Blaze: Kings of Hell MC (16 page)

We met around the bar on the second floor. I stood against the bar and looked around at the men staring back at me, waiting to hear something positive from their president.

“It’s good to see those of us who made it. We lost a few guys today,” I started. “We lost Angelo Wilkes, a long-time member of the organization. He’d been a King of Hell for decades, before some of us were even born. One hell of a man. He was a mentor to me, and I know he reached out to a few of you standing here before me. I’m sad to see him go.”

A few faces turned to the floor. A few faces, like Chase’s and Jaurez’s, stared at me with hard eyes ready to retaliate for what happened to us.

“We lost Cliff Ross today, a prospect. He was a promising young man who had proven his loyalty to the MC a few times already before throwing himself in the line of fire today in an effort to defend us. We lost Clyde Edgars, another long-time member who’d turned down several offers of promotion within the ranks so he could help you guys work on your bikes and just ride.”

Clyde’s name got a few smiles and laughs out of the guys.

“Yeah,” I joined in with a little laugh of my own, “I think we all have funny memories of Clyde telling us ridiculous stories while working on our motorcycles or on someone’s car. We lost Terrell McCoy and Johnny Britton as well, both of whom were getting their colors soon.” I glanced over at Ricky. “Ricky, we need to deliver their colors to their families.”

Ricky nodded. He stood next to Jorell Winston, the member who had drawn the ruined bikes to our attention. Jorell stood to move up to fill the hole left by Angelo’s death. I wasn’t sure if he was fully aware of that yet, but we’d already talked about promoting him several times. If not with us, then we were preparing to offer him a position in another chapter.

Jorell was ripped. Beneath his broad shoulders, his arms bulged with thick, powerful muscles. His chest pushed against his shirts as if it wanted to break out. He always wore sleeveless t-shirts to show off the ink covering both arms. He sported a shaved head and full beard. He was an impressive specimen of biker, and he took club business very seriously whenever he was involved. He stood with his arms crossed and watched me to see what my next order would be.

“The point is we lost some great people today, but I also think it’s a testament to the caliber of everyone standing here now that we didn’t lose more. I want to commend everyone for their response today. We returned fire pretty quickly despite being ambushed. That being said, I think we’ve grown too lax, too soft, too damn comfortable here,” I continued.

Voices murmured as the group certainly felt like I was calling them out.

“Now, I can’t remember anything like this ever happening to us before, so I don’t really have any fair points of comparison, but what I will tell you is that I’ve failed you. I’ve gone soft, and because of that, I feel like the MC as a whole has started to go soft. Well, not again. We’re in too deep, and the stakes are too high for us to go soft now. If anything, we need to harden up. We’re the damn Kings of Hell, for crying out loud. If someone attacks us, they need to be put on the defensive quick. We need security.”

I looked at Chase, Juarez, and Ricky. I could see that we were all on the same page. They nodded, each of them already seeing where I was going.

“Jorell, come here.” I held up my arm for Jorell to come up in front of everyone else. “You all know Jorell, right? He’s going to be our new head of security.”

Jorell gave a hearty laugh.

“You think you’re up to it?” I joked with him in front of the rest of the group.

“You know I am.” He took my hand and shook it. “Thank you for the opportunity, Gage.”

“Alright, guys, that’s the good news,” I said, killing the applause.

I felt the mood drop around me instantly.

“What’s the bad news?” Juarez asked cautiously.

“The bad news is that we still have a lot of work to do to clean up and contact the families of the men we lost today. The bad news is that gunfire like that doesn’t occur without some sort of law enforcement response, so they’ll probably be here soon. Ricky, I need you to handle them when they get here.” I was honestly pretty surprised they hadn’t already shown up, but they were probably on Ivan’s payroll, which meant there was a good chance they would never show up.

“So, all this talk,” Chase piped up suddenly, “but what are we going to
do
?”

“We’re going to make sure that after we ambush the deal they’ve got coming up, they aren’t able to do anything else. We’re going to eliminate Ivan and his men so that they no longer pose any kind of threat,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster. I still wasn’t sure of what we were going to do, myself.

“We need to have a private meeting with just the kings,” Jorell said in my ear. “We need to leave the princes out of this one until we’re ready to make a move.”

It struck me as odd that Jorell was so eager to assume his position that he’d try to tell me what we needed to do. I agreed with him completely, but it seemed a little early for him to be asserting himself.

“Look, right now, we need everyone to focus on cleaning up the mess from today. We need to replace the back window on the Suburban and fix the bikes. I also want everyone armed, just in case. In the meantime, I need to see Chase, Juarez, Ricky, and Jorell in the boardroom. The rest of you are dismissed.” I waved the group away and hobbled immediately into the boardroom with the other Kings.

