Peter Torres opened the door at Lukas’s knock, leaning hard on the frame with a glass of amber liquid in his hand. He didn’t seem surprised to see Lukas.
“You here to kill me, Rinaldi?” The words were slurred. The older man turned away from the door and walked back inside. “You going to do it in cold blood? Right in front of my wife?”
Reina’s mother was sitting on the couch, face pale, tears trickling down her cheeks.
“What the hell is going on Peter?” Lukas asked. “Why would I be here to kill you? Do you know where Reina is?”
“Since my bitch of a niece decided to prove I was st—”
Lukas’s phone ringing cut him off. It was a video call from an unknown number, but he answered it anyway. There were too many unknowns happening right now to ignore it.
Reina’s face came into view. “Lukas?”
“Reina. Thank God. Where are you, princess?”
“I tried to tell them we were done, but they didn’t believe me.” Her face was pasty white, voice shaking. “They said they were going to… going to…”
Fear gripped his heart like a clamp. “Who, baby? Where are you?”
Reina’s face was pushed out of the screen as a man came on. Young. Long black hair flipping over one eye. “Your woman seems a little too upset to talk right now, Rinaldi.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m Simon. You met my cousin during your recent trip to Baton Rouge, I believe. Put him in the hospital. I’m sure you don’t give a shit that he’s never going to be able to walk without a limp again.”
“Your cousin stole from my family, Simon.” Lukas all but spat the name. “Killed some of my people. What I did to him, he had coming.”
“That’s not how I hear it.” Simon gave a bitter laugh. “I hear you went back on a deal and stabbed him in the back, literally and figuratively. So now I feel like doing a little stabbing of my own.”
Reina’s mother began crying softly. Lukas held out a hand towards her, signaling for her to keep quiet. He turned as subtly as he could so no one but him could be seen by Simon.
Simon dragged Reina back into the shot by the hair. “Your girl here seemed pretty convinced you guys were broken up and you wouldn’t come for her. Seemed a little upset when we told her if you didn’t we’d mail her to you in pieces.”
Reina’s face filled the screen, trying to keep it together, to not cry.
“If you hurt her…” Lukas’s rage rose over him like a black wave.
“Save the threat, Rinaldi. It’s not her we want to hurt. It’s you.” He pushed her away again. “Don’t get me wrong, we will if you don’t show up. We want to talk terms of an agreement for our turf.”
“Fine. Where do you want to meet?”
Simon gave him an address across town. “You’ve got fifteen minutes to get here before we start cutting her.”
Shit. That would be tight. “Fine.”
“And to make sure you come alone—that you don’t try to get any of your considerable rescue squad behind you—you’re going to stay on this call with me the whole way.”
Fuck. There was nothing Lukas could say to that.
Simon got closer to the camera so his face took up Lukas’s entire screen. “That’s right Rinaldi, you’re going to have to choose: you or the woman.”
There was no choice for him. He would rather die than let them hurt Reina. Would gladly die to protect her. “I’m coming and we’ll talk. But you have to let her go. That’s the deal.”
“Agreed.”
“I have to get my keys.” Keeping the camera tight on him so Simon couldn’t see much else around him, he walked to the small desk in the corner of the room. He grabbed a pen and wrote the address on a scrap piece of paper.
Call my brothers. Now. Clean slate.
Still keeping the screen view limited, he pushed the piece of paper into Peter’s chest as he walked by, praying the man was sober enough to understand and get his brothers.
At least he now knew what Reina had been doing in the server room. Trying to prove that Peter was up to something. Little brainiac still should have told him, even if she wasn’t sure if it was true or not. But he was willing to forgive everything if Peter could get word to the rest of his family now and help get Reina home safe.
He got into his car and sped away toward the address Simon had given him. He wanted to demand to talk to Reina but knew the more he let on how much she meant to him, the more danger her life was in.
