His to Protect: Midnight Riders MC

by April Lust

  But that day would have to be in the afterlife. For a moment, it was like the world froze in its orbit. Everyone held their breath, the lights ceased their flickering, and even the stars overhead stood still. I saw my opening, shining among this foul-smelling shithole like it was heaven-sent.

  The bombs.

  The pallet of chemical weapons was parked ten feet behind Cosimo and just far enough to the right of him that I had a clear line of sight. My swollen left hand had hung limply at my knees, but the gun in my right hand was still pointed steadily forward. Right at the wagon.

  The weapons were highly pressurized gas in military grade plastic containers, packaged along with detonators that operated via electrical pulses. Being that it was a black market contraption, however, the entire rig was susceptible to destabilization in the event of dramatic trauma to the integrity of the containing device.

  In other words, a bullet in the right spot would make the whole thing go bang.

  Three things happened at once. I took a deep breath. I yelled, “Run, Natalia!” I pulled the trigger.

  And the world went supernova.

  Chapter 32

  Natalia

  A white hot tidal wave of air hit me at the same time as Nicholas’s voice. “Run, Natalia!” he growled from where he kneeled in front of Cosimo. His voice broke me from my paralysis. I obeyed immediately.

  I swung the heel of my foot into the crotch of the man gripping my arm. He doubled over immediately, taken by surprise. I threw an elbow into his face for good measure, and then I turned and ran.

  The second wave knocked me down. I tried to look backwards, but the light was blinding. I couldn’t hear, couldn’t see. The night was crackling with sparks and an unfamiliar chemical smell that singed at the edges of my nostrils. I could feel the heat baking against my back as I scrambled up. All I could think to do was move my legs. Run, run, don’t stop, don’t ever stop. Keep moving.

  I burst out of the central courtyard and into the intricate pipework surrounding the facility. My breath was like a dagger in the side of my ribs, twisting deeper with every breath, but still, I couldn’t stop. I weaved my way between the massive contraptions of steel. Back behind me, fire and smoke were beginning to fill the air.

  I finally broke out of the labyrinthine factory and onto an access road running behind it. Parked alongside the near edge of the road were a series of white vans, still idling. I ran up to the one in front and yanked open the driver’s side door.

  The keys sat in the ignition. I looked around me. No one had followed. I was completely alone.

  Here it was. The chance to escape that I’d always been waiting for. Anyone who had ever tried to keep me trapped was back in the middle of the sewage plant. No one could stop me now. All I had to do was climb into the car, pop the brake, and drive off to start a new life. I could do it. It was right there.

  So why wasn’t I moving?

  The answer was obvious. Nicholas was still back there.

  I let a banshee wail tear up my throat. I slapped a hand on the side of the van, relishing how good it felt to hit something solid and know that it was real, that this wasn’t all some horrific, never-ending nightmare. The metal rang under my touch.

  “Get in the car and drive, Natalia,” I said to myself. “Do it now. It’s easy. Climb in.” I choked back a sob and got into the seat. The fingers of my right hand came to rest on the keys, my left on the wheel. My foot found the gas pedal. But then I froze.

  “Come on, Natalia,” I urged. “It’s so easy. Just turn the car on. Turn the goddamn car on.”

  But Nicholas. My master, on paper and in body. But so much more than that. The first man who’d ever made me feel like I could truly stand up the way Marco had told me to. There was a lot I had yet to learn about him, but a deep part of me knew the words he said and the past he carried with him would only be a confirmation of the aura he gave off, the one I already felt and knew. I swallowed hard as the words crossed my mind—the one I loved.

  He had taken me so roughly, so harshly. But I’d wanted it then and I wanted it now. I wanted it every day for the rest of my life.

  I had to go find him.

  I bolted out of the car and back towards the factory. The fire had begun to rise up. Shadow puppets danced on the sides of the huge storage tanks. Even from here, I could feel the heat roasting my face. The closer I got, the more intense it became. The smell, too, grew fouler and fouler as I ducked between the piping and zig-zagged between buildings. It was like running into the lowest rung of hell.

  I still wasn’t sure whether the man I was after was a devil or an angel. But I wanted the chance to find out.

  I turned onto a long, thin alleyway between two adjacent buildings. Weighing my options, I spun and headed down it rather than keep wandering the circuitous route I’d escaped by as I searched for Nicholas. I was halfway down when a figure stepped into the light on the other side.

  Alessandra.

  I halted. My heart was attacking the inside of my rib cage, pounding and pounding like it was trying to let her know how much fear was pouring through my veins at the sight of her. It felt like a cold hand was squeezing my stomach into a tiny little ball. My hands shook. My throat went dry.

  Of course it would be her. I’d never be able to escape without facing her, the one who hated me, the one who’d tortured me and taunted me…my sister, Alessandra.

