by April Zyon
When she opened her eyes she saw her friend, Striker, and smiled. “I will live. I just don’t look like it right now. They kept me like this because I killed three of their men. They have no idea who or what I am, but they didn’t want to chance me hurting anyone else,” Emily said, explaining why she was still zip tied up when she was inside of a locked cell. She had a feeling it was also a bit of perverseness on their side as well. They were assholes like that.
“I know, Em, but you know me.”
She knew. That’s why he was one of the Horsemen. He was Death, and he would kill anyone that got into his way. But he had another side to him as well, one that he let very few people see and she was one of those people.
“I will take care of ensuring all trace of you are gone. I will keep Redneck with me until the sterilization team is here. You go with Jester and Pest so we both know you are protected.”
“Thanks, Strike.” Em closed her eyes then and gave in to the unconsciousness that had been tugging at her for the last hour.
Chapter Six
When Emily next awoke, she was in one of the highest tech facilities in the world. The hospital was based out of Washington DC, so she knew they had placed her on a sonic jet, obviously one that had a full medical staff or they wouldn’t have risked her health or that of her child. Looking over to her left, she saw her guardian angels sitting there, all five of them. She smiled and whispered, “Hey, guys.” It was the Horsemen and Lucifer himself, Kenny.
She felt the shift of testosterone in the room and wanted to laugh. God, she loved these guys. They were like brothers to her and she needed them right now. “So what do the docs say?”
Kenny was the one who stood and approached her. He put his hand on her forehead, brushed her hair back from her head, and pressed a kiss there. “The baby is fine. Wanna know what you are having? We all know,” he said with a teasing grin that had her smiling in immediate relief. She was thankful he answered the question she needed answered first. That was another thing about the pits, they had technology that wasn’t even out on the markets yet, they were able to tell what the sex of the baby was and its healthiness where other OB/GYN’s weren’t able to do so.
“Thank you for telling me.” She had tears in her eyes when she answered Kenny.
“Now, are you gonna tell us who the baby daddy is so that we can go and kill him?” Redneck’s southern drawl was heard from the corner. She knew him, and he wasn’t even teasing in the least.
“Oh for the love.” Emily rolled her eyes when she looked up at Kenny. She laughed, which made her wince and the pain raced up from the soles of her feet to the top of her head. “Oh god that hurt.” She whimpered in complaint. “Don’t make me laugh, it hurts.” She eyed Redneck as she said that.
“Sorry, Em.” At least he looked repentant for making her hurt.
“It’s okay, but he didn’t know I was pregnant when I was taken or, I assure you, there was no way I would have been left alone that morning. Did we find out why I was taken?” It still hurt to breath, but she could feel the antibiotics working in her system through the IV line attached at the back of her hand.
“Tell us.” Those two simple words were all Kenny said from her side.
“I fell in love,” Emily said simply. “I hadn’t expected it to be honest. I met him while on a job and I kept seeing him. You all know how reserved I am, but he is worse than me. I don’t know how it happened or when it happened, but in the blink of an eye I was in love with him. I knew when he kissed me, but then when we made love for the first time I was lost. I felt it in my soul that I was born for him. He’s twelve years older than I am, but I’m positive I was put on this Earth for him and him alone.” She knew that was why she had waited so long for a relationship; it had been for Antonio.
Kenny laughed and shook his head. “Never thought the Angel would fall, but damn, girl, you did, for a human no less.”
“We are all only human.” Emily reminded him. “We might have code names of the angels and demons, but we are human.”
“Oh, Emmy, honey, you have been our own little angel since your momma and siblings died and your daddy brought you into the fold. We trained you, honey. We knew your dad wasn’t doing all of the jobs, but it wasn’t until you fully committed to the Guild and the jobs that were assigned to you that we realized just how good you were,” Kenny said. “You are our little sister. You are the only woman who has ever been able to successfully make it through everything we demand of our trainees. You were forged through the fires of Hell, Em, and you came out through that Hell as our Angel.”
