by Brook Wilder
The weeks and months after it, however, I remembered very well. Numerous skin grafts and surgeries to at least cover my arms, intensive physical therapy to rebuild the muscles so that I could regain the strength I’d before.
It took me years to get where I was, but a tiny wall had fallen tonight with Elisa.
I leaned down and covered Elisa’s naked, tempting body with the comforter, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Get some rest.”
“You need it more than I do,” she grumbled. “You will come back, right?”
I straightened. “Hell yeah, I’ll be back.”
**
Thirty minutes later, I sat at the table as Chains called the joint council meeting to order. “Alright, let’s get this shit over with so we can go back to the party. Sabrina, it’s all yours.”
Sabrina stood, her father right beside her. “We have finally finished cracking the files. These bank accounts were buried under layers of shell companies. Those companies are expertly set up, something unlike we have ever seen before. I don’t think the cartel did this alone.”
“What does that mean?” Chains asked, sitting up in his seat. “What are you saying?”
Sabrina looked at her father, who nodded, encouraging her to finish. “We think someone in the government is involved.”
Shit. That was something we weren’t expecting, especially since we had a CIA agent playing in our backyard.
“Well shit,” Widow Maker echoed, rubbing her hand over her face. “This just gets better by the moment. Why don’t we just invite the secret service next?”
Chains eyed his wife. “We all knew it was a possibility. Now we just have to figure out how to handle it.”
“I say we get rid of the agent,” Crankshaft said, crossing his arms over his chest. “He’s got some sort of agenda.”
Sabrina looked at her boyfriend. “Oh, great idea. And then we will be running from more CIA agents.”
He gave her a look before winking at her and I rolled my eyes. This place was turning into a damn love fest instead of a meeting.
Myself included.
“We just need to keep an eye on our friend,” Chains finally said, glancing at his wife. “I’m not ready to kill an agent when I don’t know who’s behind this.”
“Plus,” Widow Maker added. “He’s got too much on our clubs.”
And likely everyone else given what he knew about Elisa and my military career. I wasn’t about to risk anything when it came to her safety. She wasn’t gonna like it, but she would be going to the safehouse after this meeting. She was a distraction here, and I needed to know she was safe.
Even if it meant I would be servicing myself now that she had wakened the beast.
“Make sure everyone stays close to the club for a few days,” Chains was saying. “Now that we have that shit in Mexico going on, I don’t want to take any chances of keeping the club naked. No more parties until this shit is over with.”
Well that should go over well. Some collective groaning went through the room, but for the most part, everyone just looked, well, bored.
“Machine Gun,” he continued, looking at me. “Get the armory ready and see if Gun Jesus has a damn tank or something we could park in front of the club if need be for cover.”
“Aren’t you going a bit overboard?” Widow Maker murmured to her husband.
“No,” he said immediately. “This is our family, our future. We will protect what is ours from whoever the enemy is. Fuck the CIA, FBI, Cartel, whoever it is.”
Widow Maker glared at her husband before rapping on the table. “Meeting adjourned.”
We all filed out of the room, leaving the two presidents behind to discuss whatever the hell they were worried about.
“This is some shit, man,” Crankshaft muttered. “This is some shit.”
“Yeah,” I said, looking at Sabrina. “Can you still take Elisa with you?”
“Of course,” she answered. “She’s more than welcome.”
I nodded, a sick feeling in in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want to let her go. I didn’t want her to leave my sight. This was far more than just protecting her.
I was feeling things I never thought I’d feel, only compounded with the fact that I had fucked Will’s little sister earlier.
Sneaking into the bedroom, I found Elisa asleep, lost in her own dreams. I didn’t have the heart to wake her. Tomorrow would be soon enough to take her to the safe house anyway.
After stripping my clothes off, I slid next to her on the bed, breathing in her scent as I wrapped an arm around her waist. She made a sound but only burrowed closer to me, not waking. She had been right. I was fucking beat, the last few days of no sleep catching up with me.
But I hadn’t imagined I would be sleeping like this, with her.
Damn, it might’ve sucked outside, but in here, it was damn good.
***
The next morning, Elisa’s eyes fluttered open, a smile curving on her lips. “Good morning.”
I held out the coffee mug to her. “Good morning.”
“Wow,” she said as she sat up, gathering the sheet around her before accepting the mug. “I don’t think I’ve ever had coffee served to me in bed before. What time is it?”
“A little after eight,” I answered, crossing my arms over my chest. “We need to talk.”
