by Franca Storm
He took another step and kept coming this time until he was in my space looming over me.
And that was when I acted.
Psyching him out, I swung with my other hand, delivering a jarring uppercut to his jaw. It had him grunting and stumbling back in surprise.
While he was reeling from that, I didn’t waste any time in following through with the scissors. I plunged them into his left shoulder.
He cursed and choked, crashing into the sink basin, and fighting to pull them free even as blood leaked through his beige t-shirt.
With a burst of speed, I hightailed it out of the bathroom.
Adrenaline was shooting through my system like a livewire. It had my limbs shaking, my body and mind alike on high alert.
I made a sharp turn, skidding around the corner into the lobby.
Salvation seemed so close. All I had to do was to get through the front door and dive into my car, gun it, and speed the hell away.
I heard him running toward me.
I bolted for the door.
But, before I could speed outside, his hand clamped down painfully on my shoulder and hauled me away across the lobby. I smacked hard into the wall, only just managing to throw my hands out before I smashed my face into the drywall.
I spun around… right into the irate face of Knox.
I went to shove him, but he dodged my attempt, then grabbed a fistful of my hair and shoved the back of my head into the wall. I groaned and struggled to fight the disorientation as my head swam and throbbed.
“That was a dirty move.” His hands wrapped around my neck in the next second and he squeezed painfully. He exerted so much pressure that it had me gagging and fighting for breath.
Panic tried to take me over, but I forced it down. That wouldn’t help me right now.
Calling on Finn’s intensive training instead, I executed a move he’d taught me to free myself from a pinned predicament. Slamming my hands up and out, I managed to dislodge his grip. Ducking low and twisting to the side I burst forward and ran for the front door again.
I heard him behind me.
Too close.
I thrust my leg back, knocking him away, then spun into a roundhouse kick to his face that sent him crashing into the wall.
It bought me just enough time to barrel down the steps and out into the courtyard.
I ran to my car, frantically patting my pockets for my keys.
Oh my God! They weren’t there. I’d left them on the coffee table in the living room.
Knox roared and I swung my head up to see him sprinting down the steps toward me.
The trees rustled around me and the next thing I knew, someone burst from them and ran at Knox, tackling him around the waist and driving him to the ground.
“Scott!” I cried.
I couldn’t believe it. He was here. He was okay.
Or so I’d thought until I saw the bloodied and bruised state of him.
Whatever had caused that on his brutal mission tonight didn’t seem to slow him down at all, though, because he didn’t waste any time with Knox.
I winced as he wailed on him ferociously.
It wasn’t just a matter of trying to subdue him.
No, it was a hell of a lot more than that.
His emotions were exploding all over the place, all over Knox.
The intensity.
The brutality.
The exasperation.
The rage.
The pain.
He was a man unleashed.
It was hard to watch as he beat Knox into a bloody pulp. But, at the same time, I couldn’t look away for the life of me.
I needed to see it.
I needed the proof that Knox was no longer a threat, that it was over, that it was all okay.
And Scott needed to do this, to get it all out, to find peace.
I jolted in shock when Scott suddenly stopped and pulled his gun.
Shoving it under Knox’s chin, he called over to me, “Go back inside.”
“Scott, no. You can’t.”
“Ain’t no choice. He ain’t gonna stop.”
Before I could get another word out, Knox choked out a crazed laugh and told me, “You get it, doll? I’ve already won. He don’t kill me and those he cares about are never gonna be safe. He does kill me and his life is over, because the kill’s gonna trace right back to him. With our history, he’ll automatically be the prime suspect. It’s his woman’s place. Nobody’s gonna believe it was in self-defense, not with him. Yeah, he’s looking at a life sentence for this. That’ll fuck up the club and all his boys with nobody left to protect them. He’ll lose everything.”
Oh my God.
“Shut it!” Scott seethed.
My heart hurt for him. It was an awful no-win situation. He didn’t deserve that. He’d been through so much, worked so hard. He couldn’t lose everything at the hands of the man who’d already ruined so much of his life.
I wouldn’t let it happen.
I couldn’t.
Pushing off my car, I hurried forward and held out my hand for the gun. “I’ll do it.”
Scott looked beyond shocked. “No fucking way.”
“Listen, I—”
“No,” he growled adamantly. “He’s trying to get under your skin, love. It ain’t gonna go down like that.”
“Scott, I can’t take that chance.”
“It’s all bull,” he assured me.
He fingered the trigger.
But he never got a chance to pull it.
A sharp whizzing sound tore through the still night.
A bullet blew through Knox’s left eye, killing him in an instant.
Jerking back, I slapped my hand to my heart. What the hell had just happened?
Scott, looking confused, pushed to his feet and scanned the area.
Two figures stepped onto my driveway. As they got closer, I saw one of them was Sky. Relief flooded me. She was safe and well. She hung back as the other figure stepped into the light and I realized it was Jesse. He had a sniper rifle in hand.
“What the fuck?” Scott exclaimed, when he reached him.
Jesse stared down at a dead Knox sprawled out on the ground, then drew his eyes back to Scott. “I’m a ghost, you’re not.”
Scott blew out a heavy breath, then scrubbed his hand over his face. “Fucking shit,” he muttered.
“What about the prospects?” I asked Jesse. “Are they okay?”
He nodded. “Just knocked out. They’ll be all right.”
I watched Scott nod to himself as he stared at Knox’s body. He took in the macabre sight for a long time, clearly struggling to process it.
Then he closed the distance between us and wrapped me up in his arms. He held me to him as he murmured curse after curse.
We sank into one another for a long time, neither of us ready to let the other go.
