by Madison Faye
Because it took one second for all three of us to fall in love with Mia Thorne.
…And Ryan Cunningham needed only one second more to take her away.
I slammed the gun down and grabbed a second, shoving the cartridge in with a sharp snapping sound.
Cunningham had officially fucked with the wrong guys.
He didn’t know about Amy — well, at least didn’t know our connection to her. That’d been part of our goal with getting back into the scene at the Auction House, in order to get close to him so we could take him out. But he knew about Mia alright.
And he’s just hit our breaking point, whether he knew it or not. This was it — this was the line that snapped us over the edge.
The plan to take him out was a long-term one, and there were a few months left before we’d planned our final move. But now? Well, now Cunningham had moved that deadline up.
Considerably.
Because today was the day we acted.
Today was the day he died.
They’d fucked with the wrong guys. For one, because we were past caring now. But for two?
I smiled grimly.
Well, for two, because we dealt fucking guns for a living.
I glanced around the stockade — what we called the subterranean network of supply rooms, barracks, and garages that we’d built beneath the mansion. I could almost laugh. Yeah, bad fucking move, Ryan. The place was a literal fucking arsenal that rivaled the armies of most small counties.
And now we were locked, loaded, and ready to go.
“Oliver.”
I glanced up to see Erik looking grim as he slung a shotgun over his back. “Helicopter inbound. Let’s go do this.”
“Let’s go get our girl back,” Ash growled, strapping a wicked-looking knife to his leg.
I nodded.
Because we would get her back.
And then we’d kill every single one of the bastards that took her.
22
Mia
“I’m a man of certain tastes, Mia.”
I shivered at the cold steel of the blade, swallowing thickly as Ryan dragged the dull side of it against my cheek.
Ryan’s midtown penthouse apartment was the entire top two floors of a building — all glass walls looking out over the twinkling city lights. It’d be beautiful, in another situation.
One where I wasn’t tied to a chair in his living room while he breathed down my neck and teased a blade against my skin.
“Now,” he said. “I know where you’ve been, and who you’ve been with.”
He shook his head, eyes narrowing as he moved in front of me and leveled them at me.
“You know, some might call you damaged goods, but me? Well, to me, you’re not.” He smiled wickedly as he twirled the blade in front of my eyes. “Well, not yet you aren’t.”
“You let me the fuck go.”
He grinned. “A kitty with claws, I see.”
“Fuck you.”
He sucked on his teeth, making a “tsking” sound.
“I thought they’d break you in, those three. Guess they failed.” He chuckled to himself. “Guess they weren’t man enough.”
“Believe me,” I smiled sweetly at him. “They’re definitely man enough.”
He leaned down, eyes level with me. “I know those three shits have certain tastes — certain darker tastes.” He growled. But trust me.” He leaned forward, and I shriveled from him as his lips drew close to my ear.
“Trust me when I say their tastes are nothing compared to mine.”
The blade slid over my skin again, making me shiver.
“Is your thing talking me to death?”
His eyes narrowed as he whistled. “You really want me to make this hurt don’t you?”
“You’re still talking.”
I knew I was pushing him, but I also knew I didn’t care. Because I’d figured something out about myself, there in that house with Oliver, Ash, and Erik. And as strange as it sounds to have learned it through submission, and giving up control, it’s the truth.
I’d learned a strength I’d never known I had.
I learned about that hidden part of me, deep inside — the part of me that was stronger than I ever knew I was, and the part of me that gave me a power I’d never known.
It was also the part of me that refused to cower to men like Ryan Cunningham.
“You know,” he hissed, leaning close and hefting the knife. “I think we’ll start with your tongue. And then?” He smiled sickeningly as he traced the blade down over the font of my shirt, down lower as his other hand stroked the small bulge in his pants.
“Then we’ll have some real fun.”
There was a whirring sound in the distance, something mechanical and chopping that came through even over the distant sound of the city below. Ryan’s brow furrowed, when there was a knock at the door.
“I’m still occupied in here,” he bellowed.
The knock came again, and he hissed as he whirled again. “What?”
Two men rushed in, looking grim. “Mr. Cunningham, sir!”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, what is—”
“There’s a helicopter approaching the building.”
Ryan frowned. “What for? I didn’t call any—”
“It’s not ours, sir, it’s—”
The glass wall behind us overlooking the city suddenly shattered under a hail of bullets as Ryan and the other man screamed and dove for the floor.
The helicopter pulled up, hovering even with the shattered window.
And my jaw dropped.
It was them.
More men poured into the room, guns blazing. Oliver and Ash returned fire from the open doorway of the helicopter, scattering the men as bullets raked the walls.
In the chaos of the moment, I lurched to one side, slamming over onto my side and feeling the wind knock out of me. But I also felt my arms slip free of the ties holding me. I scrambled, kicking free of the ties holding my legs as I made a dash for—
One of Cunningham’s men suddenly hefted a large pipe onto one shoulder and leveled it at the chopper.
