JETT (Savage Saints MC Book 3)

by Carmen Jenner

  “What the hell are you waiting for?” my VP yells in Crazy’s face, but obviously his question is directed at me. I slip away while two security guards are escorting Tank and Crazy out the front door, and I slide into the elevator just as the doors are opening and a couple of docs are heading out.

  I push the third floor for the maternity ward and smooth my hair back from my face. It’s been a hell of a day, but I need to know what the fuck is going on with my woman. All the worst thoughts are playing on repeat in my head. Was she hurt, raped? Did they hurt the baby, steal something? Were they just looking for quick cash or is it Arians, or another club? We got beef with just about everyone right now. It feels like every time we turn around there’s some other bastard trying to slit our throats.

  When I make it out of the elevator and through another closed door, there’s a nurses’ station that awaits me. It’s late, and the ward is quiet. I think about poking my head through several doors just to see if I get lucky with the right one, but a matronly old bitch comes out of one of the rooms. Her eyes roll over me from my scuffed motorcycle boots to my cut, finding me distasteful, if her sneer is anything to go by.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I’m lookin’ for my wife, Raine King.” I shake my head. “Cole, she’s Cole. Raine Cole.” I let out an exhausted sigh. “We ain’t really married, but she’s my woman, and she’s having my baby.”

  “Raine is in room 203.”

  “You’re an angel, sweetheart.”

  “Mr ...”

  “King.”

  “Mr King. She’s in a very fragile state right now—we wouldn’t want anything to upset her.”

  “Of course.”

  “You should prepare yourself.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “You don’t know?” She studies my face and blanches. “Come have a seat, Mr King.”

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  “I’m so sorry to have to tell you that Raine was attacked earlier today. Two men broke into her apartment and she was slammed into the wall and fell to the ground. She was beaten. The placenta erupted in utero.”

  “What the fuck does that mean. English, please?”

  “The baby didn’t survive. When the placenta detaches from the uterine wall, it can be stitched back in place and for the most part, mother and baby are fine, but the placenta didn’t just tear—it exploded. The baby drowned in amniotic fluid before we could get to her. I am so sorry.”

  “No. No, no, no, no, no. That can’t be right.”

  “I’m afraid so. You can hold her if you like? Raine is in there with her now.”

  “She’s dead?”

  “Yes, she passed in utero.”

  “This is bullshit.” I double over, lacing my hands behind my head. I can’t believe this. They were fine this morning. I felt her kick and ... and now she’s dead. “Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking Christ.”

  “I’m very sorry for your loss, Mr King.”

  I want to hit someone, throw something, but I can’t because they’ll call security and I need to be here. I need to see my woman and my baby, and hold them both. I need to beg their forgiveness because I wasn’t there. I left them alone, and I should have been there to protect them.

  I suck in sharp, short breaths, but I can’t get enough air.

  I wind up with my arse on the floor and my head in the lap of a strange woman as I sob like a little fucking girl for the girl I lost. The girl we lost. “I need to see them.”

  “Of course.”

  “Jesus, I didn’t know you could love someone this much who you’ve never even laid eyes on.”

  “She’s a beautiful little girl. Come on. I think Raine could use you now.”

  I follow the nurse down the hall and into the room. Sitting on the bed under the dim glow of the bathroom light is Raine. She’s got a couple of bumps and scrapes on her head, but they’re nothing when compared with the haunted look in her eyes.

  She meets my gaze, conveying everything with a single look—heartbreak, sorrow, apology. I rush to her side, but stop dead in my tracks when I see the little crop of blonde hair and the tiny head resting against her breast. “She’s perfect, isn’t she?”

  I kiss the top of Raine’s hair and stare down at my little girl. She’s the smallest thing I’ve ever seen, with tiny features and long white lashes. She looks like a doll, but she’s far too pale. She’s blue. Her skin is almost transparent. “Yeah, darlin’. She’s perfect.”

  “Do you want to hold her?”

  I nod. And she lifts her from her chest, swaddling her in the blanket before handing her to me.

