by Anthology
“Annie! Get down!”
He grabbed me, tossing me onto the floor. I dove over the baby just as the first pop of automatic gunfire crashed through my living room window. The glass splintered and showered inside. Gold laid over me and Silver. His swearing wasn’t loud enough to muffle the baby’s cry.
Her terrified shrieking squeezed my heart.
Bullets flashed, bashing through the window and imbedding in the wall behind the couch. My lamp popped and shattered. The paintings on the walls fell. My television toppled over, hurtling to the floor in a flurry of sparks. Gold shouted. I didn’t hear what he said. I clutched the baby closer to me, covering her vulnerable little body with mine.
The bikes thundered outside, away from the house. Gold didn’t let me up until the street fell silent. He grabbed a gun from Silver’s diaper bag.
“She okay?” He slid before us. “Annie, you hurt? How’s she?”
I shakily rose. Silver wailed.
My heart sunk.
A little line of blood traced over her cheek. Only slight, only the tiniest cut. The crimson blood peeked with her rosy cheeks.
Gold lost it.
“Son of a motherfucker!”
He leapt to his feet, but I didn’t trust him to hold the crying baby. He didn’t trust himself either. The gun tightened in his grip. He stared at the broken window, the bullet riddled walls, the thin trail of blood over his daughter’s cheek.
“I’m going to murder him,” he growled.
“She’s okay,” I said. “I can clean her up. She’ll be fine.”
I chased him down the hall, hushing the baby with gentle kisses to her forehead. It didn’t work. Silver wanted her daddy, but Gold wanted blood.
He jammed his shoes on. The cell was already in his hand. I knew who he dialed, but he pointed at me even after Thorne answered.
“Annie and the baby are going to Pixie.” The order was for both me and his president. “The Coup just did a drive-by. Nearly killed my kid. Send the prospects with a car for them and call in the guys. I’m going after them.”
He hung up but didn’t bother with a shirt. The keys to his truck twisted in his hand.
“Gold, wait!”
He stopped only to kiss me. He touched Silver, but his fingers trembled with rage.
No, fear.
He was terrified.
“Get her out of here,” he said. “Now. Take her to Pixie. I’ll have the prospects keep a watch over you.”
“Gold!”
“I’m going after them,” he said. “Hide in the fucking basement. Barricade this door. Don’t answer it for anyone but Anathema’s guys, you got it? They’ll take you to safety.”
“Stop!” I couldn’t handle his rage and the baby’s terrified shrieking. “It’s too dangerous. You can’t chase them. That’s what they want!”
“I need you to keep her safe. Promise me!”
Like I had a choice. No one was lifting the baby from my arms unless the bullet went straight through to my heart.
He loaded the gun. “I fucking love you, Annie. Sorry it took me this long to say it.”
“I love you too.”
He didn’t hear me. The door slammed behind him. His truck started within seconds, and the screech of his tires pulled from my driveway.
I trembled, cradling his baby, rubbing the little line of blood from her cheek.
Christ, if this was what I missed without him, if this was what I sacrificed in not loving him, I was better off.
But some things were worth the fight.
I grabbed the diaper bag and shouldered Silver, taking her to the bathroom to rinse the blood. She watched, whining and whimpering as I pulled the hidden handgun tucked under my nightstand.
Gold needed me.
I needed him.
And nothing was going to separate us this time.
Chapter Eight
Gold
The bikes turned north on the nine, and I chased like I already tasted their blood.
A bullet pierced through the passenger side of the truck. Right through the car-seat. Right where Silver might have rested if she were riding with me.
It didn’t fucking matter that she was in the house. The bullets riddled there too. Annie’s wall battered with flaking drywall and shattered two by fours. She hadn’t seen it, but stuffing seeped from the couch where she had been sitting just before I shoved her to the ground.
If I acted one second later, Annie would be dead.
