Kinsmen MC (Complete Series)

by J. C. Allen

  One last look at the father of my child, the man who had changed so much in my life.

  While my mind shifted a lot between whether or not Matthew was someone who had put me in this spot, whether or not he was a good guy or the bad guy in this spot, one thing was undeniably clear—he had made a profound impact in my life. It had started in high school with our little dalliance at the field house, sure, but it had become so much more than that, most especially in the last month or so.

  He was the one who helped me land on my feet at a time when I was so stubborn I had chosen to remain homeless rather than see my parents. He was the one who introduced me to the world of sex, both for better and for worse, and had made me more confident in myself and in my body. He was the one who had gotten me pregnant, but more importantly, he was the one who made me believe that someday, I would fall in love and have a child. Maybe it wouldn’t be with him—right now, I wasn’t even sure if I’d get out of here alive—but the fact that he had done that…

  If I got out of here alive, I would be forever grateful. If—

  The door slammed open. It’s four. Has to be.

  “So,” Rocco said, smirking at us. “It’s time to get your boys over here. We’ve already emailed them with encryption that we have the three of you. So they may yet be on their way. You all should hope so.”

  He pulled out his gun and made a not so subtle brandishing motion of it before swinging it over the three of us.

  “Because they have thirty minutes to get here,” he said. “Or one of you will die.”

  It’s me.

  I’m going to die first.

  Rocco didn’t elaborate at all, but the fact that he stared me in the eye as intensely as he did when he uttered those words wasn’t the world’s most subtle hint.

  I am going to die.

  Goddamnit, Matthew. Please come and help!

  “Clock is ticking,” Rocco said with a nefarious laugh before he shut the door behind us.

  19

  Matthew

  I didn’t know where the hell the Cavaros would be keeping Grace, Rosella, and Michael within The Quad.

  But I knew that if I didn’t haul ass over there, they were going to kill her. I knew too much about them to assume anything else; the deaths of their hostages was practically imminent if we didn’t act with haste and speed.

  Most of all, I just could not live with the death of Grace. The death of my child would also haunt my days until I died, but at least she would never be a face, she would just be lost potential.

  But Grace… Grace was the person who had somehow calmed me. Grace was the woman who captured my heart like no one else ever had, no matter how hard they tried or how they had sex with me. A lot of women in the club, a lot of friends of the club, had made a lot of not-so-subtle efforts to woo my heart; in fact, more than a few had promised sex so regularly if I committed to them that not even I thought I could keep up.

  At the time, I had dismissed them because I just wanted to be free. I wanted to fuck who I fucked and not have to apologize for that.

  Now, though? I realized that they had just all lacked what Grace brought to the table.

  It was hard to articulate exactly what that was, but words like soulful, cheerful, encouraging, wholehearted, kind… they all danced in my head.

  And none of that will be worth a shit if you don’t rescue her.

  I revved the accelerator down the road, my brothers and Beast behind me in tow. We had our phones mounted on our bikes in case any critical updates came through, but I wasn’t much paying attention to that. I was just focused on getting Grace back; logistics could follow.

  I saw the signs for The Quad and had to brake to get in, barely avoiding skidding out. As soon as I turned the corner and came to the top, I paused.

  The entrance offered me a small advantage in that it enabled me to take a look at everything that was going on in the complex; The Quad was so named because it had a nice garden in the middle, with a parking lot surrounding it and the actual apartments surrounding it. The small opening at the bottom of The Quad was where I now stood, and where my brothers and Beast soon stood a few short seconds later. We had a bird’s eye view of everything that was happening in there, and nothing was going to elude our eyes.

  “Sure she’s here?” Zeke said.

  Smart boy, staying focused.

  “I’m sure of it,” I said. “We just have to figure out where the Cavaros are.”

  I was about to say to be on the lookout for anyone suspicious, but here, everyone looked suspicious. Grace was something of an outcast in this place; it was the spot where convicts and the homeless and the outcasts of society came and tried to get a stranglehold. Just from my very spot, I could see about a half-dozen apartments with the same pink slip Grace had gotten on their door. I would have felt sympathy for them, except I remembered not too long ago walking her up to her room and seeing windows with guns in them, people staring out their blinds, and aggressive dogs barking.

  It wasn’t a nice place.

  “Look,” Simon said.

  I followed his finger and saw it. In the corner, down in the far right side, a white van was backed up so far that it was hopping onto the walkway—as if people didn’t want others to discover what was going on.

  “Think it could be them?” Zeke said.

  “I’d bet on it,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” Jaxson said.

  Wait? What the fuck—

  “Could be a trap.”

  I sighed. I hated that Jaxson could be so right sometimes—that was why he was president, yes, but I just wished he wasn’t that smart all the time. It made it a lot more difficult to disagree with his advice when he was so wise all the time.

  “I’ll go,” Beast said.

  “You just drive around and come back,” Jaxson said. “You do a recon run. You only shoot if you’re shot at.”

  “Understood.”