  “Support her head,” she says, and then when her eyes meet mine, I see the second her heart breaks all over again. I feel the helplessness in her soul. Our baby isn’t at risk of breaking her neck, because she’s already dead.

  I sit in the chair beside the bed, perhaps falling into it heavier than I should with such precious cargo in my arms. She might not be breathing, but she’s the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen, and she still needs to be handled with care. She’s far too perfect for a lowly biker like me, and if she’d lived, I would’ve spent the rest of my days fighting every arsehole under the sun for so much as looking at her.

  It’s this thought that makes me lose my mind. It all just unravels and my heart breaks. For the first time in my sorry, fucked up life, I truly know what it means to be broken. And it’s not a feeling I’d wish on my worst enemies.

  RAINE

  I DON’T KNOW HOW MANY days have passed in this room. How many nights I’ve woken to her cries and put her to my breast, willing her to drink, but her lips never move, her mouth never sucks, and my breasts continue to feed her anyway. My body doesn’t understand that I’m grieving the loss of my daughter instead of being able to nurture her. The cooling cot means she can be in my room, beside my bed. I can spend time with my daughter before her tiny body turns to rot. And I use every second I have with her. I stroke her face and tell her how perfect she is, how every nail on her fingers and toes are a blessing I never thought I’d have.

  But all of the time I’ve spent loving her, I never anticipated how my heart would break when they came to take her away. The nurse pulls her from my arms. I try to hold onto her frail body, but I don’t want her to break. I couldn’t stand to hear the crunch of those tiny bones, so inevitably, I let go. I fall to my knees on the floor of my hospital room and I beg them to give her back to me.

  I don’t care that Jett, Kick, and Indie are all here to witness my meltdown. I don’t care that I’m acting crazy—out of my mind with grief and guilt and sorrow. I scramble to my feet and chase after the nurse. I grab her arm. Little Sophie’s body jerks, and sour milk pours out of her mouth to splatter the floor and my feet.

  The nurse’s jaw drops open. The room is dead silent, save for the keening cry from my lips, and I’m pulled back to the bed as the father of my child cradles me in his arms. I hate that I’ve become this person. I hate that I’m acting like a wild animal, but I hate that they’re taking my baby more. And when I try to wrestle out of Jett’s hold, several nurses file into my room and strap me to the bed while they shoot me up with drugs to keep me calm.

  I RIDE THE ELEVATOR with Jett to the top floor. When the doors open and we step out into the hall, I glance up at the ceiling lights. Dread washes over me. I remember them flickering, I remember the pain moments before as they moved me from the floor to the stretcher and wheeled me through here on the gurney. I remember wishing those men had just killed me.

  I don’t feel any different now.

  I dare a glance at Mrs Robinson’s apartment door as we pass. She came to save me. An elderly woman who was frail and all alone burst into my apartment and accosted my attackers with her broomstick, and she died protecting me. I don’t know what happened to Winston. He’s probably sitting in a shelter somewhere awaiting execution. Lucky him. When we turn the corner, blue and white police tape covers my apartment door.


  “Shit. I um ... I-I wasn’t thinking. Come on. I’ll take you to my house.” Jet turns and starts walking back to the bank of elevators. I rip the tape off the doorjamb and try the handle. The stained wood slips open and I push it the rest of the way.

  I stare at the blood on the carpet, the outline of a body in tape etched into my floor. It doesn’t seem right that there’s only one—all three of us died in this apartment that day. A violent, animalistic sob tears free of my throat.

  “Shit. Raine, come on,” Jett says, tugging me back from the door, and I can hear the torture in his voice. The agony. You’d think he’d be used to chalk lines considering how many lives he’s taken and lost. “I should have had someone clean that up. I’m sorry, darlin’. I’m so sorry.”

  “I can’t stay here.”

  “I know.”

  “Come on. Maybe the mountain air will do us both good.” Jett leads me from the wreckage of my apartment, of my life, back to the elevator and downstairs to the car.

  On the way, the man in 36B is coming back from the pool, and he stops dead in his tracks when he sees me. “Hey.”

