by Sadie Savage
She hopped to the tall wall that ran around the perimeter of the roof and gazed downward. What she saw made her hands fly to her mouth to keep a scream back.
The crew that Ace ran, Brooklyn’s Sons, were down there dragging Walker, Pete, and the other two from the car. Julia felt a wild thrill shoot down her spine. She hoped, with everything in her being she hoped, that they would kill Walker.
Then the innocence that she had never lost, the sweetness that Walker had never been able to beat out of her, surfaced. She was not a killer and she didn’t want anyone to die, not even Walker.
They were all fighting down there, it was a full blown street brawl. Horrified and yet unable to do anything because of her injury, Julia stood there watching it go down.
Chapter 10
Ace had been waiting years for this opportunity. He wanted nothing more than to beat Walker into a bloody mess. Walker had just come into his territory, and he had just fired shots at Randy and Jenny.
Randy was a former Navy SEAL. Taking him down was not something Walker was capable of. Randy had pushed Jenny into a room and exchanged gunfire with the other men. He had hoped to lay down enough cover fire to get to Julia but that hadn’t happened. He had managed to slow them down so that she got a good running head start. He also managed to call Ace, who had been less than half a mile away.
Now that Ace knew that Julia was safe, well out of reach on the rooftop of the clubhouse, he was no longer worried. Now he was just pissed off.
Walker stalked closer. Pete and his other men were already engaged with Aces crew. It was just Ace and Walker facing each other now.
Walker sneered, “You think I don’t know that you’ve already turned her into a little whore?”
Ace gave him a nasty smile. “Don’t talk about her like that.”
Walker got a little closer, but not close enough. Ace was biding his time, knowing that Walker had more strength but a lot less speed and stamina. Ace also knew that it took more energy to throw a punch that missed then it took to throw a punch that landed. He intended for all of his punches to land, and write in Walker’s face and gut.
Walker asked, “What do you think you’re going to do with her now that you have her? Huh? Do you think she has a single loyal bone in her entire body? Her mother was a traitor. She’s a traitor. How long do you think it will be before she betrays you?”
Ace knew exactly what Walker was doing. Everything Walker was saying was true. Julia’s mother had run out on the man she had sworn to ride or die for. Julia had turned her back on blood. Walker was hoping to use those truths to plant doubt in Ace’s mind and heart.
The truth was Ace had no idea at all if he could trust Julia. What he did know was that if Walker had not treated her the way that he had she would not have turned her back on him. He did not know what had happened between Julia’s mother in Walker’s father but considering that Walker’s father was far more violent than his son he could guess.
Ace said, “That’s where you’re getting this all wrong. This is not about her. This is about a debt you owe my family. This is about you coming into my territory, riding into my borough, and firing at somebody in my family.”
Walker put his hands up. All around him men were fighting. Pete was using his gun, which must have been empty of bullets by then, as a weapon but it wasn’t doing him much good. There were too many of Ace’s crew to face down.
Walker said, “Well you just bring it on then.”
Ace said, “Thought you’d never ask.”
He charged in, fists flying. All the hatred and rage he had ever felt for Walker came spilling over. Ace let his fist connect with Walker’s jaw while he hoisted one foot upward into Walker’s crotch.
Walker was used to street fighting. He didn’t even go down. Instead he began hitting back. Ace ducked the blows easily enough. The impact of his knuckles on Walker’s flesh sent waves of pain spiraling down his arm but he just kept hitting.
Blood flowed. Both men had a score to settle. For Ace it was about Margo and the death she had not been able to escape thanks to Walker first getting her hooked on heroin and then using her as a guinea pig for a batch that he had not been sure of in the first place.
Walker had his own score to settle. Ace had just cost him a connection that could have made him the king of the entire city. He would have had the kind of money that could have squashed the cruise in every other borough. Ace had taken away all of Walker’s leverage.
Asphalt met Ace’s hands and knees. His palms stung and his jeans shredded away from his kneecap. Walker’s foot connected solidly with his ribs, threatening to break them. Ace reached out one hand and grabbed the blade that he saw glittering from that boot.
Walker realized his mistake too late to stop it. Ace drove the blade deep into Walker’s calf. Walker let out a high-pitched scream and staggered backwards, the blade still buried in his flesh.
Ace made it back to his feet. Someone tossed him a very long and heavy piece of steel and he advanced on Walker with it in one hand. Before he could crush Walker’s skull with the steel Pete and the other two men, all bloodied and pulped, grabbed Walker and rushed back to the car.
Ace held up one hand as his crew tried to rush the car. It would’ve been way too easy to kill them but the truth was the fight had already drawn more attention than they could afford. His eyes scanned the neighboring buildings. Blinds that had been opened moments before were closed. Stoops that had held people were now deserted. There were no sirens to be heard but that did not mean much. It was the digital age, and people tended to take a video and put it on the web rather than call the cops when it came to street brawls. Ace would much rather they just called the cops. Lying to a cop was easy. Lying to a judge when there was video that had gone viral was a whole other thing.
They staggered into the clubhouse. Ace, battered and weary, climbed the stairs slowly. He made it up onto the roof to find Julia standing near the wall with both hands pressed against her mouth and her face soaked with tears.