Once the heavy double doors were closed, we took our seats around the table.

“So, how’s it going down?” Chase asked almost immediately.

I looked between his face and Juarez’s. Neither of them held any humor. There were no more jokes to be shared. Their faces had hardened in the course of the evening.

“Might I make a suggestion?” Jorell spoke up before I could answer, raising his hand like he was still in school.

“Sure.” I sat back in my chair and gave him the floor, eyeing Ricky the whole time. Something suddenly didn’t feel right about Jorell. He was too eager to take charge, it seemed, but I figured I’d hear him out. He’d been a great asset to the MC so far. Maybe his eagerness was just a reflection of how long he’d waited to get to where he was now.

“Whatever we decide to do, let’s hold off on it and take time to plan. Let’s not jump into anything. We need to prepare,” Jorell suggested to everyone. Before sitting back down, he added, “I’m only saying that because emotions are running high right now, and I don’t want to see us lose
more
men by acting on those emotions and doing something stupid.”

“Thanks, Jorell. I think that makes a lot of sense,” I told him as he seated himself again. “Now, let me catch you up to speed with where we are right now. Julia Danvers, the woman who was translating for us with Dimitri, Ivan’s right hand man, is gone. They’ve got her. One of the guys told me so when he grabbed me and told me he was going to take me to Ivan.”

“What did you do to him?” Chase asked.

“Shot him right under the chin, blew his head off,” I answered. “Anyway, we know they’re going to be on Lake Michigan in a couple of days. Ivan has a pretty big deal going down on his yacht with our mayor and a handful of other corrupt politicians and law enforcement officials. And, Jorell, I’m glad you said something, because I really was thinking about running in there with guns blazing tonight just to take them out.”

“Well, what are you thinking?” Ricky asked me.

“I’m thinking we ambush the meeting and just kill everybody,” I told him, “but that’s a knee-jerk reaction to what happened tonight. I feel like there’s a better option. I just haven’t figured it out. But, no matter what we do, I want to rescue Julia.”

“Well, let’s spend tomorrow getting all of our resources together,” Jorell said. “Tonight after this meeting, though, I’m going to start positioning guys so that HQ is guarded properly. We should have seen tonight’s ambush coming a mile away. They don’t need to get the drop on us like that again.”

“Yeah, I don’t think there’s much else to say tonight. Let’s try to get some sleep tonight and make sure everyone who’s with us is safe. Let’s help the families of the guys we lost start making their final preparations. Most of all, tomorrow, we’ll need to start our plan to take Ivan’s punk ass down.” I stood up slowly. “I think we’re done here tonight, guys.”

“Alright, I’ll go ahead and secure the building,” Jorell said, already heading out the door.

“We’ll start contacting families,” Juarez said, and I could see it in his face that he dreaded having to call Cliff’s family. They followed Jorell out of the boardroom.

“Ricky, hang back a sec,” I told him while the others left.

“What’s up, Gage?” He leaned over to me.

“I need you to keep an eye on Jorell, or get an eye on him for me,” I said quietly.

“I’m on it. I don’t trust him either.” He eyed the door while he talked to me.

“Is it just me or does he seem too eager?”

Ricky nodded. He patted my shoulder as he got up, telling me, “Don’t worry about it, brother. I’ve got it all under control.” He walked out, leaving me to sit back down in the president’s chair behind the boardroom table. I sighed and shook my head.

Everything hit me. I’d almost lost my MC tonight, and if I didn’t respond to the attack the right way, I could easily lose my position within it. I had actually lost my girl to Ivan, and the longer it took to get her back, the more danger she was in.

“How the hell did you let this happen?” I asked myself.

To top it all off, I knew that the only way to save Julia and salvage whatever was left of our budding relationship, I had to refrain from killing anyone on the yacht. Julia wouldn’t want me to murder Ivan and his men, despite the fact that they’d endangered her life. She didn’t even want me fighting. She would have been horrified if she’d seen what happened at HQ tonight.

I closed my eyes. The next few days were going to be long and unpredictable. I needed rest to be able to manage. I’d lost a lot of blood, it felt like. I struggled to stand. The pain in my leg pumped and throbbed with my heart, but I knew that if I failed to make it upstairs, I’d either get no sleep or fall asleep right here in the boardroom. I trudged up to the third floor where I wandered to my room at the end of the hallway. I opened the door and climbed into the bed.

I inhaled deeply. The sheets still smelled like Julia.

“I’ll have you again soon. I’m going to bring you home,” I said to my memory of her as I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.

Julia

The rocking motion woke me. I started to open my blurry eyes, but the pain in my head made me wince and close them again immediately. I tried to pull my hand up to my head to shield my eyes from the light, but both of my hands were tied down to the chair I was in.

