Owned by the Mob Boss

by Ashley Hall

  I gripped the door handle. Like father, like son. Shadow rode his bike, crazy fast too.

  Soon, we pulled up to a run-down apartment building. "What floor?" I asked. The building had five stories.

  "Don't know. The app isn't that precise." He shook his head ruefully.

  I walked around the side of the building. Some bushes were smashed, covered with broken glass, and there were some bloody footprints. I followed them, but the trail ended quickly.

  Fear making my heart pound, I glanced up to see a balcony whose door was shattered. I pointed to it. "Look."

  "Third floor. Let's check it out."

  I nodded, my throat too tight for me to respond.

  We rushed inside and took the stairs. The sound of sirens could be heard, but they were far away yet. I had to assume they were coming here. The police. Shadow. If he were caught, he'd be sent to jail for a long, long time.

  With his long legs, Shadow's father beat me up the stairs, and we rushed past the closed doors on either side of the hallway. Only one was open. Room 328. His father went in first, and it took me until now to realize he was holding a gun. I almost felt safer for it.

  "Uh, Allie…"

  I entered the room behind him and stared at the dead man bleeding onto the carpet. Was he the pedophile? Had Shadow killed him?

  In a daze, I whirled around.

  That was when I saw him. Shadow. Face down on the carpet and bleeding just as profusely as the other guy.

  I dropped to my knees beside him. So many thoughts jumbled in my mind, but I couldn't voice any of them. I couldn't breathe. What do we do? The sirens were getting louder. They were definitely headed this way.

  Wide-eyed, I stared at his father.

  Wordlessly, he shoved his gun into the back of his pants, tossed me his car keys, and slung Shadow onto his back. He rushed out the door.

  I could only follow him.

  "Take my car. Follow me." Grunting, Shadow's father situated himself and his son onto Shadow's bike and took off.

  Hands trembling, I raced to the car. It took me two tries to get the key into the ignition, but then I was off, chasing him. I couldn't see clearly. Tears blurred my vision, and a few times, cars honked at me, but I kept on driving, watching the bike in front of me, staring at Shadow…

  All of a sudden, the bike veered sharply to the right. My tires screeched as I followed. We were at a hospital. Thank God, but won't they call the police? I hadn't seen enough of Shadow's wounds to know for certain, but I was still positive he'd been shot… Maybe even more than once considering all of that blood…

  My parking job was terrible, but I couldn’t care less and hopped out of the car and rushed over to the bike. Shadow's father was already walking to the door.

  "Won't they—"

  He cut me off. "The club always uses this hospital. It's private, and they won't report him. Just follow my lead."

  In a mind-numbing blur, I trailed behind him inside the hospital and watched as the nurse jumped to her feet to grab a wheelchair. When she noticed the bullet holes—damn, he had been shot multiple times! —she exchanged it for a gurney. A doctor and then another one approached, and they wheeled him away.

  I sank to the floor, my arms covering my head. I was back to crying again.

  A hand touched my shoulder.

  I glanced up but couldn't see through the haze of tears.

  "They're taking him to surgery. All we can do is wait." Shadow's father sat in the chair closest to me. "At least I don't have to fill out any paperwork," he muttered. "Just told him he has no medical conditions, no medicine allergies, and what his blood type is. They don’t need anything else."

  I remained on the floor, not wanting to move, not wanting to feel. Even though I had just left Shadow, I didn't want him to die. Grief overwhelmed me. In the hospital, depression had been my only companion, but grief was a thousand times worse. It prickled at you, sharp and constant, needling away at your soul. If he died… He wouldn't die, right? He couldn't. He had to survive.

  Had my fear come true? Had he been distracted because of me? Or had he decided life wasn't worth living anymore? That he couldn't take any more pain and disappointment from people he thought had cared for him? His scars ran so deep, and he had so many demons. Did he want to die?

  I was a firm believer that the mind was a very powerful tool. If he didn't want to live, he wouldn't survive the surgery.

  Somehow, I climbed to my feet. I stumbled over to the nurse who had helped him. "Please. I need to see Shadow. I have to talk to him. I have something he has to hear."

  "Honey, he's in emergency surgery right now." She patted my arm.

  "I know," I choked out, "but you don't understand. We got into a fight and—"

  "You can see him as soon as he wakes up from surgery, dear."

  "But what if…"

  She shook her head, her gray hair not moving an inch from all of her hairspray. "Don't go down that road."

  "But he—"

  "If your connection is strong enough, he'll know you're here. He'll know what's in your heart."

  But he didn't know. Even though I had thought I was done with Shadow, I realized now I wasn't. Not yet.

  Damn it, Shadow, don't you dare die on me.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Shadow

  Light shone beyond my closed eyelids. I groaned, not wanting to move. My mind was hazy. I couldn't remember what had happened, and from the way my body felt, I suspected I didn't want to. Everything ached. So much pain.

  And not all of it was physical. I knew that much.

