Paul Van Etten is a mess in front of me. His suit that is always in place is wrinkled, and he’s sweating profusely. His eyes are wide and wild. Something is wrong.
Very wrong.
“We can’t,” I tell him while Emmalee looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind.
Maybe I have.
But the thing is, Colt was right. This place is comforting. It’s home in a way I’ve never felt. I don’t want to leave. How do I know her dad is safe?
Frankly, I don’t know anything. I don’t know where to turn. I only know that my gut says stay put and Colt will find me. I have faith in him. I believe in the connection we share.
“Diem, I don’t have time for the temper tantrum. I said come on. We’re leaving,” Paul orders.
I shake my head. “No!”
He looks to the journal in my hand and then the suitcase. “What is this?”
“Paul, what do you know of my mom?”
He blinks and looks at me carefully. He knows.
My entire life he’s known, and yet, he didn’t say anything.
His phone rings, he looks to the screen. Declining the call, he shoves it in his pocket. “Diem, you really need to come with me. I’ll take you to your dad, and he can explain everything.”
“My dad, as in Luke?” I question, and his eyes don’t widen in shock but rather narrow on me.
“Diem, you can discuss this when we are someplace else.”
I shake my head. “No.”
He turns to Emmalee. “You’re coming with me. Say goodbye to your friend.”
The way he says each word is ominous; fear climbs up my spine. Emmalee moves to hug me when there is a loud bang before the glass of the front windows shatters. I push her to the floor with me.
Flattening myself on the ground, I try to think. Paul rushes to me, grabbing my wrist and yanking on me, trying to pull me up. I fight back. The more I move, the more glass cuts into my skin from the busted windows.
“Diem, he wants you. Let me and Emmalee leave.”
I keep fighting.
The popping noises go off even more, and suddenly, Paul Van Etten isn’t tugging on me. No, I watch as his body comes down on the beautiful glass table with the etched anchor. The glass shatters and crashes under him as he bleeds from his head.
The smell of urine and feces assaults my nose before I can even sort out where the shots are coming from. Emmalee is frozen in place staring at her father from her spot beside me on the floor.
“Emmalee,” I yell, “snap out of it.”
That’s when the bullets stop.
Scooting to Emmalee, I huddle close to her while trying to keep my body lower than the frame of the windows. Moving us to the hallway, I can sort of see into the yard and find three men in regular clothes walking toward the house. One of them being Thomas Reigns.
Each one carrying a gun.
We have nothing.
Fear is powerful, and I am engulfed by it.
“Diem.” Thomas Reigns’ voice is all I hear as I can no longer see the men or him.
Be smart, I tell myself. He doesn’t know what I know. Maybe he won’t know Emmalee is here.
“Emmalee,” I whisper. “Go to the closet. Take your phone. Hide in the closet and call Colt.” I think about my dream where my mother sent me to hide. In this moment, I can’t imagine her exact emotions, but to some degree, I get it. I want Emmalee to be safe. I want to know I’m not getting my best friend killed.
So, I push her away as I stand and walk out to the man who raised me, cared for me, provided for me, and killed me inside.
After all, I owe him everything.
I owe him my pain.
I owe him my mother’s pain.
I owe him my father’s pain.
I owe him Adrianne’s pain.
I owe him Emmalee’s pain.
And I intend to pay him in full for every ounce of agony he’s caused.
14
Colton
Boomerism: “Never forget where you came from because it will always impact where you are going.”
We’re not far from the house when my phone rings. I answer, not recognizing the number. “Lo.”
“Colt, it’s Emmalee,” she whispers and sounds a wreck.
Something is seriously wrong. Fuck!
“Colt, he’s got her.”
“Who is he?”
“Her father, not her father.”
She’s rambling nonsense. “Emmalee, snap it together. Where is Diem?”
“They’re in the living room, but she’s going to go with him. Colt, my dad’s dead. They shot up the place.” The panic in her voice is something I don’t think I’ll ever forget.