Emily wiped tears away with her good hand. She realized her hand without the IV line had a cast on it and that was the arm they had broken and she had tried to set, but obviously had set it incorrectly. “I love you guys, too. You are my family.” She felt the Four Horsemen coming and touching her as well. Her family. “I need to get in touch with the man I love, make sure he knows that I’m alive.”
“Tell me who he is and where to reach him, and I will go.” This came from Striker, of all people. “And no, I won’t kill him.”
“Antonio Bruno. He’s the second in command of the Italian Family in California. What?” She snorted in laughter. “Did any of you really expect me to fall for someone so mundane as an accountant or dentist or something?” She saw the look in their eyes and somehow knew they already knew exactly who it was she had been sleeping with.
It was Jester who snorted in laughter first, which was odd to hear from the stoic man. “No, I guess that would bore you to tears, and he wouldn’t be strong enough to protect you. Then again, this man wasn’t strong enough to protect you either. In fact, this man is the reason you were taken. We all knew who it was that you were with, Emily, we simply wanted you to confirm it. You are ours to watch over and protect, we’ve always known who you were with and what he was. Even though he is with the Mafia, he is a good man with his own Code, just as we have ours.”
Emily frowned as she looked at each of the large men around her. “Explain.”
“You were taken to use as leverage against the Italian Mafia. More importantly, you were taken to use against the second. From what we gathered you were going to be used to control him, to get him to kill his boss and then for him to take over. You shocked the fuck out of them when you fought back against them. You killed three of their men and it was not what they expected.” Kenny was the one talking now.
She hadn’t thought she’d killed the men, disabled with severe prejudice absolutely, but she hadn’t thought she’d killed them.
“I’m surprised they didn’t kill me.”
“They wiped you clean from his home. The pictures were going to be used to taunt him when his boss got back. They wanted to make sure he knew they had you so he would do everything that they demanded of him. However, that went to fucking shit when they figured out you were pregnant.” Kenny looked at her stomach, placed his hand there, and rubbed the small lump. “The one man, Robert was his name, he asked me to end him because he hadn’t known you were pregnant. He was the one who took delight in kicking you in the back and stomach. I think he was already unstable, but he was losing his shit when you finally told them you were pregnant and started to show.”
“But my baby, its fine?”
“Yes, your baby is fine,” Kenny said with a smile. “Do you want to know what you are having?”
“Yes.” She looked at each one of the men, and they were all giving her silly grins.
It was almost like they practiced it because all at once they said, “It’s a boy.”
Emily found herself crying and smiling at the same time. She was going to have a little boy. A little boy with Tony’s laugh, his mocha-latte colored skin and amazing eyes. She didn’t think she could be happier. “So why would my pregnancy have tossed a cog in their plans?”
“Because these men are beyond careful about procreation. If they had gone to him and told him you were pregnant, then they would have run the risk that you lied,
” Kenny said bluntly. “They were trying to figure out how to run a paternity test without anyone figuring it out when you got your signal out.”
“He wouldn’t have doubted me.”
“Yes, Em. Yes, he would have,” Kenny said sadly. “They sent word through one of his friends that you were pregnant, and the man came back laughing his ass off. He said for you to fuck off and go to hell.”
Emily was utterly shocked. No, that didn’t sound right. That sounded more like Tony protecting himself or her, not disbelieving her.
“So am I going for the baby daddy or are we going to raise the kid with you?” Striker asked Emily, and for the first time she realized he was being deadly serious. He was perfectly willing to leave Tony out of the child’s life.
“Yes, you are going to go for him if you aren’t getting me a phone.” Emily couldn’t believe he had asked that question.
Kenny pulled a phone from his pocket and handed it to her. “It’s untraceable and unlocatable, you know how we work. Call your boy. Tell him what’s happening. We will give you space.” Kenny looked at his Horsemen, and Emily watched him tilt his head toward the door. “We will be back in an hour, with food. Just don’t be shocked if he doesn’t believe you, Em.”
