by Franca Storm
He tensed at my ominous words. I could see him fighting himself as he ground out, “All right.”
I braced myself and drew in a soothing breath before telling him, “I have to take this job.”
“What?” he barked, folding his arms across his chest and shifting his weight, all signs I recognized as him trying to hold his temper in check.
“I don’t have a choice, Cole.”
“Of course, you do.” He reached out with shaking hands, courtesy of the adrenaline from his fight with the Strikers not twenty minutes ago still coursing through his veins. I recognized it well, because he was always in the same state after his underground fights. It took him several hours to fully come down from it. He cupped my cheek, his eyes burning into mine with intensity, as he said, “I’m here with you now. I’m not going anywhere this time. I swear it. So, I’ve got your back. I won’t let him force you into anything. We’ve just finished cutting all ties to the illegitimate aspects of your business, I’m not about to let that all end up being for nothing because of that motherfucker.”
“Cole, I—”
He jerked back from me and threw his hands up in the air, his temper finally getting the better of him. He’d been holding it in for too long during all of the Strikers’ provocations. And talking about Nik had sent any chance of him being able to swallow it straight to hell. “You’re not his! Why do you let him do this? After all this time, why can’t you just shake him, woman? He’s not a part of your life anymore! He’s nothing! Why the fuck are you letting him have a hold on you?” He thrust his foot into a nearby bollard and roared at the top of his lungs, “Fuck! I’ll kill him! He’s dead! Dead! I can’t stand hearing you speak his goddamn name! I’ll wipe him out of your life! I’ll end this sick and twisted shit between you two once and for fucking all!”
“Cole,” I spoke calmly, walking to him. Slowly, I held out my hand. The second my fingers brushed his shoulder, he spun around, making me jump.
Hs eyes blazed with fury.
But there was no aggression in his touch as he took my hand.
He was being very careful with me, very gentle, even in the heat of his temper explosion.
I knew he’d never hurt me. It wasn’t even a question.
But I wanted him to calm down and I hated seeing him in such a state. It was because I knew his rage was just a mask. A mask of extreme pain and anguish. And I didn’t want him so upset, so hurt. Ever.
“Why?” he asked, desperately, his voice a strained growl, as he held my hand up between us. “Tell me why you’re letting this happen?”
“Because, I really don’t have a choice, Cole,” I reiterated as gently as possible.
“Argh!” he fumed, releasing me quickly and spinning around, tugging at his chestnut-brown hair wildly. “You do! There’s always a fucking choice and I’m gonna make damned sure you always get one, no matter who tries to fuck with that and back us into a corner! Nik! Slade! You’re carrying our kid and nobody’s gonna jeopardize that! Nobody!”
“Wait a second. Slade?”
He stilled.
“Cole? Tell me now. You still haven’t said. What exactly did Slade send you down here to get from me?” Judging by the way he’d just tied them together during his outburst, I had a pretty good idea now. I just hoped I was wrong. “Tell me it’s not what I’m starting to think it is. Tell me it has nothing to do with Nik.”
He turned back around, breathing heavily. His eyes were filled with pain as he revealed, “Slade wants to use your connection with Nik to draw him out from his heavily-fortified compound.”
“To what end?”
“So we can end him.”
“Oh my God,” I gasped. “That’s why you came here? To push me back into that, so your club can use me for their own vengeful ends?”
“That’s not—”
“You know the lengths I went to in order to escape him, what it took, how long it took, for me to finally escape that demon! And you were all for putting me right back in his line of fire?”
“You wouldn’t be in his line of fire. The club would protect you.”
“Unbelievable,” I said, shaking my head with disbelief. “After all your talk about how much you hate him for everything he did to me, for everything he did to us. And just now, your blowup about this recent bullshit from him. Yet, all along, you had this agenda.” I blew out a breath. “You’re a gifted double agent, I’ll give you that, Cole.”
He closed the distance between us, telling me urgently, “You don’t understand. Let me fucking explain, all right?”
He reached for my hands, but I jerked back, screaming, “Don’t touch me!”
“Tasha,” he beseeched me.
“No! How dare you play me! I thought you were the one person who would never do that with me. How could you—”
“It was all for us!” he bellowed over me. “So we could finally be together, woman!”
His words shocked me into inaction. All I could manage was a croak. “What?”
“Slade has his agenda. I have mine. I would never let Nik hurt you again. Never. The plan was that you would do Steel Titans this favor, helping us take down our worst enemy, and then we’d be in your debt. The club’s perception of you would shift. They’d see you as a hero, not the way they currently see you. I could bring you in, make you a permanent part of my life, and finally fucking well claim you as my woman, because they’d finally accept you. Slade’s willing to give you this option of redemption in exchange for helping him put Nik to ground.”
It was a hell of a lot to take in. We fell into an uneasy silence as I mulled everything over, weighing it all over and over. The strategy itself was as sound as it could be with Nik involved. But it definitely wasn’t without its risks. Major risks.
“Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”
“Because there’s no way any of that’s happening now.”
“What?”
