Forever Rockers (45 page)

Harper had a fever of a hundred and three by the time we got to the hospital. She was taken immediately up to the maternity floor and pumped full of fluids and antibiotics while Violet was taken into the nursery to get a full exam. She was four weeks early, but she was still crying and a nice five pounds, two ounces, so the nurses weren’t too worried about her.

Mia needed a lot of fluids to flush the rest of whatever drug she’d been tranquillized with out of her system and only once she was taken care of did I let the ER doctor tend to the deep gashes on my arms and face. I needed a soft cast for my hand since I’d fucked it up good kicking Helena’s ass, but nothing was broken.

Gabriella had to be taken into surgery to take the bullet out of her leg. The doctor called the cops, but I was ready for them when they came in to question me. The MC guys were off dealing with Sean and getting rid of the bodies, so I told the cops the truth. That Harper, Mia, and Gabriella had been taken. We’d found where they were being kept and were able to get them to the hospital.

None of us knew where Helena and Sean were.

It didn’t get any truer than that. I had no clue what Felicity’s guys would do with the bodies and as long as I didn’t know, then I wasn’t lying.

After they left I stayed with Mia. She was sleeping peacefully now, but she still looked pale. I stood over her bed, memorizing every little feature of hers even though I already knew them by heart. Nik stood on the other side of her bed, doing the same.

“We almost lost her,” he muttered and lifted his troubled ice-blue eyes to me. “We nearly lost you both.”

I reached for his hand and we linked fingers. “But we didn’t. She’s safe now. Safer than she’s been in a long time.”

“Do you even remember Helena? Was she really one of Shane’s many?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably. I can’t remember any of them, so I can’t tell you for sure.”

“Promise me this won’t ever happen again, Em. I don’t think I can handle any more of this shit.” He clenched his jaw. “If I need to leave the band, if my life is affecting our kids’ safety and your own, I don’t want it anymore.”

I sucked in a surprised breath. “This wasn’t your fault Nik. It was mine. I’m a bitch, and I was never gentle with anyone’s feelings. I’m still not. But we can’t go through life worried about hurting someone’s feelings and them turning into some psychotic nut job.” I glanced down at Mia. “All we can do is make sure that she’s protected. That’s all any parent can do.”

“And you. I want you protected too.” Still holding my hand, he walked around the bed and pulled me into his arms. “I nearly lost you tonight, too. Baby girl, I heard that gun go off and I nearly died right then. My heart was still beating and I was still breathing, but until I saw you with my own eyes, touched you, I was dead inside. You are my everything, Emmie. Without you, nothing else means anything. Don’t ever make me live without you.”

Fresh tears stung my eyes. “Nik…”

“I love you,” he whispered as he lowered his head and brushed a butterfly-soft kiss over my lips. “I love you more than anything in this world. I refuse to live in it without you.”

My heart filled with all the love I had for him. “I love you, too. You are my world, Nik. Now and forever.”

It was a while later before I could make it up to the maternity floor to check on Harper. I found her room and carefully looked in on her. She was asleep, but Shane was sitting up in the recliner beside her bed, holding his baby in his arms. Seeing him, I quietly closed the door behind me as I entered the room.

He lifted his dark head and grinned up at me like the proud father he was as I took a peek at the pink bundle in his arms. “Look at what my amazing wife did, Em.”

I returned his grin. In that moment the chaos of the day faded away. All that mattered was that moment. Shane holding his little Violet. “She’s beautiful,” I assured him, looking down at my newest little niece. “She looks a lot like you,” I murmured as I took in the baby’s features.

“You think so?” He shook his head. “I think she looks just like Harper.”

“Harper’s lips and hair. Your eyelashes.” I traced a finger down her soft cheek. “Your jaw.”

“I hope she has Harper’s eyes,” he whispered.

I lifted a brow. “How many Stevensons do you know with anything but blue-gray eyes?”

