by Kasey Krane
“I just need a minute to myself, okay? Just give me some time!” I snapped.
“We have to go see Chip,” Bolt said.
I blinked. Stunned. I pulled the door open with force and stood in front of him with my mouth open.
“What did you just say?” I asked.
“I’m going to take you to see Chip right now,” he repeated.
I gulped. He had no idea how badly I wanted to hug him. I wanted to burst out laughing with relief. Chip! My brother! Was it true?
I raised a hand up to my mouth, my nostrils flared with emotion.
“You’re not kidding? This isn’t a joke?”
“Why would I joke about something like this?” he asked.
“I don’t know anymore…”
“Are you ready to go see your brother now?”
I nodded in silence.
“Come on then.”
Bolt was leading the way out of the room and I followed him, taking short, quick steps in the hopes we could get there faster. I stared at his wide, strong back. So muscular. Powerful. He was all man. He was a man who could look after me and destroy me at the same time. And he’d just given me the best piece of news. And he’d kissed me like no other man had kissed me before.
With every passing moment I spent with Bolt, I could feel myself getting more drawn to him. I wished this was something I could control, but I knew I couldn’t.
11
Bolt
I hated him in that moment when he banged on the door. Whoever it was interrupting our kiss.
I wasn’t sure why I kissed Cassie. I knew it wasn’t the right thing to do. Banging her was one thing, something I could’ve explained to the rest of the MC. She was a hot piece of chunky ass. None of them would’ve cared if I tapped it or not. But kissing her like this, the way I did—like I wanted to possess her, make her mine—that was unforgivable.
She was Chip’s sister. Chip was going to be punished. The last thing we needed was for the Sergeant of Arms starting something with a member of this guy’s family.
But Cassie was fuckin’ irresistible. I’d spent the last twenty-four hours trying to keep my hands off her, but it was impossible. The more time I spent around her, with her, watching her, touching her, the more I wanted her. I didn’t give a fuck whose sister she was. When I saw how upset she got, when she was close to tears, I wanted to pull her into my arms and hold her.
And the kiss. This fuckin’ kiss happened out of nowhere, and then someone was interrupting us.
I had to pull away from her. I saw the look of horror in Cassie’s eyes when she stared up at me then. She got carried away too. She knew she wasn’t supposed to kiss me. She knew exactly what a mistake we were making.
When I went to the door, she went running to the bathroom. To do what? Cry? Curse? Hide from me?
I could feel my cock throbbing in my pants when I went to the door. I didn’t want to be interrupted. I wanted to see it through to the end. Fuck her. Make love to her. Have her in my bed. Whatever the phrase was.
But it was Ghost on the other side of the door. He tried to look into the room over my shoulder while I blocked his view.
“Where is she?” he asked, curiosity written all over his face.
“Why?”
“We need her downstairs. In the Black room.”
“What for?”
“Chip. He wants to see her, make sure she’s alright.”
“Since when do we give a shit what Chip wants?” I growled, hoping Cassie was still in the bathroom and couldn’t hear us.
“He’s agreed to talk to us. He’ll tell us whatever we need to know about the shipment. Where the Silver Knights are keeping it and what the security is like. Everything we need to plan the raid.”
I glared at Ghost. For some reason, I didn’t want to believe it. Maybe because I wanted to extend that moment with Cassie alone.
“And he wants to see his sister in exchange for that?”
Ghost nodded. “Bring her downstairs. That’s what she wanted too, right?”
“Yup. That’s all she wanted from the start,” I murmured to myself.
I was in the Black room with Cassie and Chip.
Cassie begged to not have too many people in the same room as them. Besides me, it was only Flash in the room with us.
She ran to her brother when she first saw him. Chip was sitting on the chair, the only piece of furniture in the dark room, one bright light hanging overhead. His hands were still tied but I noticed Flash had removed the ties from his ankles. Maybe to give him some sense of dignity for the sake of his sister.
“Chip, oh my God! Are you okay?” She hugged him tightly.
“Why did you come here, Cassie? Why the fuck did you follow me here?” His voice was shrill and broken. He was covered in sweat. Fortunately, there weren’t many visible bruises. Just one long gash across his cheek.
“What have they done to you, Chip?” She was hysterical, barely listening to what her brother had to say. She kept desperately searching his body for marks and bruises.
“I’m fine. Don’t fuss, Cassie. Leave me alone.”
“But I heard you howling in pain. Where did that mark come from? Did they hurt you?” She peered at the bruise on his face.
Flash cleared his throat and Chip looked at him.
“Where have you been? Did they hurt you?” he asked her.
Cassie shook her head.
“I’m okay. Nobody touched me. I even went to the cafe today and got my work done,” she replied, offering him a weak smile.
“Now that you’ve seen her, you need to give us what you promised.” Flash was laying down the rules. He didn’t have the time or patience for an emotional reunion.
“What did you promise them?” Cassie asked. She looked at Chip and then turned to me with a horrified look on her face. “You said I could see my brother; you never told me there was a condition attached to it!”