Her smile faded and she looked worried. “Alright. What about?”
I drew in a breath, steeling myself against her reaction. “I’m going to send you to safe house,” I started out. “With Sabrina and her dad. They will hang out with you until we clear up all this shit.”
“A safe house,” she repeated.
I gave her a quick nod. “Yeah. I got shit to do, Elisa.”
She made a noise and before I knew it, the coffee was on the table and she was gathering her clothes from the floor. “I knew it.”
I grabbed her wrist, forcing her to look at me. “It’s not like that.”
“Yes it is,” she said tightly, throwing her shirt over her head. “I knew you would go all possessive, but I thought maybe you would give me a chance.”
“Elisa,” I started as she yanked on her jeans. “You don’t understand.”
She rounded on me, her eyes flashing. “No, Damian, you don’t understand. I am tougher than I look. I have been taking care of myself in some of the scariest places for ten years just to help other human beings. I dealt with my brother’s death on my own, without anyone’s help. I can handle this, yet you want to put me in this bubble just because you lost Will. Well, I’m not going to let you.”
I stared at her, my jaw clenched. “You don’t have a say in this, Elisa.”
She laughed bitterly, shoving her feet into her boots. “I don’t have a say? I don’t even belong here! I came to y’all for help, not to be cooped up like a prisoner and be left out. I sure as hell didn’t come here to be coddled by you.”
I reached out and pulled her against me, feeling her stiffen in my arms. “Listen,” I said into her hair. “I don’t want to fight about this. All I want to do is make you safe, but I don’t want to shut you out. Do you know what it’s like to have someone you care about be in the fire?”
She buried her face in my shoulder. “Yes, I do.”
Of course she did. I wasn’t sure if she meant both me and Will or just her brother, but either way, she knew the ultimate sacrifice. “Sorry.”
She pulled back and I hated that there were tears in her eyes. “I don’t want to be separated from you, Damian. I’ve waited ten years for this. Ten years ! Let me stay, please.”
I swallowed, knowing she was already making me second guess my good intentions. I craved her, wanted to take her right now even in the midst of our fighting.
And I also knew if I sent her to that safe house, she would be all I thought about. “Fine,” I forced out. “But not here.”
Her expression brightened. “Really?”
I nodded, releasing her. “Get your stuff. I’m taking you to m
y place.”
An hour later, I pushed open the door to my house, flipping on the lights. While I spent most of my time at the club or on the road, I still kept the house my dad bought for me after my injury, one that was embarrassingly expensive.
But hey, it was paid for and the deed was in my name.
“Wow,” Elisa said as she walked in. “This is beautiful, Damian.”
I pushed the door shut and set the alarm for the exterior, glad that I at least had the alarm system. If Elisa was going to stay here, she would be safe enough. “There’s a full fridge and plenty of shit to watch on TV,” I said throwing the keys on the foyer table. “Bedroom is back here.”
But Elisa wasn’t paying attention to me. I swallowed as I saw her admiring my military wall, one my mom had done in the study to remind me of all the great things I’d done in my career. A purple heart, the silver star, numerous accolades and rank changes that didn’t mean shit to me anymore. Sure, it made for a nice pension but other than that, I would have rather had Will back any day.
Elisa turned, tears in her eyes. “You are amazing.”
That wasn’t what I would have expected her to say. “I’m not. I didn’t do anything special.”
She crossed the room, grabbing my hands in hers. “Yes, you did. You recovered. You came home. You didn’t die over there. That’s simply amazing.”
Embarrassed, I tried to pull away, but she held fast. “Damian, you came home.”
So I pulled her against me, feeling her body sag in my arms. “I don’t deserve you.”
She wrapped her arms around my waist, hugging me tight. “No, you don’t.”
I chuckled, pressing my face into her hair, one of my favorite things to do when I held her like this. I had a shitload of things to do for Chains and the club. I needed to do inventory, call Gun Jesus for the damn tank, and keep tabs on Voodoo.
But right now, all I wanted to do was stand here and hold Elisa.
“Damian.”
“Yeah?”
“Didn’t you mention something about a bedroom?”
I pulled back, grinning down at her. “I did, but that wasn’t part of my original plan.”
She pressed her lips to mine. “Then revise your plan.”’
I swept her into my arms, laughing as she squealed, and started down the hallway to the master bedroom. A quickie wasn’t going to hurt.
Chapter 11
Hector Villarreal
Somewhere in Mexico
Hector Villarreal jumped down from the truck and looked around, his hands on his hips. The village was shitter than he had imagined, but it didn’t matter.
