Shakedown

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  Needless to say, her inspiration knocked it out of the park.

  “What does you getting off the computer and going to bed early have to do with this fitness tracker?” my mom asked as she placed the cheese she’d been stirring on the stove in the middle of the table for us to start dipping chips in. When she was back at the stove, I took a seat at the table and scooped my own bowl of cheese even though I trusted Delanie and Dillan implicitly.

  I’d always been pretty particular about my food.

  None of it could touch until I wanted it to touch.

  I didn’t share food or drink—I’d learned the hard way from when one of my brothers had stolen my drink and I’d found a popcorn kernel in the bottom of my cup when I was eleven.

  I did not, under any circumstances, eat anything yellow.

  That was why the cheese sauce that was on the table was white queso.

  And so much better than the yellow.

  I also did not eat anything cold that was supposed to be hot, or vice versa.

  “It helps me figure out when I need to go to sleep. If I was disturbed in the middle of the night by anything. How many hours of sleep I got. How good of sleep I got. What my strain level is for the day.” I paused. “I joined a group of people who are low level on the autism spectrum, and we all compete to see who can perform the best each day. And since I’m currently losing, it’s forcing me to make better life choices. Like going to bed early. I’m hoping these margaritas give me a sedative effect and help me conk out. I want to beat this one bitch. She’s won every single day since I joined, and it’s driving me insane.”

  My mother laughed as she came back to the table with the fixings for tacos. She placed the white cheese next to me and handed the fiesta mix to my two sisters-in-law.

  Once we were halfway through our first margarita, and I’d eaten three tacos, Delanie said, “So tell me about this Bruno?”

  I did, not skipping one single detail.

  “You think he has a big penis?” she repeated.

  I shrugged. “Well, his hand size, in correlation to his foot size, I would guess so. The guy is hulking.”

  My mother, used to my bluntness, just shook her head. “Penis size means nothing when you can’t have sex.”

  That was true.

  I’d not been able to force myself to have sex.

  The exchanging of body fluids thing, paired with the fact that the man would have to practically tell me everything he was doing before he did it, meant that I wasn’t number one on anyone’s ‘have sex with her’ list.

  “True,” I admitted. “But I think, if anyone could do that, it would be Bruno. He understands a whole lot more than any man I’ve ever taken a chance on spending time with. Not to mention he’s exceptionally observant.”

  My mother’s eyes widened. “Don’t ever repeat this conversation to your father.”

  I smiled.

  My father was… awesome.

  But he was also brash, opinionated, set in his ways, and loved his girls more than he did his boys.

  He loved my brothers, sure, but he wasn’t nearly as overprotective with them as he was with us girls.

  Me especially.

  I was so much like him, according to both my mom and my dad, that at times they wondered if my soul had just been siphoned from him when I was born.

  It’s a big joke between them, that the moment that I was born, my father lost what was left of his sound judgment when it came to reacting correctly.

  “Belle wouldn’t share something like this with Nico.” Delanie paused, seeing my face. “Would you?”

  I shrugged. “I mean, if I wanted a male’s opinion, yes. I’d also share it with my brothers as well if I felt like it would get me anything. Their opinions don’t matter to me as much as my dad’s, though. But that’s neither here nor there. If I felt like it was something that I needed to share, then yes.”

  “She’s told you that she took him to her first gynecology appointment, right?” my mother asked, dishing up a taco and plating it before reaching for some of the queso.

  Delanie gasped. “You didn’t.”

  I shrugged. What was the big deal?

  “Sure I did.” I delayed. “Is that a bad thing?”

  “No.” Dillan paused. “Not if you are weird.”

  I grinned. “We’ve already established that we are weird.”

  My phone rang in my purse, and I was frowning at it in surprise when my mom said, “Aren’t you going to get that?”

  I looked at her while it kept ringing then stopped.

  It started up again seconds later.

