by Sky Winters
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.
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.
A tall man shouted something. More bullets hit, shattering the windows at the front of the apartment. They retreated. Ace hauled her along, one hand solidly on her shoulder. He grabbed a door, a thick and heavy thing. It opened with a heavy creak of hinges and the smell of a dank basement wafted up.
There were shouts and screams. Footsteps pounded down the stairs. The front door flew open and more gunfire echoed as did more screams. The sound of bikes roaring and clashing their gears out on the street rose higher, adding to the din.
Women appeared. Ace shouted at two of them to help Julia and then he was gone. One woman grabbed kids and herded them down the stairs. More women appeared and several of them carried guns and wore grim expressions.
The woman who had grabbed Julia shouted, “Get down the stairs!”
“I can’t leave Ace!” Julia’s scream held desperation.
The woman gave her a hard stare. “You can’t help him with a bad leg. You’ll just get in the way.”
Julian went down the stairs, leaning heavly on the other woman and praying. Terror and exhaustion nagged at her.
The door swung shut and the woman who had herded the kids down the stairs shot a bolt home. They raced into a small room with an outer door. The woman said, “We may have to go out. If we do, shoot anyone who isn’t one of us.”
She shoved a gun at Julia. Julia stared at the hunk of metal in her hands, recoiling from the thing. The other women gathered the kids close and held them tightly. Julia clutched the gun and stared wildly around herself.
One of the woman looked at Julia, “You’re his sister, ain’t you?”
“Not by choice.”
The words held all the bitterness in her heart. “I’m sorry about all of this.”
The woman snorted. The kids huddled on a low sofa, not crying or speaking. The sound of gunfire had ceased but the sound of bikes roaring away was loud even where they were. The woman said, “This war’s been on the brink for years. Walker’s been after the borough for …shit. Forever. He wants the whole city and he doesn’t know how to stop.”
No, he didn’t. Julia licked her lips. “Why don’t the other crews in the other boroughs stand against him?”
The woman gave her a grim look. “Because so far he’s just attacking us. As long as he kept off their turf it wasn’t their prob;em.”
Julia looked down. “Why? I mean why has this been so close to happening for so long?”
The woman stared at her. “You really don’t know, do you?”
Julia shook her head. “Oh, wait. Margo, right?”
The woman snorted. “Margo hell. She’s just one more reason for Ace to hate Walker. This started long before that. Your mama, she was one of us. She was born and raised right here. Her dad was a Brooklyn Son. He was the leader of the crew, all up until he died and Ace took over."
All the air left Julia’s body. Little spots danced before her eyes. The world spun on its axis. “No.”
“Oh yeah. She got scooped by Walker’s dad, your gramps. He got her hooked on him and dope and then treated her like shit for years. She ran and he tried to get her back, he tried to burn us down then too but your gramps stepped in and made sure she and you were safe. When she died Walker took you, and there was nothing your gramps could do about it because he wasn’t listed as your mom’s dad on her birth certificate so the courts didn’t want to hear it. Walker only wanted you to get even with your gramps for killing his dad.”
Oh God. The world went gray. Julia’s body sagged and she took a seat on the sofa, tears streaming down her face. “Nobody ever told me that.”
“Of course they didn’t.” The woman stuck out a hand. “I’m Megan.’
“Julia.” Julia took her hand. She swallowed hard. “Did you know my mom?”
“We all did. She saved Ace’s life once, did you know that?”
Julia shook her head from side to side. “No.”
Megan nodded. “She did. She found him back when he was a snotty ass teenager trying to face down a street dealing pimp who had decided that his cousin was just what he needed in his stable. She hit that dude in the head with a bat and brought Ace and Margo here.”
Julia bent double. Sorrow filled her. Her mother had never told her that. Walker had never told her and Ace had never told her that either.
She wiped her eyes. A little hiccup of laughter came from her mouth. She said, “I guess that explains why I feel more at home here than I ever did at Walker’s.”
Megan smiled at her. “Girl if we don’t all die over this shit, I think you’ll do just fine.”
The other woman looked up. She said, “And there’s the cops. You all stay here. I got this.”
She went up the s
tairs and shut the door behind her. Julia looked at Megan, “Do you think they will be all right?”
Megan sighed. “You know what? I don’t know. Someone’s going to go to jail for this one. Walker really lost his mind this time. I can’t even believe that he did this. I mean shooting up a house in broad daylight? That’s bold as hell but more than that, it’s crazy. The cops are going to have to come down on them and us for this one. So I don’t know. I really don’t.”
The cops were the least of Julia’s worry. She was more afraid that Ace would die without her ever being able to tell him that she loved him. That she loved him with all her heart.
Come back to me, she prayed silently. Just come back to me please.
Chapter 14
The bikes raced through traffic. Sirens started. Cars tried to get out of the way but failed and the bikes went past them, the men on their backs as angry and determined as any of them could be.
Ace spotted Walker riding just ahead. He bent lower over the bike, relaxing his body and hitting the gas as they spun around a long series of curves. The world flashed past. His eyes spotted obstacles a few feet before he reached them and he rode hard, his body slicked with sweat and his shirt flapping in the wind.
The gun resting on his hip warmed under the sun and next to his body. His entire being was focused on catching Walker and ending this once and for all.
Walker took a sharp curve. The bike came dangerously close to eating the pavement but Walker got it under control just in time. Ace had to admire Walker’s skill even as he hoped the bastard would eat it, just ride himself right into Hell.
The other bikes had fallen away as his crew caught up to the men in Walker’s crew. They were in a long and mostly deserted stretch of industrial buildings whose businesses had closed years ago and nothing had ever come back in. Ace was no fool. He knew Walker had come that way for a reason. He had drawn him away from the residential and busier streets to a spot where there would be no witnesses.
