RIDING WRONG (Steel Titans MC, #2)

by Franca Storm

  By Mason.

  I was so shocked that it stopped me short, just shy of exposing myself.

  Amid the sudden commotion coming down the line from Liam and the rest of the boys trying to get him to back off, I cut in, hissing, “Mason, what the fuck are you doing?”

  Ignoring everybody else, he answered me, “Living up to my promise.”

  What did that mean?

  Before I could get another word out, he bellowed out to Nik as he stormed toward the sedan, “You want her? Come and fucking get her! Let’s get this bullshit over and done with!”

  The Strikers pulled their pieces, training them on Mason, all of them looking more than a little trigger happy.

  “Your SAA's got some balls,” Nik commented to Slade as he stepped back from him and stalked over to Mason. He held his hand up at his boys as he went, commanding, “Hold up.”

  Mason walked around to the rear passenger door and Nik joined him.

  “So, you boys really did come to your senses then. Figured on you double-crossing me.”

  “She’s not happy about this whole shitshow. You’re gonna need something to calm her down with,” Mason said, knowing the sick, twisted way Nik operated. He was doing a good job of using it to his advantage right now.

  “Sounds like my girl,” he laughed.

  It had my fists clenching white-hot. His girl? Talk about fucking deluded.

  He snapped his fingers and his boys came forward, all six of them crowding around the door, seemingly what Mason had intended with the fake warning he’d just given to Nik. He wanted them all in one place. Why? What was he playing at?

  Rick handed over a syringe to Nik. “Take it easy. She’s just scared,” he said to Nik, his real concern for Tasha obvious.

  Nik scoffed and snatched the syringe from him. “Shut it,” he said, not liking being told to tone it down.

  As the Strikers moved in closer to the door I watched Mason inch his way back away from them, away from the Sedan.

  He slipped his hand inside his pocket and palmed something that I couldn’t quite make out.

  But, being a lot closer than I was, Nik did, suddenly bellowing, “Motherfucker! Get back, boys! Get back!”

  Everything happened so fast then.

  Mason pulled the thing from his pocket, then made a run for it.

  Nik and his boys tried to do the same.

  But some of them were slower than others and didn’t make it back far enough before flames lit up the sky as one hell of an explosion blew the sedan apart.

  Screams tore through the night.

  Gunfire erupted.

  We all broke position and ran into the fray.

  Those Strikers who’d made it far enough away to avoid taking the brunt of the explosion, came at us.

  Nik barked out orders to put us all to ground.

  Slade tackled him, slamming him down on his back with a jarring thud on the concrete.

  They wrestled one another brutally, two hardened men so used to the mechanics of battle that even a shocking turnabout to both of their best laid plans didn’t faze them too much. It was just another obstacle they were both able to shift gears to decimate with any means necessary. At any cost.

  Their long-time feud had spilled so much blood, endangered so many, cost the lives of so many. And, right now, it was risking the life of the woman I loved and my unborn child.

  Enough was enough.

  I bolted over to them ready to put that motherfucker, Nik, to ground.

  I was just a few feet out when Nik got the upper hand on Slade with a dirty fucking move, sweeping his leg at his ankles as he made it to his feet.

  Slade hit the ground again, smacking his face hard on the concrete, blood spurting from a clearly broken nose. Using it to his utmost advantage, Nik rolled back to his feet and pulled his gun, cocking it and taking aim at Slade.

  Before he could even fire, a gunshot rang out. It missed him by a hair, the bullet imbedding in the exterior wall of the abandoned gas station. I jerked my head to see Liam sprinting toward them with his gun in firing position. No wonder he’d missed, given that he was running at top speed.

  Nik’s eyes narrowed dangerously at him and he fired off a shot. A pained grunt came from Liam as it plunged into his shoulder, the force and shock of it slamming him back. He lost his balance and crashed to his knees. As his hand went to his shoulder, blood oozed over his fingers. Shit. It was coming too quickly, he was losing too much blood too fast.

