by Levine, Nina
He snorted. “No, we’re not.”
Pulling out my blade, I slowly ran it across his throat. Hard enough to let him know I wouldn’t hesitate to use it, but not with enough pressure to draw blood yet. “Oh, I think we are, asshole. And while we’re at it, we might as well talk about Ivy.” The flare of emotion in his eyes and the clench of his jaw told me I was right in my assumption she was the key to breaking him. “Were you aware she was planning on leaving you? I’m guessing not because if you were, you wouldn’t have allowed it to happen.”
He jerked out of my hold. I let him go easily in an effort to get him talking. I figured I had more chance of that if I gave him some space first. “You don’t get to talk about her,” he spat. “Not after what you put her through years ago. You have no fucking idea of my relationship with her. I would never have treated her the way you did.”
My blood roared in my ears. This guy was a piece of fucking work. It was going to take every ounce of my restraint to keep myself in check. “I know you beat the fuck out of her often enough to cause her to lose your children.”
He smiled. A menacing smile. “Don’t believe everything she says.”
“I fucking witnessed the after-effects of her latest miscarriage, so I do fucking believe her.”
His smile slipped from his face, replaced by anger. “She has ways of faking stuff.”
“Jesus, what fucking drugs did you take this morning?” I shoved my face closer to his, fury heating my cheeks. “No one can fake the blood loss she had. Not to fucking mention my own doctor treated her and confirmed the miscarriage.”
The glaze in his eyes told me he would dismiss anything I had to say about her. “I know my wife, King, and I know she’s a lying, manipulative woman. Regardless, I love her more than you ever did.”
“And yet, she left you. Says a lot about your love.”
“No, it says a lot about you and how much she wanted to ruin you.”
“What the fuck are you on about?”
A satisfied smile blared from him. “You met Brant, yes?”
I clenched my jaw as I nodded.
“She manipulated him into doing her dirty work. She knew he was in love with her, and she worked that to her advantage.” He paused for a moment. “Ivy has carried a desire for revenge against you for as long as I’ve known her. I refused to humour her request to initiate an attack on you years ago, so she started in on Brant.”
“I don’t fucking believe you. You came after me using Marx. You killed my ex and her child. And besides, Brant is a psychopath, best I can figure. You’ve got shit about those two around the wrong way.”
“Brant’s a weak man. He’s not a psychopath. Where the hell did you get that from?”
“We did some digging on him. He has a history of stalking women and murdering them.”
He flinched like I’d slapped him.
I’d found something he didn’t know.
When he didn’t respond, I said, “He tell you she’s working him or did you figure that out for yourself? And don’t feel bad for screwing up on this one. We did, too.” Brant had played us for fools. I imagined he’d done the same to Romano. I’d shared that sliver of information to encourage his walls down a little.
The way he glossed over it confirmed my suspicions. “Either way, it doesn’t fucking matter. They’re concocting something up for you. Any of the shit I’ve given the feds on you will pale in comparison to whatever they do to you.”
And that right there was what I wanted. I didn’t buy into Ivy gunning for revenge, but I did buy into Romano feeding the feds shit. “Ahh, Detective Ryland’s told me about you singing to him.”
“I don’t know what you did to him, but it must have been fucking bad. The asshole can’t see straight because of you.”
I cocked my head to the side. “You hear they pulled him off the case? Seems he’s on someone’s payroll and they don’t like that.” I watched his reaction closely in an effort to judge if it was his payroll Ryland was on.
Confusion flickered briefly in his eyes. He attempted to cover it, but I had my answer. It wasn’t Romano he’d been working with. He opened his mouth to reply, but a loud crash sounded from somewhere in the house, interrupting my interrogation.
I sheathed my knife and pulled out my gun before pushing Romano towards Nitro and ordering, “Don’t let him out of your sight.”
Signalling for everyone else to search the house, I stalked in the direction the sound came from. The house wasn’t huge so it wouldn’t take us long to find whoever it was.
It didn’t.
He came charging at me as I entered the kitchen. Gun pointed at my head, he fired with one clear goal—to kill. This wasn’t the fucking feds we were dealing with. This had to be Romano’s crew.
My rage screamed to life and my demons raced from the far corners of my soul.
We’d been trained for moments like this from birth.
This asshole brought a gun to the fight.
He had no idea I was a motherfucking bomb.
Ducking the moment I saw him, I avoided his bullet and threw myself at him. My arms circled his body and with unrelenting force, I drove him backwards against the fridge. He hit with a thud, his head banging against it hard. His gun fell to the ground and I kicked it out of the way. I’d caught him off guard and he was slow to get his bearings.
Gripping his throat, I dug my fingers in hard as I aimed my gun at his foot. Pulling the trigger, I demanded, “Who the fuck are you?”
His cry of pain as the bullet went through his foot fed the beast inside me.
This was what I came here for today.
Blood and pain.
He scowled at me and spat, “Fuck you!”