  Allie had returned to me as Sky. Just as beautiful. Just as devastating. My light. My salvation.

  Only Sky, just like Allie, had left me. That ache in my chest was more from her than the pain my body seemed to be trapped in.

  I still hadn't opened my eyes. Almost didn't want to. Didn't want to see where I was. Hell, most likely. I deserved it. I had done a lot of fucked up shit in my life. No way did I deserve happiness. I didn't deserve Sky. Hell, I wasn't sure I deserved to live.

  That thought triggered a memory, and I knew then where I had to be. My face wasn't smashed up against that dirty carpet anymore. I wasn't lying in a puddle of blood. I had been moved from the apartment the damned pedo had fled from, but not before that fucker's friend shot me twice. I knew I had killed him—saw his brain and blood splatter—but he had damned near killed me too.

  Now, I finally opened my eyes. I was in a hospital, the same private one I always went to when I needed medical attention. The only one us bikers trusted to not ask questions or require us to fill out forms. We had an understanding that worked out in both of our favors. Namely, we bought them off with some of the money we stole from the rich. Yeah, my boys were my brothers, and they were just as much criminals as I was. They helped me on my missions to kill pedos, and we were all thieves too.

  My upper thigh was bandaged, but all in all, my legs didn't hurt too badly. It was my upper chest, the left side that was the source of all of my pain. Near my heart. The shithead had gotten me and good.

  I was lying down, and I wasn't about to try and sit up. My chest felt like it was on fire. Sky made me hot, but this fire was so far removed from anything sexual that it stole my breath away and almost made me wish for death, just to take the burning agony away.

  What was even scarier, though, was that beneath the pain was something I hadn't felt for a long time—weakness. I was weak. I felt small and fragile. I hadn't had a brush with death for a long while, not since my druggie days. Yeah, so I had been reckless and impulsive when I’d gone after the pedo by myself, and I might have even thought that maybe my life hadn't been worth living, but since I had survived, I might have to rethink that.

  I took a deep breath and winced at the shock of pain that spread throughout my body like wildfire. Or maybe not.

  Now wasn't the time to worry about being weak and wallowing in pity because of my injuries. No. Mostly, I was pissed as all hell that the
fucking pedo, Frank Greene, had gotten away. Jumped off a third-story balcony. I was certain he survived the jump. Assholes had nine lives, just like cats. Cats were assholes too.

  He had gotten away. How much time had passed? Even if he had used his friend's car to get away, he had probably switched plates by now or dumped it and stole another one. Had his friend given him cash? If so, finding him again was going to be next to impossible if he skipped town. Even though the police were also out looking for him, they wouldn't be able to follow a non-existent paper trail. Unless someone saw him and word got back to me, I had lost him. Fucking piece of shit.

  I turned to stare out the window. Just moving my neck hurt. My left arm hurt like a bitch too.

  Footsteps sounded, but I didn't bother to look to see who it was. A nurse, most likely. Wanting to prod and poke and hurt me more.

  "You're awake."

  I bristled, wincing again, at the familiar voice. "What the hell are you doing here?"

  My birth father walked around my bed to sit in the chair underneath the window. He looked tired and worn, and his clothes were wrinkled. The same clothes he'd worn to the clubhouse when he'd spoken with Sky and let slip about my previous job—a hired gun for the mob.

  I hadn't had the time to lay into him yet, considering I'd gone off half-cocked and tracked down a lead on the pedo right after Sky and I had a huge blow-up and she told she never wanted to see me again. This was all his fault. My birth father had never been there for me. Sure he hadn't known I was alive, and as soon as he found out, he had sought me out, but when I had needed him the most he hadn't been there for me. The guy who replaced him in my life, my foster father, had molested me, scarred me, twisted and molded me into the man I was now.

  "The hell do you want?" I asked before he could respond to my first question.

  "I'm so glad you're all right. We… We weren't sure if you'd make it."

  "I'm here, aren't I?" I said almost bitterly.

  "Surgery almost turned sour, from what I overheard. The bullet was close to your heart, and they couldn't get to it at first. But, with time, you should be fine. You will be fine."

  "I'll never be fine." I closed my eyes so I wouldn't have to look at him. At times, I hated him. Didn't matter if that wasn't fair. Maybe I was incapable of love. I sure hated myself. How could I say I loved Sky if I hated everyone else?

  "I can apologize until I'm blue in the face, and you'll still never forgive me."

  "You've said I'm sorry so many times I don't think you know what it means." I opened my eyes and glowered at him.

  "You just need to know that I'm not going to say I'm sorry about telling Sky."

  My fists clenched so tightly my teeth ached. "She left me because you couldn't keep your big mouth shut."

  "She came back because she was worried about you. It was because of her that I even knew you had taken off. We tracked your cell—"

  My cell. Right before darkness had claimed me and I thought the Grim Reaper would be the next person I saw, I had wanted so badly to call her. I hadn't been able to, but it hadn't mattered. She had heard the cry of my heart anyhow.

