Shakedown

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  I automatically took him, bringing him in close to my chest.

  He didn’t look like Lynn at all.

  He looked everything like Six.

  “Let’s talk about the elephant in the room.” Six clapped, bringing all of our attention to her. When she had it, and mine, she tossed me a bottle. “The douchebag Governor Sander Bryan who has yet to turn in his resignation.”

  Well that was a shit show if I ever saw it.

  The governor was holding on to his position with his grimy demon claws and doing it so hard that it was hurting everyone.

  With my testimony, as well as half a dozen others, as well as his fucking own at that news conference admitting to his own guilt in a trafficking ring using his own influence and business, he should be rotting away in a cell by now.

  He was not.

  He was fighting tooth and nail, his lawyer doing everything he could, to keep him out of the hellhole that would make him pay for his sins.

  The baby gurgled in my hands, and I thought about what I would do for that little one. What I would do if something like that had ever happened to him.

  Then I looked at Six, who was watching me with such happiness on her face.

  “With Sander’s brother’s death confession on tape to both of their involvements,” Sin suggested. “The trial will be a slam dunk. The only problem is, he’s been filing motion after motion to keep him out, appealing every single call that is made. He’ll get there. It’s not an ‘if’ at this point, but a ‘when.’”

  I agreed.

  Only, I wanted this over with.

  I wanted that piece of shit locked away, and for good, when my kids made their arrival in this fucked-up world.

  A fucked-up world that they would never witness as long as I had breath left in my lungs, and a heart beating inside of my chest.

  “Agreed,” Lynn said. “But every day he breathes free, is a day that I breathe uneasy.”

  I wholeheartedly agreed.

  “So let’s take care of it,” Trick suggested.

  “Affirmative,” Sin agreed. “I want to take care of it, too.”

  “Fuck yeah.” Six fist-pumped the air. “Let’s do it.”

  Lynn shot his wife a look. “You’re not going anywhere near him.”

  Six smiled sweetly. “We’ll see.”

  “We all need alibis,” Lynn suggested. “Ones that aren’t our wives and are airtight. Because there’s no way to keep this under the radar. People are going to assume now that you’re out of prison, B.”

  I looked at Lynn and grinned. “I’ll talk to my soon-to-be father-in-law. See what kind of assistance he can add.”

  • • •

  “She’s not stunted,” I growled.

  Belle patted my leg, trying to calm me down.

  But I would not calm down.

  I would not allow her family, even if they were doing it out of love, tease the living hell out of her for being ‘stunted’ when she wasn’t.

  “I was just saying, it’s a surprise that she was able to land someone.” Booth leaned back in his chair. “She always promised that she would never marry. Never have kids. Never anything. She didn’t want that life.”

  I turned to look at the woman that had agreed to be mine forever just a few hours before.

  “You thought you’d be alone for your entire life?” I asked, unable to stop the sadness from leaching into my voice.

  She shrugged. “I hadn’t met you yet. I didn’t know that there would be someone out there that understood me.”

  I felt something inside of my chest shift and knew without a shadow of a doubt that from now on, there would never be a time that she felt unwanted.

  I would make sure that she knew, every single day of the rest of our lives, that she was mine. That I wanted and needed her right there at my side. For as long as we both shall live.

  “Did you have something to ask us?” Bourne asked out of the blue. “Is that why you’re here?”

  “Actually.” I stretched my neck from side to side. “I have two very good reasons.”

  “Which would be…” Priscilla drawled.

  I looked over at the woman that looked so much like Belle, but couldn’t be more different.

  Belle was an extroverted introvert. Priscilla? She was the belle of the ball, always willing to be in someone’s presence.

  She was cute and sassy and willing to try anything, while Belle was beautiful, reserved and would always question you no matter how much sense it made.

  “Which would be, I need to talk to Nico.” I looked over at the door where the man had disappeared to cook steaks over twenty minutes ago.

  Belle rolled her eyes.

  “Just go,” she grumbled.

  She was in on this plan.

  From the moment we showed up here to the house full of her family, she’d concocted a plan that would have her dad grilling steaks and giving me the opportunity to talk to him seeing as he hated having anyone help him cook them.

  So she said.

  Anyway, I got up and headed for the door among the whispers of their family.

  But just before I got to the door, the line of questioning from Booth’s wife, Delanie, had me stopping and looking over my shoulder.

  “Priscilla, when you sit down on the toilet in a public bathroom, and accidentally fart, do you get embarrassed?” Priscilla’s face flushed bright red.

  “Of course I do!” She flushed under all the attention.

  Dillan’s eyes turned to Belle.

  “Belle, when you fart in a public restroom, do you get embarrassed?” Daniella challenged Belle.

  My lips twitched with amusement.

  I’d found out just this morning that she was a bit… different. As in, she was now much gassier. Gas that was coming out both ends, but didn’t seem to bother me in the least.

  “No.” Belle shook her head. “It’s a bodily function. Everyone does it. You poop. Pee. Throw up. Produce vaginal secretions. Ejaculate. It all happens. It’s natural.”

