by Ryan Michele
“You hit?”
“Go,” he ordered, lifting his chin telling me he was okay. Tex and I hopped in an old pickup truck. Tex had it hotwired in seconds, and we took off behind Rooster and Rhys. They were a little ways further up. Both Rhys and Rooster had their guns out shooting the SUV.
The back window shattered as we moved up to Rhys and Rooster, veering off to the right. Tex hung out the window and began shooting with the semi he had strapped to his back.
The SUV fishtailed, moving all over the place, and crashed into a large oak tree. We pulled up as Rhys and Rooster did the same.
“Ebony, open the fuckin’ door and get out here,” I yelled as a shot came through the window right at me. Luckily it missed, but it pissed me off. Gun out I started shooting, hitting Barry as Ebony leaned back as far as her chair would take her. Rhys was next to me, firing as well.
Rhys was the one to open the door. Ebony was down in the seat, gun pointed out.
She appeared like a timid rabbit with the fucking gun in her hand. Her finger went to pull the trigger, but I beat her to it, her hand splattering all over the front seat, including Rhys. Ebony screamed as Rhys looked at me, eyebrow up.
“It’s a dirty job,” I said on a smile and a shrug.
Reaching in to grab Ebony’s hand, Rhys yelled, “Down!” I pulled then got down. Rhys fired several times.
Looking back in the SUV, Barry was most certainly dead.
“Awe, you do like me,” I joked, my knee in Ebony’s shoulder blades as I searched for weapons. “She’s clean.”
“This is a fuckin’ mess, Crow,” Rhys pointed out.
“Nah. It’s just another day at the office.”
Rhys gave me his grin, but said nothing.
Ebony screamed, her thong-covered ass sticking straight up in the air. Ripe for being spanked. Instead, I grabbed her arms and pulled them behind her as Tex came up and took her from me.
“Let’s go see what the damage is,” I said and got chin lifts.
“Knock her out,” I told Tex, and with one shot to the temple with the backend of his nine mil, Ebony was out for the count. Tex pulled her into the back of the truck, getting in with her as we drove back to the bar.
There were a few gunshots still going off, but nothing like it was before. Rhys and Rooster went one way, and we went the other.
Three men whipped around to us and started shooting, hitting the truck everywhere including the windshield. I was able to duck down, then Tex and I started firing. While they kept hitting the truck we hit two of them, and one I barreled the truck over hitting him hard.
Tex had to hold on to the cab for the bump, then he ran to the back of the bed of the truck and put bullets into the one on the ground.
Moving around the big barn, there was a huge sight to see. Six men were on their stomachs, hands tied behind their backs, and guns trained at their heads.
Some guns went our way until they saw us. The truck skidded to a halt, dust flying everywhere as we finally stopped. Jumping out of the cab, Cruz and Cooper came up to me. “All down?”
“Yeah.”
Brewer and Wrong Way came up, Brewer having blood down his leg. “Is it major?” He shook his head. “Hornet?”
Rooster darted into the building.
“Took two. One to the shoulder and one to the arm.”
“Fuck!” I ground out. “What about the rest of Ravage?”
“Few flesh wounds, nothing major,” Cooper said as Nox ran up.
“You good?” he asked me.
“Yep.”
Tex carried Ebony inside then let her fall to the ground.
“Damn, Tex,” I said as the puff of dust flew up. “So we’re good? Is Rodney still alive?”
“I’ll check,” Nox said, darting through.
“These guys?” I pointed to the ground where Tug, Breaker, Deke and Green had guns pointing at each of them.
“Gave up and went down to knees. Took away their weapons.”
Nox came out of the bar with Rodney, holding him by the collar of his shirt. Rodney’s eyes darted all around.
“He talks. I want to know where that money is,” I said this looking to Phoenix.
“Why money?” Rhys asked.
“Rylynn has a case, and this asshole stole money. Helpin’ her out.”
Rhys smiled, but it was savage. “Oh then, by all means, let me help.”