They were all the same, really. Full of ungrateful Mexicans who did not support what he was trying to do in this country. Didn’t they know it was the cartel that had built this village and hundreds of others? Didn’t they know the food they sold came from a field supported by the cartel?
Or the clothes on their back?
Or the beds they slept in?
He had been raised in the cartel, understanding from a very early age who gave him what he needed to survive. Hector had been a fighter, beating out all of his rivals by killing them in their beds so he could have this position of authority. His road had been hard, but never once had his loyalty wavered; he knew who had given him this opportunity.
Others could not say the same. Others had let the taste of freedom, the taste of what they thought would be a better life, cloud their judgement.
Today they would realize their error.
“What do we do, boss?”
Hector turned to one of his men at arms. “Round up time. Let’s see what we are dealing with.”
The man nodded and hurried off to do his bidding, giving Hector a moment alone. His cousin, Raul, had the same vision he had years ago, and he had been looking forward to the day that he would turn over the reins of this empire to Raul.
Now Raul was dead, and it was because of this shitty biker club in the States. A hit, sanctioned by the American CIA and done by one man, one man who had taken his cousin in a blink of an eye.
Well he would show them what he thought about their ambush. They had no idea what they had done to his family, to his cartel. No one had the same vision as Raul. No one had the balls to do what Raul had done for him and for the cartel.
But his legacy would carry on, starting today. Today Hector was going back to his tried and true method for getting this country in line. While he had grown soft over the years, he was going to create a new empire, one that a biker club couldn’t touch.
He watched as the villagers were rounded up, yanked out of their beds and off their food carts. They were forced out from the hospital, some still healing from the attack on the restaurant where Raul had died.
Finally, once all of the buildings had been searched, Hector pulled himself up onto the truck, grabbing the bullhorn from the back. “Citizens,” he started, sweeping his arm around. “There has been a great disserve done to the cartel, but I am here to give you a choice, a choice to follow the true pride of Mexico. Together we will take back our country from those who think they are destined to change it. Why do you allow these Americans to come in and tend to your weak and infirmed? That has only opened the door to others, others who have killed our innocent while they eat their breakfast. Today is our day of reckoning. Today we will take back our country. Today is a new leaf, a new side of the coin that will be hard to overturn.”
Hector put the bullhorn down and motioned for his soldiers to carry out the plan. Separating the men from the women was the easy task, as was pulling children away from their screaming mothers to make sure everyone was in their rightful place.
That was all he wanted. He wanted everyone to be in their rightful place and understand that there was no change in that order. He wanted them to know that he cared about them, about this country that had fallen into the wrong hands.
He wanted them to know the cartel cared about them as well. After all, without the cartel, no one would eat or have electricity or have homes. The cartel was what made this country survive, not the people. The people were just pawns in the game, pawns to be moved around as they saw fit, and once those pawns were overtaken by their opponent, well, they had to be moved off the board to make way for the other pieces.
Once the groups were separated, Hector held up his hand. The Americans had assumed they had this well in hand, that they had time to get these people out of this village. What they didn’t know was that he had eyes everywhere, eyes to report back what had happened to his cousin before Raul’s body hit the floor: that the Americans planned on evacuating the village so that the pawns would all be safe.
They would be an hour too late.
With the drop of his hand, the women and girls were herded into the trucks, trucks that would take them back to the compound to be inspected and then split up to be shared amongst the cartel compounds around Mexico. Some would cook and clean for the cartel if they were fortunate, some would become whores to make money on the street. The old and infirmed would be killed, and the young ones, well they would learn a harsh life. A few would take their own life. It mattered not to Hector what the women decided to do after they learned their fate.
It was one less mouth to feed, to put in line and keep. If only they had seen the light as it had been shown to them early on. It could have been avoided.
He could hear their sobs, see the men attempt to lunge toward their wives, their daughters, their mothers, only to be held in line by his soldiers. The men knew what was going to happen and Hector couldn’t help but think briefly about his own wives and their children. He would likely react the same as these men, but the difference was that he was willing to follow the cartel’s lead.
They had not and they must be punished for their deeds.
The trucks pulled out and Hector turned toward the men, men looking at him with expressions of fear, defiance, and anger. These men thought they would be forced into his armies, some being sent to the fields to work
if they weren’t shown to be strong enough to fight. They thought the boys would be spread amongst the compounds to be trained as soldiers, enduring a far better fate than living in one of these shitty villages.