She hobbled toward him and that slow and uneven gate of hers told him that she’d been harmed. He caught her in his arms and asked, “Are you okay?”
She sobbed out, “No! No I am not okay. I did this! I brought this to you! This is my fault!”
Ace shook his head. His hands rested on her shoulders. Blood streamed down his face from a small wound on his scalp. He wiped it away with his shoulder. He said, “No, it isn’t. This has been coming for years.”
She gave him a long, intense look. “For you, this is over Margo isn’t it?”
Ace said, “What else would this be over?”
The expression on her face almost imploded his heart. She wiped her eyes and nodded. “What else?”
Ace knew then that he had to let her go. He didn’t want to. He wanted to keep her forever. He wanted her to be in his life and to be his old lady. He wanted her to ride on the back of his bike and be in his bed every single day and night for the rest of his entire life. There was just something about Julia, a sweet and un-ending innocence that made him want to build a wall around her around himself to keep the rest of the world out forever.
And that was why he had to send her away. If he didn’t that innocence of hers would die a terrible and unfair death.
That was not the only reason either. There were so many reasons why he needed to send her away. He couldn’t trust her. He couldn’t trust himself with her. He didn’t have anything to give her but more of the same life that she was running away from. He was over twenty years older than her. It would never work out.
She deserved better, far better, than him.
Chapter 11
Julia refused to look back. The taxi had picked her up at the front entrance of the hospital and had driven her all the way to LaGuardia Airport. There was a mobile boarding pass on the cell phone that Ace had procured for her. There was twenty thousand dollars hidden in various pieces of the cheap luggage that Randy had picked up on the way to the hospital.
&nb
sp; She had clothes and money and a destination. What she didn’t have, was Ace. He had walked away from her on that rooftop, calling for a woman who was married to one of his higher ranking crewmembers.
That woman had helped Julia down off the roof and into the car that Randy had shown up in. Jack had told her that she would be leaving the city immediately. Julia knew that as soon as she got to her destination she would have to attempt to find a way to get herself back into design school.
Nobody, except Randy, knew where she would be going. Walker’s crew could not get to Randy because he and Jenny were also leaving the city. They were heading in the opposite direction. And the flight that Julia was on would only lead her to a connection. She was flying into Atlanta what she did after that was up to her.
Julia was not just out of sorts and upset due to the pain from her broken foot she was out of sorts and upset due to the pain of her broken heart. Her heart was literally broken. She knew it shouldn’t be. She barely knew Ace. All she really knew of him was that he was her brother’s enemy and that he had taken her virginity and protected her and made her feel safe and sheltered and cherished just to drop her like a lead balloon.
She still hated Walker. She always would. But now she had a new hate in her heart. Now she hated Ace too.
LaGuardia was packed. An attendant got her wheelchair and helped her get through security then to her gate. As Julia sat at the gate she made herself one solemn vow. Nobody would ever own her heart ever again and she would never ever trust a man on a bike as long as she lived.
Chapter 12
Jack leaned against one wall, watching as Ace bandaged his bloody knuckles. Ace looked over at Jack’s swollen and battered face.
Ace asked, “how you doing?”
Jack laughed. “I have had better days.”
Ace looked in the mirror. “Yeah, me too.”
Jack said, “If you think sending that girl away is going to keep Walker off our shit you’re dead wrong.”
Ace watched blood swirled down the drain, crimson against the white porcelain. “I don’t think that at all.”
Jack asked, “Then why send her away?”
Ace said, “She’s no good to us anymore. Everything I needed from her, I already have. Pete’s not giving up his connection to Walker without her and without her virginity she’s useless to Pete.”
Jack whistled. “That’s cold man, even for you.”
Ace said, “Yeah. That’s me, cold as ice.”
Jack said, “I’m not so sure that girl didn’t get to you.”
Ace gave him a hard and baleful glare. “What the hell does that mean?”
Jack said, “Just what I said. You could have sent her home, let her deal with the fallout herself. You don’t usually cotton to traitors.”
Ace turned the taps off and looked down at his bandaged hands. His heart ached, as much as he would have liked to say it didn’t. He said, “I couldn’t let her get killed. I owed her. That night, the night Margo died, she called me. She was just a kid and she had no idea what she had just stepped into, all she knew was that there was a woman on the floor and she couldn’t call the cops. She found my number in Margo’s pocket and called me, asked me to come get her and get her some help. That took guts, and a lot of them.”
Jack’s eyes went wide. “I always wondered how she could have gotten back here in the shape she was in.”
Ace braced his hands on the sink. He couldn’t look at his own reflection. His shoulders slumped. “I kept my eye on her over the years,” he admitted. “I owed her and now we’re even. So that’s why I sent her off the way I did.”
It was a lie. He had sent her away because he was not good enough for her, and he knew it. Julia deserved so much better than a dirt bag biker who would likely end up in prison for the rest of his life, or dead on a street somewhere. Ride or die was exactly what they did, and when it came down to it, most of them died.
Julia was so young, and so innocent and so beautiful. She should be with someone who could promise her forever. Someone her own age. Someone who wouldn’t end with a bullet in their heart or wiped out along a street.