  I nervously stood as Beast headed down to the lot, driving slowly, his pistol on the side closest to us, hidden from anyone who would see him coming. I didn’t want to believe that we were just wasting time, but the Kinsmen brothers hadn’t come to sit on the sidelines. We’d come—

  Shots fired.

  But they didn’t just fire from the spot.

  They fired from spots on the second floor we hadn’t recognized, corners that we’d failed to look at. We’d zoned in so hard on the white van that we’d failed to account for the others.

  “He’s trapped!” Zeke yelled.

  “Let’s go!” Simon shouted.

  I didn’t need Jaxson to tell me that. Simon and Zeke split to the left, while I went to the right. I pulled out my gun and fired upon the Cavaro on the second floor. It was a clean shot, and he fell to the ground. If he wasn’t dead, it was good enough.

  I turned the corner just in time to see someone emerging from the first floor door, preparing to shoot me—until Jaxson took him out.

  “You owe me!” he yelled.

  I owe you for a lot of things right now, bud.

  We hurried over to Beast, who had blood trekking out of his left arm. In his right, though, his pistol remained.

  “Two in the room,” he said. “I think the women and the child are in there.”

  “Shit!” Simon and I said together, having convened at the same time.

  I turned around and noticed that Jaxson was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t have time to waste, though—I needed to move.

  But then, everything changed.

  “Hold your fire!”

  The man with an Italian accent shoved Grace forward, a gun pointed to the back of her head.

  “Grace!” I said, hopping off my bike.

  “Not a step forward or she dies!”

  “Fuck you!” I shouted, but I remained where I was.

  Moments later, another man came forward, this one with Rosella. I gulped. I looked at Simon, who had his gun at the ready. Zeke was behind us, his gun also held up, but I knew he wasn’t
going to get in on our battle. Beast, still bloodied, stood to the side.

  “What the fuck do you want?” I shouted.

  Given that Jaxson had seemingly gone elsewhere, I decided to take charge of this. After all, I was the one with two people held hostage right now—Grace and my child.

  “And where’s my son?!?” Simon added.

  “Your son,” the man with the white beard and white hair, the one hold Grace, said knowingly. “I always suspected he was a Cavaro bastard. Now I know the truth.”

  “Don’t, Simon.”

  I never thought Zeke would be the voice of reason, but he had distracted Simon enough that Simon didn’t do anything stupid that would have resulted in the death of everyone we loved right there.

  “Smart boy,” the man said. “My name is Rocco, I am the current sergeant-in-arms and VP of the Cavaro MC. You boys have been a giant fucking pain in the ass.”

  “Same to you, Santa,” I snarled.

  Rocco didn’t appreciate the nickname, grabbing Grace by the hair and yanking her back.

  “You insult me, I hurt your woman. Pretty simple, no?”

  I just growled but didn’t add anything else.

  “You killed Uncle Nic,” Rocco continued. “That was not good for business. So, you need to atone for it. You give us one million each for the three hostages we have.”

  So Michael is in there… he’s probably in the room.

  “And you leave this town and let us take it over. You do that, and your women will leave.”

  “And what the fuck is in it for us?” I said.

  Rocco just laughed.

  “I dunno, you don’t have to live with the guilt of letting three innocent women and children die? You’re not exactly in a position to negotiate, Kinsmen.”

  I flared my nostrils, desperately trying to think of something. Rocco infuriated me, but he was exactly right on one point—we weren’t in a position to negotiate. We had nothing. If Zeke, Simon, Beast, or I fired, then the women would almost certainly die. Jaxson, whatever the fuck he had done…

  “I need a decision, boys,” Rocco said. “I’m not a patient man. I’m—”

  And then everything changed and snapped in an instant.

  A bullet fired, hitting the man holding Rosella in the back of the head. Rosella fell forward, her feet and hands still tied together. She took a nasty fall, but it was a hell of a lot better than dying.

  “The fuck?!?” Rocco yelled, turning his body.

  For just a moment, he had turned Grace away from me, exposing the side of his head to me. It was the cleanest shot I would ever get.

  It was the only shot I would need.

  I raised my gun, fired, and hit Rocco square in the head. Just like his ally, he fell to the ground, dead instantly. Grace, too, fell, but she made a concerted effort to fall on her back.

  “Jesus,” I said, hurrying over.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jaxson standing on the second floor of the apartment complex, looking down at us. He didn’t run. He got in a position where he could help us.

  I quickly grabbed Grace, ripped off the tape from her mouth, and undid her ropes. Simon did the same for Rosella, while Beast and Zeke hurried into the room, bringing Michael back out. Grace, in tears, reached up to hug me.

  As the sound of sirens approached, as the sound of the authorities came near, I knew we’d have a lot of explaining to do.

  But for right now, what mattered most was that Grace was alive.

  My child would make it someday.

  The hours that followed were something of a convoluted mess.

  The cops didn’t suspect any of us of doing anything, probably because Jaxson had made the effort to make a relationship with the sheriff and many of the other officers on duty. But the fact was that six Cavaros were lying dead in The Quad, and even if everyone knew them to be de facto gangsters and thugs, the cops couldn’t just pretend that their deaths hadn’t happened.

