Everyone ducked as the bullets flew but the gunmen weren’t shooting at random. They had one target and once he fell to the ground, they began to drive away. Not before Mags got to her feet and pulled out a modified Steyr Aug and shot up the second Impala. Several bullets pierced the gas tank and the vehicle blew up just short of their property. The flames and smoke it produced immediately drew unwanted attention.
In the distance, ambulances, police vehicles and fire trucks could be heard.
Max grabbed her gun. “I’m gonna ditch this but ladies, go get cleaned up. Kink, collect all the guns everyone has on them. Cricket and Ronan, I’m gonna need you out here with me. Let’s go check on Hardy’s wound.”
Without thinking, Ronan spurned into action and followed Max to where Hardy lay on the ground. He spit up blood though he was still conscious, thank God.
Max knelt next to him and pulled up his upper body as Hardy screamed in pain.
“His fucking lung has been ruptured and he’s got a clean hit through the shoulder but it looks like muscle and bone could be affected. I’m no doctor but we need to get him medical treatment pronto.” Max turned toward them with those spooky aquamarine eyes, the same color as Chantal’s and Kink’s. “He’ll live but they did a number on him. If he hadn’t gone down the way he did, they woulda shot him through the heart to complete the job. This isn’t just a message, who ever did this was tryin’ to murder him.”
“There is no who,” Ronan said coldly as Cricket stood and ran to the front of the compound.
They both watched as he opened the compound doors, allowing various authority figures onto their property—including the Feds. It looked like any and everyone who wore a badge had decided to turn up to witness the macabre soirée.
“Fernando Navarro. The same sick asshole that abducted your old lady.” Max continued to put pressure against the shoulder wound as they spoke. “He’s a dead man.”
“You’re telling me,” Ronan responded in a cold voice. “As soon as we get all these fuckin’ peace officers out of the goddamn compound and Hardy to a hospital, I’m going after the asshole myself. He’s dead already, he just doesn’t know it . . . yet.”
Max’s aquamarine eyes smiled. “I always liked that about working with you guys but Dimitri also taught me a lot. Angelo and Raymond—they’ve taught me more than the Russian ever did in a short length of time. You have to know Fernando expects you to come after him because that is when he will put a bullet in your brain. You go after the ones closest to him. He doesn’t give a shit about Carlito, right? So we go after Emilio.”
Ronan laughed out loud as he shook his head. “Emilio is being held at Supermax in Colorado—how the fuck do we go after him?”
“Believe me when I say anyone and everyone can be murdered given the right circumstances. You worry about your president pulling through and leave Emilio to me.”
Two techs rushed toward them and quickly took over from where Max had left off. Meanwhile, Eve strolled their way like a pit bull that’d had her favorite toy yanked from her seductive, pouty mouth.
“Shit, head’s up—Feds on the move,” Ronan murmured.
“What the fuck is going on here?” she exclaimed in anger. “I thought I made it clear to you, dumb shit—I said NO retaliation! Did I not?”
“You’re yellin’ at the wrong guy, Eve.” Ronan lit a cigarette and dragged hungrily. “As much as I wanted to go after Fernando, my dad talked me down after he told me what happened to you with the Russians and the cartel. We never went after Fernando—though the thought crossed our minds. This is all on him. He wanted to kill Hardy that night he abducted Nomes. That’s why she willingly went with him—she didn’t want any Saints’ blood on her hands.”
Eve glared from Ronan to Max and back again with lethal, hazel-green eyes. “Are you telling me this attack was completely unprovoked?”
“I don’t know if I would use ‘completely’ and ‘unprovoked’ in the same sentence.” Ronan shrugged apathetic shoulders. “He’s got Naomi, Eve. One of the best DEA officers the Feds have on the payroll. She’s also former Air Force. Do you think she’s just gonna take whatever Fernando is dishin’ out to her? She probably killed some of his best people and pissed him the fuck off. What went down here today was his way of telling her to calm down or he'll do even more damage than he’s already done.”
