BREAKING THE RULES: Forsaken 99 MC

by Evelyn Glass

  I was fascinated by the fact that May thought the idea of my own death would motivate me more than the death of one of the closest people in my life. Maybe it was because she was inherently selfish and she didn’t care about anyone else but herself. She knew it wasn’t who I was but maybe she didn’t understand it because she just wasn’t wired that way.

  I dug in my pocket and pulled out a detonator. May frowned, her eyes glued to my hand. I unzipped my leather jacket. I’d strapped dynamite to myself, all the sticks neatly in a row with a pack in the middle, wired to all of them. Saul frowned, unsure what I was doing. May paled just a little, enough for me to know I’d gotten to her.

  “This is going to be very simple,” I said. “You’re not going to harm so much as a hair on Saul’s head.”

  I pressed the detonator with my thumb and the pack on my chest beeped loudly. May swallowed. Saul started paling. I wasn’t the kind of guy to fuck around. If May wanted to play games, I could play games, too. She hadn’t taken into account that the type of games I played were a hundred times worse than her games. You didn’t stand up against a seasoned war veteran when you were a greenie with a pocket pistol. I knew what I was doing, and when it came down to it, May just wasn’t on the same level.

  “If you kill Saul I’m going to let this button go, and we’ll all die. It’s all or nothing, May.”

  She looked at me, unsure. Was I bluffing? She was hoping I was, but it was a chance she wasn’t willing to take. At least, that was what I was betting on. For a moment everything was tense and I could see the inner struggle on May’s face, I could see how she was fighting with herself about what to believe and what not.

  She laughed, then, and I knew she’d decided I wouldn’t do it. “Don’t be ridiculous, Logan. I know you won’t kill Saul, and if that goes off you might take us all with you, but that would include Saul. You don’t have what it takes.”

  I shook my head. “If I’m dead, too, it won’t matter who’s dead and who’s alive. I won’t know about it, and there’s no way you’re getting ahold of the Thorns.”

  She was still smiling when she shook her head. “You forget what you taught me while we were still together, Logan. Always have a backup plan. Always prepare in case something goes wrong. Remember?”

  I had taught her that. It had been during a time when I thought that whatever it was that went wrong wouldn’t involve May. I had been stupid to trust her at all, stupid to love her, even if it hadn’t been the way I loved, now.

  May whistled long and low and a moment later a car pulled up. It was big and black with tinted windows and chrome mags on the tires. Whoever owned the car had a hell of a lot of money and I was sure it wasn’t May. She had everyone in her pocket these days. Lucky for me, I had contacts. I watched the back door as it slowly opened, wondering who May could possibly bring to the party that would change my mind.

  A big goon of a guy got out of the car first, wearing black suit and shirt with no tie – the standard body guard kind of look. He stepped back and yanked someone out with him. My blood ran cold and for a moment I felt like I was swaying on my feet. Selena was tied up and gagged, her cheeks wet with tears, her eyes wide with terror. She looked at me, pleading.

  I trembled with anger. Fire coursed through my veins and I was just about ready to kill May, but I had to stick to the plan. I swallowed my hatred for her. “Why are you making me repeat myself?” I asked, turning my attention back to May.

  She frowned, looking at Selena and then back at me. She was wondering why I was so calm about it all when she had Selena. She was starting to doubt herself. That was exactly where I wanted her. It took everything I had not to run to Selena and try too free her, to not put a bullet in May’s head straight away.

  “If you’re not going to let them go I’m going to blow us all up. You have no idea how easy it is for me. If I die, Saul and Selena come with me. And the rest of you.”

  May frowned, looking confused. “I’ll kill her, too,” she said, nodding toward Selena.

  I had no doubt she was capable of that. I had to keep this up until I could save them all. I had to make sure it was all the right timing, though. I laughed, then, forcing it out and to my delight it sounded about as manic as May’s laugh had sounded a short while ago. She was getting more and more unsure of herself. She lowered the gun from Saul’s head and for the first time since I’d arrived I felt like I could breathe.

  “You’re a lunatic,” May said. Her voice was unsteady now.

  I lifted the hand with the detonator in it. “Last chance.”

  May still didn’t look like she believed me. The others all around her shuffled from side to side, unsure. May looked at them. “What, are you all pussies?”

  Some of them glared at her. If there was ever a carnal rule in life it was to never call a badass with a gun a pussy.

  “You know I’ll do it.”

  May looked like she wasn’t sure that was what I would do. I had to play it out all the way. I made a big thing of lifting my thumb and bringing it down on the button. The click was louder than any scream could have been and May covered her face. Selena squeezed her eyes shut. Saul held his breath. I knew what was coming and waited for the big bang, then end of all this bullshit.

  Chapter 26

  Selena

  Mitchell didn’t have much time to react. He jumped into the fray, fighting with all his might, doing the honorable thing and protecting me as Logan had asked.

  He managed to fight the guy off for a short while, too. It was a big man, with more weight than speed. He wore a black blazer, black pants, black shirt. It all looked very ominous. The mask on his face was what made him look terrifying.