  She was bleeding from a cut on her forehead. Ash was smeared across her face and upper arms and black flakes settled from the air onto her blonde hair, strands of which had fallen from the tight confines of her bun.

  “Hello, sis,” she said. She took careful strides towards me, nails bared and teeth clenched. Her heels clacked on the concrete. “Didn’t think I’d see you again.”

  “I’m leaving,” I told her. “You won’t see me again.”

  “Not a fucking chance,” she spat. “You’re not going anywhere. You were stupid enough to stick around. You’re stupid enough to die.”

  I backed up slowly, matching each of her steps forward with a retreating move of my own. All my weight was loaded into the balls of my feet. I was ready to sprint away at any moment.

  “I thought making your life a living hell would be a fair punishment for what you did to our mother,” she said. She straightened her arms to the sky. Smoke hung around her like a wreath and the fire at the far end of the alley glimmered in the background. “But look what we have here. This is living hell, isn’t it? So I think I’d like just to kill you now. I think I’ll do that.”

  I gulped. I was a couple steps away from the entryway. I could turn and run now. I had enough of a head start; she wouldn’t be able to catch me. But once again, just like when I was back at the van, my body wouldn’t listen. My feet refused to obey. The voices in my head, the cautious ones that had kept me alive for so many years by telling me to keep my head down, to follow orders and not fight back, were screaming for me to go.

  But not this time. Stand up for yourself, Natalia, said Marco. Stand up for yourself, said the boy behind the restaurant. The same refrain, over and over, always heard but never obeyed. This time, I would listen. This time, I would stand my ground.

  I planted a heel into the pavement and waited.

  Alessandra took another step closer. She raised her eyebrow as she said, “Not going to run?”

  “I’m standing right here,” I told her. “Come kill me.”

  She was a yard away. She coiled herself downwards. Then she jumped.

  Her nails were outstretched like the talons of a bird of prey. I ducked as she flew overhead, then rose just when she was at her peak. My shoulder drove into her stomach. I heard the air wheeze from her lungs. She hit the ground behind me. I turned to face her again, but I wasn’t fast enough. She was on me immediately, raking my face with her claws. I screamed as skin tore open beneath them.

  Finding a handful of her hair, I seized tightly and yanked hard. She gasped as it ripped out of her head, leaving me with a blo
ody clump of blonde locks. In the moment where she relented, I tossed her off me. She hit the wall to my side, moaning and clutching the bare patch on her scalp where crimson blood had begun to seep through, staining her neck and face.

  I threw the hair down at her. She groaned again. “Your turn to lie down and take it, bitch,” I said. Then I turned and ran down the alley, back towards the fire.

  I had a man to find.

  Chapter 33

  Nicholas

  A Few Minutes Earlier

  The explosion went off silently at first. It took a brief second before the sound hit my ears. When it did, I felt it as much as I saw it. The heat, the din, the smell—it all collided into my senses at once. I was thrown backwards and slammed into the side of a brick building. My left arm was numb up to the shoulder, but the whole rest of my body was alive and wailing in pain.

  I slid to the ground, dazed, while the soundless roar of my damaged hearing bellowed in my eardrums. The fires had taken root amongst the debris littering the abandoned facility. Heaps of garbage sizzled, sending smoke coursing up into the sky and forming a thick blanket of grey that choked out the sky overhead.

  I looked forward and saw, dotted between the pillars of fire, the bodies of the Esposito men who had been standing closest to the bomb when it exploded. They were hideously burnt, damn near barbecued, with faces and limbs melted into shapes that looked barely human. The guns they’d been holding were reduced to twisted, molten lumps of iron, useless for anything other than pinning their sorry corpses to the earth. Good. Let them fucking stay there forever.

  I scanned left and right. I wanted to see Cosimo’s dead body, get a glimpse of the horrified shock that would surely be seared onto his face. I frowned. He was nowhere to be seen. Giovanni, too, had vanished.

  Using the wall to support my weight, I lumbered to my feet. The trigger of the gun in my hand was stuck, rendering it unusable. I tossed it aside. I didn’t think I’d need it again anyway.

  The heat was becoming unbearable. The tall stacks of the plant kept most of it trapped down below, where I was, turning this open courtyard into a hellish sauna for the dead. I needed to get out of here immediately before the quickly diminishing supply of oxygen forced me to pass out.

  I didn’t want to go back to the vans we’d arrived in. If any of the Espositos had managed to survive the blast, they’d be sure to regroup there. Instead of going there, I started staggering across the courtyard in the direction that Fists had come from. With any luck, I’d find one of their bikes parked that way.

  I limped to the edge of the circle of white halogen light. I took one glance into the shadows that lay beyond there and then looked away as vomit rose in my stomach.

  The Punishers were stretched out in a row. Each of them bore a bloody hole in the front and back of their heads. They’d been executed gangland-style, judging by the path the bullets had taken through their skulls. I forced myself to turn back and pay each of them the moment of silence they deserved.