  “The only people that would call me are here. And everyone else would call you first. Since you haven’t gotten a call, I’m assuming that whoever is at the other end of the line isn’t someone that I want to talk to,” I admitted. “I’ve been getting a lot of telemarketer calls lately.”

  The weird thing was, I hadn’t.

  I never got any phone calls period.

  And, to top it off, I never, not ever, put my phone ringer on loud.

  Not only was a ringing phone annoying, but I tended to go places where it was rude to have a phone blaring out in the middle of peace and quiet.

  My mother stood up and went for my phone, pulling it out of my purse and glancing at the screen.

  “It says Bruno,” she whispered, holding it out for me.

  A memory of Bruno taking my phone and inputting his phone number, then calling his own with mine, flashed through me.

  We’d been walking out to the parking garage, him at my side, when he’d said, “If you need help with that next time, or anything else, call.”

  I took it before I’d even told myself I was going to.

  Placing it to my ear I said, “Hello?”

  “Ahhh.” A stranger’s voice filled the line. “This is Burnett County EMS. This man’s phone was found, open and unlocked, with your phone number as the only number in his incoming call log.”

  I stood up and reached for my purse. “What hospital are you taking him to?”

  “Mercy,” he answered. “And ma’am, I just want to warn you. Whatever happened to him… it’s bad.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Never do the same mistake twice. Unless he’s hot.

  -Text from Belle to Bruno

  BRUNO

  My head hurt.

  My nostrils hurt.

  My dick hurt.

  What the hell was going on?

  I peeled my eyes open to find myself looking at a room full of cops, Belle at my bedside, and the memory of the last… however long… gone.

  “Sir, we need to ask you a few questions,” the cop that was closest said. “Where were you last night from the hours of three in the morning and six?”

  “That’s this morning, Officer,” Belle interjected. “Last night would mean anywhere from nine to eleven. Morning is morning. And, if you would’ve asked, I would’ve told you that he was with me. Yet you waited until the doctors forcibly woke him up to ask him?”

  “There are children missing, ma’am,” the officer snarled.

  That’s when Belle stiffened in her seat.

  “My father is an officer.” Belle leaned forward, planting both of her hands on her knees. “My brothers are officers. My uncles are officers. Some of my best friends are officers. And you, might I add, are the absolute definition of an asshole. I know good officers, and you are not one.”

  The officer looked a bit stunned, and I felt my heart skip a beat.

  “I. Was. With. Him,” she repeated. “There may be children missing, but my fiancé is not involved. Do you understand me?”

  Fiancé? What?

  The officer looked properly chastised for a few seconds before a look of annoyance rolled over his face.

  “Can you explain to me, then, your alibi so that I can put that in my report?” the officer asked sweetly.

  If I could lift my hand, I’d punch him in that smart mouth.

  Sadly, I wasn’t sure that
I could lift a finger, let alone punch a man.

  “We were at my house from the time that we left the hospital together—and before you ask, I had a gynecologist appointment. Since I’m uncomfortable with male touch, he accompanied me to help soothe my fears. From there, we had tacos, white queso, and homemade tortilla chips. It’s all currently sitting on my counter still, in case you wanted to know. We got a phone call, which led us to that park. Something about a spotting of my fiancé’s motorcycle that was stolen from my house earlier in the evening.”

  “You made a report?” the officer asked her.

  Belle rolled her eyes. “We didn’t know it was missing. The only reason we got a call was because the bike is very distinct, and one of our friends in a local MC saw some random male riding it that wasn’t my fiancé.”

  Lies.

  I knew those to be lies.

  My bike was not very distinctive. Though it was old, it wasn’t anything special, and had no identifying characteristics on it that would lead any of my MC to believe that it’d been stolen or to be noticeable at all. That was how I lived—unnoticed.

  At least, I did until this particular woman walked into my life.

  She wasn’t my fiancée, was she?

  The moment that she said that she was, memories started to flicker to life. Ones of a certain bar just a few days ago where we’d officially ‘met’ again as adults.

