Jaxson 3: The Last Vow (Black Devils MC)

by K. J. Dahlen

  Out of the corner of his eye, my father had seen me and came into the room, closing the door softly behind him. “You should be careful. You never know the eyes that could be watching you.” His tone was threatening. Then he pulled the blind down, darkening the room, and flicked the light switch on the wall, turning on the lights.

  He shrugged off his biker jacket and at the same time, reached into his jacket pocket and produced a pocketknife in a holster. “I need to know that you’ll have some way of protecting yourself if you need to,” he said.

  I instantly stilled.

  He leaned forward and placed the knife in my hand, closing my fingers around it.

  When I stared at the small weapon blankly, he responded by attaching the holster to my body and I pressed it against my thigh. I didn’t plan on using it, but it felt good to know I had some protection.

  I stood and he pulled me into his arm to give me a tight hug.

  “I’m sorry for what I said before. I had a sudden meltdown with all that has happened,” I said, my tone filled with regret and embarrassment. My father had helped me save Jax from being found by Jumper and the Bloods at the hospital, and I would forever be grateful for that.

  A smile crept up on his face. “Its ok baby girl, why don’t you have some breakfast?” he asked.

  “Thank you, and, yes ok,” I replied, my voice a little hoarse.

  I nodded and turned my body to say goodbye to Jax; he was exhausted from trying to stand. “Jax is stronger than before,” I told my father. I didn’t tell him how I knew that.

  “He’s fiercely determined to get well, I’ll give him that much,” Jesse remarked.

  Drawn by the strong desire to be with him, I stepped to closer to his bed. Slowly, my hand moved to his arm, and I stroked the soft skin on its underside. I leaned over him and smiled. It was bizarre. Somehow, Jax was exerting more power over me now – in this unconscious state – than when he was awake. It was as though something primal inside of him was calling me, and something inside of me was responding.

  The smell of Jax touched my nose and I let out a sigh. When I placed a kiss on his neck, suddenly all of my attention was on him. I could feel that Jax’s pulse was weaker and faster and his breaths appeared shallow. It shattered me. Terrified me. How could things have changed in him so fast?

  Jax woke in a lucid moment.

  “Jax, I’m here for you. I’m with you,” I said, my voice strained.

  As quickly as Jax’s moment of half consciousness came, it was gone.

  I felt my father’s arm fall around my shoulders. If I could’ve suffered the pain in Jax’s place I would have. If I could have drained the energy and strength from my body and passed it on to him I would have. Jax had to pull through this. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I chewed on my bottom lip and wiped the tears from my eyes.

  I slumped down onto Jax’s bedside table and rested my head against the wall. I felt like I was in a daze.

  “He’s a strong kid baby girl, don’t you worry,” dad said.

  I was turning my head to the side to close my eyes, when I saw the doctor through the window coming towards the building. He carried a hospital chart under one arm. “The doctor. He’s finally got Jax’s test results,” I declared.

  Jesse spun around and took two steps toward the door then opened it, “Dr. Sarma. All good news I hope!” he greeted him, holding out his right hand.

  Entering the room with his head bowed to his notes which were now open, the doctor and began to talk, “The man’s lucky. Had the gunshot been half a centimetre lower, one lung would have been punctured and collapsed.” Dr Sarma shuffled with his papers and pulled out the scan of Jax’s chest which showed the bullet’s point of entry.

  “How long do you think it will be until he can get out of here?” I asked, hopefully. Then, with a slip of the tongue I added, “He stood up yesterday!”

  Both the doctor and my father gave me a severe look and my eyes widened.

  “It must have taken a tremendous effort for him to do that much activity right now. Perhaps, he may revert to the slow stages on recovery. He’s in a drug induced coma right now.”

  The doctor produced a bottle of another medicine I hadn’t seen before and my head shook in response. “No. No more!” I snapped.

  “Chloe!” Dad admonished.

  I got to my feet. “No more,” I repeated, “You’ve invaded his body enough. That’s what’s making him worse. Not anything Jax or I have done,” I snapped with resolve. I was sick and tired of the doctor sticking chemicals and needles into Jax’s body like he were a slab of meat rather than a person.

