by Leah Wilde
I looked around her at the carnage as The Forsaken Ones took out Kleo’s men viciously. I watched as many of my guys simply shot the men coming at them in suits. A few automatic rifles let out peals of gunfire, but for the most part, any gunshots I heard came from us.
There were Forsaken members fighting with their bare hands. No matter how many men we took down, though, there seemed to be more of them coming out of the darkness behind the headlights of Kleo’s cars. It looked like there were a couple of large trucks carrying men, but I couldn’t have been sure from where I was standing.
There were fewer of them than there were of us, and they didn’t seem too eager to get rid of us. It was astonishing that they didn’t take out more of my men with their automatic weapons. It really only should have taken a few quick blasts to eliminate the majority of my men, but they were standing their ground and taking down her men left and right.
Soon, the noise of gunshots stopped. The sound of footsteps running across the tops of her cars and across the pavement stopped. The shouting voices as men went at each other’s throats stopped, leaving just a steady hum of men making sure their brothers were okay.
I looked around between the cars and the motorcycles. I heard the hum of Kleo’s vehicles and the steady purr of the bikes filling the darkness around me as my men stepped up to see if there was anyone left to come after them.
I watched as Felicity stood up, covered in the blood of one of my fallen brothers, and I felt my heart beat harder at the sight of her emotional response to the situation. I put my gun back under my belt behind my back and ran to her.
“Are you okay?” I asked her as I took her into my arms.
She nodded with tears in her eyes and wrapped her arms around me, holding me against her body for comfort. I felt how tense she was, and how it wasn’t letting up as we embraced. I stepped back and took her face in my hands.
“We’re going to get out of here and you’re going to be fine,” I told her in a matter-of-fact tone. “Okay?”
She nodded again.
“Rex,” I called out. He was standing with his back to me, making sure there wasn’t anyone coming.
“Yeah.” He backed up to me, keeping his eye out for any additional backup.
“Get her somewhere safe and out of the way,” I told him, putting a hand on Felicity’s shoulder and pushing her close to him. “I’m going to keep looking for Kleo. She couldn’t have made it far with her hand blown off, but I need to find her.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, putting an arm around her and walking her away.
“Vice,” I yelled, and he appeared beside me in an instant.
“Yeah, boss.”
“Make sure everyone’s okay. Check on the bikes and make sure everyone is ready to ride. I’m going to find Kleo, and then we’re going to her hideout to find the diamond, alright?” I nodded at him, sending him into the crowd of Forsaken Ones standing around putting their guns back under their vests.
I had the girl. There was nothing that was going to stop me from getting the diamond back now, but I wondered what awaited us at her mansion. Kleo was ruthless, and her men had tried their hardest to come after us on the road. She had probably learned her lesson, but as I started down between the cars again, I drew my gun anyway, letting it guide me in case she wanted to try something stupid.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Felicity
He died in my arms. Evan, the Forsaken brother I had just met, died while I was holding him and watching over him. And there was nothing I could do about it. As violence erupted around us, I looked down to tell him we needed to get out of the crossfire, and I noticed he wasn’t moving. Except he wasn’t just not moving. He wasn’t breathing, and any vitality that had been present in his body a moment before was gone.
While gunfire rang out around us, I tried to duck down behind him. I couldn’t move him because he’d suddenly grown very heavy. His lifeless body pressed down on me no matter how hard I tried to push him off. I tried to crouch instead, to put myself as close to the ground as I could so as to avoid any stray bullets.
It all started when Kleo pointed her automatic assault rifle at my face, the second gun she’d pointed me that night. She was telling Hawk that she was planning on killing me, and instead of continuing to try to convince him to let her have me right then and there, she said she was just going to shoot me on the spot.
I watched as the man I didn’t want to admit having feelings for shot off my former boss’s hand, causing her to drop her gun to the ground and grab the wounded stump at the end of her arm. I winced at the sight of all that blood.
Blood and death and all this violence were things I didn’t normally have to deal with in my line of work. We had entered an area where my expertise just did not reach. I was used to being able to avoid confrontations by seducing my marks, but these people were shooting at each other. In some cases, Hawk’s men were killing Kleo’s men with their bare hands. To make things worse, even in the glow of the headlights from the bikes and the cars, I could see the perverse pleasure in their faces as they murdered her men.
I saw why they called themselves The Forsaken Ones. They were truly depraved individuals. In my mind, it would have made sense for them to pick up the guns that the men in suits were dropping, but they weren’t doing that. Instead, they were putting their guns up to grab the unarmed men and torture them to death on the spot.
Their terroristic tactics would have been great if they had left anyone to tell the tale of what they had done to take out all of the men who had come with Kleo to collect me and fight them off. But they didn’t leave anyone. Instead, when the gunshots stopped and the last weapon hit the ground, the only men left standing were Forsaken Ones.