  Even if I couldn’t remember the last few weeks—at least, what felt like a few weeks anyway just a few short minutes ago—I would remember a soon-to-be wife.

  “And did you see anything in the park when you arrived?” the second officer asked.

  Belle’s attention moved to him. “No. We got there, got his bike, and left. That was the only time we were separated. Then he was hit by a car.”

  “He was hit by a panel van, and witnesses say that this joker used his own body and bike to help another van with what looked to be six terrified kids get away,” the second officer pushed.

  Belle looked up at the ceiling. “Yes, and there’s only one man in three hundred and twenty-eight million people that rides a bike in the United States.”

  “It’s just a coincidence that a man riding a bike was hit by a van? That my witnesses didn’t see what they thought they saw?” the officer all but snarled.

  Belle’s back stiffened.

  “Actually,” she said stiffly, “this particular county is hopping with not one, but two motorcycle clubs. The Uncertain Saints MC are but a forty-five-minute drive away, and then there are the Souls Chapel Revenants MC. Both motorcycle clubs bring carry-ons and would-be prospects as well as bikers far and wide that just want to be around a motorcycle club because it’s ‘cool.’ So no, I do not find it odd that a van hits a motorcycle. Especially when I can go out into the parking lot and hit about ten of them with a fresh loogie. And trust me, my dad tried for years to get me to learn how to spit. It didn’t stick. So I can’t spit very far. Just sayin.’”

  The ‘bad cop’ as I’d dubbed him glared.

  The ‘good cop’ who’d stayed quite quiet throughout all of this smiled.

  The doctor came in moments after the word ‘loogie’ came out of Belle’s mouth.

  He took a look around and frowned.

  “I agreed to help you if you kept his blood pressure and his anxiety level down. He sustained a head injury. One that still could require surgery. I’ll expressly ask you to leave now,” the doctor growled.

  Growled.

  I liked that.

  I had no clue who he was, but he wasn’t intimidated by the cops or me.

  Because the moment they left, he turned and glared.

  “And, just fuckin’ sayin’, if you’re complicit in the kidnapping of children, I’ll fuckin’ end you myself,” he snarled.

  I read his nametag.

  Blunt.

  Now that was fuckin’ fitting.

  Without another word, he glared at me. Then at Belle. Then left.

  Belle snickered. “Dang, that was almost as bad as when my dad thought Bourne and Booth were stealing his beer and weren’t telling him.”

  “Who was stealing his beer?” I asked the most important question on the tip of my tongue.

  She pointed at herself. “Me. I wanted to see what it tasted like at first. Then I decided that I liked it. He should’ve switched to dark beer and I wouldn’t have drunk it anymore.”

  I frowned. “How old were you?”

  She smiled. “Fourteen.”

  I shook my head, trying to clear it.

  That just caused a burst of pain to hit me and caused nausea to well.

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked the moment that the nausea cleared.

  Belle looked at me.

  “Well,” she hesitated. “I was eating tacos when I got a call from EMS that you’d been in an accident. When I got here, you were in a medically induced coma due to possible brain damage. There was a court order to wake you up, apparently, because there’s cause to believe that the panel van carrying those kids was one of about five other vans just like it. I decided that you shouldn’t be left alone, so I came in here, and then all these police officers started showing up. But based on your activities from the other night, I knew that you couldn’t have been involved in the stuff that they said you were. So I… lied.”

  I blinked owlishly at her words.

  “What day is it?” I asked.

  “Tuesday,” she answered immediately.

  “And we just were at the bar on Friday night, right? The night you ate those chicken wings?” I asked, remembering how she looked eating those chicken wings.

  Somewhere during the course of the conversation, the last few days had caught up with me, and I now remembered everything up until today. I couldn’t tell you a single thing that had happened until now.

  “Yes,” she confirmed.

  “Okay.” I cleared my throat. “And what about the fiancé thing?”

