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

by Naomi West

  “Maybe that's true-”

  “No, it is true. Why do you think he was even coming to our wedding? To see you?”

  That much was true, at least. Damn him. She hadn't sent the invitation, and Cutter was only coming because Wyland had had two of his guys arrested in twenty-four hours. She frowned a little, shook her head again. “Well, it doesn't matter why, he's been protecting me.”

  “Protecting you?” he asked, reaching out again to stroke her hair.

  In her confused state, she didn't see the hand coming. She felt his soft fingers stroke her hair, just like he used to when they'd first gotten together. Between the drugs and the confusion, she almost began to forget what this man had put her through.

  “Don't you mean keeping you locked up?”

  She slowly blinked her eyes. “That's not ...”

  But he had been, hadn't he? Every time she'd wanted to leave, Cutter had fought tooth and nail to keep her in. Hadn't that been what made her the angriest with him? That she was being kept like a pet bird in a cage, just another cell? But, no, she needed to look at the source of the ideas going into her head. This was Wyland she was dealing with.

  “He's a criminal, sweetie. A very, very bad man. And he's been keeping you because I was trying to do the right thing and protect you, and the town. Remember? I'm the good guy?”

  Okay, that part she knew was bullshit. He could lie to himself all he wanted, but that kind of shit wasn't going to fly with her. She brushed away his hand. He looked hurt as he retracted his hand.

  “If you're such a good guy,” she spat, “why the hell are you keeping me here with two guys who are talking about raping me?”

  His eyes went cold. Back to the same look he'd give her just before the beatings began. The old Wyland was back. With a vengeance. “What?” he asked, his voice almost a hiss.

  Before she could respond, though, he was up off the cot in a blur. His hand went inside his coat and came back out holding a chrome automatic pistol. With a shout, he shot both men between the eyes, one after the other. Liona screamed, as her ears rang from the back-to-back blasts in the enclosed space.

  “See?” he shouted as he wiggled a finger in his ear. “I'm the good guy! They won't ever touch you, sweetie! You're all mine!”

  Chapter 42

  Cutter

  Cutter had been a lot of weird creepy places. Crack houses, cartel grow ops, meth labs, brothels, even back alley surgeries for the occasional stray bullet. But this place took the cake. Maybe it was because he'd spent forty hours a week here for nearly four years, but there was something about the big, sprawling building with its graffiti on the lockers, fallen ceiling panels, and broken beer bottles everywhere that gave him the heebie-jeebies as he pressed himself against the wall and made his way down the hallway.

  He stopped, his feet crunching on a piece of old dry wall, and listened. He heard voices ahead and, as he peered through the darkness, he could make it out the flickering light of something like a kerosene lamp coming out of one of the old classrooms. He held his breath, tried to listen more closely.

  “West ain't shit, man,” a gruff voice said. “Fucker thinks he's got us lock and stock on this, boys, but once he gets the rest of the money, we're gonna take care of him.”

  “Think we can really pin it on hem BB fuckers?” asked another man.

  “Hell, yeah, man. Cutter is the only one still out. We take the money, take the drugs, then we kill West and blame it on Cutter. Then, we move in and pick up the pieces, taking all their territory and business.”

  So, that was their plan. They were working for Wyland on this, but then they were going to double-cross him. If he just used the shadows to sneak by, the problem could take care of itself. Nothing screamed bad DA like being killed by a bunch of bikers over a bad deal. Of course, that would still leave the Bolt Riders out, running around, trying to pin everything on the Vanguard, and Cutter in particular. The men inside the room laughed, and Cutter counted three, maybe four guys inside. He gritted his teeth. Even with a surprise attack, that would be dicey to handle on his own. Plus, if they got a shot off, he'd alert anyone else still in the building.

  One of the guys inside the room piped up. “I say we take the girl back to the clubhouse when we're done with the DA.”

  “Yeah, chief, let's get the girl,” one of them added, excited. “We could keep her as a real clubgirl, like a pet or something. After a few nights, and some China White in her veins, we'll have her begging for all of us.” All the bikers in the classroom laughed cruelly, their voices filtering out into the hallway. “We get a collar and everything for her!” The men laughed again, encouraging him.

  Cutter didn't hear the rest of their words. A spike of rage-fueled adrenaline entered his veins. His vision narrowed, his eyes clouded over. There was no way in hell these scumbags were going to touch Liona. Not a fucking chance. Their words were a burble in the background, barely audible over the sound of rushing blood in his ears.

  He reached down and grabbed the canister of DIY tear gas off his belt and began to inch closer, along the wall. He got to the edge of the door, makeshift grenade in one hand, silenced pistol in the other. He pulled the pin on the canister and banked the tear gas against the open door of the classroom, arcing it inside. Just like pool.

  “What the fuck?” one of the guys asked as the hissing can bounced one, twice, three times, before rolling to a stop in the room. Then, the coughing began. “Motherfucker! What is this shit?”

