Without Forever: Babylon MC Book 5

by James, Victoria L.

  The tone of the crowd shifted, bringing my eyes back to the circle that had now formed around Drew. His new opponent—a guy with a wide chest and a bald head—parted the crowd and stepped into the circle of bodies with a smirk of arrogance in place. His face and head were covered in ink, the words and images bleeding together, making him look deranged. He curled his body for attack. His large hands gripping the thighs of his jeans and tugging to make more room for movement.

  He didn’t mess around like the others.

  The punch he landed on Drew’s face split his left eye open, the blood spurting out in a rush—the force of the shot so hard, it sounded like he’d snapped a bone.

  Drew had barely said two words during all of this… until now. There were mutterings of pain being grumbled under his breath in the few seconds he took to himself before he righted his body, brought his shoulders back, and stumbled to the left, his vision clearly off.

  “Ya like the taste of that fist, tough guy?” the fighter teased.

  “Now, we have a fight,” Trigger mused.

  Drew blinked wildly, his eyes as wide as he could get them before he blinked again and shook his head to try rid himself of whatever was causing him a problem.

  There was so much blood.

  So damn much.

  “Again!” Trigger called, and the Nav moved, his arm pulled in tight before he landed a left fist in Drew’s ribs, bringing his body in on itself as he took the pain with a grunt of acceptance.

  It was the first sign of weakness I’d seen in Drew, that any of us had seen, and the way Trigger leaned forward with a sick, satisfied grin on his face only made the rage inside of me flare into a full-blown wildfire.

  The whole room was focused on the two men in the middle now. Even the man supposed to be guarding me was too invested in the possibility of his asshole friend besting Drew. The noise that rose from the opposing sides was thunderous. The Hounds hollered out encouragement, advice, and told Drew to focus—to get his head in the game.

  The noise made my head swim, and the words made my world vibrate painfully.

  Kill him, being the loudest of them all.

  Drew managed to avoid the next swing, but the guy recovered. It was barely enough time for me to step out of the line of men, but it was enough for me to deliver my message as Drew glanced my way through wounded eyes.

  “End him!” I cried.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  DREW

  My bones sang—their song a haunting melody of pain that made the world tremor beneath my feet. The only thing I could see with any clarity was the bright balls of light flashing in the blind spot of my left eye.

  The blood, although warm, felt cold against my skin.

  Pain sliced through my ribs.

  And then she said those two words.

  End him.

  It was that easy. That’s all I had to do.

  My opponent swung again, and I swayed, a bout of good fortune landing in my lap, which forced the dude in front of me to miss and his body to rock forward. I saw Ayda again, her concerned face mouthing something else at me as her arms flailed around in front of her in a hurry.

  I wanted to go to her—make love to her one last time.

  I wanted to kiss her and taste her breath, feel her warm hands on my bruised skin and beg her to whisper something sweet in my ear before everything turned to black. A smile tried to tug at my mouth as I looked at her, but she was telling me to look elsewhere, and it was a good job she did. When I turned to look on my blind side, a fist was swinging my way, and I ducked under the flying arm in time to spin on my feet, see my enemy, and throw a punch in the guy’s kidney.

  He groaned in surprise, and I launched, feeling the fight return.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Bam, bam, bam. I made those punches count, my knuckles throbbing; split wide open, and my wrists aching from the force of the blows with no gloves on.

  He was out on the ground soon after, but I didn’t have the drive to stamp on his head and crush his teeth into the concrete. All my energy needed to be saved now.

  Tilting my head up to the ceiling, I felt my eyes roll back, and a rush of blood flow down my throat as I sniffed up. The need for air was desperate, and I gasped, pulling it in before I shook out the shock of my hits and let my head roll back down.

  When I saw Trigger’s face, he looked like a lion that had just devoured an all-you-can-eat Zebra buffet.

  “Jedd,” I croaked roughly, never taking my eyes from his.