Silver lived, but my little girl earned a cut on her cheek. The first time she had been injured in any of the goddamned madness was the MC. She bled because of me. She bled because of the danger I put her in. She bled because a monster with a vendetta came after me, trying to hurt what was mine.
I would bury Priest.
He’d get no funeral. No honors. No memories.
A man like him deserved nothing but pain and an end to the misery that he caused.
First I’d end Priest, then I’d murder the whore who sent him.
Alexis had no right to our child. She had no right to touch her, hold her, comfort her while her little cheek bled from the sting of glass. It was over. The only way to keep Silver safe was to protect her with blood.
Nothing would harm my daughter. No one would challenge her father.
And nothing would keep me from Annie once everything was finished.
Keep answered his cell phone on the first ring. His breathless voice panted as he jogged over gravel to his bike.
“Got the guys ready,” he said. “I’m at Pixie, Thorne is coming from his house, and I got Scotch and Ace riding from Sorceress. Where do you want me?”
He might’ve been a junkie, but the vice hadn’t destroyed his mind yet. He knew when to go to work and when to go to war.
Nothing sobered a man up more than the weight of the gun in his palm. Keep was no exception.
“Gonna get messy.” I shifted the truck as the engine squealed. The turn was sharp, but I sped onto the highway. I blasted past two Hondas and the Chevy, peeling onto the side of the road in panic. The truck wasn’t built for such speeds. I shifted to fifth anyway. “Thinkin’ a couple men are gonna die tonight.”
“Thinkin’ it’s about time.”
“They’re heading north. I’ll circle around, hit the bridge and filter them through the shipping district. If we grab them before the river, we can edge them out of town.”
“They might scatter.”
“Only aiming for the one.”
Keep swore. “We’ll get him.”
I hung up. Not me. I. I’d get him.
This wasn’t Anathema’s fight. This was my vengeance. Anathema fought its wars, created its own enemies, fostered its own bloodshed, but this was personal. It wasn’t business or a disagreement about how club politics were handled. This was a man defending his home and his family and the only goddamned things that mattered to him in the fucking world.
Priest wasn’t surviving the night.
And if The Coup didn’t survive either, all the fucking better. We’d clear out the bastards’ nest and take back the city all in the same bullet.
Traffic was light now, but that didn’t mean it was a clear shot to catch the bikes. The truck was unwieldy, heavy, and maneuvered like a fucking boat compared to my bike. God only knew where The Coup took my motorcycle. Just another grievance they had to answer for. They would answer for.
I flashed my lights at the traffic blocking the passing lane, and nearly swerved onto the median to get around the bullshit tractor-trailer who couldn’t get up to speed on the shallow incline. The truck bumbled over rough patches in the road.
I clutched the wheel, sweat dripping over my neck as I jerked the truck across three lanes. I dipped down an exit on gut instinct and what I remembered from riding with Priest.
I was right.
The fucker’s got off the highway sooner than anticipated. Probably because they knew they had a tail. Most likely because Anathema owned the roads in this terri
tory.
The side streets weren’t any better for a chase, though Cherrywood Valley saw too many in its bloody history. The men of Anathema cut their teeth — and other parts of the body — on the rugged streets and narrow alleys that festered the city in the rot of the underworld.
The two motorcycles ahead of me split, one dodging to the right, the other continuing straight. A split-second decision, but I made the turn. I knew Priest. I remembered him as a bullet-proof bastard who’d sacrifice his own body to earn his kill. But he wasn’t quick on his bike. He’d take the darker roads and serpentine through traffic and civilians to gain his advantage.
I wasn’t letting him get away.
A hard left, and I took the wrong path. I jerked the truck into reverse and spun one eighty, nearly taking out a pretty little tree planted in the boulevard. The tires spun, and smoke rose from the road as I jammed it into gear. The bike tried to cross through a construction zone, but the scattered gravel slowed him. He wobbled over the milled roadway and almost laid down his bike on a quick burst to the right.
I got close, I didn’t have a clear shot.