  Daniella turned to me.

  “There was one time that Belle started her period while we were in the middle of the mall shopping for Christmas presents. We all tried to shield her, but she couldn’t care less. Not only did she continue shopping, but she didn’t even get embarrassed when a bunch of teenage boys tried to make her feel bad,” Daniella said. “We weren’t making fun of her. Promise. We were just making a point to say that she was very different than us. Almost freer in how she decides to live life. It’s refreshing. I wish that I could go through my daily life not giving a flying fuck what anyone else thinks.”

  I shook my head and laughed as I made my way out the door.

  “What are you laughing at?” Nico grumbled as he watched me walk out from his position next to the grill.

  “Their line of questioning,” I said. “I feel like eventually as time goes by, I won’t be as surprised by the shit that comes out of their mouths.”

  He watched me walk up to him, not moving his glare away from my face until I said, “The steaks need flipped.”

  He flipped the steaks, set the spatula down on the grill top, and then turned to look at me.

  “The answer is yes,” he said. “I’ve seen her over the past few months practically waste away before my eyes, and if you’re what she wants, then I’m not going to step in your way.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “Good.”

  “What else is on your mind?”

  I pressed my hand against my forehead. “I need an alibi.”

  Nico tilted his head. “Why?”

  But before I could answer, Booth poked his head out. “Hey, have you seen Belle?”

  When I looked up, it was to find my fiancée gone, and nobody knew where she went.

  CHAPTER 27

  Owls can sit criss-cross-apple sauce.

  -Belle to Bruno

  BELLE

  “It’s done.”

  I hadn’t struck the killing blow.

  None of us ha
d.

  We’d all been very careful not to be seen by any cameras.

  Wyett had showed off her B and E skills she learned from her husband and gotten us in.

  Crockett had taken out one security guard, while Beckham had taken out another.

  Swayze secured them in a closet and locked the door from the outside using a chair.

  Blaise tracked the douchebag down while I found a maid.

  A maid who, might I add, had been planted by Six to make sure to keep an eye on anything that happened in the house.

  Crockett had given the maid the packet that we’d scrounged up, and together we had watched as the maid took the governor’s ‘afternoon tea’ to his study.

  I looked at the ladies that had helped me commit a murder. “Let’s go.”

  • • •

  An alert came on my phone an hour later.

  An hour later as Bruno glared at me as he helped me from Six’s car.

  “Y’all are fucking certifiable,” Bruno hissed at the car full of ladies.

  I was the first to be dropped off.

  “Whatever.” Six rolled her eyes. “You don’t even know what we did.”

  Bruno gave Six a look, then showed her the news banner that’d just popped up on his phone.

  Breaking news: Governor Sander Bryan found dead in his home of a heart attack.

  Six shrugged. “Them’s the pits.”

  EPILOGUE

  It’s an add to cart kind of day.

  -Coffee Cup

  BELLE

  One month later

  “Do you promise to love and cherish him even when he watches videos on his phone at full volume?” the man officiating our wedding ceremony asked.

  I blinked, seriously considering this.

  That was one thing that I really, really hated.

  I’m talking, on a scale of one to ten, if that were to happen, I might just very well leave the room, or hell, the house entirely.

  “She does.” Bruno pulled me closer, answering for me.

  I frowned. “But Bruno, I really don’t think that’ll be something that I can live with…”

  Laric, who’d gotten ordained just for our marriage, started to laugh.

  Six, who was at Bruno’s side as his ‘best man,’ started to laugh right along with him.

  Bruno, who’d been very patient with me so far during all of the interruptions, gave me a ‘look’ that clearly said that I needed to behave. Or else.

  I grinned up at him.

  “I guess that I can handle that,” I said, breathing the words right into his face.

  Bruno’s eyes smoldered. “Then by the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss your bride.”

  • • •

  Two months later

  “Push!”

  “Fuck you,” I said to my brother as I slammed the door to the bathroom.

  My brother’s laugh was infectious as the rest of the family in my hospital room laughed right along with him.

  The only one not laughing was my husband. My husband who was now a father.

  My husband who’d been holding our twin daughters in his two hands since they were born when they weren’t needing fed.

  My husband who was a baby hog.

  My husband who hadn’t relinquished them to anyone, not even my father who’d all but begged.

  “In a minute,” I heard him rumble again.

  Bruno was going to be a good father.

  I knew that.

  “How’s it coming out?” I heard Priscilla yell through the door.

  I growled.

  I was scared as hell to go to the bathroom.

  Mostly because I’d ripped from my vagina to my ass, and I was goddamn terrified to do either number one, or number two.

  However, the laws of nature didn’t care that I had a grade-four tear.

  They only cared about making my bowels work overtime.

  Luckily, things turned out better than expected, and when I emerged twenty minutes later, freshly showered among other things, it was to find my dad finally getting to hold my girls.

  I smiled as I walked over to Bruno, who carefully pulled me into his lap.