Emily could only nod her thanks to Kenny for taking care of her.
****
Tony was so drunk he could barely lift his hand to order a new drink, which was fine, however, because Greg was back in town. That meant he was off the hook on being in charge for a while. He was cutting loose at the Red Tent. “Six fucking weeks.” He slurred to Snake, who sat on his left. “For six fucking weeks she’s been gone. She didn’t even say goodbye. Fucking bitch. But she sent some fucking lying piece of shit to say she went off to have a fucking kid? Who does that shit?”
Snake put his hand on Tony’s shoulder and gave him a jostle. “Hos, every fucking one of them. Only good for fucking, sucking, and keeping us fed.”
“Amen, brother,” Tony said with a laugh. When his phone rang, he didn’t argue when Peggy, the girl who had been trying to give him a hand job but he just couldn’t get hard, answered for him. Hell, he hadn’t been able to get hard without the aid of the little blue pills since that bitch left him.
“Hello?” Peggy purred into the phone.
“No, sugar, you can’t talk to my man. You see, Tony is otherwise occupied at the moment.” There was a brief pause. “Look, bitch…” Tony looked at Peggy, his vision still hazy, and he laughed at the look on her face.
“You tell them, baby,” Tony said loudly. He took the phone from her hands and spoke. “Who the fuck is calling me?”
Tony then heard a voice he didn’t think he would ever hear again. “Tony?” It was Emily. It seemed that just the sound of her voice sobered him up in an instant.
“Emily?” He pushed away from the bar and toward the back office so he could have quiet. He was weaving, his vision still unfocused. But her voice... He had to be imagining it. God only knew he dreamt her voice enough in the last six weeks as it was.
“Tony, who the hell was that answering your phone?” It was Emily! Holy fuck, was Tony’s first thought, and then intense anger raced through his veins because she was demanding to know anything about his life after she ran out on him.
“Why would you even care when you ran out on me six weeks ago, Em? What the fuck? I thought we had something real. And then you lie and send some punk bastard to try to get money out of me or else you’re gonna get rid of a kid you are claiming to be mine?”
“We do have something real, or I thought so.” Fuck, was she crying? Why the hell was she crying? What right did she have to cry when she left him? “Obviously, I’m wrong if you’ve already moved on. Be safe and be happy, Tony. It’s all I’ve ever wanted for you since that moment.” He knew the moment she was talking about. They had both felt it and expressed it later to each other.
He was going to say something to her, but she hung up before he could. “Fuck.” He cursed and looked at his phone. The number was a blocked number. “What the fuck?”
Chapter Seven
Emily hung up the phone and stared at it. She hit the nurse call button and when the woman came on the holographic screen to the side of her, she turned and said, “I need you to come in and keep my family from me for a bit. They can’t see me like this, please.” She needed time to pull herself back together. Otherwise, the men she called her family would hunt Tony down and want to know why he made her cry. So, they hadn’t lied. Someone had gone to Tony just after she had been taken and tried to leverage that against him, but he didn’t bite. He had instead turned the man away with a fuck you very god damn much, leaving her in that hell, suffering and at the mercy of the men who had taken her.
Emily felt her heart grow hard, grow cold. She felt her pain numb because she realized that if only Tony had talked to the man, he could have saved her weeks earlier. He could have prevented much of the damage to her body. She didn’t even want to think of the possibilities of what would have happened to her and her child if she hadn’t gotten the message out to her team when she did.
“I will be there in two minutes.” The nurse replied sympathetically and tuned off the holographic image.
She stroked her hand over her belly and sighed. “It’s okay, baby. I love you and you will know that no matter what you were wanted. You were conceived in love.”
