by Levine, Nina
I passed our plates to him and said, “We didn’t finish your five things. I still have a few questions.”
With his gaze firmly locked to mine, he said, “We have dinner. Then we have my time with your pussy. Then we have sleep. Maybe after that, we have five fucking questions, but don’t fucking count on it, because the way I’m feeling, I’m gonna need a whole lotta time with your pussy.”
I sat next to him and picked up my fork. “I really like your place.”
His eyes found mine. “I like it now you’re here.”
Butterflies. Tummy.
God, this man.
After that, we ate. Then he did all those things he said he would. We never did get to five fucking questions again, but I’d make sure we played that game a lot in the future.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
King
Lily: How do you feel about cream as a colour?
I stared at the text from Lily. Fuck knew where she was going with this. It was her day off, so I expected this shit to continue throughout the day. But I really didn’t have the time to be going back and forth texting about fucking colours right now so I rang her.
“Hey. Did you get my text?” she asked.
“Yeah. What’s this about?”
“Well,” she started and then stopped for a beat before continuing, “so I was shopping at Target, and I saw this… Wait, first tell me your feelings on girlfriends who take over your life.”
“Fuck, Lily, I’m busy. Can this wait until tonight?”
“No,” she snapped. “It’ll take less than five minutes. Surely you have five minutes.”
I forced out a long breath. “Spit it out. What have you done?”
“I may have just bought you a new blanket for your bed. And before you say anything, it’s getting colder at night, and I worry about you being cold there. I mean, not that you really sleep there on your own anymore, but you might, and I don’t want you to get a cold. But I can return it if this is overstepping the girlfriend line.”
Fuck, she hit me fair in the gut with that. “Don’t fucking return it.”
Silence, and then—“Okay,” soft as fuck, causing my gut to tighten again.
“We done?”
“Yeah. I’m going to head over to your place now and drop this blanket off. I’m going to do some washing and stuff, too. I’ll try not to text you too much.” With that, she ended the call and I leaned back in my chair thinking about her taking over my life. She had no fucking clue that she didn’t need to buy me shit to do that; she’d taken it over the minute I’d decided to make her mine. And she could do whatever the fuck she wanted to my place, because I intended for it to be hers at some point, too.
I’d just finished the call with Lily when Axe rang.
“What’s up, brother? And where are you?” I asked. After he and Zane had left Sydney, they’d headed back home to Brisbane, but Axe often went away for work if Zane needed him on a job out of town.
“I’m at home. Just checking in on you to see how things have shaped up. The feds still on your back?”
“No, I took care of that shit the other day. We’re getting back to business as normal now, thank fuck.”
“Good to hear. You speak to Zane yet? Clear shit between you two?”
“Yeah.” He’d fucking pissed me off by not giving me all the information I needed, but we’d cleared the air. We’d known each other for too long and had been through too much not to fix shit between us. And I’d decided that perhaps he had a fucking point that I needed to trust him more, because he was right—he hadn’t ever let me down.
“So I’m also calling to let you know I’m taking off for a while. Justine walked out on me and has moved in with the motherfucker she cheated on me with. They’re talking marriage, and I can’t fucking watch this bullshit, so I’m taking some time off work and getting the hell out of town.”
“Fuck, Axe. Where are you going?”
“Fuck knows. Where the wind blows for all I care. The baby isn’t due for another six months. I’ll be back in plenty of time for that. She’s made it clear she doesn’t want me around, and I’m done fighting.”
“Well, you know my thoughts on the matter. It’ll do you fucking good to get away. Keep in touch so I know you’re not dead in an alley somewhere.”
“Will do,” he said, ending the call.
I hated that Justine had fucked him over like this, but I was more than happy he was out of that shitfight of a relationship. With any fucking luck, he’d find a better woman fast. Axe had never been good on his own. He preferred to have a woman by his side. I just hoped the next one was the complete fucking opposite of Justine.
I left the office and headed out to the bar. Kree met my gaze as I entered, and hit me with a smile. She’d moved past our previous problems now that her life had gotten back to normal. I appreciated a lot of things about Kree, but the fact she didn’t hold grudges had to be one of the best things about the woman. She was low fucking maintenance and handled her business with little fuss, and that shit made life far fucking easier when dealing with her.
I’d come looking for Hyde and found him at a table in the corner. Pulling up a seat, I said, “We need to go over Winter’s proposals. You got some time now?”
He nodded. “I’ve got a couple of hours.”
Our disagreement of a week ago was long forgotten. Neither of us held onto that kind of shit. And he’d accepted the deal I’d made with Stark. He’d actually fucking liked the idea which had surprised me.
We ran over the proposals Winter had sent through for the Melbourne operation, and came to some decisions about how we thought it best to proceed. I may have hated that city, but it was shaping up to be a profitable venture for us down there. We’d almost finished working shit out when my phone rang.
Bronze.
I hadn’t heard from him in almost a month so I’d figured he’d taken my advice and moved on with his life.