“What kind of car are you in, Rinaldi?” Simon asked from where Lukas had thrown the phone on the passenger seat. “A fast one I hope. Miss Torres has really pretty, unblemished skin. Don’t you think?” He heard Reina cry out. “Ooops, I think I just cut her a little.”
Lukas didn’t take his eyes off the road as he hit the gas harder.
Fuck.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Fifteen minutes later, Lukas drove straight through the fence surrounding the abandoned warehouse without even slowing down. The thought of a knife piercing Reina’s smooth skin had cold sweat breaking out along his spine.
He drove as close to the door as he could possibly get before slamming on the brakes and turning off the engine.
“I hear you,” Simon said in a sing-song tone. “You made it just in time.”
Lukas disconnected the call and pressed the speed dial for Roman, leaving the phone sitting in the seat. If Victor hadn’t already contacted his brothers, this call was going to be too late to save Lukas, but at least it would give them some direction.
He ran towards the warehouse, knowing everything about this plan was foolhardy. Trusting that Simon wouldn’t hurt Reina. Trusting that drunk Peter would get a message to his brothers immediately. Trusting that there was any way he was going to make it out of this alive.
He entered the warehouse and heard Simon’s voice to his left. “I have to admit, I was hoping to cut on her a little bit more. That soft skin, am I right? It’s hard to resist.”
“Enough. You said you would let her go. You’ve got me, I’m unarmed and alone.”
Simon walked into the moonlight filtering in through the window, dragging Reina beside him. Fear loosened its fist on his throat. She was alive. A couple small cuts just below her ear, but nothing too bad.
Simon threw her toward him, and Lukas caught her before she fell, then set her beside him.
“You should’ve seen her when you showed up. She honestly thought you weren’t going to do it. She was talking all this trash about how she stole from you and you hated her. Get your hands up.”
Simon made sure Lukas had no weapons then stepped back.
Lukas looked down at Reina. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. But why are you here?”
He didn’t answer. He wanted to kiss her more than anything in the world but couldn’t. Couldn’t let Simon know what she meant to him. Lukas turned back to the other man. “She wasn’t lying. She did steal from me and we’re through. But that didn’t mean I wanted to see my ex cut up into pieces, so here I am. Now let her go.”
For a second he didn’t think Simon was going to do it. That he was going to keep Reina and hurt her in front of him. If the younger man had any idea whatsoever of how that would destroy Lukas, he no doubt would.
Lukas put a hand around her upper arm—because he couldn’t not touch her—but kept her held away from him.
“Fine,” Simon finally said. “She can go. But she walks.”
He thought of trying to slip her the keys to his car, but it wasn’t worth it. She would be out of here. Out of danger. That was all that mattered.
“I don’t want to leave you,” she said.
He pushed her towards the door. “Just get out. Be glad I came for you at all.” Those big eyes filled with tears and it took every ounce of willpower he had not to pull her against him. “Not get out and let the men talk.”
“But…”
“Now, Reina. Do as I say.”
Her face scarred over with pain, but sh
e nodded and turned, walking out the door. Thank God.
Lukas turned back to Simon. Now this fucker was going to die. “So, you wanted to talk about working out some sort of deal?” He walked further into the room. He needed to buy as much time as he could. If Peter had gotten in touch with Roman and Dominic, they would be on their way. At the very least, Roman should’ve gotten Lukas’s call.
“You put my cousin in the hospital.”
“I did, but you have some of your details confused, Simon. We only attacked your cousin’s gang because they encroached on our property and area first. We were not picking a fight with them; we were defending our property.”
But this younger man with his hipster haircut and skinny jeans wasn’t interested in reason. “Your time in Louisiana is coming to an end. You are the old. My people are the new.”
“So, what exactly do you want to talk about?”
Simon took a step closer, pulling out that beloved knife of his. “I actually don’t want to at all. I’d much rather send a message.
“Well, then tell me, and I’ll be sure to relay it.”