Keep did.
Keep’s bike burst from the shadows and peeled up the street, his gun firing dead ahead and clipping the bastard’s fender. Priest almost earned a new asshole, and it scared the fuck out of him. He took the next exit from the city onto the highway, and I had him right where I wanted him.
After a quarter mile on the highway, three more of Anathema’s bikes piled behind us. Keep and Thorne rolled forward, preventing him from taking another exit or shimmying across the median and through an emergency turnoff lane to head south. His only option was to continue through the city limits, edging toward the only neutral territory that existed between Anathema and The Coup.
Sorceress.
Keep shot before Priest pulled into the designated neutral zone. He missed, and I spat the same profanity he must’ve uttered.
Anathema roared into Sorceress’s parking lot. Priest ditched his bike at the entrance and burst inside, guns drawn.
The dancers weren’t going to like this.
One in particular.
I didn’t park the truck. It stopped, and that was all I needed to leap out and chase the motherfucker into the strip club.
The dancers screamed. The regulars got the fuck out, and the music scratched into silence. I raised my gun as the pink hue from the stage seared into brightness.
The lights came up, and the viper came out.
Lyn Hart often forgot her control over Sorceress didn’t extend to Anathema. She owned our wallets and the dancers, but that was it. It didn’t stop her from trying to exert her power, even when it was none of her business, even when it put her perfect fucking ass in harm’s way.
She hopped off the stage, half naked and ready for war. She didn’t cover her tits, and she wouldn’t. She knew she looked fucking sexy in her thong. In her rage, she caught the sweatshirt tossed from one of the dancers cowering behind the bar.
“This got nothing to do with you, Lyn.” My gun aimed only at Priest. “Take your girls and get out of here.”
Lyn stepped in front of the gun, but I wasn’t idiot enough to think the blonde would protect Priest. It was the club she worried about, her own girls, not Anathema.
“Thorne.” Lyn stared at my president. “Tell your boys to turn around, get on their bikes, and kill themselves in the street. It’s not happening here.”
Thorne didn’t lay down his gun. “This isn’t Anathema’s fight, this is between Priest and Gold.”
And it was going to be quick.
Priest didn’t look prepared to die. He rubbed the dirt from his face and cracked the knuckles he used to fire the gun that nearly killed both Annie and my child.
His jackal grin would be the first place I aimed.
“I am not letting a street war start in my damned club.” Lyn never worried about blood or death, only how much it’d cost to replace her new carpets, already stained by the grease of our boots. “Where the hell is Knight?”
“He’s not here,” I said. “Just me and Priest. Why don’t we step outside?”
Priest snorted. “I can kill you right here, boy.”
Lyn jerked the shirt over her body. “Get the hell off my property before I call the Feds. You assholes can dance for each other in County’s showers for all I care.”
Thorne grabbed her, tossing Lyn into a seat before Priest popped one in her smart mouth. I ignored her. Priest welcomed my approach.
I pointed the gun. Priest stood taller than me, but if I survived an IED and firefight in Tikrit, this bastard wasn’t anything special.
“You almost killed my kid,” I said.
“That so?”
“Yeah, and now we got a problem.”
“Ain’t no problem here,” Priest said. “Just a lesson.”
“What’s that?”
“Got no right taking what’s not yours. Alexis is looking for her baby. You’re gonna bring her back.”
“Fuck. You.” The gun aimed. “You tell that fucking whore if she ever even thinks about that kid again—”
“Gold!”
Alexis’s shrill scream echoed over the club. She tripped as she burst over the stage, diving at me, talons outstretched for my fucking throat. Lyn shouted, but Priest caught her. Her ass landed on the ground at his feet. Probably where the whore was most comfortable.
“Where’s my baby!”
This shit again?
I didn’t want to aim a gun at the mother of my child, but her screaming was worse than a slug to the head.
