by Franca Storm
“We can just pull over whenever the nausea gets the best of me.”
He screwed up his face. “Nah, I ain’t having my pregnant woman suffering like that, and forced to chuck up all over the roadside. No fucking way.”
“Slade, I—”
He held up his hand. “End of story.” He pulled his phone from his leather jacket pocket and told me, “I’m gonna get the doc to send another prescription to a pharmacy down this way ASAP.”
“It’s a Sunday, Slade. The closest store, let alone a pharmacy, is forty-five-minutes away. The chances of it being open are slim.”
He thought on that for a while. “Fine,” he said, dialing another number. “I’ll have one of the boys bring your current ones right down to us.”
“That’s a bit much. The ride is—”
“It ain’t too much, darlin’. You’re the club president’s Old Lady.”
I grinned. “Am I now?”
“Fucking right.” There was a twinkle in his eye as he added, “Well, for a little while longer, until the whole retiring thing finally gets underway. Then it’s gonna be Abi.” He shook his head. “Can’t fucking believe that. It’s a hell of a thing.” He blew out a breath. “But, it works for Liam, so it is what it is.”
“Then what?” I teased, sidling closer to him.
He dipped his head, his lips just shy of brushing mine. My body hummed from the need radiating between us. “Then,” he spoke in that husky turned-on growl of his, “You’ll be mine until the goddamn end.”
“Slade,” I breathed, reaching up and cupping his face in my hands.
I didn’t get much further than that when another awful wave of nausea hit me.
I jerked back from him quickly. “Hold that thought,” I said, before bolting for the bathroom.
Talk about bad timing.
Dammit!
35
~Slade~
SHE WAS EXHAUSTED.
Not that she’d ever admit it.
But her passed out on the couch in the backroom of her office building was a dead giveaway, even if I hadn’t noticed the change in her over the last few days.
I pulled my phone out of the inside pocket, then shrugged my leather jacket off and draped it over Willa, tucking her in nice and easy, careful not to wake her. She needed her rest badly. Her being without those meds really weren’t helping. She hadn’t been able to eat and the constant sickness was wearing her down without any fuel to keep her going. Living the way we did, we had to be at our best physically and mentally. We were warriors. We had to be ready for anything, to stave off an attack, to pull an all-nighter during a mission, or whatever the hell. And right now that was majorly compromised for her. I’d put in a call to the club to send somebody down with them ASAP, and they were on their way, but it was a few hours’ ride. It had me on edge, big time.
Willa had a rule about never meeting a client in the same place twice in such a short timeframe. But, that was what had happened with this place. Between meeting me that first time, then stopping off here while she was under Freeman’s thumb to pick up equipment, and then Will Decker, she’d been here three times. Way too many, ramping up the risk something fierce. Every second we stayed here upped the danger and the chances of Freeman or Nolan getting a lock on our location. It weren’t like being at the clubhouse, which was a fortified position. Nah, this office was in the middle of nothing, cut off from any backup. It weren’t intended as a stronghold, just a covert place to meet a client from time to time.
I took one last look back at her, then stepped out of the room and closed the door quietly.
As I made my way down the corridor toward the reception area, I dialed. I needed an update on the ETA of the prospect, or whoever Liam had sent down to bring those meds for Willa.
It connected on the first ring.
“Prez,” Liam answered. “Wyatt is almost there.”
“Wyatt? Thought you were sending a low-level prospect, not our best one, the guy we’re real close to patching in, because he’s so damn good. We’re at war. We need our best guys manning the clubhouse. Yeah, the militia’s off the table, but we still got Nolan and Freeman gunning for us. Nolan’s got his guys at his back and—”
“Nolan’s off the table.”
“What?” I barked. If he thought for a second that I was gonna back down on taking that asshole out, after I’d already gotten close twice and then lost it, he had another thing coming. “Liam, there ain’t no way that—”
“He’s dead, Slade.”
Talk about a shock to the system.
It brought me up short.
I couldn’t wrap my head around it fast enough, let alone actually respond with anything.
“We just got word from Van.”
“Who did it?” I croaked out. It was a toss up between Will Decker and Blake Freeman. They both had the motive and the ability.
“Freeman. He tore into the driveway on his bike and ripped through the bay windows of the place Nolan was holed up at with a TEC-9, taking Nolan out in the process. He went down in a hail of fucking bullets.”
“Jesus Christ,” I breathed.
“Yeah, it was a wild, unhinged move on Freeman’s part. He didn’t even try to cover it up. He moved so fucking fast that Van couldn’t even keep up with him while he had eyes on him, and you know how good he is.”
“The asshole’s lost it,” I realized. “Losing a partner in Willa, then the militia.”
“You need to get the hell out of there as soon as Wyatt arrives and Willa gets those meds in her system. Nobody is safe until we can get a lock on him and take him out.”
“I hear you. When is—”
The call dropped.
Startled, I eyed my phone to see that there weren’t a signal no more.
Son of a bitch.
I really doubted it was random, or just some coincidence.