“O’Leary has Diem,” I say to Wesson, and Emmalee starts pushing buttons wildly on the phone.
“No, no, no,” she screams before the phone shuffles. It sounds like she hit speaker phone, but when I look at the screen, no, she switched to video, and I watch helplessly as one of Thomas Reigns’ men drags Emmalee by her hair to the living room of the house, my safe haven.
In the middle of the living room, Paul Van Etten lays dead on my now broken coffee table. Diem stands in front of her father as he looks over to her suitcase.
“Going somewhere?”
She rolls her shoulders back, but I can see the tremble of her lip. She’s trying to be strong, but she’s scared out of her fucking mind.
“Just waiting to hear from you. Mom told me to pack a bag and wait.”
He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Your mother told you to pack a bag and wait here for me?”
She nods but doesn’t speak.
Thomas Reigns pulls a knife from his pockets as Emmalee is helplessly held in place by a man, while trying to keep a hold on the phone and not let them notice the video. Wesson uses his paddles he drives with to speed up.
Hang on, ladies, we’re coming.
With Wesson’s phone, I send a text to our dad, so the Hellions can get here. I’m going to end Thomas Reigns tonight, and it’s going to be fucking ugly.
Reigns reaches out, grabbing Diem with his free hand. She pushes away. He swipes her with the knife as she cries out in surprise and pain.
He attempts again and gets a hold on her. He presses the blade to her neck.
“Why, Dad? Why are you doing this?”
He laughs maniacally. “You read your mother’s books.” He waves the knife to a set of notebooks inside her open suitcase. “You know I’m not your father.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Before, I did it for Adrianne. She loved you. She loved Tianna. But Tianna stuck her nose in my business. She was going to ruin everything. I gave you to Adrianne, so she could have a piece of her friend and to keep her in place. Now, well, now you know too much. You have to die, Diem.”
“No!” she screams with a blood curdling yell as the knife goes across her neck, and then he pulls back and jabs it into the side of her neck.
“You can’t talk if you can’t breathe,” he mutters over her body as she falls to the floor, holding her neck as blood leaches between her fingers and all over the floor.
I fight to stay quiet. I know I have to be smart. Combat training kicks in, and I can’t react in my emotions. The man holding Emmalee swings her around just as the other man in the room pulls a gun and hands it to Thomas.
He aims and fires.
The phone drops face down on the floor just as Wesson and I pull up to the back side of the church.
“You’re a witness to nothing,” Thomas says firing a round and then another, and a third.
“Call emergency services,” I tell Wesson as I jump from the van and ready my Glock.
I have one mission, and one mission only: make it to Diem in time, so she doesn’t bleed out on the floor.
In a swift movement, I’m walking in my backdoor. The smell of blood and bodily fluids permeates the air as I watch Thomas Reigns make his way to the front door with the suitcase. The gun he held before is tucked into
the waist of his pants like he didn’t just commit a massacre in a living room.
I lock my eyes to Diem. She’s blinking. She’s alive. Her gaze is pleading and pained. It kills me to see her like this. She keeps opening her mouth, but only garbled noises come out. I need her to calm down, but first I have to ensure her safety and that means ending Thomas Reigns.
“Reigns,” I say his name in disdain.
He turns to look at me. Diem moves her legs, trying in vain to move.
“The matter is handled. I’ll have it cleaned up. This is no concern of the Hellions.”
I shake my head. “Oh, but fucker, it is.”
Wesson wheels around and up the ramp onto the front deck. The noise has Reigns turning his head.
“Diem is mine. Do you know what that means in my world?”
“I don’t care what it means. She’s gone.”
His words slice me to the core. I move my finger to the trigger and adjust ever so slightly before I fire. I intend to make him feel pain before he dies.
The bullet hits his collarbone, and he drops to his knees, grabbing for his own gun. Wesson fires, hitting his hand, and I’m pretty sure going into his spine.
“You should care, motherfucker,” I state moving closer.
