OWNED: A Dark Bad Boy Baby Romance (Blood Warriors MC)

by Naomi West

  “I just, I wanted to tell you to be careful. Okay? And don't trust him.”

  “I know. I will be, and I won't.”

  They embraced again, one last time before he left. He held her against him, his strong arms encircling her like a ring of protection and security. “I love you,” he said, just louder than a whisper.

  “I love you, too,” she whispered back. She stood up on tiptoes and kissed him. “I still wish you'd take me with you, though. I don't like this, Cutter.”

  “We went over this,” he said, squeezing her one last time. “I can handle Wyland, okay? I'll be back soon, alright?” Then, he was letting her go and heading out the front door.

  She watched him as he left. She didn't like this, not one bit. Not only did she worry that he'd bitten off more than he could chew, she didn't like this feeling of helplessness. Not after she'd been given a glimpse of what having control of her own life could be like.

  But, maybe that it was her fate to be in one prison or another. Imprisoned by her fear of Wyland, imprisoned by her worrying over Cutter trying to protect her. Every which way she turned, she seemed to see bars in front of her. Some effort by someone to control her. She clutched her hands into fists at her side and shook her head: no, something had to change.

  Chapter 32

  Cutter

  It was a rare occurrence when Cutter didn't enjoy the shortest of bike rides. This was one of those times. He could smell a change in the air, one that he didn't necessarily like. His palms were sweating, his head spinning. He'd spent his entire adult life fighting, sometimes even killing. His world was drenched in blood and violence. He'd done backroom deals, shady back alley trades, dead drop style cash for drugs. Hell, he had even become comfortable with it, years ago. He understood he had blood on his hands, and he even knew where the bodies were buried. He'd put some of them there, after all.

  This was different, somehow. He had to outsmart a man like Wyland. A man who lived by his wits, by his ability to speak and talk circles around the other man. Even with as much reading as Cutter had done over the years, he knew that he was pretty much walking into a gun fight, armed with just a knife. This was a damned fool's errand, a Hail Mary of epic proportion. But, it was the only chance he had.

  He arrived at the park a few minutes early. He stayed on his bike for a moment and looked around, taking in the lay of the land. With school still in session, it was almost deserted. Most of the soccer moms were lined up in front of the elementary school waiting for their ankle biters, or busy at the grocery store picking up provisions for the weekend. A lone figure stood out by the small pond, about a hundred and fifty yards away, feeding ducks.

  The only car here was Wyland's white BMW, parked down at the far end from Cutter's bike. The tinting on the windows was dark, almost black. At a glance, he couldn't even see inside. Wyland could have been sitting in there with a whole squad of cops, or a gun leveled at his head, and he wouldn't know the difference. It was now or never.

  He took out his cell phone, brought up the app that he'd downloaded for recording their conversation. It was simple, just a little record button that would save the recording to a digital file and immediately upload it to a cloud service somewhere off his phone. He was about to put the phone away, but then decided against it. He needed to send a message to Squirrel, to see how things were going with Liona.

  He hated leaving her out of this, but he couldn't risk putting her in harm's way. He knew she didn't like it, that she was agitated with him for agreeing to meet with Wyland. If anything happened to her on his watch, he'd never forgive himself. Cutter sent off the message to Squirrel, glanced around the parking lot one more time, then headed for Wyland's vehicle.

  It was time to have this meeting.

  Chapter 33

  Liona

  Nervous and agitated, Liona paced back and forth in the rec room. This was insane. She couldn't believe she’d let Cutter run off on his own like this. He didn't know what Wyland was capable of. Even though they were friends years ago, he thought Wyland was just some prick in a suit. Cutter thought that, as president of the Vanguard, he was some top dog on the street. But, Wyland was crazy. There was no telling what he'd do.

  She chewed at her thumb, gnawing away at the tip as she tried to think of what she could do. She had an idea, but she didn't know if it would work or not. She remembered seeing some sleeping pills in Cutter's medicine cabinet when she'd been rummaging for some face wash. Maybe, if she could get the guys to have a drink with her, she could slip one of them, or both, a mickey. She looked furtively back over her shoulder at Smalls and Squirrel, who had returned to their seemingly genteel game of pool.

  “Come on, man,” Squirrel said as he chalked the tip of his cue, “you can't make that shot.”

  “Boy,” Smalls said, grunting as he leaned down over the pool table and got a bead on the eight ball with the cue ball, “don't tell me what I can and can't do. This shit's child's play.”

  Squirrel barked out a laugh. “Believe it when I see it.”

  “Hey guys,” Liona said.

  Smalls and Squirrel glanced her way, eyebrows raised. “Yeah, girl?” Smalls asked.

  “I'm gonna head back to Cutter's bunk. Try to read or something, take my mind off things.”

  “Alright,” he said, nodding. “We'll keep an eye out for Cutter. Either of us hear anything, we'll let you know, okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Okay.”