  “Hi.” I can barely get the word out before I’m bawling again.

  “You know each other?”

  “I’m um ... her neighbour.” He glances at Jett’s patch, and clears his throat. “I ... I was first on the scene. I mean, behind Mrs Robinson.”

  “You helped keep me alive?”

  He scratches his neck in what appears to be a nervous gesture. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How’s the baby?”

  “She ...” I take a deep breath, but I can’t finish. I can’t bear to say the words. I just shake my head.

  “I’m really sorry. For both of you. I keep thinking if I’d just heard something sooner, I could have helped. I could have stopped them.”

  “You did enough,” I say, but even as the words leave my mouth, I know it’s not true, and I think he knows it too. I wish he’d done more. I wish someone had heard, come sooner. I wish Jett had never left that morning. I wish a lot of things. “Was there any word on Winston?

  “Winston?”

  “Mrs Robinson’s dog.”

  “Oh, um ... no idea. I didn’t know she had a dog. Guess I never really paid much attention to my neighbours until it was too late, huh?”

  I give a non-committal shrug. “It happens.”

  “Take care of yourself, okay?”

  I nod. Jett shakes his hand and mutters something that sounds like “thank you for saving her”. All the blood is whooshing through my ears, so I walk away because I don’t know what else to say. I don’t know how to deal with Jett thanking my neighbour for saving my life when I wish I’d died on the floor with my baby and my elderly neighbour.

  I climb in the passenger’s side and close the door, waiting for Jett to take me home, to the house he shared with Mia. The one that still has all of her clothes, shoes, and handbags in the closet as if at any minute she’s going to come home from a day at the spa. The one he hasn’t stayed in since her death.

  WHEN WE ARRIVE AT JETT’S house, the bikes in the drive make it clear that we’re not alone. I feel every step of the lead up to his front porch in my C-Section, and every step I take feels like another in the wrong direction, another step away from my baby. Indie and Ivy meet us at the door, their men behind them. Does it really take this many people to look after a crazy woman suffering post-partum depression?

  I don’t know what to say. It’s apparent from their gaping jaws that they don’t either, so we fill the awkward silence with hugs and useless platitudes. The girls tell me I need to eat something, but I’m not hungry. Nothing will fill the void inside me, so what use do I have for food?

  “Darlin’, you need to eat.” Jett squeezes my shoulder gently. He’s so careful with me, as if he’s afraid I’ll break. Too late. I already broke the second I saw blood pouring out of my body onto my white carpet. I squeeze my eyes tightly closed and shake my head, willing the tears away.

  They fall anyway and I turn and head for the stairs. “I just want to sleep.”

  “Yeah, okay. Come on. I’ll show you the master.”

  I let him lead me up the stairs. At the end of the hall, I stand in the doorway to the master suite. The bed he shared with his wife.

  “Indie’s been here for the last hour. She changed the sheets and tidied up the place for us.” He pulls back the covers and I lean against the doorjamb and watch him. She had his lashes, his lips. Would she have had his temper too? His heart, or mine? It doesn’t matter now, because we’ll never know.

  A sob escapes me and Jett hurries across the room, taking me in his arms. He leads me to the bed and helps me lie down. The mattress dips and he stretches out behind me, wrapping an arm around my chest. I grab his wrist and hold on tight as we both cry for our little girl.

  WHEN I WAKE, JETT IS gone. Probably out on club business. I listen, but there’s no sound other than the faint noise of the TV. I close my eyes and wish I’d never answered that door. For just a second, I wish I’d never met Jett or the Savage Saints MC. If I hadn’t, I would never have had my heart filled with joy and slaughtered by sorrow. I would never have seen the most perfect face in the entire world and had to give her up. I wouldn’t be lying here alone in the marital bed of the man I love and a stranger. I would never know the grief and utter decimation of feeling life inside my womb, and holding my baby that contained none.

  Maybe that would have been best for everyone.

  JETT

  IT TOOK ME FOUR FUCKING days to find the information I needed.