Wesson wheels in and checks on Emmalee. “She has a pulse. Weak, but it’s there.” Then he moves to Diem. Holding her hand, my brother reassures her we have people coming while I wish I was the one comforting her. I need to make sure she never faces this again.
I lock my eyes on Reigns. “Where’s the money?”
He shakes his head. “I told O’Leary. Paul did that shit. I don’t know where the money is. I didn’t take that shit, he did, but he did it to make it look like I did.”
“What’s O’Leary got going on in Haywood’s Landing?” Tripp asks entering from the back door, as do the rest of the club. “You can tell us, and we spare you with a bullet to the head, or you can keep quiet and the cops will be here in three minutes. You go to lock up, O’Leary’s going to end you slowly, painfully, and behind bars.”
Reigns doesn’t say a word as he looks at the men around him. Some of my brothers go to Emmalee to help her, and others move to Diem while I listen to the sounds of the ambulance getting closer, knowing this is her best chance to survive.
Weighing his options, Reigns speaks. “O’Leary doesn’t want shit moving through here. In fact, if my Paul hadn’t stolen the money Haywood’s Landing never would have seen a single part of O’Leary’s business. Paul set me up.” With that he twists to the dead man on my floor and spits on him. “Fuckin’ bastard crossed me. Thirty fuckin’ years of trust he threw away to double cross me. He thought he could run my business better than me. He thought wrong.”
“I’ll get word to O’Leary he crosses into the Carolina’s it’s war,” Tank mutters to Tripp who nods.
“I gave you what you wanted, Crews. Get me out of here and not with a set of cuffs or in a body bag.” Thomas Reigns states thinking he still has some negotiating power here.
Boomer moves to Reigns, who is on the floor holding his chest and fighting through the pain.
“Thomas Reigns, my name is Nathan Vaughn. I’m here to simply explain to you how shit works in our world. You see, this is my family. My son claimed your daughter, that makes her my family. You caused her a great deal of pain.”
“She’s not my fuckin’ daughter,” he spits out. “I don’t want problems with the Hellions. I want to get the fuck out of here. I got fucked too ya know.”
My father, unfazed, simply strokes his beard as if he’s in thought. “That’s not how this works in my world. See, my sons aren’t my blood, but they are my sons. The men in this room aren’t my blood brothers, but they are my brothers. And what you need to know is there’s not a man in here unwilling to bleed for anyone else.”
“Fuck your loyalty family bullshit.”
Boomer stands and backs away from Reigns. He looks to Tripp. “Clear the house. The ambulance will be here any second.”
As BW and Red lift Diem from the floor, I look to her. “Diem Reigns, I will always keep you safe. Your pain is my pain, and I promise to feel every ounce of it.”
“Mighty bold of you,” Reigns states. “Then again, you think you have it all.”
I laugh. “Fucker, I have it all. I know the feel of a good woman coming alive just for me and not because of money or status. I know what it is to be free. I know what it is to give as good as I get. I know what it is to have family, real family. Yeah, I’m fucking bold from it all. I’m also bold enough, brash enough, and brave enough to tell you, Thomas Reigns, I’ll see you in fuckin’ hell.”
With those parting words, I move my finger to the trigger and fire the kill shot.
Bold, you bet your ass, I’m bold.
I’m a mother-fucking Hellion.
15
Diem
Life lessons with Diem: My pain is a blessing in disguise.
It’s over.
I hear his voice. Everything is fuzzy. There is a beeping noise before I drift back to sleep.
I’m in the cubby hole hiding. My dad comes to the door. “It’s over, Diem. Come with Dad.”
I climb out of the small space holding my bear. “Come with me.”
“Where’s Momma?” I ask.
“She’s waiting to see you,” he says in a strange tone. “First, I need you to take some medicine, Diem. It will help you sleep.”
Sleep.
I thrash my head back and forth. Fighting, I need to wake up. Why can’t I wake up?
