by Rie Warren
I kept trying to reach the damn gun, but my hands were still trapped in his leather-belt contraption, and I just couldn’t dig far enough without drawing too much attention.
“Saint will find me.” My legs free with Reggie standing to the side of me, I kicked out at him. “Saint’s going to kill you!”
He smacked my foot aside then cranked his hand back down on my neck. “He already tried once and failed. Time for you to take my cock like you used to and shut the fuck up about anything else.”
Hysteria approached when he took out his sharp blade. He began hacking off my shirt all the way down my back to the cheers and crude comments of an entire captive audience.
“We wanna see the cunt on her!”
“She done pushed out a baby. She oughtta be able to take two cocks for the price of one.”
“Force-fuck that ho to her grave!”
With my shirt ripped free, Reggie tore off my bra. He tipped me up briefly so everyone could view my breasts.
I simmered with violent rage, the bag with the gun now laying on the floor at my feet.
After whacking me back down to the table, Reggie ran a hand down the center of my spine.
I tried to shrink away from his gross touch.
Especially when he uttered, “All y’all can have a shot at her sweet pussy after I rape an orgasm or two out of her!”
Ear-splitting roars of excitement rang out from the Death Dealers.
A whole captive audience. Just not the kind of audience any woman would ever want.
Janky leered as Reggie tore down my skirt and shredded off my panties.
That bucktoothed bastard poured a line of coke on the side of his hand then sucked it all up his nose.
He jumped up and down right beside me then humped at the air. “Yeah! Gonna get me some upscale snatch to-night.”
Reggie bumped his fist then held his hand out for a line of blow.
He pressed the snuff up against my nose. “Wanna taste?”
Shaking my head, I turned my face aside.
I shut my eyes.
I kept trying to reach my bag, with my feet now.
“Too bad. Mighta made you a better ride.”
I heard him snort up the coke. Then his hand came down with a harsh blow on my ass. His fingers squeezed under my torso, and he twisted my nipples hard.
His disgusting penis prodded at my opening, and I slammed my legs together. I hunched down, giving him no entry.
Fingers back to tangling through my hair, Reggie hauled me higher up the table.
“Keep this twat where I need her,” he ordered Janky.
The coked-up asshole did as told, using his whole upper body to lay across me. He pinned me down, but not before squirming his fingers beneath to maul my breasts.
“Yeah. Let’s see what we can do with this.” Ruthlessly kicking out my legs, Reggie reached across Janky to put a stranglehold around my throat.
With a heave, Reggie gave a savage dry thrust inside of me.
A scream ripped from my throat at the nauseating pain of being forced.
I wanted to puke. But my scream was met by an unholy bellow and a clash of Titan-force bodies behind me.
Saint.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
SAINT
I WAS AT TIT for Tat, and for once I was actually working. Or I had been at least. All frigging day. Like a good bad boy.
Taking various needles and shaders out of the autoclave and storing them in the racks, I listened as Lennox’s tattoo gun hummed along behind the curtained area. It was just about shutting shop time, because I had a date and Lennox was clearing out our last walk-in of the day.
Except Honoré was running late. She was supposed to pick up Caleb from school then meet me here.
She’d show. She wasn’t a woman to back down on her word. Besides, traffic happened. And it was entirely possible Caleb had twisted her arm to stop for ice cream. I knew that trick well. He got those big old puppy dog eyes, and it was impossible to say no to him.
Shit, but that kid was funny. And fun to be around. I just had to watch my mouth with him because if I slipped up with an f-bomb and word got back to Honoré, I’d be in the doghouse for sure.
Lennox had finished his aftercare instructions, rung up the customer, and was in the back clearing his shit away when Revenge banged inside like a bullet shot out of a gun.
The bell above the door chimed wildly, and the man looked just as wild himself. His pupils blown wide like he’d just finished a three-day meth bender, he stopped long enough to grab a choppy breath.
Then he grabbed me by the arm. “They’ve got her and Caleb!”
