RIDING DIRTY (Steel Titans MC Book 4)

by Franca Storm

  Shit. The whole thing was far worse than I’d even imagined. Blake Freeman was an accomplished strategist. He was a businessman. A visionary, in fact.

  But he was also twisted.

  I could see it in his demeanor, in the lighthearted and almost jovial way he’d reacted to killing two people in that explosion, people I cared about deeply.

  I clenched my fists, fighting harder than I’d ever had to do before to hide my reaction from him. I couldn’t let him know about the pain and grief clawing at me and threatening to take me over. It would be a weakness and that was something a strategist like him could use far too well to their advantage.

  “I’m not the asset you think I am.”

  “How’s that?”

  “For one, my recent job was a failure. My client was… neutralized. You managed to apprehend me.”

  “Because you fell victim to the Rick Vale curse.”

  “What curse?”

  He laughed nastily. “I’m surprised he never told you about it. He’s like a broken record about it.” He thought for a moment. “Then again, he probably figured you’d never get mixed up with him, let alone, spread your legs for him, if you knew. Anything that guy touches goes to shit. It never fails either.”

  “That’s a sweeping generalization. Ridiculous.”

  “Well, whether you’re down with it or not, it’s the truth. You faced a double-edged sword with this job, though, because Slade was involved.”

  I fisted my free hand in the sheets to contain the ire close to exploding all over the smug asshole at both his audacity and the cavalier way he’d just brought Slade up, like nothing had happened, like he hadn’t gotten caught up in that explosion.

  “What about him?” I managed to grit out.

  “He ran roughshod over you with his own plans and intentions, compromising your meticulously crafted approach. Him going after Nolan is proof enough of that.” He shifted his weight. “I’ve gotta ask, after he did that, going behind your back, and breaking your hard and fast rules, why did you keep him on as a client? I’ve looked into you, I know you’ve kicked people out the door for less than that. Not only did you keep him on, but you also went out of your way to protect him at your safehouse. I want to know why, why was he so valuable? Was it about his connection to Rick?”

  Everything was still so raw when it came to the guys, especially Slade. With the weakness from the strong sedative compromising me, and something else that I just couldn’t seem to put my finger on, my poker face shattered.

  I knew the second I’d given it away, because the realization was all over Freeman’s face in the next moment. And it was clear that it was something he hadn’t actually accounted for.

  “Huh. I see. It wasn’t just a one off with Rick. You’ve got a thing for bikers.” He smirked slyly. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He pushed off the bed and shook his head to himself. “You could do a lot better than Slade Mitchell, sweetheart. He had way too many demons weighing him down. He didn’t have the means to handle a woman like you. He was broken, a shell. My father saw to that. Slade was set in his ways and already surrendered to his lot in life. You want somebody who’s going places, who’s got the whole world to give you. A woman like you is a hell of a rarity and you need to be appreciated for that.”

  He was laying it on thick.

  It was making me sick to my stomach.

  So was him talking about Slade in the past tense.

  “All of this is pointless. These compliments, hitting on me, all the trouble you went to in order to bring me here so we could talk privately… every little bit of it has been wasted. Look elsewhere for what you want, because I’m not taking on any new clients. In fact, I’m leaving this business, retiring.”

  I noted his surprise. It mirrored my reaction to Slade confessing the same thing to me. Instead of heeding it, though, he shook it off and told me, “You don’t understand. This isn’t just some job. It’s more than even a career path. It’s a calling. I’m building an empire. It’s way beyond the Strikers Rising ruse.”

  “Ruse?”

  “Yeah, I fed that bull to Rick, because I knew he was playing double agent.”

  “You were trying to buy time until you had everything in place.”

  He grinned. “That’s right.”

  Realization dawned. “I redirected the surviving Strikers members for nothing. You never had any intention of really recruiting them.”

  “Nah, they were just pawns. Building my own motorcycle club was never my plan, certainly not my endgame. Like I said, I’m building an empire.”

  “What kind of empire? Weapons? Drugs? Gambling? Trafficking?”

  “Yeah,” he answered with a glint in his eye.

  A bit of everything then. The guy was building an empire all right. Shit.

  “And where do I come in?”

  “You have a network of contacts and a hell of a lot of leverage.”

  “What leverage?”

  “Tons of clients you’ve done questionable things for, things that they’ve ordered which will compromise them big time.”

  “You want me to turn on them, blackmail them to bend them to your will and agenda?” I asked incredulous.

  “I want you to use them to your advantage.”

  “Discretion is a vital part of my business.”

  “A business you want to retire from anyway.”

  “These are dangerous people we’re talking about.”

  “I have an army at my back. I can protect you.”

  “I don’t need anyone to protect me. I never have. And you want to know why? I make smart decisions. I don’t disrespect or threaten the wrong people.”

  “To achieve true success you have to make a few waves along the way.”

  I shook my head. “This is suicide. You’ll be taken down before you even make it out of the gate.”

