by LeAnn Ashers
One thing I know is that we will go down swinging.
Adeline looks at every woman in the room. “They threatened the women in the club too, they just sentenced themselves to death.”
* * *
Wilder
“Get to the fucking mall!” Lane yells, running out of the clubhouse. The other guys follow me.
What the fuck happened?
The mall?
My heart fucking stops in my chest. What if she is hurt? My life would be over in a split second.
We thunder out of the gate, rushing to the mall. All of the guys around me are pissed off, and I can tell they are scared.
We can handle a fucking lot of shit, but our worlds being threatened?
That tortures a man.
The ride to the mall is the longest fucking one yet, and we pull up outside the place. Lane doesn’t get off. He motions for us to stand still.
“Son, fucking tell me she is okay,” Smiley says.
My dad looks like he is about to pass out beside me. My mom, my woman, and my fucking sister.
Six more bikes pull up. It’s the Original Guys, including Walker and Tristan. “What the fuck is going on?” Walker yells and steps off of his bike.
“If you will sit fucking still I will tell you,” Lane yells back before he collects himself. “The cartel made their move.”
“How?” Derek growls.
“They knocked out the prospects and told the women to give us a message. The message was they are here and ready to take over the town. Fight, and the women and kids are the first ones to go.”
Another bike pulls up with a sick Travis.
“Let’s get our women and then we can fucking chit chat.” I cannot fucking stand it anymore. I need Joslyn here in front of me to make sure she is okay.
“We go straight to the club.”
We get off our bikes and walk into the mall. “Where are they?” I walk to the right of Lane—-as vice president, that is my spot—-and on my right are Derek and Travis.
“The bathroom off the food court.”
We all walk a little faster because they are right up ahead. We head for the bathroom.
The prospects are awake now, propped up against the door, and I know they are going to be thrown out on their asses because they left the women exposed. Second chances are not happening here.
Lane rips the prospects’ patches off their cuts right then and there. “Leave,” Lane tells them and they leave.
“Amelia, I am here,” Lane calls through the door.
The door flies open, and we all run into the bathroom. Joslyn is standing next to my mother, and I run to them. “You guys okay?” I ask my mom, and my sister nods before my father swarms them both.
“Wilder.” Joslyn face plants into my chest and her dad stands beside me.
“You okay, Sweetheart?”
She nods, her fists clutching my vest. “I’m fine. Wilder, I have to tell you something.” She reaches behind her and hands me something.
My eyes get to the word “pregnant.”
“Yours?” My voice cracks.
“I’m pregnant,” she whispers with a blinding smile.
I kiss her forehead, pulling her to me. My head is against the top of her head, my hand pressed against her stomach.
“You’re going to be a grandpa,” Mom tells Dad and he looks at me, shocked, then at Jos. Walker says, “What?”
“I can’t wait to be an aunt!” Brittany jumps up and down in those fucking heels she wears.
“Congrats, bro.” Travis smacks my shoulder, and Joslyn narrows her eyes at him.
“Why are you out of bed?”
“Babe, like I would stay in bed with all of this shit going on?”
She shakes her head. “Back to bed!” She points at the door. How fucking cute is she when she pretends to be mad.
“I will soon, Mom.”
She smiles and laughs, and I look down at her belly. My baby is in there. I feel someone staring at me—Mom is looking at both of us with tears rolling down her face.
My mom has been wanting grandchildren since the moment the idea popped into her mind. She couldn’t have any kids other than me, and when the opportunity to get Brittany arose, she didn’t hesitate. Brittany became her baby girl, and Mom and Dad spoiled her rotten, even though she was sixteen at the time.
I cannot believe I am going to be a fucking dad. Let’s all pray that it’s not a girl; I am not sure I could handle that shit.
Joslyn
I cannot believe I just told him right in front of everyone, but with everything going on, it seemed like a good idea. His reaction was everything I’d hoped it would be and more. I will never forget the expression on his face when I told him. He was so happy.
For me? It has not sunk in yet. The moment I found out, my friends and I had guns pointed at our faces.
“Come on, Sweetheart, we are headed to the club.” Wilder pulls me close, and other guys are doing the same with their women. Lane is in the front with Amelia, and Travis is standing beside her. Brittany is behind her with Derek on one side and Maverick, one of the Original Guys, standing on the other. Smiley, Adeline, and Tristan are behind her. Darla is behind them with her husband and Konrad beside her. I am pulling up the rear with Wilder and my dad. The other guys are just standing around us.
They are making sure we are safe.
This wasn’t planned; they all just lined up like this.
This is family.
We all walk together to the entrance of the mall, ignoring peoples’ strange looks. The bikes are parked outside and, at the back of the parking lot, I see a blacked-out van. My heart sinks. Am I just paranoid?
Screeching tires come next, and they quickly move toward us. Wilder pushes me behind him, and Walker wraps himself around me. All the other girls are in similar positions as their men move to protect them.
Wilder pulls the trigger, and one of the guys with the guns falls out of the van. Travis starts shooting out the tires, and Tristan hits the front of the van, making it stop. Konrad rushes to the van and throws open the door, shooting the person inside.