  “No! Go!” he gritted out as I skidded to a stop beside him. “Take him down. End this,” he willed me.

  “Go,” a familiar voice called out, and I turned to see Mason hurrying over. “I’ve got him.”

  I hesitated one more moment on leaving the side of my wounded brother, but as Mason reached Liam and started tending to him, I knew he had it in the bag. Two of us weren’t needed.

  With a swift kick to Nik’s gut, Slade managed to buy himself enough time to get back to his feet. But before he was able to take another shot at Nik, Rick jumped in between them trying to break it up. The both of them were so stunned that someone was trying to actually put an end to the violence amid a massive battle between the best of the best of two clubs that they hesitated.

  It bought me the time I needed to hurtle across the distance.

  My peripheral vision picked up two Strikers members running for me, no doubt intending to stop me from reaching their Prez. A roar cut through the night. The next thing I knew, Tank was literally throwing himself at them, tackling them both to the ground at once like the beast of a man that he was.

  No need to worry about that then.

  I made it just as Nik grabbed Rick by the scruff of his neck and started giving him shit, issuing threats and hell knew what else to his own club brother.

  In the next second, I was lunging at him and driving him into the side of the gas station. He choked, the wind knocked out of him.

  That was fucking nothing.

  I was just getting started.

  Like I’d sworn to myself a long time ago, I’d bring hell to his door and make him experience my brutality up close.

  It was time.

  I’d end him.

  For Natasha. For our kid. For the club. For me.

  I slugged him hard in the gut, making him double over. Then I delivered a nasty uppercut to his chin, forcing his head to snap back, and a grunt to escape him.

  He thrust his knee up, but I reacted swiftly, batting it away with my hand.

  Another blow came my way, but I brought my arm down in an arc, deflecting it with ease.

  “Dumb fucking kid,” he growled. “Think you can strike me with no fallout? You’re a dead man.”

  “Yeah,” I seethed, punching him in the gut again. “I do.”

  He grabbed wildly at the wall, trying to hold himself up.

  I went in for another hit, but he dodged it, then darted around me, came up on my side and wrapped his arm around my neck, trying to choke me out.

  “She weren’t in that cage, was she?” he asked. “No way Slade woulda let you be here for that, knowing how you feel about her.”

  Human instinct when having someone or something exerting pressure around your windpipe was to grab at the offending object. But trying to break a strong grip like that was majorly unlikely, unless there was a crazy-ass strength disparity. Nah, you had to be smart and resist your natural instinct.

  Fortunately, as a trained fighter, that was what I was all about.

  Going for the weak spots.

  I thrust my elbow back, driving into his diaphragm. The instant choking effect had him loosening his grip just enough to give me time to hook the back of his knee with my motorcycle boot, destabilizing him. That was all I needed to shift the balance and, with a sudden twist of my body, I spun us, slamming his back into the wall. Over and over, until it weakened his hold enough for me to rip his arm from around my neck. I spun out, away from him, raising my fists and shifting to a ready-for-anything fighting stance.<
br />
  I took in his wearied, disheveled state.

  I knew then. I knew I could take him.

  I was stronger, faster, better trained.

  Commotion from my left threatened to distract me.

  In the ring, my focus was always entirely on my opponent. Any break in that was a recipe for defeat. But this situation was different. It wasn’t just a one-on-one battle. There were a load of players involved, a shitload of untamable variables flying about all over the place. It meant, I had to split my focus between Nik and the rest of the battlefield.

  Fortunately, Nik was distracted too and as he looked over there, I took the opportunity to do the same.

  I saw Rick a few feet behind me still trying to hold Slade back, mostly trying to use diplomacy. Just like the tactic he’d tried to use with me a few weeks back at that diner lot. Damn him for not being as fucked-up as the rest of the Strikers. He’d already demonstrated several times that he actually cared about Tasha, that he actually had more than just a shred of humanity left in him despite his time in Nik’s employ. The son of a bitch was redeemable.

  And that complicated things for me.