Eve swallowed harshly as she pulled out her Samsung Note and voice dialed her superiors. “Yeah, the situation has become tenuous. We’ve got to get her out of there before he kills her.”
There was silence as she turned away from them and slowly began to casually pace back and forth on the pavement. “He’s your fucking informant, Des, but Hardy Cox is my fucking agent! I’m not losing another man because you get the psychos, assholes and fuckin’ sociopaths who go Hannibal Lector on their targets. This is your mess—you clean it up! Me? I’m going to get my other agent before she ends up in the hospital or dead!”
Eve pressed end and faced the men again. “I could use all the help I can get. It’s totally against protocol but do you want to accompany me to get your girl?”
Ronan’s heart beat in his chest like wild horses. “You think you have to fuckin’ ask me twice? Hell motherfuckin’ yeah I’m accompanying you!”
“Come on. We gotta get to North Las Vegas Airport. A plane will meet us there. Max, you comin’ along too?”
“Only if I can bring Mags.”
Eve rolled her eyes. “Then tell your wifey to hurry the fuck up. We leave in five.”
Chapter Eight
Naomi
If I had one of the best captors who could bring out the complete and utter sadism that existed in him, Fernando would definitely be in the top three.
Every time I passed out from the pain, he would wake me with smelling salts so I was forced to endure every shred of the agony he put me through.
Unlike his earlier threats of shoving his cock in every hole of my body, he only raped me missionary position or doggy-style.
He knew my menstrual cycle like the back of his hand. Even though I’d used birth control pills, my cycle never changed and I was ovulating.
Fertile.
He knew the act of getting me pregnant was like shooting fish in a barrel.
After loading me up with a shot of fertility drugs usually reserved for women who were seeking IVF treatment, he downed a couple of Viagra and went to work.
My vaginal area ached every time he hammered his cock inside of me with only one mission in mind. There were no nausea-induced orgasms because he was past the point of caring whether my body betrayed me and reacted favorably to the forced sex between us or not.
Fernando was acting out his own revenge against Ronan and me.
He stopped only briefly once a call came through on his burner phone. He picked up his iPhone 6 Plus and listened to the caller before a smile spread across his face.
“So we lost a few soldados but the gringo is dead?” he confirmed in quick Spanish.
He listened to the caller received and nodded his head. “Good work. Don’t bother me again. I’m busy all day. If you need something, call Carlito and he will get in touch with me.”
Fernando ended the call.
I lay on my back, my legs spread at an obscene angle but my whole body ached to the point where I couldn’t manage to fake a shred of decency. At this point, I just didn’t give a shit anymore.
He’d done what he set out to do.
I could feel it. I knew it wasn’t possible and my imagination was just playing tricks on me but he’d succeeded. He’d gotten me pregnant. I could feel another life growing inside of me and feeding off whatever nutrients it could drain from my battered body. There was absolutely nothing I could do but continue to take my punishment with as much endurance to the pain as my brain would allow.
I was disconnected from my own body enough to the point where the continuous ache was dulled to an intensity that I could feel but it didn’t matter anymore. He’d traumatize
d me and something inside me had snapped and irrevocably broken beyond repair.
If the human psyché was a rubber band then mine had been stretched as far as it could go. Between fighting war in Afghanistan, being a DEA agent and what I’d been forced to put up with since my abduction, that band had stretched further and further until I felt it snap in two.
There was still some fight in me but it was buried too deep, hurt too much for me to try to dig it out and use it when I needed it the most.
I’d never suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome before but I knew people who had. My soon-to-be brother-in-law, Cillian, had it with a vengeance. I knew what it was like. The highs and the lows. The feelings of despondency and absolute self-loathing and self-hatred.
Somehow, we’d done this to ourselves. It was our fault we suffered the way we did.