“You are the message, Rinaldi. I’m going to kill you to let your brothers know we’re taking over the Baton Rouge turf and to stay the hell out.” He passed the knife from hand to hand.
Lukas didn’t even try to keep from rolling his eyes. “Well then, you better be pretty damn good with that knife, because you’re not going to get more than one chance with me. You want to make sure you kill me? You probably should’ve brought a better weapon.”
“I didn’t need to.”
Lukas shook his head. “Over confident and cocky. Just like your cousin. That’s what got him in trouble too.”
Simon just smiled. “I didn’t need to bring a better weapon because Nicky brought one.”
Lukas heard the sound of a gun cocking at a distance behind him. Fuck.
“Will your dead body with a note saying to stay out of Baton Rouge be too subtle, do you think?” Simon asked, grinning.
Lukas didn’t want to die at the hands of this hipster wannabe, but at least he knew Reina was safe. That was enough.
His brothers bursting through the side door of the warehouse almost seemed to be in slow motion. They immediately took out Simon with their own weapons, but Lukas knew they’d be too late to get Nicky behind him in the dark. He heard a shot fire from that direction and waited for the burn of the bullet as it hit him.
But it didn’t come. Instead, something even worse did: a higher-pitched moan.
Reina.
Lukas turned and ran towards the darkness, his brothers on his heel. Nicky turned his gun on them and was dead at Roman and Dominic’s hand a split second later before he could get another shot off.
“Reina!” He saw her lying on the ground and scooped her up in his arms. “Princess, oh God, are you okay?”
“He was going to shoot you.” Her voice was hoarse. Weak.
Wetness leaked onto his fingers around her waist. Jesus, she’d been shot. “Just hang on, princess, okay?” He tried to find the wound so he could put pressure on it. Her eyes began rolling up in her head.
“Reina! Stay with me.”
“Don’t be mad,” she whispered.
“I will be. Do you hear me? I’m going to be so damn mad if you leave me here all alone.” Her eyes closed. “You stay with me, you got that?”
“Or you’ll spank me?” her voice was getting weaker.
Dominic’s hand fell on his shoulder. “911 is on the way.”
Lukas leaned down closer so he wouldn’t jostle her. “That’s not a good punishment. You like it too much. You stay with me and I’ll spank you every day. Be inside you every day. Spend the rest of my life showing you how much I love you, princess. You’ve been so strong. Don’t safe word on me now.”
But her eyes were already closed.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
When Reina woke up the next day everything hurt. She opened her eyes then immediately closed them again at the bright hospital lights.
All she could remember was sneaking around to go back inside the warehouse, knowing Lukas didn’t know Nicky was there and had a gun. And then, evidently, she’d been shot. She remembered the pain and Lukas crouching over her saying stuff, but she didn’t know what. Just knew that he’d been mad. Again.
“You can’t keep your eyes closed forever, princess. I know you’re awake.”
“Lukas?” Her voice sounded scratchy, weird. She opened one eye just the slightest bit, and sure enough he was there in a chair next to her bed, eyes red and a day’s worth of stubble on his jaw.
“You gave us quite a scare in that warehouse. You and I are going to have a serious talk about putting yourself in danger. You’re so fortunate the bullet didn’t do more damage. No organs hit, just the fleshy part of your waist.”
She felt the bandage over the left side of her waist. She had been lucky.
“I’m going to go get the nurse, baby.” Her mom’s voice came from the other side of the bed. Reina tilted her head so she could see her.
“Mom?” Was she really here? And sober?
“Yes, sweetheart, I’m here, where I should be. I left Peter, or I should say, he fled the state. I’m so sorry I was blind to what he was doing. Ruining your father’s company. Cheating people.”
“It’s okay.”
Lukas stood. “I’ll go get the nurse, Mrs. Torres. You stay here.”
They both watched Lukas walk out the door.
“That man loves you,” her mother said. “He hasn’t left your side from the moment you got out of surgery.”