  The doctor furrowed his brows at me.

  It made me wonder whether anyone had questioned him before.

  Again, he consulted the file in his arms. “Let me explain his injuries more completely,” he said.

  I sat down and let out a frustrated breath as I clasped my hands anxiously.

  “Jax has simple fractures in his lower ribs and both legs which would have occurred on impact when he was shot and thrown from his bike. I’d like to put them in casts. With injuries like this, the body knows how to heal itself but it is always wise to give it some guidance. As you have seen, Jax can walk, but it will cause him a great deal of pain.”

  “How long would you say he’ll be out of action?” my father interrupted.

  “It’ll take six to eight weeks for fractures like this to fully heal,” the doctor responded. “Then, there are many minor injuries, Jax has several lacerations on his chest and legs, but the worst of the lacerations is the one you see on his face.”

  “See baby girl, he is going to be fine—”

  “Well,” the doctor interrupted, “You ought to be aware of something else. I believe he’d suffered a mild concussion when he was thrown from his bike. But I see no permanent damage or swelling in the brain. Still, to control the possibility of any swelling I’ve had to administer high doses of barbiturates which keep him in a coma.”

  Barbiturates! I gasped.

  The doctor held up a hand. “He’s going to make it through this,” he said, then grinned. “I’ll tell you this, he definitely does better when you’re here. I’m not a man to trust much outside of science but his brain activity is clear. Jax responds to your voice. Studies have pointed to the connection between the mind and the body in the past, but I’d never trusted it all that much. Now, I’m seeing it with my own eyes.”

  I lifted my brows. “How is that possible?” I said, moving to Jax’s bedside, putting my hand on his arm and peering at his face. Jax needed me more than either of us had ever thought.

  “Well, there are different levels of consciousness, and though the dose of barbiturates I gave have him were designed to put him far under. I wouldn’t be surprised if he could hear us right now.

  I glared at him.” “No more of those drugs.” I wouldn’t back down on this.

  The doctor sighed. “Ok. I’m going to terminate the barbiturates. It should take twenty-four to forty-eight hours for him to come fully off the drug’s and be fully conscious, but judging by his biomarkers it looks like he will be out of the coma soon. His blood pressure is up and his cardiac output has increased. He’s fighting his way out of it.”

  “A man can fight their way out of a coma?” Jesse asked in disbelief.

  “Apparently so,” the doctor responded. “Adrenaline, as you know, can have profound effects on a person’s body. I’ll have to keep him on drugs for the pain but if Jax is going to keep fighting his way out of the coma, I’m better off letting him wake up then monitor his condition.” He paused to gaze at me. “Apparently, he needs you to get better.” He shrugged. “It appears so anyway.”

  I stood by Jax’s bed, my fingers gently stoking his arm. His arm twitched several times, and his lips parted. I sighed. This revelation hit me hard but I wasn’t surprised. Jax never gave up. Never had stopped fighting. It’s how he’d survived in this world so far. “It’s all right. I’m not going anywhere,” I whisp
ered to his ear.

  “I’ve never seen a recovery like this before.” The usually bland doctor gave me an abrupt nod of approval. “You’ve been his lifeline.” He walked out the door.

  Jesse stepped close and squeezed my arm then he left quietly.

  I didn’t care about what anyone thought. I believed in Jax. Yes, I had been here all along, but when you loved someone as fireclay as I love Jax, what choice did you have? He would’ve stayed by my side right? I paused. Unless Bruno called. I held my breath for a second to fight back my resentment. Yes, I still harboured ill will toward the man. I could never understand the pure adulation Jax had for him. As if he were Jax’s father. Jax had said as much before that Bruno was the closest he had to one.

  Well, what was good, ole heroic brave Bruno doing to help catch Jumper? At thought of that monster, I felt like crying all over again. Mom? Please be alive? Please survive this. Then tears began to fall from my eyes hitting Jax’s cheek.

  He stirred a bit as if he were trying to come up from the drug induced coma, just like the doctor had described. Could Jax feel my grief and anxiety? Could he feel my love too?