  “Not with you beside me. It also spreads the risk. My father made the mistake of going it alone. He never even gave his VP or Sergeant-at-Arms any autonomy. They and the entire structure of the club was completely dependent on his rule and say so. So, once he was taken out, his entire club fell apart. I don’t plan to go the same route.”

  “You already have Nolan.”

  He scoffed. “Another guy who’s made the same mistake as my father. The moment that fool is taken out, his entire organization falls.”

  “Not now that he has you.”

  “He hooked me up with the militia in exchange for me disposing of his Slade problem. But it’s all bull. I know the guy’s rep. He has no honor. He’ll keep coming back for more, finding ways to keep me owing him for years. I can’t have that. So, he’s the first guy I want us to wipe off the board.”

  Holy shit. Freeman wanted more than just a little bit of success and a taste of power. He was gunning for the world.

  “You’re too ambitious,” I warned him.

  “No such thing, sugar.” He rounded the bed and stepped closer to me, just out of my reach with the restriction of the cuff around my wrist. “You see, you and me are the same. Outside of your skills and connections, that’s why you make the perfect partner. We refuse to let anybody keep us down. And the only way to ensure that is to amass a shitload of power.”

  “And if I refuse you?”

  “You won’t.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “And why is that?”

  He stepped closer, breaching the safe zone. He was within reach of me now. Before I could react, he told me in an eerie rumble, “Because I know.”

  “Know what?”

  “I know why you became what you are, why you really do this.” He smirked, telling me triumphantly, “I know your weakness.”

  I kept my gaze steady, refusing to give anything away, in case he’d made an error, in case he didn’t know. I’d been very careful. But I also hadn’t had somebody look so incredibly deeply into me and my work before. If he’d gone detailed enough, he could have recognized a pattern, despite my best efforts. “And what is this supposed weakness
?” I gritted out.

  “You’re a humanitarian. You care about people. All of this, everything you do, is geared toward the purpose of protecting those who can’t protect themselves. Sure, once in a while, you take on big-name clients that don’t fully fit into that noble notion of yours, because you’ve got to pay the bills. But, for the most part, that’s what the Shadow persona is all about.”

  Dammit. “How is that a weakness?”

  “Any sentimental bull is, because it can be used, twisted to serve another purpose.”

  My blood ran cold.

  After all my years of work and busting my ass, sustaining damage that would’ve killed most, having him threaten all of that, to twist it all around and wield it against the mission I’d started it all for, sparked a knee-jerk reaction and I lashed out, literally, thrusting my fist his way.

  I was far slower than normal thanks to the infuriating sedative and I wasn’t even able to make contact, as he snatched my fist in mid-air, catching it in his palm.

  His eyes flashed and he gave it a painful squeeze, making me grunt. “There it is. Already hitting a nerve.”

  “You’re walking on dangerous ground,” I seethed.

  He maintained his painful grip on my wrist as he growled, “I’ve been going out of my way to keep things civil between us. But you keep throwing it back in my face. You just raised your hand to me. I can’t allow that.”

  “Then drop this and either release me, or kill me. I’m never going to work with you.”

  In a flash of movement, he used my cuffed wrist for leverage to drive me down onto the bed, forcing me beneath him. He pinned my legs to the mattress with his steel toe boots, scraping deep and bruising in the process, as he glared down at me heatedly, “You will. I’d rather make it happen the easy way, because I like and respect you. But knowing what I do, I have the means to go the hard way, if I have to.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  A sadistic smile played on his lips. “With a single phone call, I can destroy the Steel Titans stronghold, their entire territory, women, and children included, every single fucking person living in that shithole town. My militia is already on standby in case you continue to refuse me.”

  Unbelievable. “You really are twisted.”

  “I’m just willing to do whatever I need to. That’s the difference between success and failure.”

  “No, that’s the difference between a businessman and a madman.”

  He sneered. “Either way, it will be done, if you dig your heels in here.” He traced his index finger along my cheekbone, making me cringe. “That would be the last thing you’d want, wouldn’t it? Not only would you then be responsible for the murder of innocents, but the club that your boyfriend loved more than anything would be decimated, his life’s work, his entire legacy wiped out, all because of you.”

  “Nice try, but you don’t have the manpower to achieve that.” I recalled the number of soldiers that he’d brought along to the safehouse invasion and while it would offer up a fight, I knew enough about the Steel Titans MC, to know what they could handle.

  “What you saw was barely half of it, sugar.”

  “What?”

  “I have forty-odd more soldiers currently redirected elsewhere, doing recon on another target. I’m looking at breaking into the arms trade and a dealer like Tony Rockford will do nicely. He’ll just need a little convincing to bend to my will.”

  Son of a bitch!

  He grinned at the reaction I was trying so hard to stifle.

  Leaning in, he brushed his lips over my ear and whispered, “So, what’s it going to be?”

  20

  ~Slade~

  JESUS.

  The second I opened my eyes, I wished I hadn’t.

