by Franca Storm
Fortunately, I wasn’t someone easily intimidated, and it actually had the opposite effect on me. It intrigued me.
“Tired?”
“Yeah.”
It took me a moment, but the pieces fell into place quickly enough. “You want out? From the club?”
“I’ve had a good run.”
“So, you think taking out the few stragglers from the Strikers MC will facilitate that?”
“That and one more thing I’m taking care of.”
“One more thing?”
He grinned slyly. “Nah. That ain’t a part of this. That stays with me.”
“If this thing you’re talking about involves assassination, it sure as hell involves me. We can’t both be launching strikes at the same time. You are the common denominator. It will obviously lead back to you and—”
“And what?” he asked, sitting forward in his chair and grasping my desk. “That’s where it’s gonna stop. It ain’t gonna come back on you, because there won’t be a trace of this deal between us. I know you hide your shit well. And I don’t give people up.” He rolled his eyes. “If you’re still worried, know that I ain’t gonna be around for it to even come back on me, so it ain’t gonna have no hope of touching you anyway.”
“What does that mean? You’re going to ground, is that it?”
He ran a hand through his thick head of hair, mostly black, with a smattering of dark-gray here and there. “Yeah. That’s what it fucking means.”
Color me shocked.
So, he wasn’t just tired, he was done.
With the club.
With everything.
The surprise of it all had me pausing with my response.
“What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?” he teased.
I couldn’t help smiling. “Seems that way, yes.” Blowing out a breath, I leaned back in my chair and eyed him questioningly. “That’s a hell of a thing. You’ve been club your whole life.”
“And you’ve been doing this kinda thing all yours. You really gonna tell me you ain’t never thought about getting out and walking away from all this?”
I shrugged. “Maybe once or twice.”
He scrutinized me. “Nah, you’re lying. Seems I ain’t the only tired one here, yeah?”
This was getting far too personal.
So, I shut it down quickly. Straightening and squaring my shoulders, I held out my hand to him. “I trust you brought the specs with you?”
He gave me a look that let me know he was onto my forced subject change to get the heat off myself. Then he reached into the inside pocket of his leather jacket and tossed a wad of papers onto my desk.
“Is this everything you have on the proposed targets?” I asked, as I began scanning them to see what I was working with.
“Yeah. They ain’t major players, not in life, and not when they were with the Strikers.”
Despite that, as I flipped through the documents, it was clear his research was fairly expansive. He’d certainly come prepared.
“Okay. Let me evaluate the targets and I’ll come back to you with a decision.”
“What?” he barked. “You put me through this bull and you ain’t gonna take on the job?”
“I didn’t say that. I need time to weigh the risks, to determine if a sure-fire plan can be formulated.”
“There ain’t no such thing as sure-fire in our world.”
“I like to get as close to it as possible.”
“Bullshit.”
I leaned forward and told him firmly, “This is my process. You came to me, Slade. You wanted my cautious approach for a reason. If I had to guess, it has a hell of a lot to do with your extremely high-risk takedown of Nik Stone and the major players of the Strikers Motorcycle Club. The fallout has tied your hands. You need to continue to lay low and be seen as operating above board for a long time. You can’t actively target these remaining former members without risking exposure and incurring the wrath of the law. I am your only choice.” I rose to my feet. “So, with that in mind, how about you summon some semblance of patience and let me do my damned job, yes?”
I took in his reaction and he seemed an odd mixture of pissed and turned-on.
His eyes ran the length of my body, taking in every inch of me, like he was imprinting a mental picture in his memory. Or, more like cementing the first one he’d already catalogued of me from a few years back.
He abruptly got to his feet and smirked at me. “All right.”
“All right?”
“Yeah, you got yourself a deal.”
He held out his hand.
Confused by his sudden easy acceptance, I reached out and clasped it.
As we shook hands firmly, he winked at me. “Like your style. Always have.”
“I thought it pissed you off beyond belief.”
“People go out of their way not to piss me off. Takes guts to go the other route, to stand your ground against a man like me. You’re one of the few. I respect that. Plus, it means you ain’t gonna hold back on the truth and I like that, big time.”
I smiled. Just when you thought you’d figured him out, he threw something else out there that had you recalibrating everything.
He pulled his hand away and actually had the good manners to push his chair in before he started for the door. As he pulled it open, he turned back to me and asked, “A week’s time, yeah?”
“We’ll see.”
“All right. Be seeing ya, Willa.”
3
~Slade~
A FUCKING GODDESS.
Curves for days.
Soft, golden hair wrapped around my fist.
Eyes sucking me in deep.
Lips tasting like sin.
Her tight, wet pussy strangling my cock with a vise-grip.
Sweat pouring.
Bodies slamming.
Nails scraping.
Tongues tasting.
Teeth biting.
Hard. Dirty. Rough as all hell.
The kinda fuck that stayed with you.
Shame it weren’t real.