Ebony groaned, her eyes opening. I kneeled next to her. A slow smile came to her lips. “You’re too late,” she said then passed out.
Too late for what? Fuck!
14
Rylynn
The cell rang. The display saying Goldi calling. I answered, “Hey.”
“Hey, girl. Just got the call. Jenny’s gettin’ out. I’m takin’ Shell and Bear with me to get her.”
“Thanks.” That was something off the plate to worry about. I slept like the dead, woke up, and took Van to school. She was a bit melancholy and asked a couple questions which I answered. She was better now though, knowing her mom wasn’t dying and was going to get help.
I’d been waiting for this call since I’d gotten back from dropping her off.
“You know this Drew guy?” Goldi asked.
“Nope. Crow says he’s good.”
“Fuck, I hope so. I’ll let you know when it’s done so you can tell your man.”
“Thanks.”
The line disconnected.
I hadn’t heard from Crow and hoped like hell everything was going well. Nerves hit me full force. This must’ve been how my mom felt all those times when Dad would leave for a while and not know what was happening. It sucked, and now I was in the same boat.
If anything happened to Crow, I didn’t know what I would do. We were still new, but we were old just the same.
Scrolling through the feeds of the convenient store, nothing popped out at me. No visitors who weren’t Ravage, and none of Lemon alone.
Why I thought there would be some, I had no idea. There was just a feeling in my gut. I hit the F2 key by accident pulling up the live feed.
My heart started pounding. A large group of men with a black box truck were pulled up to the door of the basement. Zooming in… Lemon was on the screen.
Fuck!
I grabbed my phone, pulling up Crow’s name. Before I could hit send, the doorbell rang. It wasn’t a single ring, it was more of a finger pressing over and over again continuously. Like whoever on the other end was scared or something.
Phone in hand, I swung the door open. Sophia stood there, tears streaming down her face and hiccup sobs came from deep in her throat. My heart squeezed, the first thing coming to mind—something happened to Crow. No. Just no.
“What is it?”
She rushed in at me, and I wasn’t prepared. It was the crocodile tears that took me off guard for once.
“Idiot,” she growled, and everything went black.
My body felt strange, like it had been jolted or something. My limbs were tingling and I couldn’t quite move them, which ended up a good thing. Hard coldness came to my cheek like I was laying on a floor or something.
Listening, there were several voices around me. Everything seemed scrambled, but pieces were starting to fall into place. Sophia. Hate wasn’t even the word to describe my feelings toward her. Loath. Despise. They were more on the right track.
There was nothing binding my legs, but there was something sticky on my wrists. My guess duct tape. Strong, but since my arms were in front of me, easily breakable. Princess taught us all everything including how to get out of bindings. I didn’t have your average childhood. Thank fuck for Ravage. This was at least something positive.
Cracking open my eye just a bit, a hard concrete floor was what I was so comfortably laying on. Everything further away was a bit fuzzy, so I shut my eyes and depended on my ears.
Three distinct male voices. One with a very deep tone that slurred the letter ‘r’ a bit. One with a husky voice that put inflection at the end of each of
his sentences, like he was yelling, but he wasn’t. The third was the softest of all three, almost whispering, but not, since he could still be heard.
It was the female’s voice that had my skin crawling like a thousand ants were playing on my body like a jungle gym. Sophia.
Fuck.
What the hell was going on here?
“They have Ebony,” the husky voice said. “They took out most of the men up there and have a few alive. Who knows what they’ll tell them.”
“Fuck,” the whispered one replied. “They’re gonna be after us.” That voice sounded familiar, and I listened closer. “We need to take her and leave town.”
“I can’t go, my kids are here.” That was Sophia. I wanted her dead. By my fucking hand. That stupid bitch. “We have to come up with something else.”
“Well obliviously,” the deep-toned man started, “the original plan is a squash. Blowin’ up the bar isn’t workin’ now.”
Fuck. They wanted to take Ravage completely out.