  She left them in the rec room and went back to Cutter's bunk. She went into his bathroom and to his medicine cabinet. Only, they weren't there. “Shit,” she swore to herself, slamming the medicine cabinet shut. She leaned down and began to dig through the drawers just below the sink. They had to be here somewhere!

  Outside in the rec room, there was a loud yell. “Goddammit, Squirrel!”

  She stopped and cocked her head. It was Smalls, probably yelling about Squirrel snaking the winning shot out from underneath him, or some other crap. Even before the rest of the guys had been locked up, those two had been at each other's throats over little competitive games like cards and pool. As far as Liona could tell, it just seemed to be part of their natures that they were both competitive.

  She went back to digging around in the drawers. Nothing in the first one, just an empty bottle of aftershave an old, half-filled canister of shaving cream. She slid it shut and went onto the second.

  There was a loud thud, then a door slammed. Probably Smalls going off to his room to have a drink in some peace and quiet. She wasn't too worried about it. Just meant she'd only have to drug one of them. And, quite frankly, she didn't mind drugging Squirrel. He was kind of an asshole, if she was being honest.

  At the bottom of the second drawer, she found the half-filled bottle of sleeping pills with Cutter's given name typed out on them. She gave them a shake and closed up the drawer. She didn't know why he had this prescription, but she knew they'd work pretty well for what she wanted. A few years back, she'd had the same thing prescribed to her by her doctor after Wyland had mentioned she seemed to have problems sleeping.

  At the time, she'd wanted to scream at him, “No asshole! I just don't want to sleep next to you!”

  She pocketed the bottle of pills and closed up the medicine cabinet, then headed back out towards the rec room. Squirrel was still in there, picking up pieces of a broken pool cue from the ground.

  “Woah,” Liona asked as she came around to his side of the table. “What happened?”

  He shook his head. “Smalls got all pissy when I won,” he said in a frantic and frustrated voice, “and stormed off to his bunk. You know how he gets sometimes, acts like a real goddamn asshole of a sore loser. Big time, you know.”

  “Oh, I'm sorry. But, hey, would you like another beer?” she asked, gesturing to his nearly empty one sitting on the table. “I'm going to grab one, and I hate to drink alone.”

  “Sure,” he said, perking right up as he collected the last of the pool cue and took it over to the tab
le. “That'd be great,” he added over his shoulder.

  She didn't like doing this. The guys here were rough, but who among the Vanguard wasn't? To join an outlaw gang like this, you had to, pretty much by definition, be a social outcast and misfit. It didn't necessarily make someone like Squirrel a bad person, or mean there was anything wrong with him. He was just an odd duck, as her father would say.

  Liona went into the kitchen and grabbed two bottles of beer from the fridge. She twisted off the tops and set them down on the counter, then went and rummaged for a spoon. She pulled the pills out, shook a few into her hand, and stuck the pill bottle back in her pocket. She set the little blue pills on the counter top and, with the back of the spooning bowl, began to crush the pills into a fine powder. She pulled out the bottle and checked the recommended dosage again. Just one pill. Liona screwed up her face and bit the inside of her mouth. Okay, five pills. That should be more than enough to knock him out, and make it last.

  She finished crushing the rest of the pills till she'd hit her quota, then slowly and deliberately brushed the narcotic dust into the mouth of the beer bottle. The powder dissolved easily, and mixed well with the drink. Then she very carefully picked up the laced drink in her left hand, and made sure her intended beer was in her right. Satisfied she knew the difference, she headed back out into the rec room. First, she'd dose Squirrel. Then, when he was groggy enough for her to slip away, she'd go find Cutter and help him figure this out. She just hoped Smalls wouldn't wake up while she was trying to make her getaway. She didn't know if she had enough pills to dose a man his size.

  “You wanna play another game of pool or something?” she asked as she put the beer in her left hand down in front of him. She gave him a big, friendly grin. “Promise I won't break the stick when I lose.”

  He returned her grin so wide she could see those bad and missing molars of his near the back. “Sure thing, little lady. Love to.”

  Chapter 34

  Cutter

  With his cell phone set to record and stashed away in his pocket, Cutter headed to Wyland's white BMW. Gravel and rocks crunched beneath the heels of his biker boots with each step. This was the moment of truth. The moment everything depended on.

  He still hadn't received a text message back from Squirrel, but he could understand that. Squirrel and Smalls were probably throwing darts or playing a hand of cards, and he just hadn't heard. It wasn't a big deal, either. He and Smalls were brothers in the MC, after all, and Cutter trusted both men with his life, and with Liona's. Besides, he couldn't worry about that stuff now. He needed to stay focused, needed to keep his eyes on the prize.

  He realized, as he walked up to Wyland's little sports car, that something was wrong. Now that he could see better through the heavily tinted black windows, he began to see that no one was in it. He stopped next to the car's passenger side door, and stuffed his hands in his pockets. That wasn't right. Where could Wyland be? He frowned and looked around the park, a wave of uneasy confusion washing over him. He looked out to the pond, to the indistinct figure out there feeding the ducks. Could that be him? He frowned and shook his head. He could image Wyland doing a lot of different things, but feeding the ducks wasn't one of them.