“Violet’s different, though.” He lowered his head and pressed a kiss to his daughter’s forehead. “She’s so beautiful I can’t stop looking at her.”

I sat there with him for a long while, both of us watching Violet. She was the perfect mixture of Harper and Shane. So beautiful that I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her. The longer I sat on the arm of his recliner, however, the more I felt how much pain my body was in. Every muscle hurt, every bone ached. I knew I needed to go, to leave Shane alone with his new little family, but I wanted to talk to him first.

“You did good tonight,” I said, praising him. “You helped Harper bring Violet into the world and you didn’t fall apart.”

His head slowly lifted, but his smile had disappeared. “I’ve never been so scared in my life, Emmie. I saw all that blood and whatever else was coming out of her and I wanted to freak out, but she needed me.” He shifted the baby in his arms a little and leaned his head back, frowning at the ceiling. “But she told me the one thing that made me realize it was okay.”

I glanced at Harper, still sleeping deeply. “What was that?”

“That she and Violet are mine and that means that their blood is my blood. It’s true. The truest thing I’ve ever known, Em. And I reminded myself over and over again that they are mine as Harper pushed our baby girl into the world.” He sighed tiredly. “From the minute I knew she was pregnant, I thought I would fuck all this up and I was sure I would do just that tonight. But I didn’t.”

I smiled and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “That’s how it is, Shane, when you love someone more than you love yourself.” I kissed him again and stood. “Get some rest, okay?” I headed for the door. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Emmie?”

I paused with my hand on the door. “Yeah?”

“Helena is really gone, isn’t she? She’s not going to hurt Harper again, right?” 

I bit my lip. No one had told him what had happened and I didn’t think I could tell him right then. “She’s gone, Shane. Forever. She and Sean are two people you will never have to worry about ever again.”

“I love you, Em.”

I blinked back a fresh flood of tears. “I love you, Shane.”

Spider

The barn was in nothing but ashes now. A few pieces of the rotted old wood were bright with hot embers, but other than the smoke filling my lungs, there was little evidence of the chaos that had taken place there that night.

Normally when it came to this part of a run, I was emotionless. The part where it was time to play Angel of Death and end whatever fucker who had gotten on the MC’s bad side. This time I was boiling with a rage I hadn’t felt in a long time.

This fucker had taken two females, one of them an innocent little baby. I went a little insane when it came to men who mistreated females, but when one of them was a baby I got pushed over the edge. I was going to relish every moment that was about to come.

“Where do you want him?” Colt asked as he and Raider lifted the still unconscious man that the rocker’s wife had called Sean.

I kicked over a half charred wall of the barn. The edges were still smoking and a few hot spots were glowing red. I nodded for them to lay him on the wood. Fuck, this was going to be fun.

“She knocked his ass out good, didn’t she?” Hawk’s voice rumbled beside me. “Little pregos had some serious strength.”

Flick blew out a long breath. “I always thought she had a hidden badass side.”

Jet and Bash dropped down onto the grass a few feet away, watching me with eyes that were neither amused nor full of dread. They were pissed they’d missed out on everything, but they had been on the other end of the fifteen-mile radius the Italian rocker’s phone had been tracked to. By the time they’d gotten there, the others were already loaded up and headed toward the hospital.

“What about the dead bitch?” Raider asked as he dropped his end of the unconscious man.

“Acid’s the best way to go. I’ll find some after Spider deals with this sonofabitch,” Jet assured him.

I moved through the ashes, looking for a piece of wood that was still hot enough to wake the fucker up. Grinning when I found what I needed, I headed back to the motionless body. “Hold him down,” I told Colt and Raider.

Colt sighed and Raider groaned, but neither said a word as they grabbed his arms and legs. I bent down and pulled Sean’s shirt up, then touched the red-tipped wood to his stomach. The smell of flesh burning filled my nose seconds before the man was forced awake. “Ahhhhh!” he screamed. “Ahhh. What? What?” He turned his head left and right, saw Colt and then Raider before realizing that they weren’t the ones hurting him.