“He’s going to help us raid the Silver Knights. Take back the shipment he sold to them,” I said.
Cassie turned to her brother again.
“Tell them everything you know, Chip. Tell them the truth. This will all be over soon, right?”
I knew it wasn’t going to be that easy. There was no way in Hell the MC would forgive him just because he gave us some bits of info. But Flash and I remained silent.
Chip gulped and turned to Flash.
“This is all I know…they’ve transported the shipment to the eighth quarter. That’s the only space they had for such a huge order. At least six people are on constant duty guarding the merchandise. Molloy is the group leader for this.”
Flash glanced at me.
“What else can you tell us?” I prodded him.
Chip met my eyes. Did he know I was the one his sister was spending time with? Did he know I kissed her? That I wanted to fuck her? I clenched my jaws tightly, trying my best to not look at Cassie, standing protectively over him.
“They are on guard. They’re sure there will be an attack from us…you. This MC. They’re expecting you’ll want your shipment back.”
“Tell the others. We need some guys to go check out the eighth quarter,” I said to Flash.
“There’s a code for the back entrance. I saw them punch it in when they were hauling in the shipment,” Chip said just as Flash was about to leave.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you guys, but you have to give me your word, Bolt. Whatever you want to do to me, you can go right ahead and do it. Just leave Cassie out of this.” He held my gaze.
“Chip, no! You have to let us both go, Bolt!” Cassie shrieked. I didn’t look at her. Instead, I nodded at her brother.
Chip knew I didn’t make shady deals. I was a man of my word. If I promised him I’d keep his sister safe, that was exactly how it would go down.
“Four-Eight-Zero-Seven,” Chip said.
I looked at Flash who nodded and left the room.
“Chip, why? Why did you tell him the code now? You c
ould have used it later? To get your own freedom!” Cassie was screaming at him.
“You need to stay out of this, sis,” Chip said.
“Why have you done this? Chip, why? I don’t understand. Why have you put your life in danger? Why did you get yourself involved in all this?” she asked.
Chip remained stoically silent.
“You need to give me a reason. I will never forgive you unless you tell me exactly what’s going on!” Cassie continued to hound him.
By now, I knew her enough to know she wasn’t the kind of person who would just let this go. Now that she had her brother, even if it was just for a few minutes, she was going to get some answers.
Flash returned to the room.
“Spike and Ghost are on it,” he said. “And we need to get the girl out.”
Cassie fell down on her knees in front of her brother. “Chip, please, tell us why you did this. I don’t believe you did it out of greed. You wouldn’t betray your Club just for the money. You wouldn’t!”
Flash came to stand beside me. He gave me a look, like this had to come to an end. We’d let Cassie and Chip be around each other long enough.
I took a step toward them. I would physically haul her out of the room if I had to, but I needed to put some distance between brother and sister now.
“You promised,” Chip said to me. I nodded.
“I’m going nowhere until you’ve told me the truth. Why in the bloody Hell did you do this?” Cassie shrieked so loud Flash cursed under his breath. Chip stared at his sister. The color had drained from his face.
I stopped for a moment. If Chip was going to tell his sister his reason for betraying the Club, I wanted to hear it.
“I didn’t want it to come to this,” Chip said. He couldn’t hold Cassie’s gaze. She was on her knees, directly in front of him now.
“But it has. Look at where you are. Where I am. You need to tell me why you did this. It wasn’t just the money, I know it wasn’t…tell us the truth, Chip.” Cassie’s voice was weak and shaky. I hated seeing her like this. For her sake, I wanted it to stop. I wished Chip would just say something so she could move on.
“It was for the money,” he replied. Somehow, he’d managed to make his voice stern. He kept his face turned firmly away from his sister.
“No. You wouldn’t! Why, Chip?” She stood up with a jerk. Hand on mouth. Cassie refused to believe her brother would do something like this out of pure greed.
“I needed it for the house, okay? Now you fuckin’ know!” Chip growled. He finally looked at his sister, spittle flying from his mouth. He was angry. Cassie winced and took a step back. I was right there behind her. Ready to hold her if she needed me.
I wanted to punch Chip’s head in for hurting his sister.
“What are you talking about? I really don’t understand. Why did you need money for the house?” she continued in a small voice.
Chip breathed out deeply and looked away.
“Our house is going into foreclosure, do you understand? I was supposed to make payments on the mortgage that Dad and then Mom owed the banks. I couldn’t keep up with them. I was never good enough to make those payments.”
“Chip, why didn’t you say something? I could’ve helped. I have some money, not a lot, but…”
“We owe them a lot of money, Cassie…”
“But you didn’t need to resort to this, you could have spoken to me…”
“I didn’t want you involved, okay?” Chip snapped. I had to clench my fists to stop from pulling Cassie away from him. “This was supposed to be a one-time thing. One drop-off, one large payout and I could make our problem go away.”
Cassie whipped around, away from her brother. She faced me and I saw the tears streaking her cheeks.
“Do you see now? He did this for our family home. To protect me. He had a reason for it. Will you let him go now?”