I froze.
Not a pipe.
A rocket.
Oh God.
The explosion deafened the room, shattering the shelves behind the man as the rocket thundered out of the launcher. The helicopter jerked up, pulling hard away, but it was too late. The tail erupted in fire as the rocket clipped it, fire and shrapnel ricocheting through the shattered windows as the chopper started to veer up and spin.
And then I did what I swore I wouldn’t in front of Ryan.
I screamed.
23
Erik
Alarms screamed through the chopper, lights flashed, and sparks and smoke belched from the control panel against my face. I roared, jerking the stick up and hauling us up away from the windows as we started to spin.
I could hear the screech of shattered metal, and started to choke on the acrid smoke pouring into the cockpit. I glanced behind me, my face grim.
“We’re going down.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Ash hissed.
I slammed the sick left to right, fighting the loss of control as we started to veer wildly around the rooftop of Ryan’s penthouse.
I’d gotten one look at her — one fleeting glimpse of her tied to that chair in there before we’d been hit. And her face was the only thing flashing through my mind as the whole thing started to spin out of control. Not the fortunes we’d made, not the life we’d built.
Her, and the life we could have had with her.
I gritted my teeth, muscles straining as I yanked the stick hard, keeping us away from a neighboring building.
Mia.
Mia who was everything, for one quick flash of a second.
And then something in me snapped.
Fuck this.
Fuck going down like this. Fuck her tied up and in the hands of that monster being the last image I had of her.
I
whirled back to my friends. “Fuck it. You ready to make this count?”
Ash grinned like a maniac, as Oliver nodded. “Fuck yeah.”
The helicopter veered wildly as I yanked the rotors down. “I’m gonna try for the roof!” I bellowed behind me.
“If we miss?”
I glanced back at Ash. “Then it’s been an honor—”
“Shut up.”
I grinned. “If I miss, it’s gonna be a long drop and a quick stop at the street thirty stories down.
He nodded grimly, and Oliver leaned forward. “Here’s a wild idea, what if you don’t miss?”
I laughed, feeling the rush of this — the danger and the adrenaline pulsing through me.
The helicopter started to disintegrate around us as I aimed us right at the roof at an insane angle.
“It should go without saying that this is going to be a rough fucking landing,” I roared at them as the city lights blurred around us and the roof came screaming towards us.
I jumped from the cockpit, lurching for the open side door along with my friends.
“Lock and load,” I muttered to myself.
It was go time.
24
Ash
The crash is still a blur to me, even now.
We hit like thunder, the rotary blues shredding up the roof and shattering the other windows. The whole damn thing flipped, and that’s when the three of us jumped free, tucking and rolling away.
We came up firing.
Honestly, I wish I could say there was this big fire-fight, but that shit was fast. No one expected that entrance, for one. That and the helicopter itself took out about half of Cunningham’s guys as it went skidding and rolling across the roof.
The rest were just shocked that we were alive as we quickly made them very much not alive.
Gunfire raked the side of the wall next to me, and I roared as I darted out, dropping to my knees and leveling two more of the guys.
“Ash!”
I flattened as Oliver fired over me, dropping another goon with his shotgun.
The three of us shot our way past the last three of them before we went barreling into the stairwell and racing down the stairs to Cunningham’s penthouse.
“Not a step closer!”
We froze. There in the doorway of his place, all three of us bristling at the sight of Ryan brandishing a knife at her.
“Not a step,” he hissed, eyes darting around like a man who knows he’s cornered and just about out of options. “I mean it!” he squealed.
We kept walking.
The thing is, I knew Ryan Cunningham — we all did. We’d studied him and pieces of shit just like him like it was our religion, preparing for his take-down. And men like Ryan — men who enjoyed hurting women — were easy to figure out.
They were all weak, and when push came to shove they broke.
All of them.
Because it doesn’t take a strong man to beat on or force himself on women, it takes the weakest fucking kind of man there is. It takes a spineless piece of shit to do that.
Which is exactly what he was. It was also exactly why we knew he wouldn’t do it. It was why we knew he was a man of backing away, not a man of action.
Like us.
Because when push came to shove, Ryan Cunningham and men like him were really just big pussies.
He screeched as we rushed him, letting go of Mia in his haste to scamper away. I roared as my fist got him in the teeth, bloodying his mouth. Oliver’s swing got him across the face, breaking his nose and making him scream, and Erik’s elbow to the ribs most certainly broke a few.
We pulled Mia behind us as we pushed Ryan back, fists raining down on him as he stumbled further and further back in his futile attempt to get away from us.
This was for Amy. This was for Mia. This was for every single other woman he’d hurt over the years.
“Okay! Okay!” he screamed. “I’m sorry alright?! Fuck, keep her!”
We kept moving.