  She smiled, presenting me with brilliant white teeth.

  “That was all me.” She paused. “I didn’t like that you were in here by yourself. While I eavesdropped in the emergency room, I found that you were just left there to stay, and I knew that I wouldn’t like waking up with police officers in my room asking me questions. Which I knew you wouldn’t like, either. So I had to lie to get to stay with you.”

  I smiled softly at her.

  My face was broken.

  That had to be why I was smiling so much.

  Her phone rang seconds later, and I looked at it pointedly.

  “I don’t know who it is,” she said by way of explanation.

  I jerked my chin. “Answer it.”

  I had a feeling that I knew who it was.

  “I don’t…” She hesitated.

  “Just answer it,” I repeated. “It might be for me.”

  She did then, placing it to her ear and saying a hesitant, “Hello?”

  She frowned hard, and her beautiful scowl had me smiling wide.

  For some reason, I wasn’t getting upset over my show of emotion.

  From a young age, I was taught over and over again that showing any emotion at all was a very bad thing.

  If my stepfather didn’t know he was affecting me, he didn’t get to see the reaction he was getting out of me, which then in turn meant that he couldn’t torture me even further.

  It was a game that I played with myself.

  One that was sometimes a hard game to deal with when I got my face bashed in for my lack of reaction.

  Belle sighed, breaking me out of the nightmare that was my formative years, as she pulled the phone away from her face and placed it on a mound of pillows. I looked down to see Lynn’s face staring back at me.

  “He can hear you now,” Belle grumbled, sounding so damn cute.

  I didn’t point out the obvious of ‘him hearing us’ when we were now FaceTiming.

  “You’re going to have to stay away from us for a while,” Lynn said, looking at me, then to Belle, a
nd back. “Your fiancée here” —he looked pointedly at Belle, then back to me— “knows you as Aryus Dumas. Y’all met in Vegas a week ago. Got engaged. End of story. Okay?”

  “For how long?” I asked curiously.

  Damn, my head hurt.

  “Until we can find the rest of those kids,” Lynn said simply. “We don’t need the club’s name associated with finding a car full of kids. Or my name, either.”

  He had a point.

  “And you can’t go home,” Lynn continued. “You are known as a Souls Chapel Revenant.”

  Before I could bark out an ‘okay’ Belle was leaning forward so that she was directly in the line of sight of the phone’s camera.

  “He can come home with me,” Belle entered into the conversation. “I have plenty of room.”

  I couldn’t see Lynn’s face, but I could hear him when he said, “Now I don’t think that’s a great idea…”

  “It’s a perfect idea seeing as I just announced he was my fiancé,” Belle admitted, scooting back so that I could again see Lynn’s face. “Sooner or later, everything is going to get out about who he is. A child being saved from being kidnapped is going to make national news.”

  Lynn sighed. “I know. But we only need a few days, hopefully. They’re still in the area—the ones responsible for this—because they’re afraid to move right now and draw attention.”

  He had a point.

  I pressed my hand against my face, feeling the pressure behind my eyes, and wondered if my brain might really explode.

  “You okay?”

  I wasn’t sure who’d asked it. Lynn or Belle.

  My head had gone from an ‘I’m about to perish’ to ‘I’m already dead’ throbbing level.

  I opened my eyes to tell whoever would listen that I needed something, but when I opened them, my vision was gone.

  Everything was just… black.

  “Fuck. I can’t see.”

  Then I promptly passed out.

  CHAPTER 9

  Not everyone is going to believe I’m pretty or funny. They’re wrong though.

  -Belle to Bruno

  BELLE

  “He’s having seizures,” Dr. Blunt growled. “They’re being controlled now with medication, but seizures are not a good sign. Neither is the fact that his pupils are not equal. The vomiting was controlled as well with medication. But I’ve put him back under for at least the next few days. The swelling needs to go down. Now. I’m still under the impression that his brain will not need surgery based on the scans, but that’s something that could change at any point in time.”