I shot his other foot before striking him across the face with my gun as hard as I fucking could. With one last squeeze of his throat, I let him go, grasped his shirt and spun him around so I could slam him across the small room into the kitchen bench. He scrambled to get back in the fight, but he was no match for me. I closed the distance between us again and punched him. He grunted and took a shot at hitting me, but I evaded the jab and punched him again, my fist connecting with his jaw with a satisfying crack.
I was fucking manic.
Wired for hell.
I could keep going at him for hours, but all I had were minutes. Fuck, I didn’t even have that. Our plan had been to get in and get out fast. I’d gone and screwed that up by taking my time questioning Romano.
I needed to get back to him. This guy wasn’t going to give me answers to my questions, and I didn’t have time to drag them from him, so I struck him with my fist a few more times before putting a bullet between his eyes. A lot less satisfying than what I would have preferred to do, but it got the job done.
“King!” Hyde called out as his boots thudded through the place. “We need to hurry this the fuck up.”
Yeah.
I stalked back into the living room and found Axe standing over a guy, landing punch after punch on him. The guy was covered in blood and didn’t have any fight left in him, but my brother’s own demons had surfaced. Once they were let loose, a motherfucker had no chance against him. Axe and I were cut from the same cloth; he was just better at controlling the darkness running through his veins.
I looked at Hyde. “Did we get them all?”
He nodded. “Yeah. There were four of them. They weren’t feds. I pulled this from one of them.” He handed me a piece of paper.
It was a map of the area that contained scribbled notes regarding the detail that had been guarding Romano.
“Romano’s men,” I said.
“That’s my guess.”
I shoved the paper in my pocket. “Good. With any fucking luck that’s the last of them.”
Turning to Romano, I pulled my blade out again as anticipation coursed through me. This was going to be over far too fucking quickly for me, but I had no choice. As much as I wanted to take him with me so I could dedicate some long days to making him s
uffer, what I wanted more was to make a fucking statement.
This is what happens when you fuck with Storm.
We will go to the depths of hell to find you.
And you won’t be the one left standing.
My eyes locked on his.
He bucked in Nitro’s hold, but we both knew this was the end of the road for him.
I called on every memory of what he’d done to my club and the people I held close.
I allowed the thoughts to swarm like angry fucking bees.
And with a roar that I dragged from the pits of my soul, I plunged the knife into his chest.
Flesh and blood and pain filled my senses as he cried out in agony.
I ripped the knife from his body and thrust it back in, twisting deep.
Pure fucking satisfaction rushed through me, but it was tinged with torment because his death would never make up for what he’d done. The lives he’d taken would never be returned. The life he’d tried to take was still in jeopardy. The suffering he’d dealt would never be eased.
I leaned in close to him and snarled through gritted teeth, “Rot in hell, motherfucker.”
His head had rolled back but he dragged it up so he could look at me one last time. “I didn’t kill your ex… Didn’t fucking kill anyone…” He gurgled through his pain before his head lolled back again.
My mind attempted to process that, but I stumbled over it.
He did fucking kill her.
He had to have.
Because if it wasn’t him, who the fuck was it?
Chapter Eight
King
“You think he was bullshitting you?” Nitro asked late that afternoon as we watched Kick and Nash trade jabs in the boxing ring we had set up out the back of the clubhouse.
I scrubbed a hand over my face. “I don’t fucking know, brother.”
This had been on my mind all afternoon, and I hadn’t come closer to figuring out where I stood on it. It was fucking convenient for him to throw that out as he took his last breath. I wouldn’t have put it past him trying to fuck with me from the grave. If I believed him, I had to entertain the thought we were still at risk while the killer remained free to attack again.
Fuck.
I was restless after killing Romano.
On edge.
I needed to work the high out of my body.
This shit churning through my brain didn’t fucking help.
Loud cheers from the boys watching the boxing interrupted our conversation. I looked over to see Nash grinning like a motherfucker with both arms raised.
Nitro sucked back some beer before commenting, “That asshole is good for the club.”
He was right. Nash was always welcome in my clubhouse. Mostly because he stepped the fuck up when we needed him, but also because he had a way of easing the tension running through the club.
Kick got up and returned Nash’s grin before smacking him across the head. “Rematch tomorrow, fucker. And put your fucking dick away.”
Nash’s smile only grew larger as he grabbed his crotch. “You wanna see it, brother?”
Nitro chuckled, which was fucking odd for him. But that was what Nash did.
I stood, needing to get out of here. “We’ll go over everything at church tomorrow.”
Nitro nodded before turning his attention back to the ring.
I headed inside to check on a few things before leaving. Fuck knew where I’d end up, but I couldn’t sit around doing nothing any longer.
Skylar met me as I walked the hallway to the office. “Oh good, I’ve been looking for you! Can you do me a favour?”
“What?” The question came out harder than I intended, but I was so fucking tense I couldn’t stop it.
She frowned. “Why are you so cranky? I just asked you a question.”
I worked to rein my shit in, but failed. “Fuck, Skye, just ask the fucking question.”