  Daryl Brown and Kurt Schultz, the leader of the Arian sect and his fucking lackey, respectively. The two men who hurt my old lady, who killed my baby, traced back to this pitiful address.

  I stare out the windshield at the ramshackle house. It’s lit up like a Christmas tree. Three bodies move inside by the windows, oblivious to what awaits them. The yard is littered with broken-down cars and sun-baked toys left out for too long in the weather.

  It’s freezing in the van, but cold is in my blood now. It runs through my veins as bitter and icy as the anger in my soul. I’m consumed by it, engulfed by this rage to destroy the men who ruined Raine, who took my baby from me.

  Tank turns to me. “Ready, Prez?”

  “I was fuckin’ born ready. Let’s go carve up some Nazi arse.”

  Tank grabs his bag of implements and pulls out the burner phone, hitting speed dial. “We’re ready.”

  Kick, Grim, and Trigger all rode their Harleys here and parked farther up the hill. I give Tank the go ahead and he whispers into the phone, “We’re going in.”

  We storm the house. Kick, Grim, and Trigger take the back door, and I kick in the front, flanked by Tank.

  “What the fuck?” Daryl sits on the sofa, his woman in his lap. He unseats her as he reaches for his shotgun, but I press my gun to her temple and drag her back to me. Kurt’s mouth is currently getting acquainted with Grim’s Glock.

  “Touch that gun and they both die,” I say.

  He glances at me, his wife, Kurt, and then back at me again, easing his open palm into the air.

  “Daddy?”

  I whirl around and come face to face with a little Nazi offspring. He’s decked out in race-car PJs and rubs his eyes.

  “Dylan, go back to bed.”

  I cock my head to the side. “This your kid?”

  “No,” Daryl says. His head is shaking vigorously as he looks at the child with wide frightened eyes. There it is. The family resemblance.

  “Daddy. I’m scared.”

  “Go back to bed, Dylan. Everything’s fine.”

  I swing my gun around and point it at the kid. “Don’t fucking move.”

  He screams and urine soaks his pants and pools at his feet.

  “He’s just a kid!” Daryl shouts.

  “Yeah, so was my unborn child. You didn’t give a fuck about her when you pushed my old lady to the ground and tried t
o fucking rape her. You didn’t give a shit about the old woman who tried to save her. The woman you killed. Just like you killed my kid.” I tighten my grip on the gun and point it at the kid’s head again.

  “Prez,” Tank says in a warning tone. I glance at the steel-jawed face of my VP. “I didn’t sign up for killing kids.”

  “Then fuckin’ leave,” I warn. “You know where the goddamn door is.”

  From the left, a movement catches my eye, and I swing my pistol around and squeeze the trigger. I shoot the woman in the head, then I aim at the kid again. The kid screams. Daryl screams, but it’s not enough. It will never be enough. Kurt moves in my peripheral and Grim pulls the trigger. Red mist and brain matter fill the tiny lounge room. The kid’s screams turn to wails. Daryl shouts, begging and pleading with me not to kill his little boy. I wish I could say I felt any mercy for him. I wish I was a better man. But I’m not.

  I cock the pistol, squeeze the trigger, and fire the shot.

  Even I’m not prepared for the bitter look of betrayal in the kid’s eyes as his gaze meets mine and blood pours from his arm. Nor am I prepared for the thud as his tiny body hits the floor and he screams so loud, I’m surprised the roof doesn’t cave in.

  My heart hammers against my ribcage. Blood whooshes in my ears as my club brothers stare at me. None of us signed up for this.

  It’s a gunshot wound at worst, a graze at least. The kid will live, which is more than I can say for mine. I lock eyes with Tank. “Get him out of here before I change my fuckin’ mind.”

  He hoists the screaming brat over his shoulder and exits through the front door.

  “Daddy! Daddy!”

  Daryl inches forward, and I shoot out both his knees, but I have no intention of letting him off easy.

  He screams and falls back to the ground. I look at Kick and Trigger and tilt my chin toward the chair at the small table. They each grab an arm and drag him from the floor. He shrieks, but we’re only just getting started.