If only I could be more like Ronan and just turn my emotions off at particular moments, I would be fine. I always thought we shared that in common but my abduction had proven how wrong I was about the tolerance of my own mind.
I could turn my emotions on and off when I had him by my side because we worked in tandem. When I couldn’t handle it, he shouldered the burden for me; he was my rock, the one person I could depend on through thick and thin.
Without him, I felt like I was nothing.
Sure, I could be strong—I murdered two people with my bare hands and lived to tell about it—but my strength began to wane the longer I was in captivity.
I wouldn’t even refer to what I was going through as Stockholm syndrome because I felt nothing for Fernando. If I loved him at one time, it had putrefied and turned into an overwhelming sense of foreboding and hatred.
Everything about him disgusted me. From the size of his cock and the way it invaded my body to his naturally strong body—sleek, strong, lean and ivory skinned. Those fucking amber-green eyes of his—once his most arresting feature—filled me with dread. I only wanted and wished for this to all be over.
I couldn’t kill myself and I wouldn’t kill him. I couldn’t. It wasn’t physically possible. As much as I hated him for what he’d done to me, he would always be mi amor primero—my first love. To pretend otherwise was just foolish and no matter how much I despised him right now, a part of me couldn’t hurt him though he continued to make me suffer over and over again.
Fernando strode toward me, grabbed the bottle of KY warming lubricant and applied it liberally all over his swollen dick.
“Every time I think it’s gonna be the last time between you and me, I see that pussy of yours—so warm and inviting—and I want to fuck you all over again. When are you gonna loosen up for me, huh?”
I turned away from him, my jaw still aching from where he’d bruised it and caused a hairline fracture.
That was the point of kegel muscle exercises. You stayed tight down there for a reason but God knows I would stop practicing them if it meant I could get some relief from this man.
At that moment, Fernando was the predator and I was his helpless prey. I shivered involuntarily despite the temperature in the suite being perfect—it was hardly warm yet it certainly wasn’t cold either.
He eased his body on top of mine and entered me with a forceful thrust made easier by the lubricant but still my insides burned. I never thought I could ever get tired of sex but my entrance was sore from abuse and so was my vaginal passage. I needed some relief—anything to ease the pressure of being violated over and over again.
What the hell? Was the guy superhuman? How was his dick not sore from all the fucking he’d done to me?
I waivered in and out of consciousness; my mind drifting back to lazy days with Ronan when he would take me riding on the back of his Harley. Although most of the time we were safe and wore helmets, sometimes he would take me on deserted highways where we wouldn’t run into any patrolmen. There was nothing better than being on the back of a bike with the wind flowing through your hair and the feel of the air on your skin.
I would press my face against his leather cut to protect it against the elements and inhale the scent of cologne, motor oil and cigarette smoke. It was heaven on earth and as I held tight to him, I’d dream of our life together. How we would eventually grow older and he would make a proper woman out of me. I could imagine our children running around with their various cousins while my belly would be full again, pregnant with child.
When I turned to see a face, it wasn’t Fernando’s, it was Ronan’s and he smiled down at me with a look of complete love and respect in his eyes.
“Tell me you’ll always be mine,” he whispered.
“I’ll always be yours,” I replied with a small smile before his lips whispered against my own.
Reality came crashing into my sweet dream of paradise as the sound of a helicopter drowned out everything, even my gorgeous fantasy that could have kept me going through my current nightmare.
“Mierda! What the fuck is going on?” Fernando cursed loudly in Spanish before he stopped moving inside of me and glanced around with bored disinterest. “If any of those fuckin’ assholes think they can use my helipad without permission, they are wrong.”
There was a loud commotion heard downstairs but Fernando seemed oblivious. He purposely ignored it while he grabbed a chunk of my hair and held my head back, hammering away inside of me like a jackrabbit until he moaned out loud and slowed to a stop.
I turned away, ashamed as he slid from inside me like a slug and stood to his feet at the same time the double doors crashed open and the Feds invaded the room.