“Diem, spitfire, you gotta ease up. Calm down. Whatever you’re dreamin’, baby, come out of it,” Colt says, and I feel the heat of his breath on my neck.
Colton is here.
I relax.
Inhaling the clean smell around me clears my mind. Blinking, the lights are bright.
“She’s coming to,” Colt says with trepidation in his voice.
I try to speak.
I can’t. It hurts.
I try to swallow.
It hurts.
What is wrong?
I begin to panic.
The memories invade. Thomas Reigns isn’t my father. My mother died, and I don’t even know why. My entire life is a lie.
He tried to kill me.
Yet, I breathe. I live.
I open my eyes and right in front of me is Colton Vaughn. The most beautiful man in the world. His face is pained and fatigued. I reach up to rest my hand on his cheek. He closes his eyes, and it hits me.
I have not a single person in my life I can believe in other than Emmalee and Colton Vaughn. A stranger I simply wanted a good time with saved my life, and gave me my truth, even if he didn’t realize his part in it.
I slide my hand to the back of his neck and pull him to me. He presses his lips softly to mine. All of my pain subsides as I get lost in Colt.
I have nothing but what is right in front of my face.
Six Months Later
Before I realize what’s happening, he spins me around, and my back hits the wall beside the door of the darkened room. The only light comes from the window toward the back of the room.
His lips crash to mine in what feels like a battle of wills. This is the first transport where Colt has been gone for more than a day. I guess absence does make the heart grow fonder for bikers because he rushed in here like a man on fire.
He is on fire, I think to myself.
On fire for me.
No words are shared between us. There is nothing to say that can overpower the depth of emotions shared between us. Hot need, desire, and deep-rooted love rush through me after far too much chaos in the last year. I’m finding myself, and I’m finding the new me is bolder and stronger than the old one.
I also know Diem Banner is absolutely okay with losing everything to gain this new life. A life filled with love and trust built on real truths.
Since getting out of the hospital, I had to go through some therapy because Thomas Rei
gns nicked my voice box when he cut my throat. Before I could retrain my voice, I had to let my artery heal; it was literally stitched back and held together by threads for a time. Having nothing but time in hospitals, and the resources that Colt laid at my feet through the Hellions motorcycle club, I was able to learn, my real father is Luke Banner. He’s currently serving a life sentence for the murder of three men. Colt and the Hellions are looking into the case, since my father has said that it was all a set up, but he hasn’t had the resources to prove it. He’s a handsome man who still has a picture of my mother hanging above his bunk in his cell.
Luke Banner was head of security for Reigns Enterprises. That’s how Tianna met Adrianne. The two were fast friends, and Tianna ended up being housekeeper, secretary, and personal assistant to Adrianne Reigns. Even though times have changed, my father being white and my mother being African American, they didn’t have friends that were as accepting as the Reigns.
Only, it wasn’t acceptance; Luke sees it now. Thomas Reigns saw an opportunity for manipulation, and he took it.
I’m still getting to know Luke, visiting in prison isn’t easy, but I’m determined to get him out one day. All of this has finally given me the direction I need in my life, and I’m working on a degree in criminal justice. Since there was nothing left to inherit from the Reigns, I work at the Salty Dog with Dia, who is becoming a close friend, to pay for school.
Luckily for me, Colt is more than happy to let me live with him, and he won’t let me pay for anything, so I’m able to keep pushing forward without sorting out a living situation.
I have to admit, it’s nice to crawl in bed with him night after night. Whether we make love or we just talk until sleep overtakes us, I have truly found home.
And home is with the biker kissing me senseless right now.
This is real, and it’s all mine and Colt’s.
I open when he presses his tongue to my lips and his body pushes me into the unmoving wall. Then I feel the tug as he moves my hair off my shoulder. His lips pull from mine, allowing us both to come up for air. That’s when his head drops to my neck, and he sucks.
Bold from It: Hellions Motorcycle Club (Hellions Ride On Book 5) Page 10