“They all need to die to make this shit work. It’s the only way our business is protected,” the husky voice said in response.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Keeping my breathing even, I lay there still as a dead possum making sure my eyes didn’t move at all. They had to think I was still out.
“There’s no way to do that now. They’ll know about the guns,” a whispered voice said, and I knew that voice. Cracking open my eye, it was true, my instincts were right. I shut them tight once again. Lemon. Fucker. “I scrambled the recordings, but that doesn’t mean they can’t find someone to try to unscramble it.”
A loud crack filled the air as Lemon screamed out. “What the fuck?” he questioned.
The deep voice answered, “That’s for not doin’ your fuckin’ job.”
“Boys,” Sophia said, “if we call Crow and tell him we have his twat, he’ll come here. We can blow this place up with them in it, getting rid of everyone, and we walk clean away.”
Slowly, I opened an eyelid seeing the deep voice came from the man on the screen earlier, the one who was standing next to that fucker, Lemon. There was only husky that I didn’t recognize. But hell if I knew if they had more men around this place. On the screen earlier, there were quite a few guys.
“We don’t have time to wire the place up,” Lemon said to the group.
Sophia’s voice turned snippy. “It has to be this. They have to be taken out all together!”
“Honey,” the deep-voiced man said, and I tried again to place him, but the only time I’d seen him was on the tapes before we got here.
What the fuck was that? Honey? I thought she wanted Crow. Didn’t she? Was that all a game?
The deep-voiced man continued getting close to her and wrapped his arm over her shoulder. “We’ll make sure they’re all gone and not a single one of them will hurt you, your boy, or daughter again.”
Hurt her, her boy, and daughter? What the fuck was that about?
Sophia began crying, and it was so fucking fake she could win an award for it. “I just don’t know what else to do. They have to all die or they’ll come after us. We’ll never be able to break away.”
This woman had lost her ever-loving mind. She needed to be put in a padded room and doped up on serious drugs. Or dead. I’d go with dead.
“Starling, baby. We have the guns now. Lemon is getting the money transferred as we speak. We only have a small window for them not to catch on to what’s going down. They have Ebony. They probably think she’s the end game here.” The bitch held up my phone. I could tell by the case. “If we text Crow from this and give the location, all those guys that are with him will come to back him up. As soon as they enter, boom. Do it old school. Fuel and a light. It just has to be done now. They’re too smart. And I need my kids safe.”
Fuck, this bitch was going to die. I was going to wrap my hands around her throat and choke the breath out of her. My face was going to be the one she saw as her last. She would remember me for all eternity, and I’d see her in hell after I spent my years with Crow.
Starling. Rolling that name in my memory bank, nothing came up. He was the peon that Sophia was using to take out the Ravage MC. Her puppet and using her cunt to get what she wanted. That bitch.
“They’re not smarter than me.” Starling’s angry tone had Sophia’s turning sultry and seductive.
“I know they’re not, baby. I’m just scared and worried about my boy. Crow is a horrible man. You saw my face and what he did.”
That fucking bitch used me kicking her ass to blame it on Crow. I thought she loved the man. I thought she wanted him back in her bed. What the fuck was she doing?
Sophia continued, getting close to Starling, her hands going to his shirt as she looked up at him with starry eyes. “I just don’t want him to hurt us anymore. I want to feel safe again, and only you can do that.”
Fuck, she was laying that shit on thick, and the sick part was this idiot of a man was falling for it hook, line, and sinker.
He leaned down and touched his lips to hers. She didn’t flinch or move away. Instead, she smiled.
“Know that, baby, and I will. Promise you.”
She beamed up at him like he hung the moon and stars. I’d seen the same look when she gazed up at Crow. She’d been playing this whole fucking time. Probably before I even got here.
“Ebony won’t talk,” the husky man said. “But the other guys could. We used fake names, but that doesn’t mean they won’t figure it out. I agree with Sophia. We get them here now and as soon as they walk in, we blow it. It’s the only way to get out of this mess.”