“Bronze,” I answered the call. “Why are you still calling me?”
“I’ve been digging. I told you I would. And I have something you’re gonna wanna hear.”
“Keep talking.”
“I’ve been tracking Ryland, trying to get to the bottom of whose payroll he was on. He dropped out of sight, which I’m guessing you know, but I followed his trail to South America. Someone paid him a shitload of cash to disappear, and that someone was Dante D’Amato.”
I gripped my phone harder. “You sure about that? One hundred fucking percent sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
“I appreciate the info. And just letting you know, I’ve sorted my problems with the feds, but I doubt that extends to you, so you need to get as far from Storm as possible.”
He turned quiet for a moment. “Watch over Hailee for me, King.”
“Yeah.”
I ended the call and dialled Lily without wasting a second. “You still at my place?” I demanded, not giving her a chance to get a word in.
“Yes, why—”
“Do not leave there. I am on my way over now.”
“King, what’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you when I get there, but do not leave and do not let anyone in.”
“Umm, does that mean I have to kick your neighbour out?”
My blood turned to ice, cooling my veins as it flowed. “What neighbour, Lily?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, all I heard were muffled cries before the line went dead.
I pushed up out of my chair. Eyes to Hyde, I bellowed, “It was fucking D’Amato! All this fucking time! And now he has Lily.”
Hyde jerked up. “Fucking hell!”
We rounded up everyone we could find and roared out of the clubhouse. My heart beat furiously the whole fucking way there. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d been so fucking stressed. If D’Amato hurt Lily, I would hunt down every last member of his family and rip them apart limb by fucking limb. I would make them bleed in ways they n
ever knew they could, and he would wish he’d never laid eyes on my woman.
* * *
Hyde wanted to be strategic about how we got inside my place to Lily, but I didn’t have the patience for that. D’Amato knew we were coming, so there was no point fucking about getting in there. I gave Hyde half a minute of airtime with his objections to my plan, and then I fucking stormed the place.
“King, you move fast,” D’Amato said when we entered my living room.
My eyes went straight to Lily who sat on the couch with her hands bound, her mouth gagged. She met my gaze, and I saw the fear in hers. Fuck. I had done this to her when all I’d tried to do was fucking keep her safe.
“Has he touched you?” I demanded of her.
She shook her head. Thank fuck.
D’Amato moved to her, pressing his gun to her temple. “You can’t imagine how happy I was when it came to my attention you’d found a new plaything. After I killed your previous one, I felt a little empty. I decided that was because you didn’t get to see me do it, so this time around I’m fixing that mistake of mine. This time you will have front row seats. All I have to decide now is how long to make you wait for the final performance.”
“You’re fucking insane,” I snarled. “All this for a nephew you hardly knew and didn’t like?”
He pushed his gun harder against Lily’s head, rage written all over him. “No, all this for my sister whose son I presume you killed. I might not have liked the boy, but after his death, she spiralled into depression and addiction, and killed herself. I lived through those five years of her hell, and I’ve lived through the rest of these years in my own hell. And that was all on you and your fucking club. I just never knew who to blame until Ryland brought me the information.”
I assessed the situation. I had six men at my back, ready to defend me. I could lunge at D’Amato and hope like hell he shot me rather than Lily, at which time my men could save her. My concern was he’d shoot her and take whatever consequences that meant for him. His only goal here was to see me suffer, and killing her was his ticket to that.
I decided to keep him talking while my brain ran through other possible scenarios.
“I didn’t kill the baby, but I did deal with your nephew. He was a fool who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. When the club whore turned up with the child and dumped it with him, he panicked about his girlfriend finding out, and killed the whore. It was a clusterfuck for my club, because she had family connections we didn’t need to be dealing with if they found out. I only went to your nephew to give him a piece of my fucking mind, but he lost his shit and ended up dead in the process.”
“Where’s the fucking child now?”
“That was the thing in all of this that threw us—Moses disappeared. Someone took him from his cot. We never worked out who, and we never found him.” It was the truth, but I was hoping it rattled him to the point of stepping away from Lily and coming to me.
It didn’t.
Instead, he yanked her up off the couch, pushed her in front of him, and put the gun to her head again. Fear flashed in her eyes, but she showed no other emotion. No tears. No muffled cries or screams. My woman stood fucking tall and took what he did to her without anything but that flicker of fear as she watched me.
“Maybe I won’t kill her, King. Maybe she’ll simply disappear. I’ll take her with me and you’ll never see her again. Never find her.” His voice dropped to a menacing evil tone. “You’ll never fucking know what filthy things I’ve done to her.” He shifted the gun from her head to run it slowly over her body. “She looks like a fun plaything, and the more I think about this, the more I like the idea.”
I gritted my teeth.
No fucking way was he walking out of here with her.
That would happen over my dead fucking body.
I found her eyes again, silently begging her to stay strong, but she didn’t need my encouragement. Lily was fucking strong, and she wasn’t showing an ounce of fear now. That had disappeared from her eyes. The only thing I saw there now was determination.
