danil and his constant leering, she got on really well with the older Abram. “Just wondering what I should do,” she answered.
“I meant, do you need help getting up?”
“Yeah, he dropped you hard,” Danil sniggered.
“Fuck off, Danil,” she said, as she bounced to her feet and gave a quick bow to Nikolić.
She was sweaty and a little achy, but the workout had done her wonders. Had helped clear her head. She needed to talk with Blake, they had things to discuss and she had something she needed to tell him.
“I’ll grab a shower then we’ll head up to the shack.”
She ignored Danil’s “Want me to join you?” it pissed him off when she acted like he didn’t exist. It also saved her from explaining to Boris why she’d killed one of his men.
Wrapping the towel around her dripping hair, Becca pulled on her clothes and stepped out of the stall. “Fuck. Abram, you scared the shit out of me.” She looked behind him, checking if the leach, AKA Danil, had followed him in. “What are you doing in here? Has something happened?” she asked, packing her gym gear away. The air shifted and a sense of unease crept over her.
“Don’t even think about it.” The barrel of a gun dug into the middle of her side. Panic threatened to pull her under, and she cursed her fear of guns. Her hand gripped the handle of the blade tighter.
“I do not want to hurt you, Rebecca, but I will if you don’t let go of that knife and come with me.”
Well, that was good to know. She might be able to get out of this mess without sporting extra holes. It also calmed the panic trying to drown her, and she let her hand slide away from the blade. Maybe if she played her cards right, she’d be able to get out of this completely unscathed. “Where’s Danil?” she asked.
“That boy doesn’t know if he loves or hates you, but he still ran off to get you something to eat when I mentioned you might be hungry after your workout.” That surprised her, she’d figured Danil was in on what she guessed was her kidnapping. “Now be a good girl and don’t make a scene.”
Abram directed her out of the change room and through the now empty gym. As he pushed the gym’s side door open that she realized why he was making his move now. The staff gym was located in the sub-basement of the casino and had a door that lead directly out into the carpark. A carpark with no security cameras. Right then Becca cursed Boris’s illegal activities.
“Where are you taking me?” The bastard didn’t answer, just pushed her through the carpark, and she bet to the blue van that sat idling. “Okay, if you’re not going to tell me where, at least tell me why? I thought we were friends.”
“Do not use that bimbo voice on me, Rebecca. I have watched you work for months. You are not stupid.”
“So, this is all about money?” Why else would the man risk not only the mafia, but also Hell’s Exiles gunning for him?
“Da.”
“You know they’ll kill you before you get a chance to spend a dime,” she said, while spinning out of his grasp and preforming the same maneuver that had put her on her ass not thirty minutes ago.
All would have gone to plan if the door of the van hadn’t opened. A big meaty hand hadn’t wrapped itself around her mouth, holding a cloth smelling sharply of chemicals.
Chapter Fifteen
The door to the gym crashed against the wall with a resounding thud. Blake almost tripping in his haste. The room was empty, so were the changing rooms. He even checked the equipment room.
Zane hung up the phone as he walked back into the gym’s main area. “I called the shack—”
“There’re no cameras on this level,” Danil interrupted.
“As I was about to say,” Zane snapped. “There’s no fucking cameras down here, but I’ve got them checking all lift and stairwell exits for the past forty minutes.” His phone buzzed, the look on his face told Blake what he already suspected—she hadn’t been seen.
Spinning around, Blake slammed his fist into Danil’s face. Taking him to the ground. “Where the fuck is Becca?” He threw another punch before Danil could answer, his worry for Becca, and a niggling feeling that things had just gone tits-up, decimated his common sense.
The other man retaliated, cuffing Blake’s ears, causing them to ring. They rolled around the floor. Blake held the upper hand, but Danil got some good hits in. The shot to his temple was going to leave a bruise.
“Fucking hell. Back off, Blake. We might need him.” Zane tugged until Blake was across the other side of the room.
Heaving a breath, Blake stared Danil down. The man was breathing hard, his lip bled, but he was still conscious. “Do you fucking know where the princess is?” Blake demanded again.
“No.” Danil spat blood from his mouth, then bounced to his feet. “I left her with Abram. I’m not fucking stupid, man. Boris would kill me if I betrayed him.” Blake tensed, ready to strike out again when Danil stormed toward him. “What I would have told you, if you hadn’t gone fucking psycho on my ass, is there is another way out of this room.” With that, Danil pushed at the wall beside Blake. The door was practically invisible; it blended with the rest of the wall in a seamless fashion. “I might be low in the organization, but I’m still a member of the security team. You can guess why there’s no cameras on this floor, as such it has it’s—”
“Fuck,” was echoed by Zane and him. Through the door was a small, but large enough carpark to house a dozen cars along with his and Zane’s fucking bikes. A carpark Blake knew well, and but had completely forgotten about. A carpark with a prone body on the floor.
Three hours later, they’d swept the casino from top to bottom, reviewed all surveillance tapes, and they still hadn’t found his missing woman. It was becoming clear she’d been taken, and that it had been an inside job. Boris reminded him that even though there weren’t cameras in the sub-basement, there was one at the entrance of the main garage; that camera had just happened to have two technical glitches that day: One about an hour before Becca headed down for her work out, and another not long before Blake and Zane rocked up to the shack.
Currently Zane and Boris were questioning the staff. Blake had been ordered out of the room by both men, his temper un-constructive in getting any answers. He paced along the wall of the room Abram was in, the man had been in and out of consciousness since they’d found him. What he had told them wasn’t adding up. The fact the man had no tolerance for pain was pissing Blake the fuck off.
“What are you doing down here?” Bear interrupted his mental brooding.
Here, wWas deep below ground in what was known as the ‘wet room’. If his grandfather had been into the lifestyle, Blake would have called it a playroom. In a way, it was. He’d been in this room as a young man, hadn’t thought anything of the devices scattered about, but as a grown man with a dark kinky side, it was a little disturbing to use a device he’d used to pleasure women, to torture a man. “Boris kicked me out. Figured I’d come down here and see if this fucker would do some talking, but he’s still out of it. Has the doctor arrived yet?”
�
�Just got here, Nikolić is bringing him down.”
“You sure about him?” Bear knew who he was talking about.
“He’s our cousin, Blake!”
“That doesn’t mean shit to me. My family is Hell’s Exiles, they’re who I trust.”
“Fuck, you’re an asshole,” Bear snapped back. “You can trust me, Blake. We might never have been close, but you’re still my fucking older and only brother. That means something to me.”
Did he feel guilty that he thought more of his MC brother’s than he did his actual blood? No. Still, Bear had been helping to protect the princess, so that had to count for something. As Boris second, he was above babysitting duties. “Look—” his words cut off as the wet room door slammed open. Blake slapped his hand over Bear’s, stopping the gun he held from pointing at his Prez.
The suite was big, but with two leaders, two seconds, and four enforcers from two very different organizations filling it, it wasn’t big enough. Hell, the state of Nevada was barely big enough to house this much alpha vibes. Boris and Quin were in a heated argument that put everyone on edge.
“How the fuck did you guys get here so fast?” Blake asked Chase.
“Took Nessa for a ride out to Death Valley. Was only just turning for home when we got the news. And why the fuck didn’t you call? Got a call from some guy named Bear.”
Blake flicked his brother a questioning look before answering, “I was too busy trying to find out what the hell had happened.”
“For four fucking hours?”
What could he say? He hadn’t been thinking about the club, he’d only been worried about finding his woman. A woman they should be out looking for, not here arguing about territory breaches, although the conversation that came from the other side of the room was beginning to calm a little. He shrugged.