  There was nothing I could do to help Mitchell. I couldn’t fight. I was frozen with fear and he was fighting his heart out for a woman he didn’t know. For a moment I couldn’t do anything, but slowly the adrenaline faded and I could think clearly again. He was still fighting the guy off, attacking him with quick jabs so the guy had to move his hands to his face to protect himself.

  I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a frying pan from the drying rack where I’d left it before Logan and I had gone into hiding.

  I ran back to the lounge where I could still hear them fighting. I yelled at the top of my lungs and stormed the guy, ready to hit him over the head so hard he saw stars. I didn’t make it.

  He managed to get his hand in his blazer and he pulled out a gun. The whole thing happened in slow motion, and I still couldn’t stop it. There was nothing I could do. He pulled out the gun, shoved it against Mitchell’s chest and pulled the trigger. There wasn’t a lot of blood. When Mitchell crumpled to the ground red bloomed on his chest and his eyes were glazed over, vacant. I was frozen again, horrified. It was like I was watching the whole thing from somewhere else, looking down on it, uninvolved.

  The man slowly turned to gun toward me. I was still gripping the frying pan in both hands, holding it in front of me like sword.

  “Drop it,” he said in a low voice. He didn’t seem freaked out at all about the fact that he’d just killed someone.

  I threw the pan down. I wasn’t going to walk the same road. I was a coward; I wasn’t planning on fighting back. The pan rolled to the side with a clatter and I lifted my hands. I stared at Mitchell’s body, dead on my floor, and it all started dawning on me. Mitchell was dead. The killer was right in front of me, pointing a gun at my face. I swallowed hard. “Don’t shoot me.”

  He smiled then, his teeth white against the black mask that clung to his face. It was one of those ski masks or whatever you call it, the wool ones. It had to be terribly hot in there. He pulled the mask off. What was the point, then? His face wasn’t much better to look at. He had a scar running from temple to cheek and his eyes were lifeless black holes, as if he did this kind of thing all the time. I didn’t want to know how many people he’d killed in his life.

  “Let’s get going,” he said. His voice was as empty and unfeeling as his eyes.

  I
listened. I didn’t know where he was taking me but as long as I was alive it didn’t matter. I just couldn’t die, not now that my life was going somewhere. And, God, Logan would never forgive himself. I knew he would feel like Mitchell’s death was also his fault, but if I died he would never ever let himself off the hook for it.

  The guy in black marched me out of my own door and we walked down the stairs to a big black car. The thing looked like it had escaped from one of those Rap music videos. The inside smelled like pineapple air freshener and smoke. It made me nauseous. As soon as I was sitting in the corner against the other door, huddled against the leather seat, the smell of my fear filled the car, too.

  He sat opposite me, not saying a word. His gun was in his lap – passive but not packed away. I couldn’t keep my eyes off it. He’d just killed Mitchell. He was taking me somewhere unknown. I could still die today.

  We drove for what felt like about half an hour when the car stopped between containers that looked familiar but I couldn’t place them. We just sat there, doing nothing. I couldn’t run on such a high level of adrenaline for so long so I started relaxing.

  “What are we waiting for?” I asked.

  “Shut up.”

  I snapped my mouth shut. I wasn’t going to argue with the guy with the gun.

  I didn’t know how long we were there for, but it felt like forever. The space in the car seemed to shrink, squeezing me, bringing me closer to my kidnapper. The smell made me sick to my stomach. I was starting to wonder if the smell was trying to cover something else up. Maybe I was just making things worse. My writer’s imagination was just eating this shit up, making it worse than it needed to be.

  Finally, his phone rang and he held it against his ear, nodding without saying a word. The car started up again and moved forward, slowly, as if we were creeping up on something. I looked out of the tinted window.

  My kidnapper moved closer and taped my hands together. He gagged me, too, and I felt claustrophobic, unable to move properly, to talk, to escape. I started crying. We rolled along and then the containers fell away and we stopped next to a group of men with guns. They all looked as dangerous as the guy in the car with me. I didn’t want to be here.

  They shifted a bit and someone tied to a chair came into view. A moment later I realized it was Saul. They had me and they had Saul, the two people Logan really cared about. May was there, too. The woman from the library. Logan’s ex, the one that was causing all this trouble. She had a gun to Saul’s head. The adrenaline in my system kicked in again and terror hardened in my stomach, making it hard to breathe. This was going to get really ugly, really fast.

  I barely thought it when I saw Logan standing on the other side of the group. He had a mean look on his face, a look I had never seen on him before. He wore leather clothes, a menacing outfit, and he had dynamite strapped to his chest. Dynamite.

  The car door was opened and I was yanked out. I whimpered, scared.

  Logan had a button he was clutching onto and I was pretty sure I knew where he was going with this. He was going to blow us all up. He was crazy. I suddenly wasn’t sure who the man was that stood in front of me. This wasn’t the man I loved, the man I’d agreed to marry. This was some maniac with explosives and a crazed look in his eye. This wasn’t Logan.