  For one, there was some bitching resistance as I tried to open the right one. I reached up to find a row of stitches there, sealing some deep gash.

  I felt like absolute hell.

  Like I’d just spun out and been thrown from my ride, then smacked into a fucking concrete wall, or some shit.

  I looked down to see that my hands were bandaged around my knuckles. The same with my left upper arm and my head. My breathing was labored and when I tried to shift my weight just a little, it had me wincing at the ache in my ribs. Probably bruised. If they were broken, it would’ve been a lot worse, a real fight just to draw in a single breath. There was a burning sensation in my right shoulder. I knew what it was right away, because it’d happened before. It had been dislocated, then popped back into place. Fucking great.

  I clearly wasn’t in the best condition right now.

  But it was tough shit, because I had work to do.

  I was in a pair of my black sweats and a white tee, thankfully out of my bloodied and dirty clothes. At least I didn’t have to worry about the frustratingly difficult task of getting dressed while injured.

  I went to get out of bed, only to find that I couldn’t.

  A sharp pain shot through my wrist and I looked down to see an IV hooked up to my right arm. I followed the tubing to see one of those clear plastic hospital bags hanging up beside the bed I was lying on with some kind of solution in it. Judging by the grogginess and the slight high I was feeling, it was a heavy-duty painkiller.

  Fuck. I didn’t wanna be feeling that right now. I never wanted to. I didn’t do drugs, never had. I hated the way they messed with your head. I couldn’t have that, couldn’t have anything compromising my ability to think straight. I had to always be at my best. People counted on me.

  As I slowly took in the room, I realized I was somehow back in my room at the Steel Titans clubhouse.

  Plain. Simple. Small. The dark-red sheets of my bed, the blackout curtains covering the windows, the small table passing for a desk in the corner that had one too many cracks in it from my anger getting the best of me every now and then over the years, and the small-ass closet over by the bathroom door.

  What the fuck? How had that happened?

  The last thing I remembered was fending off that crazy-ass attack back at Willa’s safehouse.

  I fought through the numbing, mind-scrambling meds in my system to remember more.

  As I tried to piece together what the fuck had gone down, one thought came slamming into me, wiping out everything else, overriding it all.

  Willa.

  Those bastards had taken her.

  The last thing I’d seen before I’d put down a bunch of those soldiers before they’d blown the safehouse to hell had been that fucker, Freeman, subduing her. I’d been right on the verge of hauling ass out there and wailing on that piece of shit and anybody else who tried to stop me from freeing my woman, when Rick had pulled me back and forced me into that underground escape tunnel. He’d witnessed some of the soldiers planting explosives, while my focus had been strictly on Willa. Fuck, he’d saved my goddamn life.

  But I didn’t remember us getting out of there.

  Had he made it? Had those shits taken him too?

  I’d never seen it up close, but Freeman was known by reputation for his sadism and his affinity for playing a whole twisted cat and mouse game with whatever prey he got in his sights. My stomach roiled just at the thought of that happening to Willa, and it had me bolting off the bed, and tearing the goddamn IV right out of my arm. I hissed at the spike of pain, but shrugged it off quickly.

  I stormed toward the door, but a sudden wave of lightheadedness slammed into me, making me waver on my feet. Nausea surged and I had to stop in my tracks and grab at the wall to keep my balance.

  As I tried to rally and fight through it, the door flew open, and Liam strode in. The moment he took in what was happening, me out of the bed, the IV dangling and dripping blood onto the floor, and me struggling to hold my own weight up, he rushed toward me.

  “What the fuck, Slade?” he chastised. Wrapping his arms around me, he helped me back to the bed. I sat my ass down and scrubbed my hand over my face with a frustrated curse.

  He tried to help me b
ack into the bed, but I batted him away.

  “Back off,” I grunted.

  “You need to rest. You almost died.”

  “That’s a hell of an exaggeration.”

  He glared at me. “Yeah? When we found you, that’s what it fucking well looked like at first. You just got lucky, that’s all. It’s the only reason you’re still here.”

  Anger was coming at me, but we’d been through way too much over the years for me to take him at the surface level. I could see beyond that. It was pain and fear. He’d been worried about me, afraid he’d lost me.

  “I’m all right.”

  “If you saw yourself in the mirror, you wouldn’t be saying that.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “Rick called us, told us the deal, and we headed down there like bats out of hell.”

  “He all right?”

  “Yeah, he’s gonna be okay.”

  “Here?”

  “In one of the spare rooms. We figured that was what you’d want with him saving your ass and everything.”

  “It is. Good.”

  Liam scrubbed his hand over his face. “Fuck, Slade. I thought we’d worked beyond all this covert, secret-keeping bull.”

  “This ain’t the same.”

  How much did he actually know? After going out of my way to keep the boys far away from all this, I weren’t about to reveal the whole shitshow if I didn’t have to, if all he knew were just bits and pieces.

  “Isn’t it?”