“What the hell?” I started to panic, but everything came back to me pretty quickly.

I sighed as I realized where I must have been and who must have been with me.

“Dimitri?” I asked.

“I’m here,” he said in Russian. “Glad to see you waking up. Sorry about that bump on your head.”

The sarcasm in his apology was duly noted.

“I had to make sure you wouldn’t try to get away before we could get here,” he added.

“Oh yeah, I completely understand. It’s fine,” I snapped, returning his sarcasm. I opened my eyes and stared at the carpeted floor beneath me. I slowly raised my eyes to see him leaning against the wood paneling along the wall, next to a thin wooden door. He was hunched over, standing nearly seven feet tall, too tall for the room we were in. I looked around at the boxes and cabinets. We seemed to be in some sort of storage room. From the rocking, I figured we were on a boat somewhere.

“Have you ever been on a yacht before, Dr. Danvers?” he asked with a smile on his face. His blue eyes smiled, too. He took too much pleasure in his work, it occurred to me.

“I’m guessing I have now,” I said humorlessly.

His smile grew. “Yes, now you have been on a yacht. We’re in the middle of Lake Michigan, Dr. Danvers. I hope you enjoy your stay.”

A gentle knock came at the door and it opened slightly. I couldn’t see the person on the other side of it, but I heard the husky voice talking to Dimitri in Russian.

“Ivan wants to see you, Mr. Dimitri,” the young male voice said. “Do you want me to watch the prisoner?”

Dimitri looked at me and smiled. “No, she’ll be fine. She’s not going anywhere,” he told the voice on the other side. Then, to me, “I must leave you for now. Ivan needs to talk to me, but I’ll be back as soon as I can be. I don’t want to leave you alone for too long. You might get lonely.” He looked me up and down before leaving the room.

It struck me that he didn’t lock the door behind him. Of course, if we really were on Lake Michigan, where was I going to go if I did manage to get loose? I shook my head. I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid. I should have just done my job, like Gage requested, and moved on. I shouldn’t have meddled the way I did.

I pulled against my restraints. I was in a small wooden chair. I should have been able to break it. They always seemed so easy to break in the movies. This one wasn’t giving me anything, though. I pulled and shifted my weight, and it just held itself together.

I could hear voices on the other side of the door. It sounded like they were speaking Russian, but I couldn’t hear enough to catch what they were saying. I knew what they were saying. I didn’t need to overhear anything to know that they were probably planning on killing me, or worse, before it was all said and done. I really should have listened to Gage.

“If you get out of here, Julia, you’re taking self-defense classes,” I told myself.

The yacht rocked gently in the water, and I had to put my head back against the chair. The headache coupled with the motion to make my stomach start turning. I closed my eyes and breathed slowly, evenly, until the nausea passed. I focused on my breathing and let the motion just fade into the background. Soon, I was okay again.

So this is the when and the where,
I told myself, trying to humor myself a little bit by looking on the bright side. It was too bad I couldn’t tell Gage, though I was certain he’d probably ascertained as much from his conversation with the mayor.

I thought about my budding relationship with Gage. He’d lied to me about the whole thing with Dimitri, and what he hadn’t lied to me about outright, he’d covered up and hidden from me. I wondered if he hadn’t thought he was trying to protect me or if he really was the manipulating asshole Dimitri made him out to be.

I wondered how he must have felt when he returned to HQ to find me gone. He was probably pissed off, and I was probably on his shit list now. My only hope was that when he found me tied to a chair, he would feel sorry for me and forgive me. But I wasn’t going to hold my breath.

Dimitri poked his head back in the room with a sad look on his face.

“I’ve got some bad news, Dr. Danvers,” he said, closing the door and pulling up a crate to sit on.

“What is it, Dimitri?” I rolled my eyes as a knee-jerk reaction, not realizing until it was over that I’d even done it right in front of him.

“It’s about your boyfriend, Gage,” he said.

My heart sank into my stomach.
No, no, no
, I screamed in my head.

“It seems he might not be coming to save you after all. Ivan just told me he ordered one of his tactical teams to attack the Kings of Hell HQ.
If
we see Gage again, it will be as one of our prisoners, like you! That means, of course, you’ll get to watch him die,” he explained with glee. “Isn’t that exciting, Dr. Danvers?”

I stared at him with teary eyes. “Exciting isn’t the word I would use, Dimitri,” I said flatly, fighting back my tears.

“Don’t cry, Dr. Danvers,” he continued, mocking me. “I thought you’d be happy to see us put an end to that crook after he lied to you the way he did. I figured you would want to see him suffer for how much he hurt your friend Dimitri.”

“We aren’t friends,” I snapped.

He gave me a mock frown. “But I thought you cared for your friend, Dr. Danvers.”