She was searching my eyes, pleading with me. I said nothing because there was nothing to say. I couldn’t make this problem go away for her, as much as I wanted to.
“We have to go now,” I said to her instead.
“I want to stay here with my brother,” she cried.
“Get her out of here,” Flash grunted.
I reached for her hand and started tugging her out of the room. She was struggling again, pulling and trying to escape.
“Chip!” She repeated her brother’s name.
“Bolt, you promised,” Chip called out to me, just as I banged the door shut. Cassie yanked her hand away from me, turned and started banging on the door again with her fists.
I didn’t know what Flash was doing in there with Chip, but I was pretty sure Cassie wouldn’t want to be a part of it. I let her do what she wanted for a few minutes. She screamed and banged. Eventually, she was going to tire herself out.
I reached for her, wrapping an arm around her waist, and instead of fighting me, she rested herself on me. I carried her away from the door and put her down gently. She’d stopped fighting me. She wasn’t trying to get away to her brother.
There were tears on her cheeks, which she’d tried wiping away.
“What is going to happen to him now?” she asked. I could sense she tried her best to control her voice.
“We have to keep him here till we have the situation under control.”
She gulped and looked away. Neither of us spoke for a few moments, and then she looked up at me again.
“Can you tell me the truth, Bolt? What is the ultimate punishment your Club can declare on someone like Chip?”
I stared at her in silence. This was not an answer I wanted to give her.
“Your brother will not be receiving it because he confessed and gave us information to help us with our raid. He’s saved his ass,” I replied.
She shook her head. “I don’t want you to spare me the gory details. I want to know the truth. I feel like I deserve that much from you. I’m not even fighting you anymore. What was the ultimate punishment he was looking at? If he hadn’t given you guys this information.”
I wanted to look away from her, but that would’ve been cowardly. Cassie was right. She deserved to know the truth. She deserved to know what her brother had brought upon them. It was all his fuckin’ fault. He could’ve come to us, spoken to Drax or me or Flash about the money problems he was having. There were other options instead of doing what he did.
This was his choice. He was aware of the consequences, and yet, he made this decision.
“The ultimate punishment would have been death,” I said.
Cassie’s eyes grew wide and I saw them fill with tears. They streamed down her cheeks in a sudden gush. I thought she was going to fall to the floor, but instead, she fell on me.
I caught her. I wrapped my arms around her, and she rested her head on my chest. I stroked her hair as she sobbed gently. There was nothing more I could say to her. Her brother’s life was saved; he wouldn’t face our ultimate punishment, but he had come very close to it.
Maybe he wouldn’t have given us the information if Cassie wasn’t here. Maybe she was the one who saved his life. She was probably thinking the same thing I was, but neither of us spoke.
12
Cassie
Something changed after that night when Bolt held me in his arms while I sobbed on his chest. Maybe it was because we’d kissed before that; there was a sudden shift in our relationship. I hoped he could feel it too, but I kept silently repeating how I was just kidding myself. Bolt wasn’t the kind of guy who felt these things, surely.
I worried about Chip, but was less worried now than I’d been before. I’d seen him. Those bruises looked bad, but he was still alive; he was in pretty good shape despite everything that happened. And Bolt made it clear to me he was going to stay that way. My brother had dodged the ultimate punishment and now I could breathe easy.
The truth was, I had no idea when this would all be over. I didn’t even know what we were waiting for. All I knew was that Bolt was keeping a close eye
on me and we were spending a lot of time together. I stopped questioning it anymore.
If this meant Chip stayed alive and I stayed safe, the rest didn’t matter. In fact, spending so much time with Bolt and living this closely with him, actually felt good. I knew there was a physical attraction. It was why we ended up kissing. It was the reason why I always felt something warm and fuzzy when he looked at me. I had a crush on him, and it grew every hour.
The question was, how did he view me? What did I mean to him? Was I just a job?
The next morning, after spending another night in bed together and keeping our distance from each other, Bolt took me back to my cafe again. He insisted that I keep up appearances and go about leading my life as usual.
“Well, I’m not having you spending the whole day sitting at that table glaring at me,” I told him when we got there. “You’re going to scare all my customers away with that look on your face. Besides, my staff are going to start getting suspicious.”
Bolt shrugged. “I’m not going anywhere. I still need to keep an eye on you.”
“I’m not trying to weasel out of this. Maybe you can lend a hand. You know? Behind the counter.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Not at all. If you want to blend in and make this seem like just another regular day, you’ll have to learn how to make espressos.”
“I’m not exactly good with people,” he grunted. It made me smile.
I swerved over behind the counter and found a white apron for him. I held it up for him to see.
“Don’t worry, you won’t have to interact with any customers.”
“I’ve never made espressos before.”
“I’ll teach you.”
“So you want me to work for you?” Bolt said that menacingly, crossing his large muscular arms over his chest. “Wearing that?”
The smile grew on my face. I thought he’d look quite sexy in that white apron. With his tattoos crawling on his arms and down his neck. His bulging biceps and narrow waist. That leather jacket. He’d be an attractive addition behind the counter.
