I pull Michelle up from the floor and sit her in the chair. I slap her hard until she stirs. Her eyes take a second to focus, but when she realises I’m free, she sits up straighter, a look of panic on her face. “Start talking,” I growl.
She glances at her husband’s lifeless body, the blood oozing from the wound in his head. “He was having an affair with Emily. They had a threesome going with her dom.” She rushes out the words, showing that she’s scared. “She wanted to pay you back and Callum came up with a way. He saw you and Eva together months ago. You collected her from the hospital after she was mugged,” she continues.
My mind goes back to that day when Eva rang the club looking for Riggs and Anna. Instead, she got me. “You were responsible for that?” I ask.
She nods. “Callum set it up. He was going to find her, but then some other hero stepped in and he couldn’t get close.”
“I should put a fuckin’ bullet in you for this,” I growl and she whimpers.
“I loved you. I fell in love and you rejected me. All I’ve heard about for months is Eva. From him, and then you. She’s like a fuckin’ disease.”
“No, you’re the disease. You stay the hell away from me and her. If I see you near either of us again, I’ll kill you.” She nods her head and I leave the room. I have no doubts about leaving her alive. She can’t hurt us without her mastermind husband pulling the strings.
I find my jeans on a table outside the door and pull them on. I wince as they rub against my wound. Riggs is in the hall waiting for me. “Good to see you, brother.”
I shake his hand. “You too. I need to find Emily.”
I begin opening doors, but the place is empty. I come to the last door and that’s where I find Emily, on her knees sucking her dom’s cock. “How cute. Father and daughter, together again,” I say sarcastically. I can’t believe I brought this man groceries thinking he was struggling to raise his kid. Emily scrambles to her feet, but I already have her by the hair. I drag her from the room kicking and screaming. The old guy stands to follow, and I point the gun at him and pull the trigger. Emily screams and cowers, but I pay no attention to her cries as his body slumps to the floor.
Eva
I watch Cree drag Emily from the building and follow them with my eyes. “I saw the explosion,” I mutter. “I thought you were all dead.”
Chains laughs. “We knew what would happen, sending you over to him like that. We’d already gotten into position to follow you before you got in Callum’s car.”
“Why does he have her?” I ask, my eyes still fixed on Cree and Emily. My voice sounds weak and so unlike me. I wonder to myself if this is what happens when you go into shock.
“It’s how he handles things,” says Chains. “Let him do his thing.”
“Do you kill women?” I ask thoughtfully. My mind feels numb with shock and I can still hear the gunshot replaying in my head. I know the Kings Reapers aren’t angels. There were stories going around about them for many years. Nobody ever went to their bar, The Windsor, because everyone knew it’s where they hung out and outsiders weren’t welcomed. But since meeting the guys, I hadn’t seen any of the bad stuff. I saw how they cared for their own and welcomed me, my mum, Anna, and her daughter, Malia.
“If you wanna be with Cree, you have to accept who he is. He’ll love you and protect you with his life. All you need to do is accept him.”
“I grew up with my mum in the house she still lives in. I went to a normal mixed school and did normal kid things like play in the park and eat ice cream. The most dangerous thing I’ve done is kiss a boy in my mum’s house when I was twelve years old, and trust me, that was a big rule broken right there. I’ve never seen a gun or heard the sound it makes when it hits someone’s skull. I’ve never been coated in someone else’s blood. I . . . ”
“Eva,” says Chains firmly. “Stop.” He places his hand on mine and that’s when I realise I’ve been rubbing at the dried blood on my arms. “It’s all gonna be okay. After tonight, you won’t ever have to see these people again. You and Cree will live happily ever after.”
I stare out of the window. I’m not so sure. They deserve everything they get, Michelle, Callum, and even Emily, but the way life is extinguished so easily at the hands of the man I love is a hard pill to swallow.
Cree
Eva keeps looking over at me from her place on the couch. She’s surrounded by her girls, her mum, and Frankie. I need to know what happened to her in that place. Did they touch her? I shake my head and knock back another shot of some rancid shit that Riggs keeps giving me. I choke. “Fuck, brother, what is that?”
“Shit to help you sleep tonight.”
One of the club girls comes over to me carrying a box of bandages. “Pres said to clean your leg up.” She smiles.
“I’ll do it,” snaps Eva, marching towards us and taking the box. I smirk at her feisty attitude. “You wanna go somewhere private?” she asks me. I can’t stand her looking at me the way she is, like I’m some fuckin’ wounded dog.
I shake my head. “No, I’m good here.” I unfasten my jeans and push them down my legs. The shower I took the second I got back here cleaned off most of the dried blood, but the wound