“Hawk,” I called out, trying to get his attention so he could help me push Evan off of me. I had no idea that people could get so much heavier after they died. It seemed to me that without any life left in us, we all would be a little lighter. Not Evan.
I saw Hawk emerge from in between two of the cars in front just as another member of the MC came up to help me. He grabbed the body and pulled it off me like it was nothing.
“Are you alright?” he asked as he helped me to my feet.
“I think so,” I answered, looking down at my blood-soaked clothes. Evan had bled out all over me while he lay in my lap. Despite the pressure I had put on his wound, he had bled out.
It was a disgusting scene, but I was thankful it was so far the only time I had been forced to face this kind of violence. This was not for me.
That was when Hawk took me in his arms. It felt so good just to know he was there. I couldn’t speak. I was so overwhelmed with the love and gratitude I felt from being in his arms to form words while he talked to me. I just didn’t want him to let go of me.
Then, despite what he’d told me earlier about coming for me and not the diamond, he called Rex over to watch me and get me away from the scene between the cars and bikes. He said he was going to find Kleo so she could show him where she was keeping the diamond.
I almost felt betrayed, but I understood how the diamond inspired greed. I had felt it when I held it. I knew Kleo had felt it, and it only made sense that Hawk would feel attached to the gem. He’d held onto it for several days in his house. He’d thought it was secure in his home, and even though he had planned to sell it, he’d simply held onto it long enough for me to find it and take it from him.
I understood. I wanted the damn thing back, too, and I wasn’t satisfied letting Hawk go talk to Kleo by himself.
“Come on,” Rex said, pushing me against my reluctance. I wasn’t sure where he was taking me, but it seemed like he was walking me around the men gathered between where we’d just been standing and where I had abandoned my car.
“Hang on,” I said suddenly. “I dropped my phone back over where I was sitting with Evan.” I even patted my pockets to make it look like I was trying to find it.
“I’ll get it for you. You just stay put,” he sa
id, but I quickly turned and ducked away from him.
Violence may not have been my thing like it was for all of the thick, broad bikers standing around joking about what they’d done to Kleo’s men, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t able to handle myself. Stealth and agility were among my tools. Even when I wasn’t trying to seduce my marks, I was using my body to get what I wanted.
I ducked into the shadows beyond the glow of the headlights.
“Come on, Felicity,” Rex called out, throwing his hands up. “Dammit, you’re just like Hawk, aren’t you?” He shrugged and stared over in my direction.
He didn’t follow me as I glided through the shadows over beside the trucks that had come in carrying more of Kleo’s men, so I figured he couldn’t see me. I was going to find my former boss before Hawk, and I was going to persuade her to talk before he got there. I wanted to be the one who saved the day. I wanted to get the information for him so I could show him I could be trusted.
I owed him. After everything I had done to screw him over, I owed him big time, and I felt that getting the information we needed from Kleo was the first step in setting things right with him. I wanted to leave this situation with Hawk, not just standing by his side because I didn’t have a ride of my own.
Even though all of the cars and most of the motorcycles were still running, a thick, heavy silence fell around me in the darkness beyond the lights. I could hear my heart racing in my ears. I heard my breath as I stepped very carefully around the back of one of the trucks.
Then I heard someone else breathing. The breath was raspy and urgent, panicked. As I circled the back of the truck next to me, I saw Kleo sitting against the back of her sedan. The tail lights illuminated her, turning her face and whole body red. I was thankful for the red light because it cancelled out the blood that had to have been on her hands and arms from where she’d been shot. It kept me from having to see the full extent of her injury.
“Felicity,” she panted as I approached.
I knelt down beside her to act like I still gave a damn whether she lived or died. In reality, though she’d done a lot for me over the last three years or so, I was glad to see the smug look wiped off her face and to see her sitting on her ass trying to hold it together after being shot by someone she had such a low opinion of.
“Thank God you’re still here,” she said.
“You were going to shoot me, Kleo, so drop the bullshit,” I said plainly. “Where’s the diamond?”
She laughed until she coughed. It was a wheezing cough. She was exhausted, and her body was probably going into shock, but I needed to know where the hell that diamond was.
“What makes you think I would tell you?” she asked with a tired smile on her face.
“Because if you don’t, I can’t stop Hawk from getting it,” I said.
It was then that Hawk appeared alongside the car with his gun drawn. I looked up and met his eyes with mine to let him know I had it under control. Then I made like I was looking to make sure he wasn’t coming back there so that Kleo would trust me. He realized what I was doing and stopped where he was.
“I wouldn’t tell you where it was if my life depended on it,” she said spitefully.