My eyes snapped open and reality came slamming back.
I grunted with agitation at being pulled from such a hot and heavy dream. Normally, when I closed my eyes for more than a few minutes, there was just hell on the other side. Nightmares full of darkness, pain and death.
Somehow, she’d cut through all that.
Willa Rose.
Such a sweet name for a major hardass with balls of fucking steel.
The damn woman had gotten inside my head somehow, affected me. That meeting was supposed to be straight-up business. But there was just something about her.
It’d hit me in the gut the very first moment we’d met and each time I’d encountered her since, I’d gone from being on the verge of exploding with rage to being damn near desperate to fuck her all over, every-fucking-where possible. I’d never met anybody who’d managed to rile me up like that.
I needed to get a grip. I couldn’t be thinking like this. Especially not about somebody I was doing dangerous business with. Not about nobody else either. I didn’t take a liking to a woman. I never let myself connect that way. I got my rocks off when I needed to and that was as far as it went. One shot deals. My life wasn’t built for anything beyond that. It was just more hassle and bullshit stress. Being Prez of Steel Titans brought me more than enough of that.
Sure, if everything went to plan in the next while, I’d no longer have that burden on my back. But even then I couldn’t imagine going that route with any woman again. Been there, done that. And I had the scars to prove it. Going there meant being open, vulnerable. And that weren’t me. That kinda trust didn’t come easy for me, let alone when it came to the damaged, dangerous people I met in my screwed-up world.
With a growl of frustration that my mind had wandered down that road, I tossed the cheap-ass scratchy covers off and climbed out of bed.
I had shit to do.
First thing was first, though. I needed to check in
with the club.
I snatched my phone off the bedside table and dialed. I didn’t have to wait long until it picked up. It was a good sign that things were in order while I was off territory. “Liam. How’s things?”
“Hey, Prez. All good here.”
“You sure? Nothing to report?”
“Nah. Business is running smoothly. No security issues. The boys are all getting along.”
“Good.”
“How’s your vacation working out?”
“Fine.”
“Yeah?” he pressed. It was obvious he wanted more, but I weren’t gonna give him that.
“Yeah,” I said firmly, making it clear not to push it further.
There was a brief pause on his end, then he said, “Okay, Prez. Stay safe.”
“Will do. Later.”
I hung up and blew out a breath.
Me and him had been through a whole thing about keeping secrets and he’d even gotten it in his head that I didn’t trust him, because I’d gone that route. But this was different. I couldn’t bring it to him until I had things sorted. If this mission failed, then it would slam the lid shut on my plans of leaving Steel Titans anyway. There weren’t no point getting the club all riled up for nothing. Me being away was a real good test to see whether they could pull it together without my leadership. Liam had come a long way recently. He had the instincts there.
Me being out of the picture for a bit was gonna help him to trust in them. Mason had shit locked down when it came to security. It was also a major load off for him that Cole had finally calmed the hell down now that he’d settled with Natasha and their kid.
Internally, things were primed for me to step down. It was just external issues that were throwing up a roadblock.
The Strikers side of things should be covered by Willa. I didn’t see no reason why she wouldn’t take up my case once she looked into all the shit she’d insisted on.
That just left the big gun for me to handle.
Adrian Nolan.
A real fucked-up result of my reckless, younger days. Back then, I’d been out of control. And because of that misspent youth and my foolish belief in my own invincibility, I’d racked up a load of enemies. Over the years, I’d managed to take them down.
Nolan was the only one left now. He wasn’t actively gunning for me, but I knew a lot of that was to do with the club. He knew our code. If you came at one of us, you came at all of us. He didn’t want to risk that kind of blowback. But the second I left the brotherhood and went out on my own, he’d come for me. There was no doubt in my mind.
We had a score to settle.
And guys like us never let that kind of thing go.
4
~Slade~
SLEAZY.
That didn’t even cover it.
Indulge definitely lived up to its name.
I’d been in dozens of strip joints in my time, but this was another level.
It didn’t follow no rules neither. That shit bothered me. Rules meant order and things running smoothly. Rules meant respect. This place had none of that. There weren’t even no such thing as keeping hands-off the dancers. It was a goddamn free for all. I liked a rough and wild time, but this was just demented shit.
Just like the asshole I was here to see.
He hung out here the same time every week. Friday night. He spent his time in one of the VIP rooms screwing around with one stripper in particular. Chardonnay. Hell, they weren’t just strippers here. That was an insult to exotic dancers everywhere. Nah, they were whores. This place called itself a strip club, but it was a fucking brothel. They kept that part of it to the backrooms, though, to keep it off the general public’s radar. Only those approved were allowed back there.
It was just one of the fucked-up businesses that prick, Adrian Nolan, ran.
As President of Steel Titans, I’d done some bad stuff, been on the wrong side of the law, and I had blood on my hands. But even with all that, there were some lines I’d never cross. We had a code with the club, one I busted my ass to enforce. And part of that was that women and kids were off limits. Fucking always.
