“You remember Luke?” I stared in confusion racking my brain with the name, but nothing came to mind. She laughed. “Yeah. I didn’t think you would since you whore yourself out all around town so bound and determined not to fuck a brother… yet you fuck anything outside making you exactly that. Including my man.” Her man? What the fuck is she playing at?
“I can see by your wrinkled up little forehead that you’re trying to piece the puzzle together. So let me help you.” The butt of her gun slammed down on the shoulder that was shot a couple weeks ago, sending shooting pains throughout my arm, but I didn’t move or make a sound. Inside I wanted to scream like bloody hell, it was healed, but still tender.
“Luke was a bartender at Damon’s.” My mind instantly knew who she was talking about. The brown-haired, brown-eyed hunk of a man I fucked in the back room of the bar a very long ago. He was barely a blip on my radar. How the hell did I know he was her man? It was a onetime gig. “I see you remember him. He’s hard to forget.” Her fist collided with my stomach, but I remained impassive. Cooper, on the other hand, began to squirm. I just needed to wait for the right time, so Babs was in front of me instead of behind.
“See, he was actually my fiancé when you decided to fuck him. And you want to know how I know it happened?” She continued pacing, rage seeping out of her. “Because he fucking told me. He said he didn’t want my pussy anymore… that you’re ‘vice grip’ pussy was what he wanted,” she barked out. How the fuck could he want me after one time in my fucking pussy. Seriously?
But she wasn’t done. “Said he knew a buddy of his that was a hang around for the Ravage MC. Said since you were the Princess over there, he was gonna join. I couldn’t let that happen.” I stared at her. “He had to be dealt with.”
The pieces of the puzzle started falling into place, but they seemed minuscule in the grand scheme of things. I fucked her finance; she wanted to get back at me, so she created this elaborate scheme to do so. This chick was fucked in the head, more than I initially thought.
She walked around to the side of the room and clutched her gun in her hand. I took this as an opportunity to loosen the rope from my wrists.
As she walked towards Cooper, I halted, watching. “See, Liv here.” She ran her hand over Liv’s face lovingly, making me want to puke. “She and I had common ground. Hatred for you. Although her hatred is purely professional, it’s still there.”
As she walked towards me, I slowly grabbed my piece; I was done with this dog and pony show. In one swift move, I aimed and shot Babs right between the eyes as she dropped into a heap on the floor.
Liv screamed as Cruz, and the brothers came barreling through the doors from every direction. I aimed my gun directly at Liv. “Give me my boy.”
“Fuck you. I’ll kill him before you have him,” she snarled, clutching the gun that just shot Mel.
Cruz didn’t waste any time. Shots rang out as Cooper fell to the hard ground screaming. I ran grabbing him tightly pulling him away from everything that was about to happen.
“Mommy!” he cried, grabbing on to me tightly. I clutched him hard, not wanting to let go of him, ever.
“It’s all right, Baby. Mommy’s got you. You’re safe.” I rocked him back and forth as his tears poured into my shirt. I heard shuffling and Liv’s screams but ignored them clinging onto my boy.
“Babe?” Cruz knelt down to the ground in front of us, wrapping his arms tightly around us. “He okay?”
“I haven’t looked him over yet, but he feels it.”
“How about you?”
“Better now. She gone?”
“No,” he said kissing Cooper’s head and standing up.
“What?” I yelled shocked. “Why the fuck not?” I picked Coop up off the floor and stared at the woman lying on the ground in a puddle of blood. From the rise and fall of her chest, I knew she was alive. The few shots on her legs were not life threatening.
“Club business,” he clipped as I glared at him. Normally I’d let that shit slide, but this time, it was taking everything in my power to hold it together.
Liv laughed, lying on the ground in her puddle of blood and dirt. “What the fuck are you laughing about?” I asked as Coop’s head buried into my neck.
“You killed Babs, now someone will kill you.” G.T. slammed his fist hard into her jaw. I could hear the bones cracking at the contact.
“Wh… what’s she talking about Cruz?” My voice was unsteady. I thought this shit would be over, but it was becoming to be far from it.
Cruz looked across the room at the brothers who all nodded to him. “Babs put a hit on you if you killed her. Right now the only one that can place it is Rabbit. So we need to get to him before he finds out. We’re gonna use Liv here. She, after all, has been fucking his ol’ lady.”
Liv’s body went still, all the cockiness from her little confession gone at those words. “You can’t tell Rabbit. He knows nothing about me.” Her voice shook.
“That’s what I was banking on,” Cruz said as he nodded to Dagger and G.T. They tied her arms and legs and gagged her, dragging her off.
“Cruz, what’s gonna happen?” I knew that in our world having a price tag on my head meant everyone would be after me. Everyone would want the chunk of the money. I’d be a sitting duck just waiting to die.
“I take care of you. Trust me.” I nodded my head because if anything was certain, it was that I trusted this man.
“Thank you,” I whispered to him.
“For what?”
“For getting my boy back,” I said, squeezing his little body into mine.
“Babe, you did this. You brought him home. I’m just here for back up.” I smiled up at him knowing he was only partially right.
“Can we go home?”
Cruz looked over at Diamond, who nodded to us. “Yeah, Babe. Let’s go.”
Chapter 15—Harlow
Lying in bed next to Cruz, I thought over the week I’d had. The whirlwind of emotions was tearing me up. Tension around the club was through the roof with everyone on edge about the meeting with Rabbit tomorrow night. Cruz has been in meetings non-stop, and I haven’t been privileged to the information. Part of me wanted to know badly what the hell was going on, but the other part wanted to distance myself as far away from it as possible.
I made it my life’s mission to keep Cooper in my sight at all times. I kept him attached to my hip, not letting anyone watch him. I knew that Ma didn’t intend on him getting taken, and she’d have done anything to protect him if she could have, but I just couldn’t risk it.
Trusting someone else with him was incredibly hard. Just the thought of someone else watching him kicked up my anxiety. I hadn’t been back to X, and as far as I knew Becs was running the joint.
I didn’t even have the urge to go there right now, or leave the clubhouse for that matter.
Shutting my mind off tonight was proving to be more difficult than I thought. Even having a couple of shots before bed hasn’t relieved the uncertainty of tomorrow. The horrible part of not knowing what was gonna happen was… I didn’t know what to do to help. They didn’t want me to. Cruz was on edge, but he’s been doing everything he can to be calm and collected for Cooper and me.
He’s doing a great job at it, considering at times I wondered if he was affected at all.
After about an hour of lying there, I couldn’t take it anymore. Sliding slowly out of Cruz’s grasp, I needed another drink. The clock on the nightstand read 1:37 a.m. and I knew someone would be up in the clubhouse, and there were no parties going on.
Walking into the main room of the clubhouse, the place was dead silent, my plan was ruined. I guess 1:30 a.m. on a Monday morning was not party-central. Grabbing a bottle of Jack, I headed down to the kids’ media room in the basement. It was quiet with all the families being gone, and it was peaceful.