  Cutter raised his pistol to chest height, gripped it in both hands, and took a deep, grim breath. The men came running out of the room moments later, uncontrollable tears streaming down their red, blistered faces. “Jesus fucking Christ!” one of them nearly yelled as he ran out into the hallway, his hands frantically rubbing at his face. He turned left, passed right in front of Cutter.

  He was the first to go down, heavy as a sack of potatoes. A quick singular bullet to the head from the Vanguard president's silenced pistol. He was a human one moment, a corpse the next. The other men streamed out behind him, all with cries of confusion and shock coming from their lips. Cutter dropped them all, one after the other, still not saying a word as he seethed with anger.

  “What the fuck?” the last man cried as he dropped to his knees. “What the fuck's going on?” Clearly, he could hear the shooting, but he couldn't respond in any meaningful way. He put his hands in the air, and sobbed. “Please, don't. I'm barely even with these guys.”

  Cutter walked around him, still not saying anything, a cruel grimace on his face. He could see from the patch on his back that he was lying. He was a full member of the Bolt Riders. Granted, he didn’t recognize his voice as one of the guys who had joined in on the conversation regarding Liona's fate. He put his pistol against the back of the man's head.

  He started to sob. “Please, man, I got a little girl at home. Lemme live, okay? Lemme live.”

  Cutter sighed. Maybe the guy was lying, maybe he wasn't a father. He was still someone's son. Now, as Cutter paused, the blood-rage subsided a little. He took the barrel of the pistol from the man's head.

  “Oh, man, oh thank you. Fuck, thank you so much!” he cried out, shaking his head from side to side, not believing his luck.

  Cutter whacked him on the back of the head with the butt of his pistol, whipping him into unconscious with the big hunk of tempered steel. As the man dropped to the floor, he heard something else. It sounded like gunfire, like two shots fired one after the other. He looked around. It had come from one of the nearby air vents.

  He ran over to the closest one and put his ear against it. Screams drifted up from below the school, from the basement where they kept all the maintenance stuff. He knew that scream. Liona.

  Cutter scrambled, trying to find the door he knew was around here, the one that would lead him to the stairwell that would take him into the bowels of the school. He reached down to his belt, pulled out a mini Maglite he'd been avoiding using, and flicked it on. He ran down a hall,
found it, and threw it open. In the pitch black, with nothing but a round of pure, white light to guide him, he took the steps two at a time, running over detritus and kicking bottles of out of the way.

  “I'm coming, Liona,” he breathed to the silent high school. “I'm coming, babe!”

  Chapter 43

  Liona

  She slapped at Wyland's hands, trying to keep them off her.

  “Sweetie, honey, lovey,” he said, his voice saccharine sweet, as he tried to calm her down. “Calm down! I'm just trying to protect you! Trying to keep these goons off you!”

  “Get away from me!” she screamed in a shrill voice as she slapped at him harder, struck his face.

  He gave an exasperated sigh and stood up from the cot. “That's the way you want it, then?” he asked, his voice suddenly back to the old Wyland. “One last chance.”

  “Leave me alone!” she screamed.

  “Fine, bitch,” he said through clenched teeth. “You asked for it. Time to show you some respect.” He descended on her again, his hands not brooking any argument. He reached for her clothes, began to tear at them.

  She clawed at his hands, at his face, trying to keep him away from her. He was too strong, though. He gripped her wrist, twisted it out of the way. He slapped her with his open hand, right across the mouth. She cried out in pain, too shocked to fight back for a moment. With her hands not protecting her anymore, he reached down and grabbed the front of her shirt, began to tear it off her. He ripped the buttons off with effort, opening her to the cold deserted room.

  “See?” he asked, as he grabbed her other wrist and pinned it down to the cot. “This is what you get, sweetie.”

  She came back to her senses, began to scream again. When he'd torn her top open, he'd had to let one of her hands go. She lashed out with her suddenly free fist now, instead of just her nails, and caught the bastard in the eye.

  He recoiled, putting his hand to his face as he stumbled a couple steps back. He took his hand away and looked down at the smeared blood. She'd split open his brow, and he'd smudged a little trickle of his blood. “You fucking hit me,” he said, disbelief filling his voice. “You fucking whore!” he said, louder. “You fucking hit me!”

  Her eyes widened in fear as her hands came up to defend herself. “Lay another hand on me, you son of a bitch,” she swore despite her wavering voice, “and I'll fucking kill you. So help me God.”

  “Better start praying, then,” Wyland said, his voice cold as the arctic on a January night, “cause he's the only one that's going to help you.”

  He closed on her again.

  She screamed back. “Fuck you!”

  If she was going to go out, she wanted to go out kicking, screaming, and standing up for herself.

  Chapter 44

  Cutter

  He came out of the stairwell, the door banging and clanging against the wall. He shined his light around, searching, straining his ears. Somewhere, down the hallway to his left, he could hear the sounds of screams and struggling. Cutter bolted down the hallway, splashing through puddles of water filled with needles, used condoms, and old cigarette butts. He had to stop every twenty feet or so and perk his ears up so he could make out the sounds.

  It was still there, the sound of a woman’s voice. Wherever Liona was, she was down here. Finally, after what seemed like hours but had only been moments, he came to a screeching halt in front of an old custodian closet.