  I sat next to him on the bed and laid my head on his chest gently. I needed to hear his heart beating again. I’d done this maybe thirty times a day…every day.

  His heart was connected to mine and neither of us had a choice in it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dino

  “I wouldn’t want to be in Jumper’s shoes,” Spider remarked from behind me.

  I nodded without saying anything. My eyes focused like a bull on the black car that pulled into the loading dock of the prison and a fury coursed inside of me. It’d been ten more days of waiting for this. Ten days of excruciating anger for me. To wait for Bruno’s plan to unfold while Jumper ran around free after what he’d done. I’d thought so many times of waiting outside for Jumper after his visit with Tori in the joint. I coulda so easily killed him as he rode by when he left. But no, Bruno told me to stand down. I felt so tired of standing down, waiting to get at this bastard.

  Leaning my head against the warm glass of the bedroom window of Spider’s apartment, I let out a slow breath. I knew the figure I saw get out of the vehicle was my mark – Jumper. Every nerve in my body felt it. My hands itched to pull out my gun, go down there and whack the son of a bitch. Not only had Jumper put my best friend in a hospital bed, but he’d devastated Jax’s reputation around town.

  Jax was still stealing state headlines as an organized criminal, suspected of trafficking drugs into Coronado. It had caused a tremendous uproar in town and I hoped Jax hadn’t gotten wind of just how far his reputation had been pushed around. He’d worked too hard at avoiding the drug trade and most of the illegal bartering in town then for the likes of Jumper to tear him down? Everything about that made me want to avenge what Jumper had done to him even more. But Bruno wouldn’t have any of that. If I took that luxury away from him, you’d bet I’d end up in the trunk of a car by the end of the week.

  As per Bruno’s orders, surveillance was the only role I would play in bringing Jumper to his end. And I had a very hard time with that. I’d been keeping personal watch on the prison for the past twenty four hours. Spider, Crow and Reaper had been given the task of accompanying me. As acting president, Bruno had made sure to it that I went nowhere alone.

  Spider lived in a high-rise apartment that looked out over the joint and prison yard. There, I’d watched and waited. Nobody went in or out without my knowing about it. Bruno had bought a number of these establishments over the years. Places for his soldiers to sleep at night that doubled as hideouts, or surveillance locations. It allowed him to keep the entire town under his watch at all times. Operating this way – keeping tabs on everything that occurred within his territory ‒ was what I believe had given Bruno so much staying power in this life.

  I watched as Jumper approached the prison with a boldness that bordered on insanity. Incredibly, it appeared that he’d succeeded in getting inside. From that point on, we would be reliant on intel from our eyes on the inside.

  Either the police officers Bruno had on his payroll, or Tori’s fellow inmates who were allied with Lorenzo – most of them being nothing-to-lose street killers. Lorenzo had distributed phones to a number of inmates in exchange for them capturing Jumper and Tori’s every move on tape and feeding it back to Bruno and I ‒ live, as it occurred. I had to admit Bruno was a genius and knew how to orchestrate a trap like no one I’d ever known. It was why he refused to allow any in the club to kill the man yet. He wanted ALL of the Bloods taken down at one time.

  “Thunder…We’ve got something coming through,” Spider announced.

  “Let’s see it,” was my reply. Pulling back from the window, I crouched in front of the laptop screen on the table that had been pushed against the wall beside me.

  Reaper and Spider crouched their bodies craning their heads around my shoulders to watch…

  The camera shot was pitch black at first. A mix of shades of grey swam in and out of the shot as somebody holding the camera moved around. The camera was lifted and the video focused in on a bed where somebody slept, no more than ten feet away. The sound of the person breathing who held the phone-camera was the only sound in the room.

  “I wonder whether that’s Tori in the hospital infirmary?” I whispered.

  Confused, Spider stared at me for a second and asked, “Boss, who’s Tori?”