  He was a witness to the tearing, and he’d treated me like glass ever since I’d given him his children.

  I didn’t blame him. If I’d seen what he had, I would freak out, too.

  “You okay?” he whispered in my ear.

  I pressed my forehead against his temple. “Hurt. But it went… okay.”

  He pressed a kiss to the side of my neck and then wrapped his hands around me tighter. “I want them back.”

  I smiled and turned so that I could see into his eyes. Those gloriously beautiful eyes.

  “I’m sorry that I ever rejected your farmers-only invitation,” I teased.

  He rolled his eyes. “It all worked out in the end, didn’t it?”

  It had.

  It most assuredly had.

  • • •

  BRUNO

  Nine years later

  “Foul!”

  My eyes followed the field across to the little yuppie coach who had been calling our girls for fouls for the entire damn soccer game.

  “Ref!” the opposing coach continued to yell. “Call the fouls! Those girls are animals!”

  Our girls, Ashland and Gracelynn, were definitely animals.

  Wild children to the extreme.

  However, they were not playing aggressively at all.

  In fact, they were playing damn good soccer. Their girls were a bunch of pansies, though.

  They fell down onto the ground and all of a sudden they were producing tears out of nowhere.

  “Daddy,” I heard my daughter gasp. “I have to pee!”

  I looked at Gracelynn who had just been subbed out.

  “Let’s go,” I urged, standing from my chair where I was between Nico and Belle.

  I wasn’t sure why Gracelynn always came to me when she had to use the bathroom, but it was what it was.

  She was my mini-me. Though Ashland did a pretty good impression of it, too.

  It was cute.

  I loved the hell out of them.

  And at least they weren’t like their little brother, who was hell on wheels.

  A brother who was currently playing on the soccer field behind us with Georgia, Six, and Lynn watching him.

  I glanced between the two fields, seeing if Tucker was on the field—sadly, he wasn’t—and hurried Gracelynn to the bathroom.

  When she was finished, she all but ran back to her team, and I took my time.

  However, as she ran, she ended up going close to the other team’s coach, and the coach growled at her.

  I stiffened at the corner of the field, trying to convince myself to calm down.

  Our coach, seeing that Gracelynn was back, immediately asked for a sub, pulling out a little girl that was good, but not up to Gracelynn’s caliber.

  A whistle on the other field had me looking over to see Tucker go down on the ground in a brawl.

  I groaned and started over there just as I heard the other coach of the girls playing our team say, “If you have to, kick them when they’re down.”

  I bared my teeth and started closer to the field, knowing this was about to get out of hand.

  Because, like their mother and me, these girls of mine had tempers.

  They were angry little monsters.

  And, when one of the twins was hurt, the other would surely retaliate.

  “PK!” I heard someone yell.

  A parent of the other team.

  There were more whistles from the other field, but I knew Tucker could handle himself.

  He was a brawler just like me.

  I had a close eye on my girls, which was when I saw a tall behemoth that looked like she was twelve, not eight, creep up behind Ashland.

  Gracelynn hadn’t allowed the move to go unnoticed, either.

  Which was why, when she saw the tall behemoth pull Ashlan
d’s hair and yank her to the ground before, in fact, kicking her, Gracelynn struck.

  See, the thing about Gracelynn was, she had plenty of uncles around to teach her how to play dirty.

  Blood and club ones alike.

  So Gracelynn had skills.

  And one of those skills was to attack without being seen.

  One second the behemoth was standing, and the next she was on the ground crying.

  Who wasn’t crying was Ashland.

  She was pissed.

  “Baby,” I said, catching her attention.

  My daughter’s eyes, so much like her mother’s, lifted to meet my own.

  “Now’s not the time,” I said. “Score. Shove that win down their fuckin’ throats.”

  Ashland’s eyes narrowed.

  Then the team went on to do just that.

  And in the end, when the big guy who’d been running his mouth about a penalty kick not actually getting into the goal, and then came up on my girls threateningly, I’d had enough.

  Once again rising from my chair, I stalked across the field and got right in that motherfucker’s face.

  “You either get your annoying fuckin’ ass away from my kids, or I’ll make you.”

  Aaliyah, the lightweight boxer of our team, snickered as she whispered, “Mr. Marks, you’re not supposed to say those bad words.”

  I winked at Aaliyah as she caught Ashland’s hand and led her over to her coach who was giving them a congratulatory speech as they talked about their next game.

  The dude in front of me bowed up his chest. “Your team played like hood rats.”

  I looked at the man that probably had never had dirt underneath his nails before and said, “Our girls played like a team that wanted to win. There was no unnecessary fouling. There was only playing. Get the fuck over your loss and go home.”

  The man took a threatening step forward but I felt the heat of someone at my back.

  I didn’t have to look over to know it was my club brothers.

  “I suggest you go back to your seat and think about the consequences of your actions,” Sin drawled.

  “Or, you could go ahead and try,” Zach suggested.

  “Or, you could stop being a little bitch and let the kids play,” Hunt piped in.