Shakedown

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  Six: that guy that was posing as a cop was an assassin. Like, honest to God, hired assassin. Lynn is putting armed guards on your door as we speak. They’re ex-cops in private security. Bruno knows something that we don’t. I know that it’s illogical to ask you to keep him safe but… try. He’s one of my best friends. And now more than ever Lynn won’t let me anywhere near him.

  I flicked a glance up at the deep-sleeping man and said, “My dad really isn’t going to like you after he hears about this. But, I have a feeling that you’ll be able to talk him around.”

  CHAPTER 10

  I have a ho in different area codes.

  -Belle tracking her Christmas packages

  BRUNO

  “An assassin?” I heard barked.

  I couldn’t move my hands. Not my face. Not my arms or my legs. All I could do was hear.

  “So I was told,” the female voice replied. “I’m still here. Someone brought me my laptop, some toiletries, and a change of clothes. But I’m here for the long haul.”

  “You don’t even know him, Belle!” I heard bellowed.

  “I know him. He’s my fiancé, Daddy. Get used to it,” Belle, the woman that owned that tantalizing voice, murmured smoothly. “And stop yelling. I’ve heard that coma patients can hear everything. We want to keep him calm, not rile him up when he can’t do a damn thing about his situation.”

  “You can walk your happy ass right the fuck out of this hospital is what you can do,” Belle’s father growled. “Right now.”

  “No,” she replied just as fast.

  “Belle Pena, don’t make me…” the man rumbled.

  “You may leave. We don’t need your negativity,” Belle growled back.

  She was getting pissed.

  She sounded adorable.

  I drifted after that, not catching the rest of their conversation.

  The next time I woke up felt like a long time later.

  This time, the sweet voice of Belle was reading to me.

  “…he thrust his cock deep into her sheath, not caring in the least that she was a virgin and that she was unused to his size.”

  My brain whirled at the sound of her voice, saying those words.

  If I could move my arms, I would be reaching for her right then and there.

  “He pumped his hips deep into her valuga… nope. Typo. I think you meant vagina, Hastings.” She paused. “Bruno, would you say pump my cock into her vagina, or would you say pussy? Because I’m thinking, since this is from the male’s point of view, he would definitely say pussy and not vagina.”

  Definitely pussy.

  But, sadly, I couldn’t answer her, even though I wanted to so very badly.

  Again, my thoughts drifted.

  This time, when I woke up, she was talking again.

  “The ball is in your court,” she all but yelled.

  I had no clue what she was talking about.

  Nor did I think she was talking to me.

  “No, you moron. Don’t buy a vowel. Statistics show that you’ll end up on bankrupt, you dumbass.” She paused. “See? I frickin’ told you so. Bankrupt. You’re such a moron.”

  I would’ve laughed had I been capable.

  My bet was she was watching Wheel of Fortune.

  “Yep, I was right. Moron. Hey, Bruno, you would’ve gotten that, right? I have a certain set of standards that I expect the man that I marry to meet,” she chirped.

  Once again, I drifted.

  Each time I came back, it was her voice that I heard.

  Until one time, instead of drifting away, I swam up into consciousness.

  “This’ll likely take a couple of h…” a woman’s voice said. Not my woman’s. “Holy shit.”

  “What?” a beautiful voice asked.

  I turned my head to find the owner of that beautiful voice and smiled when I found her.

  Belle.

  “Hey,” she gasped. “You’re awake!”

  I was.

  Finally.

  I’d been drifting like this for what felt like a long ass time.

  It was never-ending.

  Something that I really didn’t like.

  The fact that I couldn’t talk to her. Console her. Ask her a question. It was physical torture.

  “I’ll go get his doctor,” the nurse, at least I assumed she was the nurse, said from the other side of the bed. “Wow, this has never happened like this before.”

  I didn’t bother to look at her as she walked out of the room.

  In fact, my eyes didn’t even blink as I continued to watch the woman that’d been talking to me in hell.

  “Do you want some water?” she asked curiously, reaching long, elegant fingers for a Styrofoam cup at my bedside. She shook it and found it empty. “Sorry, but I drank it all. You weren’t drinking it and…”

  “No,” I croaked.

  Okay, maybe I needed some water.

  But I didn’t want her to leave to go get me some.

  I wanted her to stay exactly where she was, within reaching distance.

  “I’m not going anywhere.” She smirked. “I can fill it up from the tap, but I can’t leave you. Not when you have someone that has a very substantial hit out on you.”

  My brows furrowed as she walked away toward the sink beside my bed.

  I was in a very nondescript hospital room with windows on one side, a small alcove, sink, and door on the other.

  The only pop of color in the entire place was Belle’s bright royal blue shirt that clung to each and every single curve she had.

  And the black yoga pants looked amazing on her shapely ass.

  The long, black wavy hair that hung down her back only accentuated how beautiful she was, making me want to raise a hand and sink my fingers into the long locks.

  “Do you remember anything?” she asked curiously.

  No.

  “No,” I voiced my thoughts. “Why? Should I?”

  My brain was a bit fuzzy.