“That’s a damn shame, Kleo,” I said. I shook my head and took a sharp breath as I reached for her hand and pressed my thumb and fingers against the wound where Hawk had shot her.
She screamed and grabbed my arm with her good hand.
“Okay, okay, I’ll tell you,” she cried out.
“Good, where is it? I know you didn’t leave it in the pool,” I reminded her.
“You’re right,” she said with a laugh. “I had my guards hide it.’
“Okay, I don’t give a shit who hid it, Kleo,” I told her, grabbing her hand again.
I understood the look on the faces of Hawk’s men as they beat and killed their attackers. I felt the same perverse pleasure they must have felt as I crushed her wounded hand under my grip. Watching her writhe in pain and knowing that I had that kind of control over her gave me an adrenaline rush.
It also felt good to see the admiration on Hawk’s face as he stood behind her and watched me torture my former boss. We had already proven ourselves as a great team, I thought, with the way that we got along and the way we were so perfectly matched in bed. I couldn’t wait to end this nonsense and get down to planning our future.
First, I needed to get the actual location of the Golden Diamond from Kleo, and the longer she held out, the more pain I was going to get to cause.
“Tell me where it is, or else I’m sure Hawk and his men will have no trouble tearing the place apart to find it before I do. Hell, I might even let them find it since you’re not talking,” I threatened her.
“Okay, okay. It’s in a secret compartment in my office,” she said. “There’s a button on my desk that opens one of the bookshelves. Not the one with the TV, but the one across from it, and there’s a safe set in the wall. It’s in the safe.”
“What’s the combination?” I asked.
“There isn’t one. I never lock it,” she said.
“You’re full of shit.” I squeezed her hand even tighter.
“Okay! If it’s locked, the combination is eleven, twenty-one, thirty-nine,” she said.
“Eleven, twenty-one, thirty-nine,” I repeated, cutting my eyes up to Hawk to make sure he was taking the numbers down somehow.
“Yeah, it’s my grandmother’s birthday,” she said in an almost sad tone. Now that was a story I wanted to know. It was too bad I knew she wasn’t going to be around long enough to tell it to me.
“That’s sweet,” Hawk said, stepping around to grab her arm.
“You bitch,” she hissed at me. Her eyes were full of rage all of a sudden.
“Did you really think I was going to try to do you any favors after you point two guns in my face, Kleo? Come on, even you’re smarter than that,” I told her.
“Well, you’d better hope that’s the right combination,” she said spitefully, though I was pretty sure she’d given us the right one.
“That’s okay. We have people who can crack your cute little safe,” Hawk chimed in with a condescending tone. “Come on.” He pulled her up to her feet and started walking her back up in front of the cars.
I followed behind.
“Did I do a good job?” I asked him, trying to sound nonchalant and not like I was looking for a compliment.
“You did a great job,” he said. “I’m very impressed with the way you handled that, Felicity. I saw a lot of potential back there.”
His words satisfied two purposes. First, it was just good to hear his praise. I felt like we were connecting again after being separated all night. Second, I knew it was eating Kleo alive to hear him talk me up the way he was.
She had been prepared to throw me away, but little did she know, I had already been working my way in with someone who truly appreciated everything I had to offer. Bitch.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Hawk
Felicity never ceased to amaze me. She had been impressing me since the night we met for the first time. It started before she even approached me boldly at Paragon, when I spotted her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. That was when she had first impressed me, with her beauty.
Then, it just continued, until the latest moment when she’d amazed me, when I found her kneeling behind the car with Kleo. She was working on getting the location of the diamond for me, even as she told her old boss that she was trying to get to it before I did. She’d shot me a look to let me know that she was just using that line to get the information she wanted. She was good at working people, and that was exactly what she was doing with Kleo. She worked the hell out of her to get her to believe that somehow, after everything, she was looking out for Kleo’s interests.
I also saw something else that impressed me. When she grabbed Kleo’s bloody hand to use her pain to persuade her to talk, it seemed to me like a huge step in the right direction for her. If Felici
ty wanted to come with me after everything was said and done, I needed to see more of that kind of determination and less of the shock and terror I had seen on her face after dropping the body of my fallen brother to the ground.
“Someone get Kleo bandaged up,” I said as we emerged from between the cars. I shoved her forward and watched a couple of guys grab her. I didn’t know where I expected anyone to find bandages, but someone would be able to rig something up. We always did.
“So what’s the plan?” Felicity asked as we stood between the cars and the bikes.
“We get her bandaged up, and we get back on the road. We get to the house, neutralize any threats there, and we find the damn diamond. After that, I don’t know what we do.” I wanted to take her in my arms, but I felt like the tension between us was all that was holding us both up at that point. If we had allowed ourselves a moment’s comfort, we might have collapsed. I didn’t want to risk it. There was still much to do.