Reina shook her head, trying to sit up a litter further. “If he knows about Peter, I guess he found out why I planted my program in his server room. That explains why he didn’t leave me to die at Simon’s hands.”
Her mom shook her head. “No. I was there when he got that call, and at the point that he agreed to trade himself for you he didn’t know the details about what Peter had done. Definitely not that it was you who was in the process of bringing it all to light.”
“But that doesn’t mean he loves me. He was so angry.”
Lukas stepped back into the room. “I have a temper, and I’m not always perfect at getting all the information before I make a judgment.” He crossed towards her. “But when I am wrong, I admit it. And I was so wrong at the club. I should’ve given you a chance to more fully explain.”
Their eyes locked as he stepped out of the way as a nurse entered the room followed by a doctor. It wasn’t a conversation either wanted to have around strangers or her mother.
After she’d been significantly poked, prodded, and questioned, the medical staff left. Her mother did too, promising to be back in a few hours. Lukas resumed his spot in the chair next to her.
“I’m sorry for what happened at the club,” he said, taking her hand and trailing his thumb over her palm. “Playing is one thing, even punishment, but that was something else. You were hurt.”
She couldn’t stop looking at him. There was no coldness in his eyes now. “Actually, the pain wasn’t too bad, except for maybe when Thomas was using the paddle.”
“I know. I wasn’t worried about that. Hell, woman, in a few months, you’ll be begging me to beat you that hard. I’m talking about the other.”
She knew what he meant. “I just couldn’t do it, knowing you hated me.”
He was up and leaning over her in under a second, both hands cupping her cheeks. “I never hated you. If you had stolen every dime I had, I still wouldn’t. I was pissed that you had deceived me. And believe me, I didn’t mind seeing you get punished for it, but not hurting your heart. None of us wanted to see that. Especially me.”
“I thought you didn’t want me anymore. That we were over. That’s why I got so upset.”
“You’ll never get away from me that easily, princess. I can’t promise I won’t blister that ass of yours again—as a matter of fact I can vow the opposite—but I swear from this day forward, I will never w
ound your heart the way I did at the club. I will guard and cherish it, with all that I am, if you’ll just give me a chance.”
She was smiling so hard it almost hurt her face. “As long as spankings are also included in that promise.”
4 weeks later.
Not everybody got a do-over. Pounding into Reina—her sweet pussy even tighter with the plug he’d very thoroughly fucked her ass with a few minutes ago also filling her, her head thrown back in ecstasy, her beautiful mouth begging him to let her come—Lukas knew he was a damn lucky man.
In every possible way.
She hadn’t wanted to come back to Deeper Threat, had been embarrassed—maybe even scared. They’d played at home instead, getting their first taste of vanilla sex with each other as she had healed and regained her strength. Lukas was finding that with Reina, vanilla could be quite a delicious flavor.
But his kinky girl had soon wanted more, just as he knew she would. The bedroom in his condo—where he’d moved her in straight from the hospital because there was no way in hell he was taking another chance with her life, ever—was beginning to resemble a BDSM store showroom.
Not that Lukas minded, and he planned to be playing with her in their bedroom for the next forty or fifty years, but she needed to get her over her aversion to the club. No one there held any ill will towards her. Especially not after they found out what she’d been doing, saving them from someone who would’ve stolen their money.
So, when she’d finally agreed to come play publicly at the club tonight, Lukas hadn’t pulled any punches. There was only one way to get her past the bad memories of what had happened before: replace them with good ones.
He’d seen her fear when he’d stripped her naked and placed her back in the stocks in the middle of the room, and he had been humbled by her trust when she’d kept going in spite of it.
The remote-controlled butterfly vibrator he’d placed on her clit a few moments later had probably helped. By the time she’d gotten her twenty spanks—after having had to start over twice because she’d lost count when the vibrator had turned to high and her hips had begun humping the air trying to get release—Lukas knew she was going to be just fine.
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