I crawled up in a ball and tried to make myself small as men with guns forced Fernando to the floor meanwhile a small hand placed itself on my injured shoulder.
“Naomi? Can you hear me?”
I recognized the voice as Eve’s but I couldn’t bother to reply as I buried my face in the bed, ashamed she found me like this, in a position of such humiliation and degradation.
“Get the fuck off of me!” a male voice exclaimed. “I have rights ya know. Let go of me. I want to see my woman!”
It couldn’t be but I would have sworn the voice belonged to Ronan.
No, I was obviously hallucinating.
I had to be.
Ronan was far away from here.
He was still in Las Vegas with Hardy and yet again, my mind had decided to play vicious, dirty little tricks on me. Eve wasn’t here either. This was all just a bad dream to keep me tethered to hope I should have allowed my mind to escape a long time ago.
The scars had already formed; there was no saving me. I was a lost cause and everyone knew it.
“Let him go,” Eve commanded.
Suddenly, a pair of arms picked me up as if I weighed nothing and held me against a chest that smelled of leather, cigarette smoke and Joop! Homme cologne.
Ronan had once teased me he wasn’t a guy who needed to wear cologne and it became a running gag for me to buy him various scents for every holiday—Christmas and birthdays included. Joop! Homme had been the most recent purchase I’d made for him so that fact that he was wearing it brought me back to reality.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and didn’t ever want to let him go as Eve breathed in deeply.
“Jesus fucking Christ. What the fuck did he do to her back?”
Ronan moved his arms out of the way and glanced wherever Eve was looking before he broke down sobbing. “Oh, baby. What the fuck did my Dad make me put you through? How couldn’t he have given me the orders to save you? Why was he protectin’ that twisted fuck? Eve, she needs a stretcher and a doctor. No telling where else that sick fuck has harmed her.”
In the background, I could hear Fernando laughing out loud. “Oh, your old lady will never heal from what I put her through, gringo. You’re better off taking her to some abandoned field and shooting her in the head. She’s worthless to you now.”
I clung tighter to Ronan, even when the medics attempted to separate us. Eventually they succeeded and I was placed upon a stretcher. An IV was quickly ad
ministered and once the pain medication and whatever sedative they decided to give me entered my bloodstream and kicked in, the world around me began to fade like light at dusk.
Not that I gave a damn about time or space.
I was saved and finally back with Ronan.
As far as I was concerned, nothing else mattered.
Part Two
Recovery
Three Months Later
Chapter Nine
Ronan
Naomi lay on the uncomfortable lightly padded table while Dr. Rivers pointed out the fetuses to them. Ronan held her right hand and couldn’t help the smile on his face as the OB-GYN explained the situation.
“We can’t tell the sex of the children yet but you’ve got two healthy babies growing inside of you,” Dr. Rivers announced as she turned off the machine and cleaned off the remnants of the gel used for the procedure on Naomi’s stomach.
“Can you tell how far along I am?” She bit her lip nervously. “Last time, you were a bit vague.”
The doctor smiled. “It’s not an exact science but judging from their lengths and the way they’ve grown, I would put you at about fourteen or fifteen weeks.”
He kissed her forehead before he whispered in her ear, “You were pregnant before he abducted you, babe.”
“Are you sure? I mean . . . about the timeline?”
Dr. Rivers turned to stare at her again before she realized her patient had been through rape and traumatization. The rapist’s sole intention was to get the patient pregnant when she’d been pregnant all along. At least that’s what the test results seemed to show.
“Naomi, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Sometimes we can be off by a week at the most but I’m telling you . . . before your . . . traumatic ordeal occurred, you were expecting. No one would have been able to tell you of course because you’d just become pregnant but sweetheart, these children—they belong to your fiancé.”
Ride To Vengeance (A Rough Riders MC Novel #3): A Rough Riders MC Novel #3 (The Rough Riders MC Series) Page 10