I shook him off. “What the hell are you talkin’ about? She’s on her way here with him.”
“No she’s not, man.”
The fear of fucking god sliced right through my insides as I took in his frenzied expression.
“Someone grabbed Honoré?”
“And the kid.” Revenge gripped my arm again. “Ripper. Dozer. Some of the other fuckers. Took her right out her car. Right off the street.”
Rage and shock colliding, I grabbed my leather cut and pushed Revenge ahead of me to the door.
I bellowed back, “Lennox! We gotta jet! The Death Dealers got Honoré and Caleb!”
He rushed out after us like a bull, so full of anger he almost shattered the glass in the door when he slammed it closed to lock the tat parlor down.
We three banged into Thunder Road, and I tried to fucking think rationally. Tried to stop the shaking in my hands. Tried not to imagine all the nasty shit Ripper was capable of.
“Angel!” My voice came out as a roar, and Chase hit me with a surprised look.
The prez busted into the barroom, only skidding to a stop when he saw me standing there with veins bulging in my arms and a fist clenched around the hilt of my bowie knife.
“Death Dealers?” he uttered.
I nodded, teeth grinding and jaw locked.
“Everybody better arm up then.”
As Revenge, Lennox, and I stormed upstairs for our guns, I heard Angel mutter to Chase, “Get Slade over here now. And tell Mercy to go sit with Grace.”
When we herded back to the barroom, Chase, Angel, Slade, Sol, and several of the others were assembled and looking battle-ready.
“Where are they at?” Angel asked, loading bullets into his double-barreled shotgun.
“I reckon that shit-stain just took ’em back to the compound.” Head down, I clenched my fists.
“That’d be my guess.” Revenge agreed. “They had the DD van and everything.”
Spinning on him, I snarled. “Did that cunt hit Honoré? Did anyone fuck with Caleb?”
Revenge didn’t shrink from my fury.
His own eyes blazed as he bit out, “It wasn’t exactly pretty.”
“God-fucking-dammit!” Wheeling around, I smashed my fist onto a table.
The wood splintered with a loud crack. I only wished I’d been bashing Ripper’s face.
Should’ve laid him out, buried him deep, a long time ago.
Wrangling my rage as much as I could, I glanced back at the Blood Legion men. “Right. We take this to them. And put them down like the rabid dogs they are.”
“Shouldn’t we call the cops?” The prospect held out his phone.
“Fuck that,” I muttered. “They’ll just wanna do paperwork and eat donuts. Don’t have time for that shit.
“Especially with Saint’s rap sheet. Nah. The po-po won’t do dick for us.” Revenge leveled another good reason for going outlaw on this.
“Amber alerts though,” Chase persisted.
“Are you gonna grow a pair and help us get Honoré and Caleb or what?” I snapped, already headed for the door with the keys to my car in hand.
“Sol, you get on over to Grace’s too. Wait for me or Slade to call you. Make sure the ladies and the baby are safe.” Angel gave last directions then we were on the road.
In the lead in my Chevelle, I punched it a
s fast as I could through the gears without plowing down pedestrians.
Revenge, Lennox, Angel, Slade, and the others throttled down on Harleys right behind me, Chase tailing in the van.
I was in such a fucking lather, I honked my way through every goddamn intersection, the motorcycles riding right up on my flank.
Seeing Honoré’s abandoned car on the side of the road, my gut knotted with a vicious twist.
I stopped with a squeal of tires on tar. Rushing from my car, I leaped across the hood and over to her Honda. I yanked open the door and quickly cased the scene. Caleb’s deserted bookbag in the back seat was a haunting image. No sign of Honoré’s bag. And when I jerked my head across the front seat, I saw the glove compartment open, the keys dangling from the lock.
The Glock.
Fuck. Maybe she’d retrieved it in time.
But Ripper could’ve knocked her out.
And Caleb would see everything his father did to her.
Honoré didn’t much like the idea of the gun anyway.
I couldn’t imagine her actually using it.