  One by one, I walked down the row and paused briefly in front of each body. If the man’s eyes were open, I bent down and used two fingers to pull them shut. They were cold already. The life was long gone.

  It took everything I had not to break down when I reached Fists at the end of the line. His arms had fallen to either side of his torso. I picked them up and crossed them over his chest. Blood caked his forehead, forming a thick, maroon scab in the areas where it had dried.

  I fell to one knee, careful not to let my shattered wrist knock against anything. It still hung at a grotesque angle, but I ignored that for the moment.

  I couldn’t believe this was how it ended for Fists. My president, the one who’d taken me in and told me what had to be done to get the revenge I was seeking. He’d picked up where Smalls had left off, showing me what it meant to be a man. He taught me what pain was, how to use it to my advantage. How a broken bone can grow stronger in the aftermath of the trauma that hurt it in the first place.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t do better for you, Fists,” I murmured. “I tried. I really did.”

  Behind me, the fires were growing hotter. They had begun to spread outwards, catching on the wooden frames of windows and doors in the offices that surrounded the courtyard. Whatever they could eat, they did, multiplying and intensifying with every scrap of garbage or patch of grass. They were insatiable.

  The heat lapped at my skin. I didn’t have much longer before this place, too, was consumed by the flames. I supposed it was fitting, like a funeral pyre for the warriors in front of me. They’d fought the good fight and paid dearly for it. But I knew these men. They wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  I stood. Time to leave.

  Then the fist rammed into the side of my head.

  I lurched backwards, falling against a broad vertical pipe, as the second and third punches railed into my face. Stars exploded behind my eyelids. I slumped to the floor and raised my hands over my head to shield myself from the blows. Still, they rained down upon me with a fury.

  I peeked between my crossed forearms and saw Cosimo’s maniacal scowl. He was attacking me with a boundless, coked-out energy. What his hits lacked in power they made up for in volume. Again and again, he brought hammer fists smashing against my arm.

  One swung wide and clipped my broken wrist. I felt the skin give way to a shard of bone stabbing through. It looked like a mountain peak above a river of blood.

  “Die, motherfucker, die!” he shrieked endlessly. He cocked one foot back to swing it at me. As he did, I took my chance and lashed out my own kick. It smashed into the side of the knee bearing all his weight.

  His face went white as a sheet as the ligaments tore and the knee buckled inwards in a way it was never meant to go. Instantly, he fell to the ground.

  I cautiously lowered my hands to see if he was awake. His body lay crumpled at an awkward angle and his eyes were closed. I rolled forward onto my knees, wincing as my wrist shot steel rods of pain all the way up to the joint in my shoulder. Looking into his face, I paused. His chest wasn’t moving.

  I sighed. He appeared to be unconscious, and I wasn’t going to wait around to see what he would be like when he woke up. I planted my right hand into the ground and started pushing myself up.

  Just then, though, his eyes fluttered wide open. He opened his mouth and emitted a jaw-clattering screech, then his arm rocketed forward and pulled hard on the wrist I was using to support myself.

  I fell onto my right side with a heavy thump. He threw a wild punch into my cheek, then leaped on top of me. The battering resumed, a veritable hailstorm of elbows and knuckles descending into my ribs, my arms, my head. I tried to shield him off, but he still managed to land punch after punch.

  Loading all my power into one knee, I drove it upwards into the soft part of his abdomen. He gasped and relented long enough for me to toss him off me.

  I tried to scoot back to the wall so I could hoist myself onto my feet, but he recovered too quickly. He dove into me, swung around behind, and wrapped his arm around my neck, leaning back so the entirety of his strength was dedicated to cutting off my air flow. I started to choke.

  “You rat!” he bellowed. “Filthy rat!”

  I desperately swayed my right arm around behind my head, trying to find leverage to shove him off me, but he ducked and avoided my grasp. The power in my body was fading, too starved of air to continue functioning. I was sliding into blackness. I had enough power in me for one more effort.

  Roaring, I kicked hard into the ground and shoved him back into the wall. His head hit the wall with a sickly crunch and his grasp around my throat instantly went limp. I tucked and rolled away from him, coming to a rest a yard away. A fire blazed next to me, soaking me in powerful heat. One skinny steel pole stuck out of the inferno.

  Cosimo sat up and pressed a hand against the spot in his head where it had hit the wall. When he pulled it away, I saw a smear of blood shining on his palm. He looked at me in a daze. I started once
more to push myself back up to standing. I managed to rise to one knee.

  A rotund figure rounded the corner. In his two chubby hands, Giovanni held a gun with the business end directed towards me. His injured leg dragged behind him. The heat had cauterized the wound, so the blood no longer ran in a thick stream down his leg.

  Cosimo saw him and his eyes damn near popped out of his head. He began barking orders immediately. “Kill him! Kill him!” he said, pointing a bony finger straight at me. “Fire the fucking gun!”