Clubs: Motorcycle Club Romance (Savage Saints MC Book 6)

by Hazel Parker

  And then I looked behind the fallen bikers, and I realized something that drove me mad.

  The Sinners hadn’t meant to fight us here. They’d meant to create a distraction so they could head for The Red Door.

  “Let’s move!” I roared, waving my hand.

  There was absolutely no way that this could happen. There was no fucking way I was going to get a child, get my love back, and then have it all taken away by the fucking Sinners. I’d sooner die in a suicide run there to prevent them from getting.

  The chase was just short enough that I could see the Sinners turning right onto Sahara, but not so close that I could get a clean shot off on them. And they knew that we wanted to avoid combat in a heavily congested area like right by one of the Strip casinos. It made me hate them even more to know that they were using our ethics and moral codes against us.

  I ignored the red light telling us to stop as I and several other bikers banked hard to the right, taking the turn aggressively in an attempt to catch up to the Sinners. They had cleared the top of the bridge, putting them in range of The Red Door. In a matter of seconds…

  BK, I really hope you can pull this one off. I really hope—

  I felt a bullet whiz by my head from behind. I turned to see a crew of the Sinners had pinched us from behind. When the fuck did they get strategy like this?

  Maybe that’s why they were laying so low. They were studying us, planning for this moment. They knew that they could surprise us if they showed some intellect and some strategy.

  And fuck me, it worked.

  “Pork!” I yelled as I dipped back, coming even closer to the bullets. “Get ten of these guys to protect our six. Richard and I are going to go in and protect The Red Door. Can you do that?”

  “Roger that!” he yelled, turning his machine gun on the Sinners behind us and splaying them with a few rounds of machine gun fire.

  I turned my attention back to the oncoming Red Door. I saw three figures on the roof of the building and, for the first time all battle, smiled with confidence.

  With only one arm, BK, along with Mama and Walker, were defending the club from the onslaught of Sinners. I had no idea how they’d had the knowledge to get up there, especially since Mama and Walker had been left with orders to remain inside, but BK must have known that a higher position would benefit the club more. Military knowledge.

  Better late than never that we have his help and I’m not resisting it, I suppose.

  Though the sight was a triumphant one and one that filled me with confidence, I could not declare it an exciting moment. The Sinners still had a multitude of bikers, and I couldn’t say with certainty that the three on the roof had gotten all of them. Though the arrival of us as reinforcements sent several of them scurrying away, there were too many bikes lying on the ground and not enough men by them to make me confident in believing there weren’t any Sinners inside.

  I pulled up to the entrance, took off my machine gun, and grabbed a pistol with my left hand. I heard Richard yelling at me not to go in there alone, but I knew that Cassie was inside. I also knew that if there were any Sinners inside, Cassie stood no chance. She wasn’t soft or weak, but she wasn’t going to stand a chance against a man with a gun and no morals and ethics.

  I took one step in when, in the reflection of the mirror on the far side, I saw a man coming at me with a gun. I ducked just as he fired, having hidden in the corner behind the door, and turned. In one motion, I grabbed a knife from my pocket and threw it at him, hitting him in the neck. Even with my skill, I wasn’t usually that accurate a thrower, but it did the trick. The man gurgled horribly before I finished him off with a clean cut of his throat, saving some silence in case anyone else was inside.

  “Nice try, asshole,” I muttered.

  I went into the theatre only to see another Sinner with a gun pointed at me. He missed on his first shot, and I managed to pry the gun from him. This guy, though, had some skills fighting—after I’d dislodged the gun from his right hand, I’d exposed my side, leaving me vulnerable to the knee strike he delivered. I doubled over, and he tried to send another one in.

  But this time, I reacted in time, grabbing his knee and pile driving him to the ground. I mounted him, delivering two hard strikes to the face before he bucked me up, grabbed my arm, and rolled me over. He delivered a hard strike to my gut, nearly knocking the wind out of me, but a second knife in my pocket got him off me long enough for me to finish him with a bullet.