Then he finally pulled away a little to look out at Jesse. “It’s over,” he said, as though he couldn’t quite process the new reality yet. After everything he’d been through with Knox, I was sure it would take a long, long time to get to that point.
Jesse smiled back at him. “Yeah, brother. It’s really over.”
“Jesus Christ,” Scott breathed, before sinking into our embrace again.
I tightened my hold around him, needing to feel him, needing to comfort him, needing his closeness.
Just needing him, like he needed me.
Epilogue
~Spartan~
Six Months Later
PEACE.
It’d been a real long time since I’d felt it.
Never figured on getting close to it again.
For a guy like me, I hadn’t thought it was possible.
Turned out I’d been wrong, because here I was living it.
All that bad shit was gone now.
That churning in my gut.
That simmering rage.
That guilt that’d fucked with me for so many years.
That anxi
ety strangling me, because of the threat out there on the people I cared about.
It was all dead and buried now.
I’d got closure, justice, and peace of mind.
It was over.
We were all safe now.
I was free.
Now, I could actually live my life proper.
And that was exactly what I was doing.
Stretching my arms out above my head, I let out a happy sigh and looked at Dani. She was still sound asleep beside me. In our bedroom.
We’d been living together for the last couple of months.
Normally, I woulda thought it too soon to take that step with her, but everything was different now. I was different.
I’d wasted so much time. I weren’t about to waste more.
We were renting a small house in Ridgefield.
Knox’s attack on Dani had been the last straw for her with her house. It was attached to way too much trauma. She couldn’t live there anymore. I wanted some place outside of the clubhouse too, so it’d made sense for us to do the moving in thing together. She was designing a custom home for us, so the plan was to move in there in the long-run.
But, for now, this was all good.
Once we got all the furniture moved in anyway.
Then it’d be comfortable.
For her.
I could sleep anywhere, on anything and I didn’t need much stuff. But Dani weren’t the best doing without those kinda comforts.
The priority had gone to setting up her office in this new location, though. Had to be. She couldn’t shut down her business again. She had clients counting on her. We’d also been making some good headway with the burlesque clubs project, so we’d needed access to her office. With all that shit going on with Knox and Hammer, I’d pushed it off into the background, but now I was making up for it, getting right in there with her and Sky, setting up contractors, location scouts, and all that.
This was a new phase for Iron Kings and I was excited as fuck to see it through.
There was a lot of new right now.
New business ventures.
New home.
New love.
Things had been static for so long in my life that all the changes were welcome, a breath of fresh air.
Moving forward.
Actually living, not just surviving.
It’d taken a while for the dust to settle after the mission against Hammer, then putting Knox to ground. Thanks to Jesse stepping up to take out Knox, it’d really helped me out. While he was a ghost, so nobody could tie a suspect to the murder, they couldn’t pin it on me either, so I’d been cleared. We’d taken care of the other ghosts, Hammer and his team, so that was off our backs too, no incriminations there. Those assholes were supposed to have been dead anyway, so nobody had known they’d still existed.
It’d been a fucking headache, though, the whole thing. The fact we’d come outta it unscathed was a miracle. But we had and I weren’t taking it for granted.
A groan from Dani pulled me outta my thoughts.
I turned to see her waking up.
She stretched for a bit and opened her eyes, her gaze falling on me. “Hey.”
“Morning, love.”
Screwing up her face, she grumbled, “My back can’t handle this sleeping on the floor thing. Remind me again when the bed’s getting here?”
“Two days.”
“God, why did it have to be backordered? Urgh,” she said, rubbing her eyes tiredly.
Her hair was all wild and big from the tossing and turning she did as she slept. She was tangled up in the covers as usual. Her silky night dress was all twisted. It had me grinning.
“What?” she asked, catching it. “What’s so amusing?”
“You. You’re always so cute in the mornings.”
“Cute?” she asked, pushing herself up into a sitting position and fixing the covers and herself.
“Yeah. Real fucking cute, love.”
She laughed and then climbed out of bed.
I followed her out and we made our way into the kitchen.
She set about putting on a pot of coffee.
The next thing I knew, she was typing into her phone, getting lost in work after being up for less than two minutes. I hadn’t even seen her snatch it up from her bedside table. Then again, my focus had been relegated to that sweet ass of hers swaying in that sexy-as-fuck way as she’d walked out of the bedroom.
I came up behind her and slid my arms around her waist. “Put the phone down,” I whispered in her ear. “Nice and easy. Hands where I can see them.”
She giggled as she placed it down, then she turned into me and gazed up at me with that loving look in her eyes. “Sorry, I want to make sure I’m on top of everything.”
“I get that, love, believe me. But we also gotta—"
“Stop and smell the roses?”
“Yeah. That.” I took her hands, holding them between us. “All the bad shit’s over and done with now. It’s all good, we’re all good. You can trust in that and relax now. Plus, you know, we’re a team. I got you, just like you got me.”
She blew out a heavy sigh. “It’s taking time to get used to the new status quo, to accept that things are safe and happy now.”
“I know. But they are. We just gotta live our life together now and actually enjoy ourselves.”
“Okay, I can do that.”
“Good,” I said, wrapping her up in my arms. “There ain’t no going back now. It’s you and me all the way, Dani.”
“Us,” she breathed happily.
We sank into each other.
I let it wash over me.
The love and warmth of being with her.
The future wide open.
The storm finally calmed.
Finally being at peace.
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Succumb to a Bad Boy.
Franca writes stories about bad-boy alpha males and the tough women who turn their worlds upside down.
She is best known for her motorcycle romance series, BLACK THORNS MC.
When she's not writing, Franca enjoys watching action movies and binging on great TV series. Spending time with her lovable lab, hiking, and listening to hard rock music, are her passions.
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