  They had to interview Grace, Rosella, and even Michael for what felt like an eternity while we waited on the sidelines, there to comfort them if they needed it. Beast went to the hospital to get treatment—it was going to be quite the story when Mom saw him, but right now, that was of minor concern in comparison to all of the hell that we had gone through.

  As the police interviewed the women and Michael, all of us brothers huddled.

  “The guy said that he was the VP, not the president,” Jaxson said. “This isn’t over. Not by a long shot.”

  “Is that something we really need to know right now?” Zeke said, his voice almost whiny.

  Even before Jaxson answered, I knew what the answer was. It was far more critical that we were properly prepared to address the danger of the Cavaros than to sit back and assume that this would scare them off. If anything, the big baddy of the president still being around just made it more likely that retaliation was in the future.

  “Yes,” Jaxson said. “Don’t be stupid, Zeke. I don’t think anything is coming tomorrow, but it is coming.”

  “We should lash out at them,” Simon said in a whisper. His wife, after all, was a Cavaro—not to mention the cops were right there, and even though the Cavaros were the evil ones, a murder was still a crime. “Take the fight to them.”

  “If we can,” Jaxson said with a sigh. “There’s still a lot we don’t know about them. We’re working on it at the club, but we don’t have any new information.”

  “So we have to wait for it to come to us?” Zeke said.

  His childish side didn’t always come out when he was being a prankster and a jokester—sometimes, it could come out in the form of anxiety. He was just not in enough situations that it revealed itself.

  “Seems that way,” Jaxson said with a shrug. “But we’ll deal with it at the appropriate time. For now…”

  At that, the three women headed over to us. Simon went up and embraced Rosella and Michael, still in tears. I went up to Grace and hugged her tight. She sobbed into my chest but seemed incapable of forming words—I wouldn’t quite describe it as shock, but I think she was spent for the day.

  Finally, she looked me in the eyes. Her eyes were damaged, not literally but soulfully, but she still had the same spark to them that had made me attracted to her in the first place.

  “I just… need to be alone,” she said. “Come back to me in two days.”

  “OK,” I said. “I will.”

  Grace smiled and gently pushed away. I wasn’t about to push her to do anything. I didn’t care if it meant that I would lose her. I wanted her to have a happy life and to decompress however she needed to, rather than to force her into something and not give her the space she needed to get better.

  I just hoped I wasn’t making a critical mistake.

  20

  Grace

  I’d made it through hell and came out on the other side alive.

  But that didn’t mean there weren’t going to be some serious emotional scars and lumps that I needed to take care of.

  When I had spoken to the police in the aftermath of everything, it felt like an out of body experience. I didn’t feel like I was actually there, speaking to them. I just felt like my mouth was moving, but it wasn’t me talking. I didn’t know how to describe it other than to say when the cops said I was free to go, it felt like I had suddenly returned to my body, having no idea of what had happened from the moment Rocco threatened to kill me in front of Matthew and the Kinsmen to that very moment I could finally walk up to him.

  I could hear Rosella and Michael crying against Simon, but as for me… it just felt strange to see Matthew. It wasn’t anything to do with him. It was just…

  I wasn’t in any state to be thinking of anything romantic or anything interpersonal. I just needed to be alone. It could have been my father standing there before me, and it wouldn’t have been enough. It was nice to lean on him some, sure, but…

  My mind wasn’t there.

  I asked him for space, and he was more than happy to grant
it. I asked a cop for a ride home, and he gave Rosella, Michael and me one graciously. The cop didn’t say a word as we sat in the back seat, holding hands. I knew I’d see Simon later in the day, but that was nothing. He’d be smart enough to ignore me—he’d go to Rosella and Michael, maybe ask Rosella if I needed anything, but otherwise, he’d stay away from me.

  When we got back to the house, it was an absolute mess. This in itself wasn’t really a surprise, since I had heard and seen the Cavaros trashing the place when I got kidnapped, but it was a harsh reminder of the damage that had been done. Rosella couldn’t handle it.

  “We need to call the boys. Now.”

  She called Simon, and in a matter of seconds, she had all of the Kinsmen and even some of Simon’s construction buddies to come over. I made my way to my bedroom—well, the bedroom that Rosella had given me, but one that I was now claiming as my own. I just didn’t want to see anyone.

  I was grateful for all of the help that had been given to me, and I was especially grateful to be alive right now.

  But I needed to be alone for a bit.

  When I woke up the next day, I was surprised to realize how much I had slept that night. I didn’t even remember falling asleep, honestly. I had worried that all of the events would prevent me from getting any sleep in, but the opposite had been true—the event had beaten me down so hard that I couldn’t stay awake even if I tried.

  Waking up alone, however, was something of a startle, even if I had done it the night before. All of the events came flooding back, and one word kept popping in my head.

  “Fragile.”

  Life was fragile. Life was precious, most especially with the baby slowly forming in my belly. Life was not something to be squandered.

  And there was no higher form of life than love.

  I reached for my phone and, while I was still in my morning fog, sent off the text I needed to.