I never wanted her to be put in the position where she had to.
“Okay?” Revenge’s bike grumbled beside me when I exited the Honda and locked it up.
Her keys in my pocket, I nodded.
Okay? Nothing in this fucking scenario was okay.
Climbing back in the Chevy, I gunned the engine.
Within fifteen minutes, I roared up the pot-holed road that led to the Death Dealers compound. It was a miracle I hadn’t been pulled over, that none of us had been stopped by the law.
And nothing was gonna stop me now.
Not even that goddamn chain link fence surrounding the enclosure.
Foot slamming the pedal to the metal, my motor roared. Car taking the impact and peeling the fence open with a screaming grating noise, I howled inside.
Stamping on the breaks, I did a full 360 and threw the car in park.
Blood Legion bikes ripped around me as I hopped out, and Chase closed the last gap with the van.
Death Dealers streamed from the building, coming at us with weapons raised, hollers shredding the air. One fucker even wielded a sledge hammer. He yelled like a Viking and aimed the blunt weapon at my face.
I wheeled around and blasted him in the midsection with my booted foot.
The hammer went flying, landing with a thud on the ground.
Didn’t have time for this shit.
Revenge rocketed right behind me, and I heard him tear up a Death Dealer or two. Whether or not he left them for dead, I didn’t care.
The demented fucks got what they had coming.
And what they had coming was a whole lot of retribution, Blood Legion MC style.
The fights went on behind us, and I hurtled into the dim depths of the main outbuilding.
Vane—possibly the only cunt with a shred of smarts—jumped off the keg barrel he’d been planted on and quickly hightailed it out of sight.
Red.
Blood red.
Dead red.
That was what filled my arteries and skewed my sight when I saw Honoré bent over—clothes destroyed and torn off—hunched and screaming. Ripper between her thighs, grunting and rutting up into her. Janky leering and mauling her breasts.
My roar almost brought the roof down. Then I was on Ripper. I grabbed him right off Honoré and kept going. Splatting him against a concrete wall, I aimed a glare back at Revenge.
He’d already fucking smoked Janky.
Good.
Let the bodies pile up for all I cared.
He was already holding onto Honoré and covering her with a blanket.
With Ripper slightly incapacitated and shouting insults at the top of his lungs, I yelled to Slade—the first from Blood Legion to come in after us, “Find Caleb!”
Outside, shots fired. I assumed Angel, Lennox, and Chase were going full mental out there.
I was about to go full mental on Ripper.
Hand wrapped around his throat to cut off his wild cursing, I sneered when he tried to talk.
Grip tightening, I steamrolled him off the wall and right into the next cavernous room. Ice ran through my veins . . . revenge.
His goddamn dick still hung out of his jeans, and I had half a mind to chop that shit right off and let him bleed out just like that.
Throwing limp dick against a pool table, I snatched the nearest cue and split it across his face.
“You thought you’d get away with this?” I shouted at him, that blood-haze teeming through my body.
Pushing his prick into his jeans, he shook a hank of hair from his face.
His grin came out to curl up off his teeth. “Already got it in her. Nothin’ you do is gonna change that.”
Then the pool cue wasn’t enough. I needed my fists for this.
“You’re fucking sick!” I vaulted at him, unleashed.
He met my first volley of punches with a few of his own. A jab to my stomach. An uppercut to my chin.
But I was gone.
I was pure mortal vengeance.
Roaring, I plowed him into another concrete wall. I goddamn wanted to leave an imprint of his body on the stone. Because that was all I’d leave of him.
Fists bunched and body bulging, I beat on Ripper with a violence I’d never known before.
He’d hurt Honoré.
He’d hurt Caleb.
He’d abducted them off the streets of New Orleans.
He’d hurt my people.
His lips bloodied, his eyelids swollen, he still had it in him to blast his head against mine with enough force that I saw goddamn stars.
I reeled back, but it took only seconds for the vicious rage to reinvigorate me.