  Things weren’t so cut and dry when it came to him.

  I couldn’t just let him suffer the same fate as all the other assholes surrounding him.

  Fuck.

  “Been a long time coming,” Nik told me, as he pushed off the wall and readied himself. “Shoulda never taken my woman, cuz punishment’s coming now, boy.”

  “She was never yours,” I spat. “You’re a deluded madman. The only way to stop crazy is to put it to fucking ground. She’s never gonna have to look over her shoulder again. No more endless running. She’s gonna be free.”

  He sneered. “My girls never get away. Just ask Slade.”

  The threat in his words stabbed deep, hitting that place where I fought every day to keep my destructive rage buried. I sucked in a breath, clenching my fists tighter in a white-hot grip to try to hold it at bay. If I let it out I’d lose my ability for rational thought. I’d become a fucking rage monster whose only focus was dealing out pain, blood and death. Just like what’d happened with Mikhail.

  I’d thought I’d moved past that fucked-up, out-of-control version of me.

  But maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe it’d always be a part of me. Maybe it was just the case of hitting the right trigger and I’d fucking well lose it, lose myself.

  Nah, I couldn’t accept that.

  I couldn’t be that as a father, as a husband.

  I had to do better.

  And I had to start now.

  “Nice try,” I told Nik, who was watching me closely, obviously hoping his words would’ve fucked with my head. He’d been keeping an eye on me, researching me for a long fucking time, ever since I’d gotten together with Tasha. He knew me well.

  The old me.

  A roar of fury tore from his throat and he lost it instead, unable to handle his failure to regain the upper hand by setting me off. He came at me hard and fast, his blows much harder to block than last time.

  “She’s mine!” he bellowed. “You shit! Mine!”

  I managed to hold him off despite the wild thing he’d become, ducking and weaving, blocking.

  Then I came up after a deep crouch to evade a hit to the jaw and swung an uppercut at his. He grunted, his head snapping back. Then he stumbled.

  I had my in to finish it.

  Lunging at him, I tackled him to the ground.

  I managed to gain the dominant position quickly, straddling him, pinning his legs to the ground with mine. Before I could incapacitate him completely, his hand shot forward so fast I didn’t see what he was doing until I felt a sharp stabbing sensation at the side of my neck. Reacting quickly, I grabbed at it to find a syringe buried there.

  As I ripped it out, I already felt whatever the fuck was in there starting to take effect.

  Weakness.

  It was the syringe he’d had over by the sedan earlier. He’d managed to hide it in his pocket. I’d figured it’d been left there and blown away like everything over there.

  “That was meant to knock Natasha out for hours. Fast-acting, powerful shit. Strong enough to take down even a stubborn shit like you,” Nik told me, as he used my shock to kick me off him.

  I rolled onto my back.

  As I tried to get back to my feet, the weakness worsened and a nauseating light-headedness took me over.

  Shit. I couldn’t get up fast enough.

  Nik’s boot slammed into my side.

  Once. Twice. Three times.

  He kept going, beating on me all over.

  The pain should’ve been jarring. But it was little more than an uncomfortable agitating sensation. That shit he’d injected me with was masking it, pulling me from an aware conscious state and dragging me down into the undertow.

  I knew if I succumbed I’d die. He wouldn’t stop until he killed me.

  I’d never been afraid of dying until now.

  Because of them. Tasha and my kid.

  I couldn’t let it happen, I couldn’t leave them all alone. They needed me.

  The kicking stopped then Nik stood in front of me, glaring down at me.

  My limbs were so heavy, but I still tried to reach for my gun in my hip holster.

  But I was way too slow and weak and he thrust his boot at my hand, knocking it away from the weapon.

  I saw his mouth moving, his irate expression and jerky movements. I couldn’t make out what he was saying. It all sounded like a jumbled, fading mess of words.

  He drew his gun, cocked it and took aim with both hands.

  And then he jerked wildly.

  Blood spurted from his chest, trickling down his shirt.