  As he stood there, though, he heard something. A faint, distant sound, like the jingling and singing of wind chimes just beyond the edge of his hearing. He stood still, very still, and held his breath. It was coming, he realized, from inside the car. He leaned down to the passenger window and, cupping his hands around his face to block the glare, peered inside. There, resting in the middle of the driver seat, was a cheap burner phone that was lit up, ringing. He didn't see a red light on the dashboard, or anything, to mark the car as having the alarm turned on.

  He straightened up, shaking his head, and walked around to the driver side. He tried the door, but it was locked. He looked around the park again, to make sure it was still as deserted as it had been, then put his jacket-clad elbow through the window. The sound of shattering, tinkling glass filled the air as Cutter brushed away the jagged edges of glass and reached inside to unlock the door. The phone, meanwhile, continued to ring without pause.

  He picked up the phone. On the front of it was a local number, keyed to the contact name “Oldest Friend in the World.” His stomach dropped. Wyland. At least, a name like that as the contact seemed to match his sick sense of humor. This felt like a setup, like a trap of some sort. He needed to get Wyland on the phone, one way or another. He answered the phone and pressed it to his ear.

  “You're late, Desmond!” Wyland chirped on the other end of the line, with that normal, amoral and upbeat attitude of his. “Figured you would have found this phone a little while ago. Oh well, time moves on without us, with no care for our feelings one way or another. Am I right? Or am I right?”

  “Thought I was acting in good faith when you dragged my ass out here, Wyland. What the fuck happened here? Thought you and I were doing this meet face-to-face.”

  “Good faith?” Wyland asked into the phone. All the false sanity had been dropped from his tone of voice. Now, he just had that cruel streak running through it. “Just like all the good faith I put in you all those years ago, you miserable piece of shit? Faith when you tried to steal my girl?”

  If this was how he wanted to play it, then so be it. Cutter shook his head and pulled out his cell phone from his pocket and held it up so it could record their conversation. “Look,” Cutter said, “I admit it. I fell in love with her, and I told her about it. Is that why you came after my MC? Why you came after the Vanguard?”

  “I came after you because you're all criminals, through and through. I wanted to see you all behind bars, because that's where scum like you belong.”

  “That why you beat Liona, then?” Cutter asked, trying to steer the conversation towards something more incriminating. “Why you abused her for so long?”

  “What?” Wyland said. “Who told you that? I love her. Everything I've ever done was for her. It was for our life together.”

  Cutter sighed. No luck on that front. “So, do you still want to do this deal, then? Me testifying against the Bolt Riders in exchange for immunity for me and my club?”

  Wyland laughed. And laughed. And laughed. “Testify against the Bolt Riders? Who are they, some other biker rejects?”

  “You said-”

  “Let's get this clear, Desmond,” the assistant DA cut him off, the words practically slithering out of his mouth, “I'm going to bring you down, and I'm going to bring the rest of your crew down with you. I know you've been protecting Liona, and that's fine. I'm glad you have, even. She means the world to me.”

  “I've been protecting her from you, you son of a bitch.”

  “That's just what she wants you to think, Desmond. Deep down, she knows I love her, and that her life is with me. Her future is with me. That's why she chose me all those years ago, and not you. And, that's why you've come back into our lives and stolen her away from me. You want your revenge, you want to ruin my life.”

  “What? No-”

  “You showed up on our wedding day, Desmond,” Wyland chided. “Everyone knows it, people saw you. A bride was seen riding away on the back of a chopper being ridden by a man matching your description. Same vest, same paint job, same everything. You stole her from me, but I'll get her back. I promise you.”

  Somehow, in Wyland's twisted mind, he'd flipped the script around. He'd convinced himself he was the hero. Either that or he knew he was being recorded, and that Cutter was trying to trip him up and admit guilt, some other piece of incriminating evidence. But, how could he know?

  “Just remember, Desmond, you're not always around. One of these days, she'll pick up her phone when I call. Hell, she's probably there alone right now. I think I'll just call her, or maybe swing by. I'm just around the corner, anyways.”

  Cutter shook his head, pounded his fist on the roof of the white BMW. He was nearby. This had all been a setup to get him away from the clubhouse. “No, you son
of a bitch,” he yelled into the phone. “You keep away from her?”

  “Away from the woman who'd already agreed to marry me?” Wyland asked like Cutter was daft. “I just want to talk to her, Desmond. There's no harm in that, is there?”

  Cutter could hear that cruel smile of his coming through in his words. He clearly planned on more than a little chat. But, thank God, Squirrel and Smalls were still there. They'd keep her safe, or die trying.

  “Probably won't stick around to say hello. But, maybe, just maybe, Liona will want to come back home with me. If I can convince her, you know. But, I'm going to really take her on a trip down memory lane, first, maybe change her mind. Fingers crossed on that. Once she sets herself to something, she's more stubborn than a mule.” He paused and laughed. “But, hey, you love who you love, for whatever reason. Am I right, Desmond? Or am I right?”