“Any risk is too great now, even with me minimizing it by taking point on Slade’s mission. You’re compromised now, because you’re pregnant. The stress alone would be too much for you and the baby.”
“Wow. That’s one of the most sexist things I’ve heard in a long while.”
“Call it what you want, but it’s the way it is and I’m not gonna risk you. Not in any way. Why do you think I’m so pissed about this bull that’s happened with the Strikers now? I’m having a hard enough time trying to figure out how to work this development with us when it comes to the club, to bring you in without putting you in danger by having you go through with that mission. And, now, this? Another fucked-up Nik Stone situation to deal with.”
The solution was clear as day to me.
But Cole really wouldn’t like it.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much of a choice. From the outline I’d briefly scanned on the phone Rick had given me and the corresponding extremely disturbing video that he’d included for an incentive to force me into it, my solution was the only way.
“I’ll do what Slade needs me to do.”
“You’ll… what?”
“Nik needs putting down, Cole. Now.”
His brow furrowed and his gaze dropped to the phone in my hand. “What’s on that phone? What does he want from you?”
“He wants me to run a narcotics shipment into Steel Titans territory. Nik will spread the word once it’s in place. His goal is clearly to undermine your club’s legitimate status and draw trouble to your door in a big way.”
“Fuck,” he groused. “I can’t let that happen.”
“It has to, Cole. Until we put him down we have to tread very carefully.”
“Why?” he demanded, stepping up to me. “What the hell does he have on you that’s so damned bad that you’d be willing to fuck us over when I’m busting my ass trying to bring you in as mine? Why the fuck, Tasha?”
“It’s not me!” I yelled over his tirade. “It’s you!”
He stopped short. “Me?”
I shoved the phon
e at him. “It’s all here, okay? This is why. He has video footage of you murdering Mikhail Baranov.”
He hastily took the phone and opened the video. I saw his jaw drop, the panic in his eyes. “Son of a bitch. That piece of shit.”
“If he releases this, you’re done for. Slade, too, seeing as though he helped cover it up. Cole, this could take down you and the club. We could both lose everything. That’s why I have to do the job.”
“Fucking shit.”
7
~Natasha~
I HUNG UP WITH MY POINT PERSON.
“Well?” Cole spoke from behind me before I could even breathe out a satisfied sigh. Well, satisfied was an exaggeration. Sure, all the pieces had fallen into place, all the logistics were worked out with the high efficiency and advanced problem-solving skills that I was known for. And I liked when that happened with a job. It gave me a great sense of accomplishment.
But this one was different.
It was a job I was being forced to run for one hell of a son of a bitch.
There was comfort to be found in knowing it had protected Cole and in remembering its place in the grand scheme of things, in our plans to take down Nik Stone at long last. Setting it up would stall Nik with that obsessive instant gratification he always sought out with him thinking he’d delivered a hard blow to the Steel Titans MC. It would also give Cole’s club brothers the impetus they needed to be up for an all-out, dangerous battle with the Strikers. The way I’d heard it, a lot of them were currently on the fence about it. I didn’t blame them. No sane person actually wanted war. Slade had tried to avoid it for a hell of a long time, though, but Nik had left him no choice. He just wouldn’t stop.
They needed to make him.
“Everything is in place.”
It had better be, given that I’d spent the last forty-eight hours arranging things. Cole hadn’t been happy when I’d physically had to go down to the warehouse to get the ball rolling with my guys. There had been many variables in play, all of which had needed to be handled with as much care and skill as possible. It wasn’t just accessing the hard drugs Nik wanted. It was finding a way to get them across Warlow without drawing attention and being stopped at the border. Fortunately, I had solutions to all aspects of the disgusting operation. I’d worked in the business for more than long enough to find a way around pretty much any issue.
Cole shook his head in dismay. “I want to say good, but at the same time—”
“I know. It’s complicated.”
“How are you rationalizing it?”
With a heavy sigh, I put my phone down on my desk. “I know doing this is protecting you from exposure. I also know you’ve made Slade well aware of it, so he can minimize the damage. Basically, it’s a means to an end.”
“Like your work in general, huh?” He gestured out the door at my designer living room in my luxurious penthouse apartment. “Dirty work for living the high life.”
I glared back at him for the out-of-the-blue shot at me. “You know it’s more complicated than that.” I strode over to him, eyeing him pointedly. “Just like your situation is.”
We’d both had to work hard in a down ‘n’ dirty world to survive and, eventually, thrive.
I’d grown up in a bad neighborhood that’d been drowning in drugs and violence, while being raised by a severely depressed mother, my father in the wind. I’d had to pick up the slack, working in retail, restaurants, anything I could, to support us. It’d ended up turning into a full-time situation as she’d reached a breaking point. It’d had me missing too much school to graduate. That’d ended up being the least of my problems when I’d come home after a double-shift and found her dead in the bathtub, her wrists torn open, her life drained away.
Just like Cole, I’d ended up alone in the world in my teenage years.