Nolan didn’t get that.
All he did get was money and power. He could never have enough of it. He was always working toward gaining more of both. The cost never mattered to him. Nothing was sacred to him. When I’d first come across him about a decade ago, it’d rubbed me the wrong way. Back then, I hadn’t known the meaning of the cautious, safe approach. I’d just let my gut lead me. I’d just reacted. It had bit me in the ass with him. He hadn’t been able to let go of what I’d done to him. Every year, he’d call me up and remind me that he’d be coming for me the second Steel Titans fell, the second I stepped out from the protection of the club.
Nah, I couldn’t be having that.
I’d shown mercy to him before, but that had been a mistake. You could only defeat people like him by getting down to their level. You couldn’t pull any punches, because then they’d get back up in time and come for you harder than you went at them.
Time to fix all that.
I chugged back more of my scotch. It was some shitty kind. It tasted like it’d been watered down. Didn’t surprise me that much, given how cheap I knew Nolan to be. I might as well have ordered it on the rocks, instead of my usual neat go-to.
I eyed my watch. I’d been here for thirty minutes, wanting to get a lay of the land before he showed up at his ridiculously predictable time.
Sure enough, as I looked out toward the corridor that led to the backrooms, I saw the asshole himself striding down there.
It’d been a few years since I’d laid eyes on him, but he hadn’t changed. Still a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
That three-thousand-dollar pinstripe suit and the expensive cufflinks and jewelry was all in perfect place in a wasted attempt to hide his true fucked-up nature from the world. His bleached-blond hair was drier than ever, after dying it for so long to ward off the gray, a mark of age that he just couldn’t accept. He’d had so many face lifts that his skin looked more plastic than real. The guy was playing at being a twenty-something kid, unwilling to accept that he was coming up fast on his fifties.
He didn’t know the meaning of keeping shit real. The asshole was hella deluded. And that kind of wild, unhinged thinking made him all the more dangerous.
He didn’t get far toward his destination until he was stopped by one of his suited security guards. The guy leaned down and whispered in his ear. Nolan pulled at his goatee as his gaze shot straight to me all the ways across the room, chilling in a red velvet booth.
I held up my scotch glass and flashed him a shit-eating grin.
To say he looked pissed was a major understatement.
Good.
I wanted him that way.
On edge.
Reacting with emotion.
It would make it more likely that he’d slip up.
He started over my way, holding up his hand behind him to signal his security guard to hang back. That limp of his didn’t escape my notice. Seeing as though I’d caused it, it made it all the more noticeable to me. I felt my body tense, my mind shifting to a highly alert state with every step he took closer to me. I kept it from my face though. Showing a reaction to a man like him was a weakness.
When he reached me, I pushed my scotch glass off to the side and held his fierce glare as he took me in.
“Got a death wish, Slade?” he seethed.
I took in the six-inch jagged scar etched into his left cheek. Again, something else I’d put there. “Got the hang of using make-up to hide it a bit, yeah?”
His eyes narrowed to slits. “You piece of shit.”
“Right back at ya.”
I watched him draw in a breath, his fists clenching as he struggled to both hide and control the rage I’d awakened in him.
Underneath all that hardcore security at his back, all his bravado, he weren’t nothing but a weak man.
“So, your club’s waiting in the wings, surrounding
the place?”
“They got no idea I’m here.”
Our eyes locked.
He looked nervous. He clearly didn’t like that I seemed so confident coming in here alone to his territory surrounded by his high-priced security team. “Whatever your plan is, even if you somehow succeed, you’ll be all over the surveillance footage. The law will come down on you hard and lock you up for the rest of your pathetic, miserable life.” He leaned in close to me, the move he’d always used to intimidate his enemies or those he’d wanted to manipulate into seeing things his way. “You can’t do a thing to me here.”
“I guess you got nothing to fear then,” I said, meeting his fierce glare head-on, as I rose to my feet, forcing him to drop back. “So, how about you stop stalling and show me up to your office to get these negotiations underway, yeah?”
A menacing look came over his face. He clearly thought he knew something I didn’t, had something in store for me. We’ll see about that.
It took him a moment, then he finally said, “Let’s have that talk.”
He led the way out of the seating area and off the public area of the club. Just as we were about to turn down a corridor, one of his suited security guards hurried up to him.
Nolan tried to keep his voice low, but he was too riled up to pull it off and it came out as some whisper-yelling hybrid instead, enabling me to hear every word.
“Why the fuck didn’t you give me a heads up on him being here? It’s just by chance I saw him sitting in my club when I was headed down here to liaise with Chardonnay.”
Liaise? That was a real fancy-ass word for fucking.
“He didn’t pop up on the surveillance footage.”
I smiled to myself. Damn straight, I hadn’t. I’d made sure of it.
“How is that possible?”
“No idea, boss. We’re looking into it. Maybe he snuck in here.”