  “Now it’s getting interesting, Drew.” Trigger paced in front of me, but my balance was off. It felt like an ear had exploded, as well as my eye, and all I could feel, taste, hear, and see was blood.

  I stumbled again, my footing making my body lean to the right before I corrected myself. “I said Jedd.”

  “You’re one hell of a fighter, I’ll give you that,” he said quietly, thoughtfully, like the tactician he was.

  “Save your compliments for someone who gives a shit, Trig, and get me my next fighter.”

  “Drew!” someone called out to my right.

  I recognized that voice, and my body turned on instinct, looking up to see my VP staring at me with pleading eyes. Everything else around him was fuzzy, and I struggled to take him in as more blood poured out from the cut above my eye, forcing me to swipe the back of my hand across it to clear it away.

  “You don’t owe anyone anything,” Jedd said calmly.

  I stared at him as best I could, wishing I could tell him all the love I had for him and his unrelenting loyalty. I owed him everything. I owed them all everything.

  “We can do this another way,” Jedd told me.

  Raising a weak hand, I offered a shit smile and pointed right at him. “Do your job, VP. Get every fucker out of here before these bastards ruin us.”

  “Drew…”

  “You heard what I said.”

  I turned away, scrunching my eyes tight before opening them with a flash and staring at Trigger.

  “The next guy I want setting free is Jedd. You fucking deaf?”

  “Suicide Tucker. That’s what I’m going to call you from now on.”

  “Whatever gets you hard. I’m sick of your show. Give me my next victim.”

  Trigger smirked that smirk I wanted to smash right off his face, and he called in a man who was standing to his right.

  “A VP for a VP,” he said calmly, and I let my eyes drift down to the cut on the next fighter’s chest.

  Vice President of The Navarro Rifles.

  That just happened to be a fancy badge on an idiot’s chest in the end. He had that fire in his eyes and the loyalty marked by the ink on his skin, but everything else was weak. He wasn’t big, he wasn’t strong, and he sure as shit wasn’t a fighter… although he tried. Gerrard Gates gave me a rest, even when I was prancing around like a ballet dancer. I managed to catch my own breath and wipe away more shit by the time he’d gotten close, and even when he made his fist connect my cheek, it was pathetic. In the end, he became mush beneath my legs as I knelt on his chest and pounded my fists into his face like he didn’t matter.

  He didn’t matter.

  None of them did.

  I was at war, and I was going to fucking survive this.

  When I jumped off him, sated, yet thirsty for more, I raised my chin and opened my one good eye to look at my woman properly for the first time. There was more blood on my skin than running through my veins as our eyes connected, and I let my lips fall apart to drag in more air, taking a moment to just… look at her.

  See she was alive.

  God, I loved her.

  Tears were swimming in Ayda’s eyes, but her chin was up and shoulders back as she held my gaze. Her lips trembled as she said something, but she had to stop and start again, her words clearer the second time around.

  “Come home to me.”

  I lifted a bloody fist and pressed it over my heart, my breathing ragged as I pushed it into
my chest before I released it and pointed right at her, a silent, “You” falling from my lips.

  She closed her eyes, then opened them a defiant glint in her eye. “I love you. Live for us.”

  When you love someone as much as I loved Ayda, it was easy to get caught up in whatever spell they cast. My body was breaking, heart aching, limbs shaking, and yet all I could focus on were those six words she’d just delivered to me. It made me a sick fuck to smile with blood in my teeth and crimson stains on my face, but I smiled anyway, wishing I could have appreciated every moment I’d ever had with her a thousand times more than I had done.

  Then Trigger’s voice brought me back to the present.

  “Bring him in!” he called out, and it made me blink quickly, scowling soon after as I spun to see him from my good eye.

  He was facing someone I couldn’t see, and the crowd around us began to mumble and mutter to themselves, their whispers growing louder until I picked out a name I instantly recognized.

  Walsh.