  He opened his mouth, spitting up more blood, his eyes wide in shock.

  What the hell?

  Someone had shot him?

  Who? Everyone had been busy with their own shit.

  Mason. He must’ve finished up with Liam and come to my aid.

  Yeah, it had to be Mason.

  24

  ~Natasha~

  HE SLUMPED TO HIS KNEES.

  Very slowly, he turned his head.

  I’d never seen him so shocked in all the time I’d had the displeasure of knowing him. I hadn’t even thought it a possible reaction from him.

  Then again, being the misogynistic asshole he was, he’d always underestimated me.

  That’d really bitten him in the ass now.

  I watched him choke, his body shaking violently, the shock of getting shot setting in.

  It wasn’t a fatal wound.

  I’d missed in my panic when I’d seen him about to kill the man I loved right before my eyes.

  But he was down.

  And I planned on keeping it that way.

  “Natasha,” he managed to eke out. His eyes dropped to my belly and he cursed. Obviously putting two and two together, he gritted his teeth, then snapped up his gun that he’d dropped when I’d shot him.

  He started to shift toward Cole, slowly in his wounded state.

  I fingered the trigger. No way. No way was he gonna take my love from me.

  A shot cut through the night, jarring me.

  I cringed as a bullet tore through Nik’s temple.

  He hit the ground like a ragdoll.

  Dead.

  A familiar rumbling voice sounded. “It’s over, darlin’.”

  Fighting to swallow down my shock at the majorly up close brutality I’d just witnessed, I turned to see Slade striding over to me.

  To add to the shock, he wasn’t alone. Rick was walking beside him.

  I looked around.

  All was quiet on the battlefield.

  All the Strikers members were either dead or incapacitated. Groaning came from a couple of them and Liam who was being helped along by Mason, a makeshift bandage wrapped around his shoulder.

  It was majorly eerie.

  I moved past Nik’s corpse and went to Cole. I tried to kneel down, but I co
uldn’t in my heavily-pregnant state, not right down on the ground like that.

  “Wait,” I heard Slade say, and the next thing I knew, he was hauling a barely-conscious Cole up. Tank was there in the next second on Cole’s other side, both of them sharing the brunt of his almost deadweight.

  I reached out and grasped Cole’s hand.

  I wasn’t sure if he was really seeing me. His pupils were so dilated, his gaze so unfocused, it was doubtful.

  But I told him anyway, “He’s gone. You’re safe. We’re all safe.”

  He mumbled something incoherent.

  “Let’s get him to the club doc. Who knows what the fuck was in that shit he was stabbed with,” Tank said, picking up the pace.

  As I walked alongside them, Slade eyed me, what looked like pride shining in his eyes. “You saved his life, you know that?”

  I shrugged. “I did what I had to do.”

  He smiled. “You got my respect.”

  They were words I’d never thought I’d hear from any Steel Titans member outside of Cole, let alone the President.

  I was honestly a little choked up by it and only just managed to eke out, “Thank you.”

  As we reached the bikes, I told the boys, “I’ll take him and Liam in the truck. They can’t ride right now. You do what you need to do here.”

  And, crap, did they have a lot to take care of.

  To cover their tracks with the mess I was seeing all over the area would take one hell of a major cleanup. Fortunately, I knew that Slade was well-connected in that area. He had people who knew exactly what to do and who could do it fast. Disturbing, but in this situation, more than a little comforting.

  “Wait,” Mason said, when I pointed to the truck in the distance. “Is that—?”

  He didn’t get to finish his sentence as Lucy saw him pointing at her and hurried out of her truck and bounded toward him.

  “Fuck,” he groused. “What the hell are you doing here? Both of you put yourself in serious danger by coming here and—”

  “Hey!” Lucy snapped, cutting him off. “Do you really want to get into that right now after what you pulled tonight?”

  For once, Mason looked stumped.

  His relief at seeing her after such a bout of intensity during this awful battle took precedence and his anger melted away. He pulled her into him and held her tightly.