I just get word on Freeman losing his shit, he’s been working with ex-military guys, with access to the exact kind of tech that could fuck with a cell phone signal. A fucking cell jammer. Nah, it weren’t no coincidence. It had to be him.
Adrenaline shot through me, fast and brutal, as the realization set in.
Some of those jammers didn’t have a range more than thirty feet. Others, like the kind the law used, could bring down all cell service within a one-mile radius.
Either way, it meant one thing.
That motherfucker was real close. Too fucking close.
I had to act fast.
My first instinct was to wake Willa and get her the hell out of Dodge.
But I stopped myself.
There was only one way out of here, through the front door just beyond the reception area. Willa was back down the opposite way. I needed to see if the way was clear first, before rushing her headlong into danger. Telling her that I thought Freeman was coming for us would be a surefire way to put her right in the line of fire, because she wouldn’t accept it no other way. She’d want to be front and center. No fucking way was that happening.
I shoved my phone into my back pocket, then hurried down the corridor, speeding up to a run, and drawing my gun in the process.
I tore into the reception area, locked and loaded.
Scanning the room, I didn’t see nobody, no sign of things looking off or nothing.
Everything was as we’d left it earlier, the lights muted, the place dead silent.
It was the calm before the storm.
That was confirmed in the next second.
The front door tore open, ripping off its top hinge.
I took aim.
Seconds went by.
Nothing.
I took a step forward.
A gloved hand came into view.
Before I could even fire off a shot, it tossed something into the middle of the room, just ten feet from me.
A five-inch, black cylinder.
Small, but a bitch of a thing.
A fucking flashbang!
I reacted quick, diving f
or the reception desk, the farthest corner of the room.
I weren’t fast enough.
The grenade detonated.
I was still way too close to the blast radius.
It was a fucking sucker punch to the senses.
As I hit the ground hard, my ears were ringing painfully. I couldn’t see shit for the life of me, couldn’t get my bearings, or sense a damn thing.
I forced myself up onto my knees, struggling with it.
I got one foot back on solid ground, about to push off it to get back to my feet, when hands suddenly grasped my shoulders, fingers digging in hard.
They used my weight against me and hauled me into the couch.
I grunted as I hit it with a bone-jarring thud, the thing tipping over at the impact.
The blows came hard and fast then.
I brought my hands up to minimize some of the damage, hating that I was completely on the defensive, because of the ringing, the blindness, and the intense disorientation.
I took way too much damage for the start of a fight, before my vision started clearing just enough to make out the shape and movements of my attacker, and the ringing dialed down enough to be bearable, for me to think about more than the agony of it.
But it was too little too late, as I saw the flash of a blade coming at me.
I hissed as it plunged into the right side of my chest.
The wielder leaned in close as he twisted it, making me choke, and I was finally able to make out his identity.
Just as I’d thought.
Blake fucking Freeman.
Damn, he was a dirty fucking fighter. A coward too.
He ripped the blade out, wiped the blood on his tactical pants, then stepped back.
The ringing ebbed off more and I could make out what he was saying, as he turned away and started for the corridor. “Where is she? I know she’s here,” he was muttering to himself.
Adrenaline surged. I clenched my fists.
The fucker had made a mistake thinking stabbing me would put me out of the fight.
Nah, the searing pain sparked something in me that I’d been trying to hold back for way too long. I’d been able to do it with Willa in my life, as mine now. What I had with her nullified it. There weren’t a place for it, no way for it to breathe or really exist as an everyday part of me no more. But it could still be triggered. Pain called to the dangerous, brutal part of me. The bloodlust. Ramped up by his threat on the woman I loved and our unborn kid, it surged damn near out of control before I could even try to get a handle on it.
Roaring, I ran at him and lunged, slamming him into the corridor wall.
He choked as he jarred against it hard.
I fisted my hand in his hair, ripping his head back and smacking it against the wall, as I seethed, “Fucking kid trying to play with the big men. Nik had a load of faults, but he could always zone in on a threat from miles away. He pegged you. He saw what a danger you were and he shut you down hard.”
“He was weak!” Freeman yelled. “He had no vision, no ambition. He was stuck in the same place his whole life. I could’ve changed all that!”
He drew his blade and swung.
I dodged the swipe, then slammed my fist into his wrist, dislodging the blade from his grip. It clattered to the floor. A wave of lightheadedness took me over as I kicked it away, over to the other side of the room.
It enabled Freeman to get in a hit.
He slugged me across the side of the face, actually managing to knock me back, because I was out of it.
It pissed me off, because he didn’t hit that hard, he weren’t that great of a fighter and I had a ton up on him in that area. Most of all, fuck, I just wanted this shit over and done with. Nolan being out of the picture meant Freeman was the last. The last threat. The last mission.
His boot plunged into my gut, making me double over and stumble back into the couch. I threw out my hand to keep from hitting the floor.
He made his way over, his gaze drawn to the right side of my chest. “I knew I couldn’t take you one-on-one. That bloodied mess I’ve made of your chest evens the playing field, wouldn’t you say?”
Following his line of sight, I took in the stab wound. Jesus.
Adrenaline and rage had prevented the pain from getting the best of me, stopping it from hindering me. But, it weren’t just the pain to worry about with something like that.