  Walsh was soon shoved in front of me, his body limp. His shirt was undone and his tie loose, but even with one fucked up eye, the only clear thing I could see, and smell, was Walsh’s fear as he looked up at me through worried eyes.

  His body was bent over; the bullet wound causing him more pain than he could handle in his ripped up, pretentious navy suit.

  I glanced up at Trigger who was hovering above him, and I shook my head. “Is this a joke?” I ground out.

  Trigger folded his hands behind his back and paced slowly around the Mayor of Babylon, staring down at him like he was nothing more than a sewer rat. “Do you know, Drew, how many times this man right here has stood in front of me, whether he’s been in my drug lab asking for cheap rates, or he’s been handing over intel on money launderers, arms dealers, crooked prison officers…” He paused, glancing over his shoulder to raise a brow at me. “…fellow MC men like myself.” Trigger sighed and turned back to his task. “And all he’s begged me to help him do is bring down The Hounds of goddamn Babylon.” Trigger raised his hands, palms up and facing the ceiling like he was talking to himself. “Every single time we’d meet to discuss some new venture together, it would always, always come back to The Hounds.”

  I glanced at Walsh and his scared eyes and messed-up red hair, my face tight and angry.

  “This man wanted every one of you dead. Every single last one of you. Men, women, girls, boys, innocents, guilty criminals, he didn’t care. If you were associated with The Hounds, you’re damned in his eyes. It was like he was obsessed. I never quite understood it. He sold his hatred of you to me by saying you were ruining his town, but then I looked into it. I got Chester Cortez and The Emps to look into it, to rile you up and rustle your feathers a bit. I got Sinclair to set up the whole teenage copycat club to lure you in. I got each and every man working for me to go out there and make you snap!” Trigger spun on his heels, the twist of his body smooth and controlled as he eyes shot to mine. “But I never got them to catch you starting the trouble. I never got them to catch you being fools for the sake of being fools. You were fools because your hands were tied. You were forced to be those men. Which only made me dig deeper. And do you know what I found?”

  I remained silent, apart from my ragged breaths.

  Trigger bent down over Walsh, his lips resting by the mayor’s ear as he looked up at me and spoke. “I found a bitter man, jealous of your MC, who was making men like me deal with his enemies because he was too scared to handle them himself.” He looked down at Walsh. “Isn’t that right, Mayor?”

  The mayor simply shook, a big man full of shit staring back at me with wide eyes and fear hanging over his shoulders like a cheap, shitty suit.

  “He just doesn’t fucking like you, Drew,” Trigger told me. “He’s asked me to kill you and your family so many times. He’d ask me to kill you now if he thought I would.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Because I don’t do shit for anyone unless I want to. Unless it benefits me. I work for no one. Do you understand that? Everything I ever do is because I want to do it. Because I’m in control. I rule this town. I rule all the towns. Texas is mine.”

  “And you want me to kill him now?” I asked carefully.

  “I want to see how you fight for survival against those closer to you than we are.”

  Shifting my feet, I stood with my legs wider apart, my fists flexing down by my thighs. “Get up,” I told Walsh, not caring for Trigger’s need for his ego stroking, only caring to extinguish one more threat. “Get up!” I said louder, losing patience.

  “I… I can’t fight you,” Walsh stuttered. “I can’t…”

  “Either get up, or I’ll drag you the fuck up.”

  “He sounds serious, Mayor,” Trigger teased, and for a moment, I thought he was on my side—if he had been the kind of man to take sides at all, but then I saw him dip his hand into the inside of his cut and ever so slowly, ever so carefully, pull out a knife, slipping it into the hand of Walsh as he looked up at me. “Consider this an advantage from me to you, Mayor. I think you’ll need it.”

  Walsh stared at the weapon, turning it over in his hand before he looked up at me carefully.

  “If you think you need it, use it,” I told him.

  “Suicide Tucker,” Travis said through a sleazy, bright smile.

