by KB Winters
I could have screamed and thrown a tantrum but it wouldn’t have done any good. Landry was a complete asshole and would always be one. So I went back to the first day of culinary school and made cupcakes. Butter and chocolate and strawberry. Boring but easy work.
The perfect way to spend the day after the most erotic morning of my life. My body still hummed at the memory of what Savior had done to me. The way his tongue, his fingers and that beautiful, thick cock brought me pleasure was intense. If I had five minutes and some privacy, I could get off just from the memory of his touch.
“Sutton, I need those cupcakes!” His big round body scooted to my work station and grabbed the cupcakes that I had just pulled from the oven.
“About damn time,” he grumbled.
“Those are still warm, Chef.”
I knew he heard me because I saw the small hitch in his step but he plowed forward, already preparing the next scathing comment. After cleaning my hands, I leaned against the table and watched as Landry passed several tables filled with already cool cupcakes, perfect to slather on his shitty sugary frosting.
Nevertheless, he took the warm ones straight to his station.
“They don’t teach you to let cupcakes cool before frosting them, at fancy New York culinary schools? Perhaps you should have gone to Paris, like I did,” he snickered, so fucking proud of his dim wit.
My gaze shot to the clock. Ten minutes left on my shift and then I could say goodbye to this place. For a few hours anyway, though the desire to leave forever grew stronger every shift. Ten minutes without killing my buffoon of a boss and I would make it another day.
“Is your hearing shot, too?” He laughed, looking around and waiting for the others to join in but they didn’t. They never did. It always made me laugh.
“Maybe if you weren’t so determined to try and humiliate me you wouldn’t have wasted a dozen cupcakes fresh from the oven.”
It’s not like he made the trip all the way over to my station because his fat ass enjoys exercise.
I should have kept my mouth shut but I couldn’t help it. I offered, “Or maybe in Paris they don’t teach you that cupcakes fresh from the oven shouldn’t be frosted right away. Chef.”
Two minutes on the clock and I began wiping down my station, ignoring his loud bluster. I was sure I would be without a job soon and I couldn’t find it in myself to give a damn. I’d come here to learn from him. Now, it didn’t even matter. I knew all I needed to know. He was a mean vile son of a bitch and I didn’t need him to advance in my career. Not anymore.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.
I looked up at him, trying to keep attitude out of my glance. “Away from here. My shift is just about over.” By the time the stainless steel was clean and dry, it was two minutes past time to go.
“I don’t think so. You owe me a dozen cupcakes.” Arms crossed, he held an angry scowl as his red face darkened in anger.
I forced a smile to hide my true feelings. “The ones you took were the extra batch. For your mistakes, of course.”
There were actually two dozen, but he could figure that out after I was gone.
“Later gators,” I called to the rest of the kitchen staff who always seemed amused by my run-ins with Landry.
As soon as the sun hit my face, the tension band holding my shoulders snapped and I could breathe. Finally. As happy as I was to be gone, to be away from Landry so I could press rewind on my morning with Savior, it was just temporary. He hadn’t fired me and I hadn’t quit, which meant I had to go back tomorrow.
I’d much rather focus on Savior but that wouldn’t do me any good. There was nothing to be done about him in the immediate future. Despite what he’d said last night, he’d told me all about his horrible, awful family as a warning. He couldn’t or wouldn’t give me more, and it didn’t matter to him that I hadn’t actually asked for more. It was a preemptive strike, just in case I got any ideas about him and forever.
As if.
“Mandy, Mandy, Mandy.”
Shit. I didn’t recognize those voices, which meant they were trouble. The kind of trouble I didn’t have the tools or weaponry to deter. My car was still too far away for me to make a run for safety, so I took a few steps forward before turning to face them, my fight or flight senses already kicking in. “Do I know you?” I said to the three assholes with the Roadkill MC patch on their kuttes.
“Not yet. Tell us you’ll have the money you owe us and you won’t have to.”