Terrified eyes lifted to me and I grinned down at him. “Hello, Sean.”

“Who the fuck are you?” he demanded in a voice that practically squeaked with a mixture of pain and panic.

I crouched down beside him, so he could see my face better. Bash had driven the SUV he’d been taken in earlier that night down the hill and had turned the headlights on so that we could see better. “I’m your worst nightmare, motherfucker.”

“What?” His voice rose—so high it hurt my ears. Damn. I wasn’t going to be able to deal with that shit. “I don’t know you. I haven’t done shit to you. Let me go. Let me go.” He struggled against Colt and Raider’s hold but both men outweighed him by a good fifty pounds of solid muscle.

“Someone gag this piece of shit,” I commanded.

It was Flick who stepped forward and stuffed a piece of a half-burned shirt in Sean’s mouth. She slapped him on the face once, twice, three good times. “It’s time for some fun, buddy boy. I can’t wait to watch you bleed.”

For a second I wondered if we should let Flick stay and witness what I was about to do, but Jet hadn’t tried to get her to leave and I figured she had just as much right to watch me give little Mia some justice as any of us did. She’d taken care of the little girl for over a year, had been her nanny and loved the kid as if she were her own. Flick being there to watch was just about as good as letting Mia’s mother watch, I figured.

“Strip him,” I ordered and Hawk stepped forward, his knife in hand.

Sean saw the deadly blade—the same blade Hawk had used countless times cutting men into little pieces—and started to struggle again. No one tried to make him stop thrashing. There was no way he was getting loose of Colt and Raider, and the more he moved, the more Hawk nicked him. By the time Sean’s shirt, jeans, and underwear were off, the man had deep slices on his arms, stomach, thighs and calves.

Hawk’s knife, however, was a steak knife compared to the one strapped to me. I pulled it free and touched the blade to Sean’s cheek. “You caused a lot of people some trouble today, Sean.” I
tut-tut-tutted
him as I skimmed the blade down one cheek and then over to the other. Eyes already wide with fear nearly bulged out of his head and the air suddenly filled with a new scent.

Sean was pissing himself.

Raider muttered a curse as the piss flowed down the half-charred wood toward where he was holding the man. “Pussy,” he growled.

I chuckled, amused that it was Raider getting piss on his shoes. I was still a little testy about his easy relationship with Willa.

“You know, if you had minded your own business and not touched Mia and the Italian chick, this wouldn’t be happening right now,” I murmured with a smile. “But you had to make trouble, didn’t you?” I shook my head, disappointed at him. “Well, now you have to pay the price of taking an innocent little baby, motherfucker.”

“Dear God,” Bash grumbled from a few feet away. “He’s going to lecture the idiot the whole time, isn’t he?”

“Probably,” Jet said with a shrug. “It’s fun though. I wish we had some popcorn.”

I ignored them, focusing my attention on the pussy now at my mercy. I slid the blade of my knife down his throat and over his chest. Lifting it until only the tip touched his skin, I put just enough pressure on the hilt to pierce his skin. Sean flinched and tried to struggle even harder. “I made a promise to make you eat your own dick, Sean. I always keep my promises.”

Tears filled his eyes and poured down his face. He tried to speak but all I heard was garbled nonsense through the gag. Winking at him, I let the tip of my blade trail down his chest to his bellybutton, cutting him open as I went. The metallic scent of blood as it oozed out of the long cut filled my nose and I welcomed the new smell. Right then I held the power of life and death in my hands and I was going to savor every second of it.

“Ouch,” Hawk commented from where he was standing beside Flick. “I wouldn’t want that to be me right now.”

“I kind of wish I could cut him up a little,” Flick murmured.

“No,” Jet told her. “None of that, Felicity. Keep your hands clean or I’m going to put you in the truck.”