  I ran a hand under my nose and sniffed, blinking away the trickle of blood that was swimming in my eye. “Cut my father down,” I told him, pointing Eric’s way before I pointed at Walsh and bounced on my toes. “Cut him down, and I’ll fight this fucker: knife or no knife.”

  “No!” Walsh snapped, turning back to Travis, the panic in his eyes. “No. You promised me that Eric would die. You told me he would hang.”

  Travis seemed to study Walsh, his expression unmoving as he took him in.

  “You told me your word was your bond,” Walsh rasped.

  Travis’s smirk broke free, and he leaned closer to Walsh. “I lied.”

  The words I lied fell easily from the mouth of the man who once claimed that lies were punishable by death.

  With a click of his fingers, Travis had given the instruction to bring Eric down. The chains rattled around him, and his red, raw, bleeding body swayed as two Navs began to lower and release him. Eric’s knees weren’t about to hold him up, though, and I opened my mouth to shout for someone to catch him when I saw Ayda moving quickly from the corner of my good eye, her agile body slipping past the men in leather until she was by Eric’s side in a flash. Her arms flew around his stomach a second before the chains released him, and his body fell against her. She took the brunt of it, stumbling back only a few steps before she lowered both of them to the platform as carefully as she could.

  “You son of a bitch,” Walsh hissed.

  “You said you wanted to end Tucker’s life, Mayor,” Travis whispered. “You begged me to let you be the one to sink a knife into his chest if my memory serves me correctly. You just never made it clear which Tucker you were referring to.”

  “You know I meant Eric,” Walsh ground out. “You’ve set me up. You lying, crooked bastard.”

  “Careful. I can always take that knife away from you and let young Tucker kill you with his bare hands. There’s hunger in those bust up eyes of his, and he looks ready to hunt.”

  Walsh turned back at me. His weak, shot-up arm limp as he pushed himself off the ground and began to stand on shaky feet. He looked all around him, at every man and woman within in his sight, the fear of what was about to happen taking over.

  There were no tricks he could pull here.

  No deals to negotiate.

  No bodyguards standing in front of him.

  No way for him to slip away unharmed.

  He was terrified, and I fed off it, raising my chin proudly as I stared back at him.

  “You’re all going to die for this,” Walsh whispered, more to himself than anyone around him. “And if you don’t die, you’ll rot in prison for the rest of y
our lives.”

  Travis stood, too, and with a sigh of impatience, he pushed Walsh in the back, sending him stumbling forward and into the makeshift ring.

  Walsh took one last look around, sensing his fate, and then he leaped forward, his footing off as he lunged the knife right at me like a damn musketeer. Hopping to the left, I dodged his feeble attempt and reacted quickly, my fist landing on the edge of his jaw, sending his head back and his teeth practically rattling in his mouth.

  He groaned and found his feet, shaking off the punch and blinking wildly to try and refocus on me. He moved again, this time aiming for the other side where I couldn’t see so well. The tip of the knife grazed across my left bicep, right at the same time as I landed another uppercut under his chin, sending him crashing back until he was sprawled out on the concrete.

  I straddled his chest, reached over for the knife in his hand and spun it around in mine, wiping at my face with my forearm to clear more blood away. It was trickling down faster now, spots of red landing on the mayor beneath me, making me dizzy.

  Walsh’s eyes were wide. But the mayor was a coward, and cowards were only able to win a fight when someone else was doing the dirty work for them. Now he had to use his own fists, the fear of what would happen if he did had taken over, and every ounce of arrogance Mayor Walsh had ever owned was officially as dead as he was about to be.

  Leaning forward, I gripped his throat tight in my hand, and I held the knife horizontal above my fingers, pressing the edge of the blade against his throat as I looked down at him.

  “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you,” I whispered.

  “Drew, I beg of you.” His panic sent a shiver of icy coolness up my spine. I’d seen many a man cower before me this way, and I’d never felt the way I felt holding Walsh’s life in my hands, knowing I could be the one to make him take his last breath.