  I knew I’d given away any sense of silence right now, but given the situation, I was pretty sure I’d overestimated my need for stealth.

  I hurried back to the changing room.

  “Cassie!” I shouted.

  I opened the door and found about a dozen girls on the floor, crouching and trying to remain invisible—while Cassie’s throat was in the grasp of a big, burly man with curly black hair.

  “Cassie!”

  “Oh, is that her name?” the man said, shoving Cassie against a cabinet and to the ground. “And you must be Mr. Cassie. Her knight in shining black cuts.”

  “You picked the wrong fucking guy to fight,” I growled. “Name is Barber, sergeant-at-arms of the Savage Saints. I’m the person who’s going to make your life a walking nightmare.”

  “Is that so?” the man said before chuckling with a level of casualness that sent a chill down my spine.

  He turned to face me fully, and though I didn’t show any fear, I most certainly noticed the patch on his chest. “SAA.” The sergeant-at-arms of the Degenerate Sinners, huh?

  “You can just call me Undertaker,” he said. “Because I’m gonna have your sorry ass six feet under when I’m through with you.”

  “Big talk for a man who’s about to be outnumbered and dead.”

  “Oh, that may be,” Undertaker said. “But I’m going to take you and your lady here to the grave. Like that girl of yours, Crystal, I believe her name was? The dancer who worked as a whore on the side?”

  “You watch your fucking mouth!”

  I had not expected Cassie to shout right then. I wished she hadn’t—this was a battle I needed to handle, and I sure as shit didn’t need help. Undertaker chuckled and backhanded her without taking his eyes off me.

  “Your girl has spunk, I’ll give you that,” he said. “It’s going to make it so much more pleasurable when I get my dick wet with her before I kill her. Or maybe I’ll do it after; I haven’t decided yet.”

  “No!” I roared, letting out a battle roar before I threw a knife at him.

  Undertaker dodged it with ease, moving his body only the minimum amount that he needed to before the knife sailed right by him. It missed the girls, but I knew I couldn’t do that again. If I missed and it hit one of the girls—if it hit Cassie—I’d never forgive myself, even if I won this fight.

  “Such poor awareness of your surroundings,” Undertaker taunted. “You need to protect these girls, and yet you subjugate them to the risk of your greatest killing tool. Let me show you how it’s done.”

  Undertaker came to me. He threw a right hook that I went to block with my left arm. The good news was that it worked.

  The bad news was that it felt like slamming my arm into a brick wall. The even worse news was that he followed it up with a strong front kick to the gut that sent me backwards several feet into the wall.

  “You wanted a fight with the Sinners,” he said. “You got one. It’s too bad that it’s one you can’t win!”

  I gathered myself, knowing that I had let the shock of Undertaker’s raw strength get to me. I’d trained too many times with real UFC fighters ever to get overwhelmed by raw strength; it had just been a moment of weakness.

  He again brought his foot up to kick me, but this time, I pulled it forward, stepping aside and letting his foot awkwardly collide with the wall. I stepped to his side and delivered a strong gut punch, but he sent a hammer fist behind him that made contact with the top of my head. It wasn’t a clean shot, but it was very much a shot that told
me he had skill in MMA just as I did.

  I came back up in a fighting stance, complete with a knife, but when I went to strike, he blocked me and held my wrist in place. I drew blood, to which he just snickered and laughed, before completely knocking it out of my hand, sweeping my legs out from under me, and dropping me to the ground. He put his boot on my stomach, causing me to gasp for air it didn’t seem I could get.

  “Too easy,” he said. “Here’s what you can know now that you’ll die, Barber. We’ve studied you. We’re determined to be the best in Las Vegas. You rich boys have brought shame to what it means to be a motorcycle club. The lifestyle is for the tough and the rugged, not the rich and the spoiled. We got a little crazy first, but Scar is a smart man. He learns from his mistakes. And now, you are going to be one of the first officers to die under his reign. Any last words?”