Fortunately, I had a gift for thinking outside of the box, a relentlessness to succeed about me that just wouldn’t quit in spite of all the obstacles that’d stood in my way at the time. And I was very resourceful.
It’d brought me this. A career. A place in the world. An infamous reputation.
My empire.
But Cole wasn’t wrong. It had come at a cost.
I’d become a loner, because trusting people was ill-advised in the world that I walked in. If I trusted the wrong person, it could actually kill me.
I operated in a dark and dirty world that often attracted extremely dangerous people. It was a balancing act to avoid creating enemies in any of them.
Even though I’d shut down the illegitimate side of my business, it wouldn’t take any of that away. At least, not for a while. A reputation lived a long time. It would take a lot of work and time to convert that into something altogether different.
I watched Cole’s gaze soften as he told me, “I’m sorry. This… all of this… it’s not right. I’m supposed to protect my club, not endanger it.”
“You are protecting it. If we hadn’t done this to appease Nik, you and Slade would be destroyed for what happened with Mikhail. Your lives would be over and how would the club fare then, with their President and their top enforcer locked away for evermore?”
“Yeah, all right,” he muttered resignedly. He scrubbed his hand over his face, struggling to hide his distress with it all. Then, in the next breath, he announced, “Come to the dining room. I made dinner.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “You did?”
“Yeah, well, you were on the phone sorting all this for almost an hour. I had to keep myself busy.”
I knew that well. Cole hated standing still. The guy barely had a thread of patience most of the time. I understood it completely. Living the way we both had for so long, it forced you into survival mode, where you felt like you had to keep moving and be on your toes at all times, that you had to be able to anticipate things. It also put up a lot of walls. It’d taken us a long time to work through that before we’d both been able to trust each other.
It was why it’d been all the more brutal when that incident had happened a few years back. We’d taken so long to open up to each other, then he’d turned his back on me and I’d broken his trust shortly thereafter.
But we were here again now, at that place.
There was such a deep connection between us. It kept bringing us back together.
I just hoped that it would finally stick this time, that we wouldn’t be forced apart again.
Cole held out his hand. I took it and let him lead me out of my office and into the dining room.
“Wow,” I gasped, as I took in the meal he’d prepared, all set in an aesthetically pleasing way on my mahogany dining room table.
Chicken Kiev, roasted garlic potatoes and what looked like chocolate mousse in my frosted glass designer dessert bowls.
I knew he could cook, but it’d been a long time since I’d been fortunate enough to experience it, given that we’d spent so long just hooking up then parting ways again. We hadn’t spent much quality time together.
This, right now, was really nice, and a great callback to how sweet and amazing things had been between us before.
“Here,” he said, as he pulled out a chair for me at the head of the table.
I smiled and took a seat and he even pushed it in. “Nice touch,” I said.
He grinned. “You know I can bring the romance, baby.”
“I do,” I told him as he took a seat adjacent to me.
He gestured to an open bottle of sparkling apple cider and then raised his glass.
“A toast with apple juice, huh?” I chuckled as I raised my glass to his.
“Well, you’re pregnant and I need to be stone-cold sober with everything going on right now.”
“I like it.”
“Yeah, you hate champagne anyway.”
“I do.”
“To us. Our future. Our family,” he said.
Emotion welled within me at his beautiful words and I choked up a little as I met the toast and clinked my glass against his.
Hardly anyone knew about the soft and sweet side to Cole. He believed it would be seen as a weakness to his club brothers and any potential enemies out there. He wanted his reputation to remain as the dangerous, no-holds-barred warrior of the Steel Titans MC. But, to me, it was something to be cherished. And I loved whenever he brought it out.
It was the part of him I’d missed for way too long.
I’d do whatever I had to do to hold onto it.
I wouldn’t let anything break us this time.
8
~Cole~
“WE’LL DO THEM IN THE MORNING,” I said, walking into the kitchen as Tasha was starting the dishes. I’d been on the phone with Slade after we’d finished dinner. I could tell by the furious way she was scrubbing one of the plates that it’d made her antsy. Having him call had also broken through our short-lived reverie. So, she was doing what she often did when she was stressed or upset—keeping busy.
“Is everything okay?” she asked tightly, her back still to me. “Did Slade—”
I wrapped my arms around her from behind. “It’s all good.” My hand delved into her hair, massaging her scalp in a soothing, sensual way that had little moans escaping her, her rigid stance softening. “Let’s not talk about any of it tonight. No business. Just us. The craziness is going to start soon enough. Let’s just enjoy the calm before the storm, Tasha. Let’s have tonight.”
“But, I—”
“I know. I know you’re worried. But I’ve always protected you and that’s not changing now. In fact, it’s gonna be way more intense, so you’d better ready yourself for it.”
A laugh escaped her.
“I trust you with my life, Cole. This time, though, the stakes are so much higher than what we’ve dealt with before.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll do what we’ve always done. Work the problem and come out on top. I’ve got you back with me now and there’s nothing in this world that’s going to fuck with that. I swear it to you.”
She nodded, then turned and kissed my cheek. “I love you.”
“I love you too, baby.”