  Liona screamed again behind the door. “Fuck you!”

  He tried the door. Locked. He threw his shoulder into it, but it wouldn't budge He tried again, but no luck.

  “No!” Liona screamed again.

  “Fuck you, you stupid whore!” Wyland yelled.

  Cutter drew back from the door, kicked at the spot nearest the door knob, but nothing. It must have been a steel framed door, one that wasn't going to break with any amount of kicking. Gripping his pistol in both hands, he stepped off to the side and fired two shots into the knob.

  The gunfire echoed through the hallway, setting his ears to ringing with its volume. The doorknob clattered to the ground with a clang and the door fell open. Yellow light from a kerosene lamp spilled out into the hallway.

  “Help!” Liona screamed again as Cutter rushed in. “Get off of me!”

  “Wyland!” he yelled as he barged into the room, pistol sweeping the room. He wasn't paying close attention and nearly stumbled over the two Bolt Riders corpses at his feet. When he looked up after catching himself, Wyland already had Liona, half-naked with her blouse torn open, arranged in front of him as a human shield. In his other hand, he held a fancy-looking chrome-plated Kimber pistol, flashy but sort of weapon a rich kid who knew nothing about pistols would end up buying. “Let her go!”

  “Fuck you, Desmond,” Wyland shouted back, his gun waving back and forth a little. Blood trickled down from a cut on his right eyebrow. His face was a mask of rage, a twisted caricature of what he'd once looked like. “I'm taking her with me, and we're walking out of here.”

  “Cutter,” Liona sobbed, her hands up around Wyland's forearm at her neck. “Please, please, please,” she sobbed.

  Cutter clenched his jaw, gritted his teeth. He could kill Wyland right then and there. He knew it, and had no qualms or ill-feelings. But he couldn't guarantee that he wouldn't hit Liona in the process. And even if the odds were one-in-a-million that he'd hurt her, he still couldn't have pulled the trigger. Wyland didn’t know that though, so kept the gun leveled, kept it trained on the fucker like a magnet.

  “Back out slowly, Desmond,” Wyland said. “And let us leave.”

  Cutter nodded, his eyes still very much focused. He had no intention of letting this piece of shit live. He’d let him walk out, for now. Cutter had twelve bullets left, which meant he still had at least twelve opportunities to kill Wyland. “It's okay, Liona,” Cutter said as he began to carefully back out of the room. “Just keep calm. Alright, babe?”

  Chapter 45

  Liona

  “Stop dragging your goddamn feet, you stupid bitch,” Wyland screeched in her ear as they made their way down the dark hallway. Ironically, it was probably safer that Cutter was following them, since that meant they had some kind of light for Wyland to see by.

  She tried to keep calm, tried to keep her breathing normal. Cutter was going to save her. She had to believe that. He looked like a professional, like he'd been saving people from hostage crises all his life, as he strode confidently after them.

  “You don't wanna do this, Wyland,” Cutter said. “You're not gonna be able to pin this on me like you planned.”

  They stopped at a door that led off the hallway and opened up into a stairwell. Wyland pulled her back with him and they began to slowly climb the stairs, one step at a time. “Think I'm fucked?” Wyland asked. “I got a whole crew of guys, and they all want your head on a platter, Desmond. And they're gonna get it, too!”

  “The Bolt Riders?” Cutter asked as he entered the hallway, his flat black silenced pistol still trained on them. “The guys you promised Vanguard territory to? The guys who ain't running to your rescue right now? You think I didn't take care of them already?”

  Wyland growled his frustration. She could tell from the way he was holding her, how tightly his hand was digging into her shoulder, that Cutter was getting to him. All his plans were coming apart, all his machinations had had a monkey wrench named Vanguard thrown into them.

  “Fuck you,” Wyland screamed as they reached the top of the stairs and pushed out into the hallway.

  She realized then, as they backed slowly down the wide corridor, their feet brushing through the variety of detritus on the floor, that they were in the old high school. She idly looked down at the fast food wrappers, condoms, needles, empty spray paint cans that covered the old tile, and wondered for a moment at how long this old building had been this way.

  “You're going to let us leave,” Wyland said through clenched teeth. “You're going to let us leave, so we can be happy toget
her.”

  Liona almost burst out laughing. Somehow, she kept her mouth shut. Setting him off like that right now might get her and Cutter both killed. Cutter shook his head. “You know I can't do that, Wyland.”

  They turned down another hallway. “You know, Desmond, if you'd just left well enough alone, things would have been fine. Liona and I would be happy and married right now.”

  “You really think I didn't try?” Cutter asked. “You came after me and MC, you sent me the invitation to the wedding. Not Liona. You're sick, Wyland, you're sick in the fucking head.”

  They backed up against a door with a push bar, slammed through it into a big, wide open space. The auditorium. Where all this had started? The place where Cutter had first told her about his feelings. Where Liona had first caught a glimpse of the madness behind Wyland's eyes. Where Liona had made the wrong choice, no matter what Cutter said now.