Emily took her time getting herself together. When her family came back, she smiled up at them and did something she’d never done before. She lied to them. “I don’t want to see him. He’s moved on with his life, and I think I should move on with mine.” It was the truth. She just didn’t tell the part where her heart had been shattered by the woman who answered the phone and him basically telling her to fuck off, confirming what Kenny had told her.
All five men looked at her as if she had lost her mind, but she held up her hand. “Don’t question me and don’t go against my wishes, or I will disappear and you will never see me again. You all know that I can do it.”
“I don’t like it.” Redneck voiced his opinion loudly. “The fucking man should at least be a part of the kid’s life.”
“Fuck him.” Striker sat down at Emily’s side and took her hand in his, toying with her fingers. “She doesn’t need him and neither does her child, not when he has us.” Well that wasn’t at all what Emily had expected from any of the men, especially Striker. Oh well. She wasn’t going to bitch about it, because she needed them to completely forget about Tony.
“Besides, I need to heal anyway. Once I’m healed and after I’ve given birth to my son, I want the name of the person who put out the contract to take me in order to ruin Tony’s life.”
“Why’s that, Em?”
“Because I’m going to kill them.” Emily couldn’t believe they even had to ask. Each one of them would want retribution if anyone had harmed them, so she damn sure wanted it as well.
“Once you are healed and after you have the baby, you will have the name.” Kenny assured her. She knew no one would deny her vengeance. That was one thing they all understood, the need for vengeance. The Guild fucking wrote the book on helping people get vengeance, so of course these men understood her need for it.
“Is it for you, or is it because of the loss of your lover?” Striker asked her while he sat and toyed with her fingers.
“It is for me. The other is none of your business.” She couldn’t believe Striker would even ask her that question.
“Just wanted to make sure you were really okay. All that makeup and shit doesn’t fool us. We see the subtle hints of everything. You forget that we are trained for it.” Striker was starting to piss her off, but he had a point. They were all trained to notice the smallest of things, and her makeup hadn’t fooled them like she had hoped it would.
“I’m okay. I just didn’t want you to see me with tears in my eyes. You all know that weakness is not something I show willingly.” She took a deep breath and nodded. “Now, off with all of you. I
want to sleep. If you are going to take turns being in here with me, then only one at a time, please?” Because at this point in time she couldn’t handle all five of them at once. She was too weak and she knew it. Emily needed to rebuild her defenses.
“Okay, Em.” Kenny looked at the men and nodded. “I will stay with you for now. The guys have assignments anyway. Go. I have our girl, and we are at the Pits. I have Beta Team patrolling, so she’s safe. Go, do your jobs.”
Each of the men muttered their anger, but one by one they moved by her bedside and each of them gave her a parting hug and kiss. Each whispering their happiness that she was home and safe.
****
When the four men left the room they each looked at each other and without even speaking began to do Roshambo in order to determine who was going to California. Hands and fists slapped rocks, paper, and scissors until one man was left standing.
Jester looked at Striker and frowned. “I know how you feel about Em. We all do, even if she’s completely clueless. Don’t kill him. You will be tempted.”
“It doesn’t matter what I want. That went out the door the minute she said she was in love with this man. I’m not stupid. I’ve been waiting around for ten years for her to fall in love with me. She never did, so why would I fuck up her finding it with someone else? I’m a big boy and I will get over it. Right now, what’s important is figuring out what the fuck is wrong with this idiot that he pushed her away.”
Redneck nodded and rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably. “I think all of us have had a soft spot for Em over the years. I think every one of us felt we were in love with her, but you clung to it longer than us. Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Striker’s sigh was heavy in the hall and he shook his head. “I know it was more of my overprotective side than anything else.” He looked blankly at the wall and then shook his head. “Emily came to us so young. She lost her mom and siblings, and I understood that because I did, too. I think I took that bond, that similarity too far. I see that now. She’s never been what I thought she was. Now, stop trying to fucking babysit me and do your jobs. I have one to do now as well. I have a missing father to track down. I need to find out why he’s left our Emily out to dry.”