  He pulled out a gun. I looked over to Cassie, who had her hand over her mouth. My love… my child…

  “Yeah,” I said, still playing weak.

  Then, in a flash, I had a knife driven into his calf, causing him to cry out and awkwardly hop around in pain.

  “You need to know why they call me fucking Barber,” I said.

  I pulled the gun from his grip as blood dripped from the floor. He turned to me with a scowl on his face.

  “You will never—”

  But I shot him, and he collapsed to the ground, dead.

  It was only after the fact that, upon closer inspection, I realized two bullets had actually hit him at the moment of his death. One fired by me.

  The other, I saw as I turned around, by BK.

  “You alright?” he said as he entered the room.

  “Eh,” I said. “I survived. Everyone else OK?”

  The girls, some of them sobbing in fear, all rose. No one had any wounds, aside from Cassie having fingerprints on her throat. That was enough to make me want to fire another half-dozen rounds into Undertaker, but BK, of all people, calmed me down with a hand on my shoulder.

  “You showed a lot of courage here, brother,” he said. “You’d have made a fine Marine.”

  “Don’t give me too much credit,” I said as I collected my knives. “I was almost dead.”

  “Which makes it all the more impressive that you fought.”

  I turned to him. I couldn’t believe it. BK was actually fucking smiling.

  The silent Marine was fucking smiling!

  “Thanks, BK,” I said, the only reaction that felt appropriate then. “Thanks for your help.”

  BK nodded, firmly taking my hand.

  “We have our differences, but you are a Savage Saint,” he said. “That makes you a brother in arms.”

  “Same,” I said.

  As great as this moment was, though, there was someone else I needed to check in on much more. I nodded to BK, turned back to the girls, and found Cassie in the crowd.

  “Baby,” I said.

  She ran over to me, embracing me, battle scars and all. She sobbed into my shoulder, and I held her as tight as I could.

  “You’re safe with me,” I said repeatedly. “You’re safe with me. I’ll make sure nothing bad ever happens to you. I will never leave you.”

  “And I’ll never leave you,” she said. “I knew you’d come.”

  Even if I came a little late. Even if I showed up a little later than expected.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here, huh?” I said. “You’ve had a rough, emotional day.”

  Cassie couldn’t even muster any words in response. And who could blame her? She’d gone from thinking this could have been our last night together to learning she was going to have our child to thinking that this was the end of the line for her.

  But I could say for certain one thing was for sure.

  She was never going to be alone ever again.

  I was never going to be alone ever again.

  We were going to be together forever.

  Chapter 22: Cassie

  I woke up the next morning at the surprisingly early hour of nine in Brett’s apartment.

  Despite all that had happened the night before, I slept with almost stunning ease. It was as if the craziness, the absolute insanity of yesterday, had caused my brain to short-circuit when it ended, knocking me out for the evening. I didn’t remember much from when I got back, to be honest. I knew that Brett drove me in his car, knowing the quietness of the ride would be better than the thrill of riding on the bike. I knew that he had virtually carried me to bed.

  But beyond that? The whole night was one big mystery as if my mind was already working to block out everything that had happened.

  Not to say I didn’t remember the big parts, of course. But the man who had grabbed my neck? The men who had stormed The Red Door? That was all a mystery to me.

  In any case, awake and now feeling better, I slowly got out of bed, leaving a snoozing Brett behind. I placed a gentle kiss on his forehead, went into the kitchen, grabbed a glass of water, and went out to the porch, overlooking the Las Vegas Strip illuminated by the morning sun.

  From this vantage point, Las Vegas didn’t look so bad. The neon signs were off, with no purpose for them to be on at this hour; if anything, all the buildings had some shade of the same bright gold that the sunlight provided. The vehicles below weren’t yet at rush hour traffic, producing incessant honking. I could see myself living here for some time.

  And that was just the city.

  What more lay in wait between Brett and me? We had a child on the way, though “on the way” was still a good eight months out, maybe a little less. I hadn’t even begun preparing for the LSAT, and I was determined not to let a child end my career. I was going to be one of those women who did do it all, and I knew that would require sacrifices on Brett’s part.