She screamed and pounded the floor, freaking out with whatever junk flooded her veins. Alexis was never this out of control when she danced on the stage, and she slashed at Lyn when she tried to help her up. That earned her a quick smack across the mouth. Lyn kicked her to the floor, but Alexis didn’t calm down.
She screamed again and again for Sophie, but her words slurred as the hysteria and drugs fucked with her system.
“Jesus Christ!” I pointed the gun. “You aren’t getting the kid. You can’t be trusted with her. You’re a goddamned junkie whore, and who the fuck knows how many cocks you sucked and needles you stuck when I wasn’t around. You think I’m gonna let my daughter grow up around that bullshit?”
“You goddamned asshole.” Alexis tugged at her hair until the dark roots seemed to show. She cried, but it wasn’t tears of sorrow or mourning. Just frustration. She hadn’t had a hit in too fucking long. “You don’t know anything, you jackass. You are a fucking bitch, Gold. You hear me?”
“Take her out of here.” I pointed at Lyn. “Get her sober or toss her in the dumpster, I don’t care anymore.”
“I want my baby!”
“Get it through your fucking head!” I didn’t want to gesture with the gun, but her shrieking pierced through me. She didn’t have the right to act like she missed our baby. Not when I was the one feeding her at night. Washing her in the day. Playing with her any chance I got. Keeping her warm. Rocking her when she was sick. “It’s done. My daughter stays with me.”
Alexis shakily rose to her feet, gripping Priest for support. Her words spat, foul and meant to strike with venom.
“You are an idiot, Gold. A fucking idiot.” Alexis snorted. “My daughter is coming home to her momma.”
“You haven’t been a mother to that child since you found out you were knocked up.”
“And you’ve never been her father.”
“Bullshit.” I rushed forward. Keep and Thorne stopped me from making a bloody mistake. “That girl is my fucking world. I do everything for her.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Alexis’s eyes widened, wild and hateful. She curled her arm over Priest. “Think about it Gold. Think long and hard about it. That baby is mine.”
“She’s mine too.”
Alexis didn’t have to shoot me. Her words packed enough of a fucking punch to land me on my ass.
“You fucking asshole. I made it up. Sophie
’s not your daughter!”
Chapter Nine
Gold
I didn’t remember attacking.
The man I struck wasn’t Priest.
Keep went down first, but Thorne throttled me on the floor. His knee ground into my back.
He shouted for Lyn, and she took the whore away before I murdered her with my bare hands.
Priest followed.
They should have killed me. They should have put a bullet in my skull and ended my goddamned misery before I let those words sink into my pathetic brain.
She wasn’t mine.
I never thought to ask. I never considered it a possibility. I never did the fucking math.
She wasn’t mine.
She looked like Alexis. But she had blue eyes. I thought they were my blue eyes. The books said they would darken as she got older. I wouldn’t have even known.
She wasn’t mine.
How the fuck did words hurt more than more than a bullet, more than a fucking roadside bomb igniting under my feet?
Thorne dragged me from the club. Keep nursed a black eye, but he wrestled the gun from my hand. I didn’t get to shoot. Probably would’ve turned the gun on myself.
They forced me in my truck, and Scotch drove me to Pixie. To Silver.
To my baby.
Why the fuck wasn’t she my baby?
I cried. The tears burned. The words charred to ash on my tongue. I swore a vengeance that I’d never earn. I could do nothing, say nothing. No one I hurt or killed would ever change the truth.
Alexis lied.
Alexis used me.
Silver wasn’t my child.
They hauled me into the bar and forced me in a chair. Keep poured whiskey into a tumbler but passed me the rest of the bottle.
I didn’t have the strength to lift it to my lips. Unless I could drown in it, literally fill my lungs with the amber regret, I wanted none of it.
“Dude, drink.” Keep pushed the bottle at me. “You need it.”
No. I needed the last year of my life back.
I needed to get out. To rethink my life. To figure out just when I turned into such a fucking jackass.
When I didn’t see it.