The blond with the buzz cut acted as spokesperson or maybe it was the jagged scar that ran from the corner of his right eye to his mouth.
“I don’t owe you a damn thing, so I guess you got your wires crossed somewhere.”
Buzz cut tossed his head back and laughed. “Really? Because Krissy says you’re a crack card counter and that’s how she’s gettin’ us what she owes us.”
I wasn’t a liar but living the way I had as a kid meant I had a damn good poker face. “Well then she told you wrong. I used to count cards, about ten years ago. It took a long time to get good at it, more time than you —”
Buzz cut stopped my words with a backhand across my face.
“I didn’t ask for your fucking life story, bitch. Tell me you’ll have my money.”
I shook my head, shaking away the ringing that dulled every sound. “I won’t have it. Even if I did play that tournament, I’d never make it past the first round. And that’s if they even let me in the casino.”
“Shut the fuck up!” His fist came flying again, this time right to my stomach and I doubled over, coughing and struggling to breathe.
“Krissy said you never got caught.”
“Well Krissy’s a goddamn liar, isn’t she?”
I knew he was interested now and I kept talking even as I felt my cheek swelling. “She has no idea why I up and left the city years ago,” I told him, thinking as fast as I could before another fist descended.
A snivelly rat with greasy brown hair invaded my space. “She’s lying, man. Look at that lying little face.” He had a smile like a cartoon villain. “I hate a lying bitch,” he crowed and before I could take a step back, he punched me in the face and I hit the ground.
It took a second for my body to realize it had dropped to the hard, hot concrete, but when it did, all I could do was groan in pain. My jaw felt like it was broken in a thousand pieces. My teeth hurt. I wanted to cry and scream and yell. But I wouldn’t. Not now. Not ever.
Buzz cut leaned down and hissed like a serpent, “No more fucking excuses, Mandy. Get the fucking money or live with the consequences.” He wasn’t that close, at least from what I could tell through my non-swollen eye, which happened to be pressed against the ground.
“Or maybe you won’t live with them,” he added ominously.
I closed my eyes. A few seconds, maybe a few hours passed and then I felt it, a boot in my stomach, on my arm, my back, my face. I curled up into a ball the best I could. Over and over, blow after blow rained down on me until I couldn’t move. Could barely see, not that I wanted to open my eyes.
I could only hear the sound of three sets of booted feet stomp away. Buzz cut, Snivelly Rat and some silent asshole, growing farther and farther away as everything around me went black.
***
I don’t know how many minutes passed after I lost consciousness. No one had rushed to my aid or even ambled to my aid so when I came to and remembered the attack, I slowly sat up and caught my breath.
Fucking Vegas.
Standing was more of a challenge, and breathing was pure torture. I leaned against the trunk of the nearest car and scanned the parking lot to make sure they were gone. I limped to my car with a swollen eye and an arm I could tell was broken, then managed to slide behind the wheel and get the engine started. My seatbelt wasn’t going to happen with this pain. If those dickwads hadn’t killed me, I figured my number wasn’t up today.
It was the dumbest thing I’d ever done, even dumber than sleepin
g with Savior and coming back to Vegas all rolled into one, but I drove myself to the hospital. It took longer than it should, given my limited vision and the setting sun, to say nothing of the excruciating pain throbbing throughout my body.
But I made it.
Mostly.
I left my car parked at an angle in the ambulance bay and staggered inside the hospital before passing out in the arms of a brown-eyed male nurse.
I faded in and out of consciousness but knew it took several people to get me into a room and check me out.
One of them kept asking questions.
“Does she have any I.D.? Anyone we should call?”
The voice belonged to an older woman.
A man answered. “There are hardly any numbers in her phone. Work. Landlord. Teddy. The rest are just numbers, no names.”
“Just call the one with an actual name,” another female voice snapped. Probably the doctor, frustrated as she moved fast, blasting orders, poking my wounds. Annoyed.