  I was putting an awful lot of weight on him. But if anyone could handle it, I knew Brett Pierce was the man to do it.

  I jumped with a slight startle when I heard the glass sliding door behind me open, but I relaxed as Brett walked through with a weary grin on his face.

  “This must be like four in the morning to you,” I said.

  “Nah,” he said. “It’s the perfect hour now that you’re here.”

  He bent over to kiss me, exerting a slight grunt from his battle bruises from the day before, and then sat down in the chair across from me, taking my hand.

  “You know, I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure you don’t go through the shit you did yesterday ever again,” he said. “I let my stubbornness make me think we didn’t need the Saints from California. But I think that was my ‘do it myself’ mentality taking over. When you left that first time, I just felt like I had to do everything on my own. Even when I got to the club, even when I was just one of fifteen, I had a mean streak of independence. Maybe that’s why I got to be the sergeant-at-arms.”

  I felt guilty at that. I squeezed his hand and flashed him a sympathetic smile.

  “Sorry,” I said softly.

  “Never be,” he said with a wink. “It got me here, back with you, a chance at being a father, and on good terms with my club. We’ll probably bring the other Saints to town in fuller force so we can strike at the Sinners, bring them down for good. And when that’s done? I’m taking you on the vacation of your life.”

  “Oh, stop,” I said with a chuckle. “I don’t need a vacation to be with you. Just being here with you, in Las Vegas, that’s good enough.”

  Brett smiled, but he appeared to go deep into thought when I said that. I let it go for a few seconds, but curiosity started to get the best of me.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  He looked at me, looked back at the Strip, and then looked at me again.

  “You’re serious about staying here,” he said.

  It was more of a statement than a question.

  “Your efforts these last three weeks made me realize just how big of a mistake I’d made when we were stupid teenagers. I always felt guilty about it, but now I felt… I felt like I could
n’t waste the opportunity. A part of me always felt that if I went with you, I’d give up being a lawyer, and that I would get stuck. But then I thought if I went to be a lawyer, what would that mean for giving up you? It’s not like I’ve dated the last fifteen years. It’s not like I found love again. You were the one.”

  I could practically feel the warmth in his hand increase from the excitement. It made my body glow gently, just thinking about the possibilities that lay ahead of us for the rest of our lives.

  “So yeah, I feel pretty good about staying here. Just be glad you’re not in Reno or Carson City, though. UNLV is the only law school in Nevada.”

  “I’d shoot myself if I had to stay in one of those places,” Brett said with a playful eye roll.

  “Please don’t. But also…”

  I waited until Brett looked at me again. I wanted him to know the importance of what I was about to say to lay to rest all future doubts.

  “I’ve run so much in my life,” I said. “Not just from you. But every time something got bad after I first left Phoenix, I ran. I think I’ve lived in at least six or seven cities since our first relationship. And it’s like… maybe once or twice, there’s a justified reason for it. Maybe if you do it then, there’s good reason to be on the run. But that many times? There isn’t. It’s an internal problem. It’s a problem of thinking that ‘the right place’ will solve all of my problems. And I know that I’ve had a history of being on the run, being a bit of a coward. I don’t want to be that person anymore, Brett. I don’t want to be the person that leaves thinking ‘oh, it’ll be better here.’ Leaving Las Vegas would just be a continuation of that.”

  “Even for a better law school?” he asked. “Even if you wound up in a place like Los Angeles or Utah for law school?”

  I nodded.

  “Look, I’ll get a job no matter what,” I said. “I’ll wind up in a firm somewhere, especially since Nevada doesn’t have much competition. I’m too driven.”

  “That you are.”

  “And, you know, I’m too pregnant,” I said, drawing a chuckle from Brett. “I’m a little scared about that, I’ll admit. I’m scared that I might miscarry. I’m scared that I might not be good enough as a woman to bear a child.”