Everything is happening in slow motion. Wilder is standing over me like a sentinel, and Walker is covering my body with his.
“Konrad, Maverick, throw them in the prospects van and drive it to the clubhouse they are around the street!” Lane yells as he stands up with Amelia pressed against his back. Derek is lying on top of Brittany, and Darla is hidden under her husband.
Adeline is pressed against Smiley’s back, and I see pure panic on her face. This has rattled her, and I am sure I will be in the same boat once I’ve had the chance to think about what the heck just happened.
“To the bikes!” Lane yells, and Wilder pulls me off the ground, hiding me from view. Everyone around me is hurrying to the bikes. “You’re in front of me,” Wilder says.
What does he mean?
He climbs on and settles me on his lap so I am straddling him on the bike. “Is this safe, Wilder?”
He grinds his teeth. “Baby, we need to hurry to the club. I will not leave you exposed against my back.”
I understand now and, making myself as small as possible, I hunch down and lay my head against his chest. He wraps an arm around my back and uses the other to move the bike.
“I need you out of here, Baby,” he whispers in my ear and turns on his bike. The others also crank up their ignition, and I see all the girls are in similar positions. Brittany is next to us, riding with Derek. She winks and snuggles closer to Derek, who is trying to fight a smile. She is loving riding with him right now. She has wanted him for a long time, and right now she has him exactly where she wants him.
“Let’s ride!” Lane yells, and we all follow him. The van is behind us with the guys that shot at us. The other Original, my dad, Travis, and Tristan are surrounding the van on their bikes.
The wind is whipping around me like crazy. We are going really fast, and the wind is intense. Wilder must sense it and puts
his hand over my face, protecting me from the wind.
God, I love that man.
Wait, I love him? Did I really just say that?
But I have to admit it’s the truth. I love him so much that it consumes every part of me.
Now we have someone threatening our very existence.
16
Wilder
Joslyn and the girls are huddled in the living room with Tiffany, along with the Devil Souls women and kids. The Devil Souls were called the moment we got back to the club, because this affects them just as much as it affects us. They are in the next county, on the same shoreline, and we are connected by relationships among our members. Shaylin is the Grim Sinners’ princess—she’s the daughter of Smiley, the ex-president of the club, and the sister of Lane, the current president. She’s also Butcher’s woman; he’s president of the Devil Souls. Alisha is Techy’s ole lady; he’s part of the Devil Souls. And she’s the daughter of Adeline, who is Smiley’s wife.
The Devil Souls has a lot more kids than we do at the moment. Torch has a baby; the president, Kyle, has two kids; and Alisha has twins.
So yes, this shit affects them just as much.
Lane just explained the whole situation and Liam stands up. “I just stepped off the plane. My time has ended with the SEALs and I’m here to fucking stay, and I say we take all of them out. No one threatens us and especially our women.” He looks at Torch as he says “our women.”
Liam is the kid who saved Torch’s daughter when he was seventeen. Paisley was sixteen, and a janitor at the school tried something with her. Liam beat the shit out of him.
That bought the kid a prospect patch and led to him being patched in by the age of eighteen. Then he joined the navy and became a SEAL.
The kid isn’t a kid anymore. He is now twenty-four, only three years younger than I am, and fucking huge. He is six-foot-five and tattooed, ready to take on the world. And Torch just lost his daughter to Liam. After dancing around each other for years, Liam and Paisley are finally together. Torch is glaring at Liam, ready to kill him.
He knows that shit too.
“Techy, we need eyes on them.” Kyle takes out his computer.
“I say we put trackers on their vehicles. An alarm will go off in all your homes and in the club once they are close.”
Our tech guy, Caleb, nods. He’s already on his computer. “One of the warehouses is outside of town, close to our gym,” he says. They are looking at the cameras tracking the cartel’s movements.
“Don’t forget we have one alive that shot as us earlier,” Derek says.
Liam smiles evilly. “May I have the honor?”
“Have at it.” Lane throws him the key, and Derek follows Liam out of the room.
“Guys, they have been seen in Raleigh. Kyle.”
“Fuck!” Kyle yells, slamming his hand on the table. It’s what we thought, but it’s been confirmed.
“We need to retaliate,” Lane says, and Kyle nods.
I pitch in for the first time. “I say we fucking take out the warehouses.”
Konrad, one of the Originals, says, “I have some launchers and we can take out both warehouses.” He grins, sitting back with his hands behind his head.
“Good with me, let’s get rid of these fuckers,” Kyle agrees.
“Mav, Konrad. You’re on.”
“Fuck yeah!” Maverick says and walks out with Konrad on his ass.
Maverick and Konrad are the youngest of the Originals, in their early forties. The rest are in their fifties.
“We all fortify our houses at night, we are impenetrable because of the steel barriers. We also alarm our gates, electrify, and triple lock. The moment someone gets close to our houses, we’ll hear the alarm,” Techy informs everyone.
Techy and Caleb have planned this system for both clubs for the past year, and now it’s time to finally put it to use. We have steel barriers in place, and nothing can get in unless we let it.
The door opens, and Liam comes in. “He is going to tell us all he knows.”