There was no one else in this room. The rest of his junkyard dogs were either out there getting beat on by my men or already dead. I could potentially get away with fucking anything.
Even murder.
Lunging with a snarl as anger bled down to the marrow of my bones, I forced Ripper to the pool table and was ready to snap his spine in half against it.
A gun would be too easy. I had a far uglier type of death in mind.
Then a shot fired.
A bang that repeated inside my eardrums.
Frozen in that second, I thought he’d gotten me.
Thought this was the end.
That my life with Honoré and Caleb was over.
Heart tripping. Ears ringing. Fists bloodied.
Then Ripper took one last strangled breath—a crimson stain pouring from his gaping lips. He slumped to the floor in a dead heap—crumpled, mangled body parts with no life left inside.
Spinning slowly from the corpse with a hole plugged right through his forehead, I saw Honoré.
Revenge came up behind her, another pale vision.
Ghost white, Honoré came forward. The blanket over her shoulders began slipping free. Gripped in her outstretched hands, the Glock trembled.
The gun I’d given her.
Jesus Christ.
“I killed him. I killed Reggie. I killed Caleb’s father. I killed Joan’s son!” She lurched forward, the weapon weaving just like her unsteady steps.
I couldn’t even swallow. I could hardly speak.
But I managed to say, “Come to me. Give me the gun, baby.”
She came toward me with stilted steps, and I met her halfway. Taking the gun and quickly flicking on the safety, I spun so I stood directly in front of the carnage.
Folded in my arms, she began sobbing desperately. “I murdered him. I’m going to jail. I’ll lose Caleb!”
Angel, Chase, Lennox, and Slade appeared. Revenge quickly took Caleb from Slade and left.
Silence drew out, fragmented only by Honoré’s broken sobs while I held onto her shaking form.
“Hush now. You didn’t do anything wrong. You’re not going to jail, I promise.”
“Of course I am!” She wailed. “I’ll lose Caleb! I’ll lose everything.”
; “Not gonna happen.” My throat clicking, I cupped the back of her head. “I’m taking the rap. Wouldn’t have ended like this anyway if it wasn’t for me.”
She began crying harder, trying to tell me no. But I was having none of that.
Looking out across her bowed head, I asked my brethren, “No one else knows what happened here?”
“Affirmative,” Slade answered, and his voice sounded strangled.
“Good. It doesn’t leave this room. Honoré’s name doesn’t leave this room.”
I pressed her back just enough to wipe down the Glock then take the weapon in a firm grip so my prints were all over it.
Awakening to new horror, Honoré pushed against me.
She peered around wildly. “Where’s Caleb? Where’s my baby boy?”
Outside, with the last remaining Death Dealers milling around, the reunion between Caleb and Honoré made me draw in breath after ragged breath.
They just clung to each other, Caleb perched up on her hip, both crying now.
Moments later, we were out of there.
Away from the madness and the mayhem.
Honoré and Caleb both sat in the front of the car with me, belted in together and holding one another as tight as could be.
The van ahead put the heat on any traffic in our way, bikes thundering in our wake on the way to the hospital.
Honoré might not feel it right away, but from the looks of it she’d been banged up pretty hard. Not to mention the position I’d found her in . . . Ripper, he’d been in her. He’d forced himself inside of her.
I clenched the wheel with a white-knuckled grip, speeding along.
She wouldn’t put Caleb down, not even when I pressed our way into the ER and whispered the basics of what had happened to the woman seated behind the desk.
Ushered to a private room, Honoré lost it when nurses tried to separate her and Caleb. They both needed to be examined and possibly admitted.
She screamed, kicking out and spinning around to shield her baby boy.
Hell, I didn’t know what to do. This was breaking my fucking heart in half.
The nurses stood back to give her space, and I cautiously approached.
Touching Honoré very carefully on the shoulder, I sucked in my cheeks when I saw the terror in her eyes.
“Baby, you need to get looked at without Caleb around.” The words struggled from my throat, the hardest I’d ever said. “I’ll stay with him, okay?”