  What the hell? Cry of my heart? The medicine they were pumping into me must be making me loopy or something.

  "—and we found you. Got you out of there a minute or so before the police arrived. The only reason why you're here and not in a morgue is because of Sky. Her concern saved your life. So no, I'm not going to apologize. If you want that woman to be in your life for the long haul, she has to be able to accept you, all of you, your past, your present, your future. All of it. And I think she might be able to do that."

  Damn him. That was why I had told Allie about my job in the first place. I had wanted her to understand me, to accept me, to be on my side. But she hadn’t been able to, so I hadn't planned on ever telling Sky for fear that she would have left me too.

  And she had left me.

  And then come back.

  Sky must still care for me, and I sure as hell cared for her. Hope filled me, and I couldn't talk, some of my anger melting away.

  A nurse, an older woman with a kind face, even though she had enough wrinkles to be an authentic witch for Halloween, came in then. After she had checked me over, I cleared my throat. "Is there a woman waiting to see me?" I asked, glancing between the nurse and my father.

  "I'll go see. Would you like to sit up?"

  I grimaced. "Can I?"

  "Let me know when I should stop." She pressed a button on the side of my bed, and it raised me up to a sitting position. Holy fuck did it hurt, but once I was somewhat upright, I felt a little more human.

  "Thanks," I muttered.

  She nodded and left.

  My father and I sat in silence. When Sky came in a good ten minutes later—during the wait I figured she wasn't going to bother to come, that she had changed her mind about me again, that she had left—I gasped. She looked beautiful, like always, but I could see she was trying to hide the fact she had been crying. Over me.

  Over me.

  My heart began to race. Even here, in a hospital bed, after surgery, I still wanted her. I would always want her. I had to have her in my life. Didn't she realize how much she meant to me? She was the only good thing in my life, the only light. Darkness was all I had without her.

  "Sky." I held out my right hand to her. My left arm was bandaged in such a way that I couldn't move it, not that I wanted to.

  Her face unreadable, she approached the bed but didn't touch me. "You're alive."

  "For now." I cracked a smile.

  Evidently, that was the wrong thing to say because she grimaced. "That's not funny."

  I opened my mouth but quickly closed it. I didn't want to fight with her. Not again. So I patted the bed, needing her to be close to me. "Please, sit."

  For a moment, I thought she would refuse, but then she gingerly sat down. The bed shifted, and I gasped in pain.

  She jumped back up, hands at her mouth. "I'm sorry."

  "Don't be." I grinned. "I'm just a little broken, that's all. I'll be as good as new soon, you'll see."

  "'A little broken,'" she repeated. She shook her head, lips pursed.

  "All right. A lot," I admitted. Hell, she wouldn't give me an inch. Maybe that was a good thing. I needed someone who would stand up to me. But I also needed someone who would stand up beside me too. I so badly wanted her to be the woman for me, but maybe I was expecting too much of her. Maybe I was supposed to be alone.

  "Shadow…" She wrung her hands. "What happened?"

  "I—"

  "Your blood was all over the carpet." Sky bit her lower lip. I hated seeing her so worried, but it also gave me hope. If she was worried, she really did care for me, which meant I still had a chance.

  Right?

  "Do the police…" She took a deep breath. "Do they have your DNA on file? Will they know you were there, that you were shot? Will they track you down?"

  "They don't. I've never been on their radar. Too smart for that." I grinned and winked at her. "I make sure to pay my speeding tickets immediately. All they've ever gotten on me."

  "Not even when…" She swallowed hard. "No transactions?"

  Drug exchanges? I shook my head. "Too careful for that."

  Her eyes widened. "The mob protected you, didn't they?"

  She was too smart for her own damned good. "Yeah. Ok, so maybe there had been one thing, but they made it go away. Sure, the police will enter the blood into their system, but it won't have anything to match to."

  "For now." She crossed her arms. "One day, though, you'll slip up and then they'll be able to match you and what then? They'll have you for…" Her voice had been rising, echoing in the small hospital patient room, but now Sky glanced around and lowered her voice, leaning close to me. "Murder," she hissed in a low whisper.

  "Self-defense." Which was the truth. The guy had fired off a hell of a lot more shots than I had. He'd had two guns, for fuck's sake!

  "You went into that apartment armed
with the intent to kill, to commit murder." Her glower would make anyone confess.

  Fuck, we were fighting again. Time to change the subject, and the words poured out, straight from my heart. "Sky, I can't thank you enough for coming back. If it weren't for you, I'd be dead. You saved my life."

  She straightened and backed away from me, holding up her hand to stop me. "You took off by yourself. How could you go out like that? On a suicide mission! Didn't you realize how that would affect me?"

  I gaped at her. She had been the one to leave me, but she was acting like it was the other way around. Ok, yeah, so I had been a little suicidal. That was as much on her as it was on me. "I wasn't aware you still cared for me," I said bitterly.