Eventually the drugs they gave me kicked in and I couldn’t hear them not-so-silently judge me anymore.
Chapter 16
Savior
I felt like a fucking creeper, at worst, a stalker for sitting outside Mandy’s place waiting for her to come home. But it was past seven and she worked a long day that started at five in the morning. I wasn’t worried and it wasn’t like I had the right to call her up and ask here where in the hell she was. So I leaned against my bike in the guest parking spot beside hers and waited.
And waited. When the clock drew closer to eight I began to worry and decided I would swing by Knead just to be sure. Before I got settled on my bike, the phone rang.
“Yeah?” I barked, pissed it wasn’t Mandy.
“Savior, man, where are you?” Golden Boy’s voice sounded weird and instantly I was on edge.
“I’m at Mandy’s waiting for her to get home. What’s up?”
“Stay where you are. I’m coming to pick you up. Now,” he said and ended the call before I could ask any more questions, damn him.
Luckily, I didn’t have to wait long before he pulled up in Teddy’s Mercedes. When I spotted Teddy in the passenger seat I finally understood what people meant when they said their blood ran cold.
It’d never made much fucking sense before, blood was never cold. It was warm, warmer than you would imagine and when shit got real, it got even hotter. I’d been to war, killed for my government and my club, and never had I been as scared as watching my brother and his pregnant fiancée get out of the car and waddle my way. “What the hell is going on?”
Teddy stepped forward, one hand on my shoulder and the other on her belly. “I just got a call from the hospital. They didn’t say much other than Mandy was hurt very badly and mine was the only number in her phone. That’s all we know but I thought you’d want to know.”
I nodded but my mind was blank and racing too fast to do anything else but bark, “Let’s go!”
I grabbed Teddy’s arm and helped her back into the car before jumping in the backseat while I thought of what “hurt very badly” meant with the shit going on with her friend and those fuckers from the parking lot.
I was ready to kill the motherfuckers.
At the hospital, there was more fucking waiting and no answers. It was nearly ten by the time someone with a stethoscope around his neck came out to update us on Mandy’s condition. His gaze focused on Teddy, who’d been vocal in wanting, no demanding progress.
“Ms. Sutton has a fractured ulna and radius, bruised ribs along with a nasty black eye. Those are the big injuries, but she has quite a few scrapes and bruises all over. The good news is that she’ll recover.”
“And the bad news?” Teddy took a step closer, her gaze focused and intense.
“We don’t know what happened to her,” the doctor said. “She drove herself in that condition, leaving her car in the ambulance area. The nurse has her keys,” he told them and Golden Boy left to move it.
“Can we see her, doctor?” Teddy looked so damn worried I thought she might end up going into labor early.
“I’m sorry miss but she is heavily sedated and probably won’t be awake for hours. We’re going to keep her for at least one night to monitor for concussion. We think she lost consciousness when she sustained her injuries but we’re not sure. That could mean head trauma. If she was knocked out, she doesn’t know for how long and we haven’t been able to keep her awake long enough to get any more details.”
With a polite smile, the doctor walked away.
I couldn’t let that ride, though. I needed more. Not only was I worried as shit but would Ammo kick my ass from here to hell for leaving her without making sure she was okay.
“Hey, Doc!” I caught up with him in the hall and he flashed a worried grin.
“How can I help you, Mister . . .?”
“Call me Vick, please.” Sometimes I forgot how we looked to normal people. “Doc, I’m a family friend of Mandy’s but the problem is she’s lost all her family. I served with her brother and he didn’t make it back after his last tour.”
I ran completely out of steam and my shoulders fell, thinking about how I’d let Ammo down. Let Mandy down.
“Say no more, Vick. I was a combat medic and I get it. Follow me.”
With a grateful smile, I followed him down a long corridor to a small, antiseptic room with too many machines for Mandy’s little body. I ached for her and the pain she must be feeling based on the strain on her face. “Thanks, Doc. I promise to stay out of the way, I just want to be here when she wakes up.”