  He shouted something I couldn’t hear, the fear overpowering everything else in my mind, and lifted the button. I watched as his thumb came down on the button and I ducked my head down. This was the end. This was where my story ended, the happy ending gone, only fear and despair left. I screamed, squeezing my eyes shut.

  There was no explosion. There was a lot of movement, May’s surprised cry, laughter. Laughter? That didn’t make any sense. I looked up and everything had changed.

  The men all around May had their guns hanging at their sides. They were crowded around Logan, shaking hands with them. May looked shocked and furious, like she couldn’t decide which emotion to go with. Logan looked at me and smiled as if May wasn’t even there. It was the kind of smile that would make your heart melt.

  It washed away all my fear. It would be all right now, I was sure of it. Logan started walking toward me. He was going to come and save me. He was going to take off this tape and the gag and he was going to wipe my tears away and everything would be better. I knew deep down he wouldn’t have done something crazy like blow everybody up.

  One of the other guys headed toward Saul and started untying him May shouted at him to stop.

  “I’m still in charge here, asshole!” She sounded panicked.

  He laughed and shook his head. “Tables have turned, sweetheart.” The way he said sweetheart was like it had a foul taste.

  May picked up on that, too. Her face went red. “You don’t tell me what to do. I tell you what to do. That was our agreement. I’m paying you, for God’s sake!”

  He shrugged. “Logan’s paying me more.”

  Loyalty was all about money? It didn’t make sense. I’d seen different with Logan and his guys, but maybe that was what made them so special. May shook her head and kicked the gun out of the guy’s hand. He looked at her, angry.

  “You may think you make the rules around here, but I still have a gun.”

  She pointed it at Saul’s head and everybody froze. I looked at Logan. He’d gone pale. He believed she would do it. That wasn’t good. I trusted Logan and I went along with what he believed. He knew what he was doing.

  “Don’t do this, May.” It was Saul who had started talking. “If you kill me now, you’ll die. They’re all on his side and you know Logan won’t let it go until he sees you dead for killing me.”

  Saul was right. If the bond Logan had with his men was anything to go by, he would never rest until May paid for killing one of them. God, if he knew about Mitchell…

  “Maybe you’re not the right person to use as a target, then,” May sneered. She turned the gun slowly away from him and for a moment I breathed easy. That moment passed and then I was looking down the barrel of the gun. I couldn’t breathe. I saw my death in that round mouth, the gun that would spit my death at me.

  Logan lunged forward. “Don’t!”

  May laughed. “I never thought the day would come where you lose your cool about something. She means more to you than your men, does she? That’s interesting. I thought you weren’t capable of love.”

  “Just not with you,” Logan said.

  May’s menacing smile disappeared. Did he have to insult her now? With the gun trained on my face? I was whimpering again no matter how hard I tried not to. May seemed to relish in the fact that I was so scared I could barely stand. I had never had gun pointed at me and it was the worst thing I’d ever experienced.

  Everything was frozen. The gun was on my face. Saul’s face was shock. Logan’s face was horror. All the other guys had their guns pointed at May but I had a feeling it wouldn’t make any difference. She’d lost her mind, after all, and she was angry and jealous of me. I had taken her place in Logan’s life, after all, and he cared for me in a way I was gathering he never cared for her.

  She wanted to see me dead and with her heartlessness, her lack of morals and values, her obsession with the Fallen Thorns, I wasn’t under any illusion that she wouldn’t shoot me. None of the men, not even Logan, could outrun a bullet.

  I closed my eyes and conjured up Logan’s face the way he looked at me when it was just me and him, when there was nothing in the air but love. I didn’t want to be the horror, the anger, the fear, to be the last thing I saw before I did. I was pretty sure this was the end.

  Chapter 27

  Logan

  There was no way I was losing Selena. There was no way I was losing her to May. No fucking way. The moment she moved the gun from Saul to Selena it felt like I was dying inside. I had never cared for anyone this much in my life, including all the men. Including Elijah. It was something different than I’d ever felt before and I wasn’t going to lose it now just when I’d found it.

  I cried out and j
umped forward without thinking about it. May laughed but she looked more upset than amused. “I didn’t think you would ever find someone more important to you than the boys.”

  The truth was, I hadn’t thought so either.

  “It’s a pity she has to go so soon.”

  She was pissed off and jealous. She was upset I hadn’t loved her the way I loved Selena. It was difficult, though, to love someone who loved herself so much that there wasn’t space for anyone else. Besides, May had lost the plot ages ago. I had never wanted to spend the rest of my life with a lunatic.

  The jealousy was insane, though. I could see her bristle. She almost had a green glow to her. It was awful because she knew exactly what Selena meant to me now and she had the gun pointed at her.

  I still had my guns on me – I hadn’t only packed the dynamite. I knew well enough that it was good to be prepared for every contingency with May. There was no telling what she would do. Selena closed her eyes. I could see her giving up, giving in, accepting her death. There was something very strong about a person who had the ability to do that instead of panicking. Selena was amazing in every way, and the more I got to know her, the more I was reminded of how spectacular she was.