For the first time in his life Ace found himself thinking of all the things he had done with some real shame. He was a badass, and he had grown up hard and fast. The things he had done to get to where he was had seemed like just things he had to do, and he had never felt guilt or shame before but he did just then. That pissed him off. This was his life. He had chosen it because he wanted it. This was what he had always wanted, to be at the head of a crew and to be respected, to have money in his pockets and his pick of women.
But there was only one woman that he wanted right then.
He wanted Julia, and she was out of his league all the way around.
Bert appeared, his face creased with concern. “Ace, we got trouble.”
That was starting to be a sentence that Ace truly hated hearing. “Oh yeah?”
“They’re riding right for us. They’re threatening to burn the entire borough to the ground if we don’t give the girl back.”
Ace snorted. “She’s long gone. They could burn the city and it wouldn’t get her back.”
Bert frowned. “We know that but they don’t. It’s war Ace.”
Ace looked into the mirror. His lips thinned. He said, “It’s been coming for a long time. You know it has been. Walker’s never been content to keep his territory and let us keep ours. If it wasn’t this it would be something else. Get the hood ready. You know it is about to get ugly and we can’t afford to have the neighbors killed in our dispute.”
Bert nodded. He turned to leave and then turned back. “Uh, Ace?”
“Yeah?”
Bert fiddled with the butt of the gun sticking up from his hip pocket. “You’re wrong.”
Ace’s brows drew together. “The hell I am. This war was started the minute Walker climbed on that bike and took the lead spot in his crew.”
Bert grinned. “No, not about that. We all know that. I mean about that girl being long gone. She’s not gone. She’s right downstairs and she says she ain’t leaving. She’s got some sand, I’ll give her that.”
Ace’s mouth dropped open. “Come again?”
Bert chuckled and walked out. Jack lifted his eyebrows and said, “Looks like you might have to try sending her away again then, huh?”
Ace sent a glower his way. He pushed his way out fo the bathroom and headed down the stairs. The foyer was empty but he could hear guys moving around in the apartments. The air was charged with an electric tension and he felt his heart tick up a few extra beats as he paused on the second floor landing to look down at Julia.
She stood there, balanced on the crutches. Her suitcase was beside her. Her eyes lifted to his and his first instinct was to smile and then to run right down those stairs and grab her and hold on tight.
Instead he took the steps slowly. He asked, “What are you doing?”
She lifted her head. “I’m standing here.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
“You’re right. I keep wanting to put weight on this foot and I’m not supposed to.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Her eyes were steady. “I know what you meant.”
He shook his head. “Goddammit Julia, there’s an out and out war about to kick off here. You could get killed.”
She shifted a little but her eyes didn’t drop away from his. “So could you.”
His jaw clenched. “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“Ditto.”
Goddamn her! The girl was infuriating and impossible and he wanted to turn her right over his knee and spank her lush and ripe bottom until she learned to do as she was told. He descended the stairs again, his dick stiffening at that thought of her across his knees and his hope and fear growing with each step.
“Julia,” he began but she cut him off. “Ace, listen. I don’t know what’s happening between us, I don’t. I just know I want to see where it goes. I am not
leaving you, not even if it means I have to be in the midst of a war with my brother. Half-brother. I don’t…I know my walking away from their and giving you information makes me a traitor. Not just to him. I know that makes people wonder if they can trust me. I get it. I do. But I walked on him because he is a terrible person and just because he kept me prisoner does not mean I owe him my loyalty. If anything his holding me prisoner like that stripped away whatever need for loyalty to him I might have had. I won’t betray you. Ever. Let me stay. Well, I am staying so really what I am saying here is go ahead and try to make me leave.”
He shot a look around the foyer. He spoke in a low voice. “I am way too old for you.”
“I’ll get older.’
“This isn’t the life for you.”
“I never said it was, but then again why can’t I have a life too? I mean, there are plenty of guys in the crews who have a family and a wife who does other stuff besides be someone’s old lady.”
God that was so true. He shook his head. “I can’t let you get hurt. I can’t let him hurt you.”
“He spent five years hurting me. You see? He already has hurt me, so there’s no way you can stop that.”
Frsutration set in. Every single reason he had to send her away was being shot down right out from under his feet. He studied her face for a minute. “You could change your mind.’
Her face didn’t change out of its obstinate expression. “So could you, but I am willing to take that chance and hope you never do.’
He wanted to hold her, to pull her in and keep her close. He wanted to love her and give her everything in the world.
He said, “We barely know each other.”
“Well then, we should probably spend as much time together as we can so we can get to know each other then, shouldn’t we?”
“You are the most stubborn…” He moved closer. Julia’s lips called to him. He intended to claim that mouth, to kiss her until he either lost his mind or she regained hers but before he could the glass in the front door shattered.
Chapter 13
Julia heard the breaking glass and ducked. Ace grabbed her and they went down on the floor together, rolling. His body covered hers as a hail of bullets poured in through those broken doors. The door beside them popped open. Screams echoed throughout the building and Ace stayed over her, telling her to go, pushing her and using his body as a shield as they scrambled into the apartment.