When the doctor left, I texted Teddy and Golden Boy to let them know I was with Mandy, got settled in a damned uncomfortable hard plastic chair. And waited.
And waited.
And fucking waited.
Finally, around two in the morning those pretty green eyes popped open and I could breathe again.
Chapter 17
Mandy
“Do you really have to do this now? She’s been awake for five fucking minutes!” I could hear Savior’s angry voice and I doubted he was talking to the doctors or nurses like that.
“Sir, your girlfriend was the victim of a crime, don’t you want us to find the perpetrators. If there are even perpetrators,” a taunting voice said that I assumed belonged to one of Vegas’ finest.
Insert eye roll if you want.
I appreciated Savior fighting for me, but it was unnecessary. I woke up some time in the middle of the night, not that the rest was all that peaceful with the nurses waking me up every hour to ask me ridiculous questions: What day is it? Who’s the president? Two questions guaranteed to piss me off. Somehow I came out of that fracas with no brain damage, just a few bruises, cuts and fractures that would keep me out of work for who knew how long. Maybe I’d find out if the doctor ever made his way to this side of the hospital.
“I’m awake,” I called out to stop the damn pissing contest outside my door.
The door opened and Savior popped his head in, blue eyes looking stark against his pale skin and dark hair. “How are you feeling?”
“Not as good as I would be if two gorillas weren’t yelling outside my door.” And if I hadn’t gotten my ass stomped by a bunch of pissed off bikers. “Come on in and bring your friend.”
His lips twitched but Savior refused the smile and stepped inside, not bothering to hold the door for the two men I pegged as detectives based on their suits. One wore an ill-fitting brown suit like a cop from the seventies and the other, well he looked like a mob lawyer.
“They want to ask you some questions,” he said reluctantly and sat in the chair where I found him when I woke up.
“Alone,” mob lawyer said with a frown.
“He wasn’t involved so I’d rather he stay.” I didn’t like cops and I didn’t trust them, but I knew they were only doing their jobs right now. Still, I needed backup and Savior was it. He grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze to let me know he was there.
The detecti
ves stood at the foot of the bed wearing twin scowls meant to intimidate. “Can you tell us what happened, Ms. Sutton?”
I nodded and let out a sigh, wincing as the pain lit up my ribcage.
“Shit that hurts!” I yelled without thinking. I guessed my ribs didn’t get the memo that they weren’t broken because those fuckers hurt. “I was leaving work when three guys approached me in the parking lot of Knead, it’s the restaurant where I work. They had on jackets that said Roadkill MC, if that helps.” I paused because talking and breathing? Not so easy to do with bruised ribs, it turned out.
Seventies detective looked at me with a look of disbelief. “What business do you have with them?”
I barked out a laugh that was worth the fucking pain. “I have no business with them, but someone I knew when I lived here as a kid promised them I would do something I don’t do anymore.” I flashed a look at the detectives and then at Savior. There was no point trying to hide it anymore. It would come out anyway. “A woman I knew back when I was a kid, she helped me get a fake ID when my brother’s tour in Afghanistan was extended. I needed to pay bills, get food and stuff.”
“Where were your parents,” mob lawyer asked.
“Dead, for years at this point. Anyway, I saw this video online about counting cards and it seemed easy enough. I trained myself to do it and I only took enough to pay the bills and have some cushion, but Krissy wanted more.”
Mob lawyer interrupted me, giving me a chance to slow down and ease the pain. “Who’s Krissy?”
I hadn’t made it clear? “The so-called friend who got me the ID. She wanted a cut in exchange for the favor.”
His eyebrows rose in understanding as if I’d finally explained nuclear fission to him. So I continued.
“After a while it became too much, too risky. I got my acceptance letter for culinary school, hopped on a bus and never looked back.” I sighed deeply a few times, to breathe through the pain. “Until I returned six months ago to bury my brother and then three months later when I took the job at Knead.”