  “The Viper. She’s Tori De Grasso. Everything you saw before was a disguise,” I answered, before snapping my head back to the laptop screen. And none of us spoke until we’d seen all we needed to see…

  The camera shakily followed a large figure stepping out of the shadows and approaching the bed where I was sure Tori lay. He moved silently, almost invisibly, with stealth. The woman lay limp, asleep under the sheets. When the figure reached Tori’s bedside, he pressed the palm of his hand over her mouth. Tori’s body jolted at the sensation, and kicked her legs but his hold was unyielding. She tried to gasp or cry out. Her desperate cries were drowned into a muffled scream. There was a frantic scuffling sound of the sheets as she fought the person.

  The stranger who stood above Tori shone a torch directly in her eyes. “It’s me, now calm the fuck down.” It was Jumper’s voice and the light reflected on his face. His lips flashed an evil smirk and I felt my gut twist in fury. She hadn’t realized who it was until the man Tori snapped both hands away, which had been clawing at Jumpers arm. He leaned in closer to her. “Get your lazy ass out of bed,” he hissed, punctuating every word.

  The monster inside of me roared. It wanted Jumper’s death, and I wouldn’t be able to fight it off much longer.

  She didn’t move, and she was speechless. Tori only stared at him, and he hauled her from her bed and she took a deep breath in, hissing in pain, as Jumper pulled her to her feet and out the door, her pained breaths becoming fainter as they disappeared out the door.

  Whoever was holding the camera trembled as she followed them. Her fear was evident. Her breathing was irregular. The shot bounced up and down as the person started to run toward the door. The next time I saw them, Jumper was moving down the corridor towards a set of steps. Who knew where they were going?

  The person with the camera kept moving but didn’t follow them. Perhaps, she knew where Tori and Jumper were headed. A minute later, I tried to make out where Jumper and Tori were. A car park? I asked myself. The loading dock! A truck driver thirty feet away had the engine running. Jumper appeared with Tori by the shoulders out of a set of double doors.

  Jumper looked left and right, and then sprinted toward the truck. Tori followed then ran into the wall and started to bellow but Jumper covered her mouth.

  I almost scoffed aloud while watching Tori the super-bitch struggle. Her child like voice cried out with pain. She didn’t seem realize that she was showing her vulnerability. She really was a pathetic woman behind her mask.

  “Shut the fuck up until we get out of this fucking
hole, unless you want to get us busted,” Jumper hissed in a rush. He looked panicked. He tugged her further to the truck as she stumbled behind him, half dragged to the vehicle.

  Before Jumper opened the side door to the truck, he turned his head and glared at her. “Ok bitch, I’m about to get you out, now you keep your end of the bargain,”

  Tori stepped into the back of the semi-truck and Jumper pulled the door shut. The truck took off slowly, and the camera started to shake as the vehicle approached where the informant was hiding. There was a flash from the headlights and a scuffle as the truck passed. The last of the pair that the camera caught was a shot of the truck stopped at the security at the exit. The truck started up again and the pair was away.

  I turned the video off. I couldn’t look at it any more.

  The rage inside me grew and started to sting my eyes, it needed an outlet, any kind of outlet to lessen the pain in my soul. It pissed me off that Jumper had shot my best friend and I couldn’t return the bullet. I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket, tugged it out and saw Bruno’s name flashing on the screen, but I couldn’t answer it. Not yet.

  Spider and Reaper tilted their heads at me questioningly.

  Spider asked, “Boss, why are you—”

  I glared at him, silencing him.

  Both men averted their gazes, their faces instantly becoming impassive.

  I walked away from them, still angry with myself for the weakness I’d shown. I drew in a breath and held it, letting a coldness seep back into my body. Jumper wouldn’t make me weak, I wouldn’t let him.

  My hands tightened into fists so hard I couldn’t feel my fingers. Every muscle in my body was on fire. I stood up and kicked my chair across the room. I gripped my hair and pulled, pacing away from the window where the three of us stood.

  I have to avenge the injustice done to Jax. The monster inside of me roared, ‘Jumper’s mine to kill.’

  But Bruno would kill me if I did that. I punched the wall and my bared knuckles hit it with a crash as the plasterboard broke through. I stepped backward in shock, chest heaving. Unable to calm myself, I hit at the wall again and again. My fist bled while covered in flakes of paint. Over and over I punched until I felt two hands on my shoulders and stopped in mid swing.