We all get up and follow Liam into the interrogation room, and we all stop dead in our tracks at the sight of the man.
His fingers are cut off, and the fingers on the ground have no fingernails. The stubs have been burned so the guy doesn't bleed out.
Liam walks up to the guy. “Tell them now.” He presses a knife against his throat, dragging it slowly but not deeply enough to do any real damage. “Or I start on your toes.”
We are hit with the stench of shit. Piss and some other vile-smelling liquid is pooling at his feet. “You’re fucking lucky that didn’t get on my fucking shoes,” Liam deadpans.
Nobody has said a word from the moment we walked into the room. I look at Derek and he shakes his head, in as much shock as the rest of us.
He is fucking vicious.
“Our plan was to start with the kids, we were planning on taking the president’s daughter, Tiffany.”
Lane charges across the room, and we all hold him back.
“Next was Shaylin, then Joslyn and Brittany. The princesses.”
Rage is all I fucking feel. They were planning on hitting us all where it would fucking kill. This means absolutely no mercy. They were going for Tiffany first. That shit is unspeakable.
“We were going to torture them until you gave in, and once that happened we were going to hit the Devil Souls MC, starting with Paisley.” He looks right at Torch when he says his daughter’s name.
They have been watching us for a while. They know our names and the kids in the club. “End him,” Lane tells Liam.
“With fucking pleasure.” The knife disappears into his neck.
“This is war, this is one time we will not show any fucking mercy at all. They threatened our kids and our women, that is something we will not forget or forgive.”
Lane stands beside him. “All I can say is game on.”
“May they rest in motherfucking pieces,” I roar and everyone joins me.
The MC is in our blood; we are made for moments like these. It’s time to let our true nature out.
“I am going for Paisley,” Liam tells Kyle and Torch.
Kyle nods and is running out the door; Torch watches him go. “Torch, Paisley will be safer with Liam than with anybody else,” Techy tells Torch, who grumbles, “I know.”
“I will stay with Brittany,” Derek says, and I look at him. Any other time I would say no, but she needs to be protected. Her house is well-armed, of course, but a man on her is just as important.
“I am staying with you, Wilder,” Travis tells me.
Lane looks at his phone. “They are in place. Let’s go watch.”
Techy rushes ahead of us, and we all enter the room to see security cameras pointing at the warehouses. Konrad is standing outside the warehouse in our town, and Maverick is outside the other in Raleigh.
Techy turns up the volume, and Konrad stands in the middle of the road with a huge-ass gun in his hands. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he sings and I laugh.
One by one, they all walk out. Konrad winks at the camera and turns around and shoots the launcher before any of them can even draw a gun. The bullet moves through the middle of the group.
He shoots two more. The warehouse is completely on fire at this point. Some of the guys on the ground are getting up. Konrad takes out his gun, and bullets land directly in their heads.
Konrad disappears from view and shows up with a shotgun. He has always been a crazy fucker, and Smiley laughs at this. He shoots the vehicles sitting outside the warehouse, taking out their motors.
Lane texts Maverick and grins into the camera, and he doesn’t even let these guys have a chance to walk out. He just shoots and shoots until the place is completely destroyed then takes out their vehicles.
“Techy, I will take the shift whenever you want, man,” Caleb says.
“I will take the day if that’s okay.”
Caleb nods.
They will take shifts tracking and
watching these guys, making sure they don’t play us like they did before. We know what to expect now, and that is a deadly mistake on their part.
“It will take them a few days to get on their feet again, go home and rest,” Lane tells us.
I am the first one out of the room, and I go straight to my parents’ house. Joslyn is asleep on the couch, her head in my mom’s lap. “How is she, Mom?” I ask.
She looks down at Joslyn. “She is fine, she is just exhausted.”
I lean down and lift her off the couch. “I am taking her home.” Travis holds the door open for me; he has his truck here.
Joslyn
“Sweetheart.”
“Hmm,” I mumble, my body still heavy with sleep.
“Wake up, Baby, you need to eat,” Wilder says softly, kissing my cheek.
I smack away his hand, which is snaking up to my boobs. He laughs, and his hand slides down to my stomach, right under my belly button.
It all comes back to me: I am pregnant.
Wilder scoots down the bed until his face is right above my belly. “My baby,” he whispers, just before he kisses my stomach.
I couldn’t stop the tears even if I wanted to. I am going to be a mother, a baby that Wilder and I created together.
Wilder grips my hips, pulling me down the bed so we are sitting face-to-face. His hands touch either side of my face, demanding every bit of my attention. “Joslyn, I love you. I love you so fucking much.” The tears are rolling down my face full force at this point.
His hand lifts mine, our fingers entwined, and holds it to his chest, his heartbeat under my fingers. “This beats for you.” He brings our joined hands to my stomach. “And for our baby.”
My bottom lip shakes. “I love you too, Wilder, you’re my world.” I throw my arms around his shoulders, kissing him deeply.
He stands up, lifting me with him, my legs wrapped around his waist. This feeling is one I will never forget, the feeling everything is right in the world.
Wilder breaks the kiss, setting me gently on my feet. “Come on, Momma, let’s get you fed.”
He tugs me out of the room.