Deep shit. Yeah, I was there swimming in a pool of it.
Lemon turned his head to me, and I closed my eye and hoped he didn’t see me. After a few beats, I relaxed inside when he didn’t say anything. Thank Christ.
“Look, I just want my cut, and I’m gone,” Lemon, the traitorous asshole, said. “I got you access to the guns and money. Give me my cut, and I’ll roll out.”
Starling’s voice got hard and demanding. “Yeah, you did do all of that.” I heard the cock of a gun and opened my eyelid to a slit seeing Starling holding a gun to Lemon’s head. “Guess we don’t need you anymore.”
Lemon smiled, and it was wicked. “How’d I know you’d pull that shit.”
“What?” the husky voice responded.
“You hurt me or put a bullet in me, you don’t get the money.”
“What the fuck is this?” Starling asked, or more like demanded.
Lemon crossed his arms over his chest. “Right now, the money is floating around in cyberspace. When this business is done, I have to do the sequence to get the money to go into your offshore account. If you want to kill me, fine. Don’t get your money.”
“What if I beat it out of ya?” Starling said angrily.
Lemon smiled once again. “Then you’ll beat me to death because I’m not giving it up. You’ll kill me either way, so there’s no point in it.”
“Fuck!” Starling said, lifting his gun and hitting Lemon across the cheek with it, blood squirting everywhere. Lemon fell to the ground on his knees, laughing.
This pissed Starling off, and he started kicking Lemon. When Lemon didn’t cower, Sophia went up to Starling and put her hand on his shoulder. He turned and looked at her. I closed my eyes and listened again.
“That’s enough. Let’s not waste any time on this when we can get the crew in here and get it set up. We get rid of all of them, then we go off and live away from all this shit.”
What about Greer? Her daughter? Was she planning on taking them with her? Was Greer involved with this? The kid had to be a pawn, and while I didn’t like his attitude, I understood it with all this shit going on. And the little girl, shit I didn’t know anything about her. This was going to kill Greer and the little girl in the end.
“I’ll make the calls,” husky voice said.
Lemon’s laughter could be heard, but it was getting further away. Then the d
oor shut.
There was silence for a beat, and I was just about to open my eyes but heard what sounded like kissing. I peeked my eyes open and saw Sophia was kissing Starling, and they were the only two in the large room with me.
The kisses became heated and Sophia dropped down to her knees, unzipped Starling’s pants, pulled out his cock, and I had to lay there and listen to him getting his cock sucked off.
They didn’t have time to set up explosives, but they had time to get off. These fucking people had lost their damn minds.
Awhile passed as I listened to the sounds making me want to throw up.
“Go do what you need to, baby.” Sophia’s voice was hoarse, making me wonder how many times she had to give this man head in order for him to fall in line with this little plan of hers.
Boots could be heard echoing through the space as heels clicked getting closer to me.
Stock still I laid there, not giving anything away. The sounds stopped in front of me, and the smell of her nasty perfume invaded me. Bitch. It wasn’t the time for her to know I was awake. It was the only card I had right no, and I was playing it.
“You stupid bitch,” Sophia growled, her voice close so I thought she was bending down next to me. Her hand came to my shoulder, and it took everything inside of me not to grab her wrist and slam her to the ground.
I held on, barely. “Crow is mine. Always been mine. Will always be mine. If I can’t have him, no little twat is going to come and take him from me.”
This didn’t make sense considering she thought she had Crow. At least that was what she told me. Unless she was hoping he’d go to her instead. Was she this crazy? Yes, she needed a white jacket and fast.
If Ebony was involved though, that operation in the barn looked as though it had been going strong for a while. Not in the past few months since I’d been with Crow. The timeline didn’t work. Then again, the way this woman was acting, anything went at this point.
“When he kicked out Simon, I’d thought he’d come around to my way of thinking. That’s all Simon’s job was. Make Crow jealous. But no. It was all about you. For some ungodly reason my man wanted you.”