“You want money?!”
Oliver laughed bitterly.
Ryan’s face paled. “Well what the fuck do you want?” He gasped as he felt his back come against the shattered frame of his floor-to-ceiling windows, the wind from the city streets thirty stories below whistling past us.
“What the fuck do you want!?” he screeched.
“What do we want?” Erik said softly, grabbing him by the collar and yanking him close.
“We want our fucking sister back, you piece of garbage.”
The three of us grabbed him, and without a second’s hesitations, we pushed.
His heel caught, his body tripped backwards, his eyes went wide—
And we turned away.
Mia’s eyes were wide as we turned back to her, and I shook my head. “Before you say anything, before you tell us that was wrong, or murder, or—”
“I’m not going to say any of those things,” she said quietly, stepping over the rubble before she just gave up and ran into our arms. She melted into us as we held her tight, breathing in her scent, and letting the warmth of her radiate into us.
She lifted her face and pressed her lips tightly to Erik, kissing him fiercely before pulling away and moving to Oliver, who scooped her close. She pulled back and turned to me, her face flushed as she threw her arms around my neck and let my mouth sear itself to hers.
“I was just going to say thank you for flushing that piece of trash away,” she finally said as she broke away.
I grinned. “My kinda girl,” I murmured, as I leaned down to kiss the top of her head.
“Can we go home now?”
Oliver grinned. “Oh, it’s home now?”
“I could keep calling it the tower, where the wicked beasts have me locked up.”
“The locking up part could be arranged,” Erik murmured.
“I’ll wear my finest choker.”
We all grinned as we pulled her close, kissing her, claiming her.
Loving her.
Always.
Epilogue
Mia
And somehow, the three evil beasts who locked me in the tower turned out to be the knights in shining armor after all.
Well, maybe more like knights in black, tailor-fit, non-shiny armor, but you get what I mean.
You’d have thought crashing a helicopter into a building in midtown Manhattan, getting into a gun fight, and then throwing a man off said building would land you in a world of trouble. And you’d be correct — that is, unless you worked under the table for the US Government. And let me say, friends in high places are a very good thing to have if you plan on doing any of those things.
Especially the helicopter part.
Whoever Ash, Erik, and Oliver’s “friends” were, they made the whole thing disappear. Completely. The crash was deemed an accident, and the gunfight and dead thugs swept under the rug. Ryan’s death was declared a suicide in the papers, but the message had been sent.
And it was heard.
The night on that penthouse roof changed a lot. It’s funny to think of there being “good” criminals and “bad” criminals, but the fact of it is, there are both. After that night, the bad ones — including Johnson Cunningham and the rest of his goons — sort of disappeared.
The Auction House has reopened — back to its original concept, and with its original clientele — both the women who choose to be there and the men who take them home. It’s still a funny concept to me, but then, it’s not a scene I or my men have anything to do with anymore.
Not since we decided four was a pretty solid number.
My mother never heard the real story, because honestly, there was no need to freak her out. I did come clean about the fact that I was moving in with three rich, powerful men, and I even leveled with her about the nature of that relationship. Eyebrows were raised, and pearls were clutched, but at the end of the day, she was just happy that I was happy. It certainly didn’t hurt that when she met them, Ash, Oliver, and Erik were the most freaking
charming versions of themselves I’d ever seen.
Andrea was another story. Andrea got the whole story because she’d been dragged into it.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Ryan’s people had her when I’d called. They’d kicked down the door to our apartment earlier that very day, dragged her away, and waited for me to call. They’d had the chopper and the men on standby, and made her at gunpoint talk me into stepping outside, where they could grab me. Luckily, we’d found her right after Ryan went over the edge that night, pounding on a closet door a floor below. She was a wreck, of course, and she’d thrown her arms around me as we’d both let the tears come.
“I’m so sorry! About all of it!”
She felt the whole thing was her fault, of course, what with setting me up with Blaine’s friend. But Ash, Oliver, and Erik set her straight soon enough, helping me to calm her, and to let her know about the divide in the scene. As it turns out, Blaine really was a good guy, and out of the Auction House scene enough that he had no idea what kind of guy Ryan really was. My three men actually knew him, at least peripherally, and I think them vouching for him being one of the good ones went a long way with Andrea.
He’s since stopped paying her for dates and asked her to marry him, and their wedding is next month.
And the month after that?
Well, the month after that I get to figure out how to throw a wedding with one bride and three grooms without causing the scandal of the century.
I know the saying is “three is crowd,” and you know what? That’s actually true. But who’s to say a crowd is a bad thing? A crowd is a group, or a tribe, or a club. A crowd can be connected, and bound together. And our crowd?
Well, our crowd is a family, and that’s something I’m never giving up, no matter what they say.
Besides, let ‘em talk.
…We’ll just have to go out of our way to give them something to talk about.
The End.
Surprise!