  In fact, I couldn’t remember much of anything.

  “Do you know your name?” she asked.

  I frowned. “Bruno Aryus Marks.”

  She did a little happy dance as she filled up the water.

  “And what’s my name?”

  “Belle,” I answered.

  “And what am I to you?” she asked.

  I tilted my head. “Mine.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Psychiatrist: What triggers you?

  Me: Nouns

  Psychiatrist: Nouns?

  Me: You know, people, places and things.

  -Text from Belle to Bourne

  BELLE

  “You’re sure the memory will come back?” I asked nervously, looking at the man at the end of the bed that was tying his boots.

  “With time, yes,” Dr. Blunt replied. “It’s not very surprising that he has memory loss. He suffered a motorcycle wreck. Hit his head pretty hard on the ground because of the way he landed. Fortunately for him, he was wearing a helmet like a sane person. Had brain swelling. It’s normal. Most people get their memories back. You’re lucky he remembers you.”

  I wasn’t so sure he ‘remembered’ me as much as he was possessive of me.

  I mean, I’d take it, but I wanted him to figure out what got him here in the first place.

  The fact that he couldn’t remember was scaring the crap out of me.

  An assassin set on killing you over something you don’t even remember that you know? That wasn’t a good thing.

  “He’s free to go.” Dr. Blunt shoved his hands into the pockets of his doctor’s coat. “If you have any questions, call the nurse.”

  I would’ve laughed had I not been so scared.

  I’d never really dealt with being ‘targeted’ before. I mean, my dad was a cop. I was protected beyond measure.

  But the moment we left this hospital, we were going to find ourselves the target of someone that was hell-bent on killing the man I was quickly falling for.

  Hell, I didn’t know w
ho I was joking.

  I’d already fallen for him.

  It’d started when I’d denied him a date and ended when I’d found him hurt here in the hospital.

  I didn’t have much rationality where he was concerned.

  I mean, who the hell fell in love with a guy that fast? Certainly not most sane women.

  And hell, what made it worse was that the majority of the ten days that I’d been around him, he’d spent in a coma and couldn’t talk back to me.

  “Thank you,” I murmured softly. “I really appreciate everything that you’ve done for him.”

  Dr. Blunt grunted out a few words that I couldn’t quite decipher and then left, leaving without another word.

  I walked back past the two security guards that had scary looking eyes—eyes that felt like they looked straight through my soul—and moved toward Bruno.

  “You ready to go?” I asked him.

  “Mr. Dumas,” the security guard that was closest to me said. “We’ve got you a car in the back alley closest to the service entrance.”

  Bruno stood up, his face ghostly white, and carefully nodded his head.

  He had a fresh Band-Aid on his arm that covered his recently removed IV.

  That was the only thing that could be considered ‘wrong’ with him since all of his other wounds were covered up by clothing.

  He had a long-sleeved black t-shirt covering his upper body, shoved up to his elbow to reveal his forearms. He had on a pair of faded denim jeans that looked like they’d been found in the dumpster outside considering how dirty they were.

  Then there were his scuffed boots.

  He was wearing the same stuff that he’d come into the hospital with.

  Surprisingly, none of it had been cut off of him because of his refusal to allow the ER staff to cut them off of him.

  Bruno’s nurse had also offered to have them laundered—I secretly think she had the hots for him but was too intimidated to go past offering to do things for him—but he’d refused.

  Which led us to now, walking out of the hospital, two security guards escorting us.

  It took me two steps with Bruno’s hand in mine to show me that this wasn’t going to go how I’d planned.

  It was only as the security guards were in the elevator, holding the door, that Bruno let them in on his plans.

  “I’m going in my own elevator,” he murmured. “What floor are you going to?”

  The security guards answered, their eyes curious and watchful.

  “I’ll meet you down there,” Bruno muttered.

  They nodded and went down—I wasn’t sure that was protocol, but who would argue with a grown man that looked like he could take on mountain lions and bears barehanded if he needed to?

  Only after the doors completely closed and the next elevator opened did Bruno turn away from the elevator doors and start moving.

  “Ummm.” I paused as I watched him turn us down the hallway directly to our left, go down two flights of stairs, and then take an immediate left into what looked like a long hallway that led to nowhere. “Where are we going?”

  Bruno glanced at me, reached for my hand, and then tugged me toward him.

  I went willingly, loving the way his hand practically engulfed mine.

  I loved it even more that, despite not remembering who I was, he wasn’t letting me go.

  “Back way out of here,” he answered, words clipped and carefully neutral.

  He wasn’t moving fast, but he was still moving us faster than what I imagined was comfortable for him.

  More importantly, he’d just woken up from his coma two days ago. He was still sore—that would happen when your head was practically ran over, helmet or not—and he probably shouldn’t be doing anything this strenuous.

  “But what about the security guards?” I asked curiously as he continued.

  He looked at me over his shoulder, his eyes going to where our hands were connected as a little frown filled his face, and then turned back around without answering.

  I sighed and went with the flow, following him dutifully out of a side entrance that spit us out, not at the back or the front of the hospital, but across the damn street after we crossed over the skybridge.