Her lips flattened. “Fine,” she snapped. “Can you drop some meals over to Lily’s? Annika and Kree cooked some up for her family, and I promised her I’d get them over to her today.”
I stilled, my shoulders rocklike. It wasn’t a good idea for me to see Lily in the state I was in. Not when I was wired for sex. Not when all I wanted to do was wrap my hands around her neck and fuck the hell out of her. When what I needed to do was fuck the dark shit out of my head.
“Get Devil to do it.”
The scowl she directed my way let me know what she thought of that. “Why are you being such an ass about this? Like, is it so hard for you to do something nice for her after everything she’s done for us?”
“I’ve got shit to do. Ask Devil. And if he can’t do it, find someone else.”
“No,” she said with force. “I think you should do it. I want this to come from our family, not from the club.”
I stared at her for a long few moments, warring with myself over this decision. I wanted to do it. Wanted to see Lily. Fuck knew she was the only woman on my mind. While I always used sex to come down after a day like today, I wouldn’t go looking for it with anyone else tonight. But no fucking way would I show up looking for it from her when she was dealing with her sister in a coma. Doing what Skylar asked of me would put me in dangerous territory. I wasn’t convinced I could be near Lily and hold myself back.
I never did the right thing, though.
“Jesus fucking Christ, okay,” I barked.
“Good. They’re in the fridge. You should go now,” she said, lifting her brows, daring me to argue with her.
I ignored that and continued on my way towards the office, my mind already focused on what I had to do. I wouldn’t be going now, that was for fucking sure. I’d give myself a few hours to get my head together before seeing her.
“And stop being a dickhead,” she called out as I rounded the corner of the hall.
The women in my life would be the fucking death of me.
I entered the office, my phone ringing in my pocket as I did so.
“What’s up?” I answered it after seeing Hyde’s name flash across the screen.
“Where are you? There’s a fed out the front to see you.”
And so it all fucking began again.
“I’m on my way.”
This was the first we’d heard from them since discovering Ryland had been removed from the case. I wondered if the new guy would be as determined to see us go down. At least this time we weren’t distracted by Romano. This time I could dedicate my attention fully to the motherfuckers.
I made my way out to the front gate, slowing as I laid eyes on the new fed I was up against.
She stepped forward, her gaze full of steel, her features schooled into an unreadable blank canvas. “Mr. King, we finally meet. I’m Detective Stark.”
I levelled a harsh expression on her and crossed my arms over my chest. The sooner she got her ass off my property the better. “What do you want?”
“Just wanted to stop by to say you left us a hell of a mess today.”
I’d only just met the bitch, but my first impressions of people were usually spot on. This one had brass fucking balls. “I’ve been busy today, so I have no fucking clue what mess you’re talking about.”
“We can agree on one thing—you have been busy.”
“Now that you’ve said what you came here for, you can leave.”
“I also wanted to tell you that Romano was the least of your worries.” She took a step away from me. “Strap in. We’re in for some fun now.”
I watched her leave, my mind going crazy with a million thoughts. A million fucking more than were already in there. As she drove away, I pulled out my phone and dialled Bronze.
“You find Brant yet?” he asked as he answered.
“No, but we’ve dealt with Romano. That’s not why I’m calling, though. I’ve got a question for you.”
“What?”
“You ever work with Detective Stark?”
He whistled low. “I haven’t worked with her, but I’ve heard o
f her. She’s a ballbuster.”
“Yeah, that’s what I got from her. She ever had any dirt on her hands?”
“Not that I know of. I’ll do some digging.”
“Don’t fucking put yourself at risk, Bronze. Axe has a contact we can use.”
“I’ve got nothing else to fucking do,” he muttered.
“Yeah, you do. Get the hell out of town and never look back.”
He ignored that. “I’ll call you if I find something.”
After he hung up, I looked at Hyde. “She’s gonna prove more difficult than Ryland.”
He nodded. “Yeah, brother. My thoughts, too.”
I jerked my chin at him. “Do whatever you need to do tonight to get your head focused. Tomorrow we make a new plan. No fucking way are we lying down for these feds.”
Chapter Nine
Lily
“Call me if you need me, okay?” Adelaide said as she exited the house, stepping out into the dark of night. We’d had a downpour of heavy rain earlier. A cold wind lingered, reminding me we were heading into the time of year I wasn’t a fan of. I didn’t mind autumn; it was winter I wished we could skip every year.
I reached for her arm and pulled her back so I could hug her. When I finally let her go, I said softly, “Thank you for today. I promise I’ll call you if I need you.”
She smiled. “I wish I could take tomorrow off, too. I’m not far, though, so call and I’ll come as soon as I can.” The sound of a car pulling up drew our attention, and Addy said, “Good God, it’s almost ten o’clock. Who would be stopping by now?”
I squinted into the dark trying to see who it was, but I knew the only person who would come by at this time of night was the one person I really didn’t want to see. King. My belly fluttered, betraying me, the bitch. She’d done the same thing this morning when he’d dropped by the hospital.
I was a mess over this man.
Completely confused and flustered.