It was the fucking blood loss. It had spread through a good half of my gray tee. No wonder I was so lightheaded and off my game. I couldn’t stay on my feet feeling this way. I had to take the fight to the ground.
Just as I was about to make that happen, he reached behind him, up his shirt, then pulled a Glock, cocking it and taking aim.
Adrenaline flooded my senses, my body fucking well vibrating with it. And something I weren’t used to feeling in a fight. Never in all my years. Fear. It weren’t for me. My life had always been expendable. It had to be. I had to be willing and able to go there for the sake of the club, of my brothers’ lives. But everything had shifted now. I couldn’t die, because I couldn’t leave Willa and my kid. I wouldn’t let an innocent be brought into the world without my protection at their back. I wouldn’t sentence my own flesh and blood to that. They needed to have more than what I’d had.
So, I held up my hand.
Freeman frowned, looking surprised. “Really? Gonna beg for your life? Slade Mitchell, the ruthless, merciless bastard of the Steel Titans MC?”
Beg? No way in hell.
I shifted my weight, so I was in a position to push off at a split second’s notice, putting all my power into a sudden dash forward.
And then I mind-fucked him, revealing, “Willa’s pregnant.”
Sure enough, it worked just like I thought. He reacted. From what Willa had told me, and what I knew about Freeman myself, I’d figured he had more than a business partnership interest in her. The asshole was obsessed with her. He fucking well wanted her.
“Yours?” he choked out, taking an uneasy step back.
“Well, it ain’t yours, asshole. As close as you came to forcing yourself on her, you knew better in the end, knew she’d rip you apart if you crossed the line you wanted to.”
His eyes narrowed. “She deserves better than you. I could’ve given her the world.”
“Yeah, that’s why you’re still a kid. You can’t see nothing beyond your own ego, can’t see things the right way. Willa don’t need nobody to give her nothing.”
“I’m not letting her go! She’s gonna build me that fucking empire, one way or another. Maybe this time, I’ll leverage your life.” He sneered and took a step back toward me. “You think she’d let you die just to have the freedom to turn me down again?” He lowered his gun. “Nah, there’s no way, especially not now that you’re the father of her child.” Eyes lighting up, a nasty smirk coming over his face, he went on, “She’ll follow my orders, give in to my every whim.” He locked eyes with me. “My every desire.”
Motherfucker!
I made my move, sweeping his legs.
He cried out in surprise and went down hard, landing painfully on his back, his gun clattering to the floor.
I was on him in split-seconds, my weight bearing down on him, as I wailed on him mercilessly, letting that bloodlust take me over.
The more pain I caused, the more I needed.
I couldn’t fucking stop for the life of me.
So fucking what?
He’d brought it here.
Pushed and pushed and pushed some more.
Leading an army to put me to ground. Kidnapping my woman. Coming onto her, manipulating her. And here he was coming for the both of us again?
Nah, there was no way around it. A quick death weren’t enough no more. He deserved the maximum level of pain and brutality that I could deal out.
But as I pummeled him into a bloodied mess, breaking his nose, and causing more still, making him choke with it, a warning sparked in my brain.
I could feel mysel
f slowing against my will. The usual power I brought into play during a fight was compromised. My head was swimming. Goddamn it!
I eyed his gun.
Currently out of my reach, but doable, unlike mine that was over on the other side of the room thanks to the impact of that flashbang.
That brief distraction cost me big.
Freeman reared up and grabbed my right shoulder. Using it as leverage, he stabbed the fingers of his free hand into my chest wound, digging in deep and making me growl.
“I was gonna let you walk!” he yelled wildly, driving deeper. “That home invasion wasn’t personal. It was just a business deal I made with Adrian. I was just there for Willa. You did me a favor by taking out my old man.” His eyes flashed. “Now, though? Now, you screw me over like this? Tear me down? Take Willa from me? She was supposed to be my partner! She was the key to making all of this happen. Now she’s stabbed me in the back, blacklisted me to Decker and anybody else he knows—and he knows a shitload of people—and put me right back at square-one. All because of her misplaced love for you! Adrian was right about one thing. You’re nothing. You don’t deserve a woman like her! You should’ve left well enough alone!”
Damn, his version of things was beyond twisted.
Gritting my teeth, I shot out my hand and grabbed his wrist. His eyes went wide at the sheer level of my strength as I ripped his fingers from my wound. I shoved him away from me, then reared back and smashed my boot into his face.
I fought to get back to my feet.
But that last burst of strength had pushed me too far.
Dizziness overwhelmed me and as I went to reach for the arm of the couch to push myself up, I missed and landed on my hands and knees back on the floor instead.
Get up! Get the fuck up!
I pressed my hand to my chest wound, trying to compress it to at least stop further blood loss. Freeman had made it a hell of a lot worse.
My breathing was straining. My surroundings were moving out of focus.
Through the haze, I saw Freeman struggling back to his feet.
A shot rang out.
He jerked, his eyes shooting wide as a bullet blew through his left side. Looked like a through and through, but a brutal one.