  He led us to a nondescript black sedan in the middle of the parking lot, parked me directly at the front driver’s side door, and then walked all the way around the car.

  Just as he made a near complete circuit, his phone rang, and he reluctantly pulled it out and put it on speaker before saying, “Yeah?”

  “Bruno, what the fuck?” Lynn barked into the phone. “That was for you!”

  Bruno looked at the phone. “Don’t care. If you say don’t trust anybody, I’m not going to trust anybody. Even you.”

  He had a point.

  What did I know about Lynn?

  Obviously, I’d asked my father about him.

  Though he’d known ‘some’ about the ‘mayor of Kilgore’ he hadn’t known enough that he felt like I would be safe with him with an assassin hell-bent on taking Bruno out.

  Lynn sighed. “So I take it you’re not going to Belle’s place, either?”

  My heart skipped a beat at that announcement.

  Bruno’s eyes met mine. “We’re going to mine.”

  “Yours as in the one that nobody from this club has been to, that I haven’t been to, that one of your best friend’s hasn’t even been to?” Lynn asked carefully.

  There was a pause and then Bruno said, very carefully, “Yes.”

  Then he hung up, shoved the phone into his pocket, and then gestured at me to get started.

  I looked at him blankly.

  “I don’t know what you’re expecting me to do,” I admitted. “I don’t have the keys to this car.”

  He pulled something out of his pocket, a set of keys, and then unlocked it.

  “Lifted it from the tech that was taking all my bandages off earlier,” he murmured. “We’ll drive to the nearest car lot and leave it there. From there, we’ll buy a new one and head out.”

  Buy a new one.

  What?

  But that was exactly what he meant.

  It took us ten minutes to get there, fifteen to buy the car—Bruno was very persuasive—and five to get the keys before we were heading out in a brand-new, 2021 Chevy truck under my name.

  My. Name.

  I wasn’t sure why it was under my name.

  I didn’t ask. Didn’t think it would matter.

  Only…

  “You know,” I said. “If you were going to buy it in my name, you should’ve let me pay some of it off. I’m trying to build up my credit.”

  He looked over at me.

  “I have an 823 credit score right now. I want to have perfect credit, however,” I explained when he still hadn’t turned to look at me.

  Which was then making me nervous.

  “What you mostly need to do there is open more lines of credit in your name. A car would’ve worked—if we would’ve had the time to sit there and do all that paperwork. Even spending what we did there was a chance I probably shouldn’t have taken. Saying that, we needed a vehicle that was new. One that didn’t happen to have a tracker on it like the one they wanted me to get into probably had. And, just sayin’, I pay. Always. Get used to it,” he grumbled as he took the driver’s seat this time.

  “I guess that’s a good enough reason not to take that car,” I expressed warily as I slid in beside him.

  The seats were nice. Like warm, melted butter.

  I pressed my hands to the leather underneath of me and nearly moaned.

  I loved heated seats, and I loved soft things.

  Soft things made my life go round.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  I petted the seat some more.

  “You know how, a long time ago, t-shirts had tags in them and you had to wear and wash them a bazillion times before they were soft?” I asked out of the blue.

  He grunted out a word that sounded possibly lik
e ‘yeah’ so I kept going.

  “I was thinking how all this changed,” I said as I continued to feel up the seats. “Things didn’t used to be this soft. Which was a massive trigger for me. I had to have soft things. My dad used to dress me in his old t-shirts because they were always soft and comfy. He learned how to cut the tags out perfectly. Then, they started to change up t-shirts. Now they’re tagless and are in a soft cotton blend that isn’t scratchy at all. And they’ve come out with some great feeling sleep clothes—again, they had to be super soft or I’d be naked. I remember my dad used to have an old truck back when we were kids. I hated riding in it because it had one of those scratchy industrial seat covers on it. The kind that were universal for several truck seats. Anyway, he used to have to give me a blanket to lay over the seat so I’d even get in it.”

  “Sounds like a pain in the ass,” he grumbled. “But I can see why it would bother you, I guess.”

  I snickered.

  “I’m weird,” I told him. “There are things about me that’ll make you sit there and question my sanity. I’m sorry you’re stuck with me now.”

  He turned to look at me when we came to a stoplight.

  “If I didn’t want you to be here, you wouldn’t be.”

  With that, he drove in silence until we arrived at our destination.

  CHAPTER 12

  It’s thick girl season. All u thin crust women sit down. Deep dish coming through.

  -T-shirt

  BRUNO

  My head hurt.

  I couldn’t remember what I’d done last week, let alone last month, and the last thing I wanted to do was feed my animals.

  But the moment that I pulled up in front of my barn, I knew that I’d fucked up.

  Not telling anyone where I lived meant that nobody but I could take care of the animals.

  It also meant that, though they could forage on their own, they hadn’t eaten ‘well’ in well over ten days.

  Son of a bitch!

  I hadn’t understood the urgency to get here until now, and when I got out of the truck and heard my pigs bleating like they hadn’t been fed in weeks, I couldn’t stop the rush to my steps.