D’Amato continued talking, but Lily drew my attention from his voice when her eyes widened and she started shifting her eyes to the side and back, over and over. Like she was trying to give me some kind of signal. Problem was, I had no idea what the fuck she meant. I glanced to the right in the direction she kept moving her eyes, but the only thing there was the couch and above that, the mezzanine level, so that couldn’t be what she was trying to get across to me.
“Are you listening to me, King?” D’Amato barked. At the same time, he threw his arms up in the air, showing his frustration.
Lily took her moment. She turned to her right, spinning around to face D’Amato, and pushed him hard as best she could with bound hands. He stumbled back, but he didn’t fall. I rushed at them, trying like fuck to get Lily away from him. While I did that, Hyde bellowed, “To the right!” and the sound of gunfire filled my home.
I had no idea what was happening behind me; my only focus was Lily. Unable to get my aim on D’Amato without the likelihood of hitting Lily, I lunged for him rather than shooting him. Lily was in the fucking way, so she went down with us. Our guns went flying, but I didn’t need a fucking weapon. I would kill this motherfucker with my bare fucking hands.
Fists flew and legs kicked while D’Amato and I fought like hell to kill each other. Thank fuck Lily got out of harm’s way. I couldn’t see her, but I knew she wasn’t anywhere near him. I managed to get my hands around his neck, and I reefed him up to a standing position, his back to my chest. However, he then used all his force to ram me backwards against the brick wall, winding the fuck out of me. The loud crack of my head as it hit the wall filled my ears and slowed me down as pain radiated through my skull. It only slowed me for a moment, but it was enough for D’Amato to gain the upper hand.
Turning quickly, he faced me and wrapped both hands around my neck. Squeezing the fucking life out of me, he snarled, “Change of plans, I’ll kill you first, and then your little plaything.”
My gaze focused behind him, taking in what was happening there. D’Amato had brought his own men with him, and they had engaged my men in battle. If I was to save my life and Lily’s, I had to fucking do it now before he choked me, because I had no backup to rely on.
And then Lily’s voice cut through the battle sounds. “Change of plans, motherfucker. I’ll kill you, and then my man will kill yours.” My eyes landed on her as she put my gun to D’Amato’s head and pulled the trigger.
I wasted no time pushing him out of the way, ignoring the blood and shit that splattered over me as she shot him. Ripping the gun from her, I headed into the fucking fray and lost my fucking shit, shooting at every last fucking cunt who’d threatened my woman’s and my men’s lives.
A fucking hurricane of fury raged out of me as I took down anyone who came at me. That he had put Lily through this drew my demons to the surface. They wanted to dance, and I welcomed that with open fucking arms. So we fucking danced. And when we were done, the place was a mess of dead bodies and blood splatter that fucking sang to me. It was like a goddam orchestra of death and destruction playing in my head, dragging me closer and closer to the edge of no return where the music played twenty-four-fucking-seven.
I’d fought against following that music my whole life.
Had kept my distance.
But it fucking called today.
When my woman almost died because of me, it fucking called.
As the last man standing took my bullet, I looked for her.
I needed to touch her.
Needed to know she was okay.
“King.”
I turned to her voice, finding her standing where I’d left her near D’Amato’s body. She watched me with that same fierce look of determination she’d had before. So fucking strong.
I closed the distance between us and she moved into my arms. Wrapping hers around me tightly, she said, “I thought you were going to die,” right before her fi
rst tear fell.
I held her until she stopped crying. Hyde called Nitro who’d been out on a job all day, and asked him to organise a cleaning crew. The place would take fucking hours to clean, but that was the least of my worries. My only concern was Lily and getting her the fuck out of here.
“I’m taking Lily home,” I said to Hyde.
He nodded. “Yeah, brother. We’ll get this shit sorted. Don’t bother coming back.”
I cleaned us up and organised for Devil to drive us to her place. I sat in the back with her, not letting her out of my arms. The emotions coursing through me were unlike any I had ever experienced. For the first time in my life, I had felt fear. It was a foreign feeling to me, and not one I ever fucking wanted to feel again.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lily
I’d always wondered if there would be a moment in my life that punched me in the gut and winded me so badly I would struggle to recover. I’d thought I had come close when I discovered Linc cheated on me. I then thought I’d come closer when we divorced. And then when Brynn had been shot, I knew I’d reached that moment. However, when that man had threatened King’s life today, I finally knew I’d found the moment that would wind me so badly I wouldn’t be able to breathe for a long time.
I’d wanted him to kill me instead.
It had been the most selfish moment of my life, because I never wanted to leave my children without a mother, but in that split second when I thought King would die with that man’s hands around his neck, I wanted to offer my life in exchange for King’s.
I hadn’t been able to breathe.
I hadn’t been able to think straight.
All I had wanted was to give my life for my man’s.
And then my brain had kicked into gear, and I’d done some straight talking and reminded myself I was a mother with responsibilities. I’d told myself to find a way to save both of us and then I’d done that.