I looked down at the floor and shook my head. There was no need to argue with him. He was enjoying playing with me too much. He laughed when I looked away.

“From the moment I saw you, I knew I could trick you into helping me,” he said. “I just didn’t know how long it would take to convince you to do it.”

Great! So now I’m naïve and gullible, and it’s obvious,
I thought, clenching my jaw, biting my tongue.

Dimitri continued. “I didn’t count on getting help from Gage, but he really seemed to rise to the occasion for me. He couldn’t do right by you if he tried.”

I tried to tune him out, tried to focus on the floor or the rope digging into my ankle to distract myself from him. I knew he was just trying to get a rise out of me. I couldn’t let him succeed. I couldn’t react or respond.

“I guess you probably expected him to come to rescue you, huh?” He leaned forward and put a thick finger under my chin. He lifted my face so that I looked into his eyes.

I tried to stare at him blankly, but I felt my face contorting in anger.

“You did, didn’t you? You really thought that heartless bastard cared about you. Listen to me. Gage doesn’t care about anyone but himself. The sooner you learn that, the better.” He chuckled. “I guess you’re learning that now, huh?” He shook his head in pity.

“It’s not over yet,” I told him. “Don’t count him out just yet.” I narrowed my eyes at the Russian. I still had faith in Gage. I couldn’t explain why. Dimitri had been right about him lying to me and screwing up every time he turned around, but there was something genuine in Gage. There was a connection between us that really felt sincere. When all was said and done, I felt like Gage really did care.

“Remember the story I told you about his ex-girlfriend?” Dimitri asked.

“I remember.”

“This is how she died. She died because he allowed her to get mixed up in his business. She died to save him in a conflict just like what’s happening right now.” His voice dripped with a perverse pleasure, as if he was getting turned on by rubbing the other woman’s death in my face.

“You told me Gage killed her.”

“He did. He put her in harm’s way, and he gave her up so that he could escape,” he insisted.

“But you also said you weren’t there. You didn’t see it happen.” I wanted to push him a little and see if his little tale stood up to any kind of scrutiny.

“I didn’t see it happen, but everyone knew about it as soon as it happened. It got him quite the ruthless reputation. Unfortunately for him, Ivan doesn’t care about his reputation. Ivan is stronger. He hires stronger men.” Pride crept into his voice, and he stuck his chest out proudly as he talked.

“So, you’re one of these
stronger
men?” I mocked him. “You got taken down by two guys who are tiny next to you. I’ve seen Chase and Juarez. They aren’t remarkable, but they were able to take you captive and tie you up in the basement of their motorcycle club’s headquarters. You certainly didn’t seem too strong then.”

He gripped my face in his hand. It felt like he was going to crush my jaw and my cheeks. He moved his face so close that I could taste his breath.

“Do not mock me, little girl. I can crush you with my bare hands, and don’t think I won’t do it,” he threatened me.

I just raised my eyebrows, daring him to do it, but he let go of my face, stood up, and stepped back from me.

“I didn’t think you would,” I told him. “You need me alive in case Gage does show up. You know, in case Ivan’s men aren’t successful.”

A frantic knock came at the door, as if right on cue. I knew deep down what it was already. I didn’t need to hear the frantic voice when Dimitri opened the door.

“There’s been a problem. Ivan needs to see you.”

Dimitri shot me a dangerous look, as if my words had caused whatever it was that had happened.

I just smiled and shook my head. “I told you, don’t count him out just yet. Some reputations are earned.”

“I’ll be back for you,” he threatened before he walked out of the room and closed the door.

I took a deep, shaky breath after he left the room. I tried to pretend he wasn’t scaring me, but the truth was I was terrified. It wasn’t every day that I got kidnapped by the Chicago chapter of the Russian mob. It also wasn’t every day that I relied on an outlaw biker to come save me. I hoped that the bad news for Dimitri was as good for me as it sounded. I hoped it meant that Ivan’s men had failed to take Gage and that he was still on his way to rescue me.

He couldn’t get here fast enough.

Surely Gage knew about the boat and about Lake Michigan. Surely he’d gotten that information from the mayor. He must have known by now, as well, that I was with Dimitri and the rest of Ivan’s men. He couldn’t just leave me here. I didn’t know what Ivan had planned for either one of us, but I hoped Gage and the Kings of Hell would be able to reverse those plans when they arrived.

The boat rocked gently side to side, keeping time in its own way, like the ticking of a clock. I closed my eyes and trusted the water’s sense of time. Now that the initial bout of sea sickness was gone, the rocking was peaceful and relaxing.

Soon, I heard raised voices outside, on the other side of the door. Dimitri and someone were having words with each other, but I couldn’t hear them clearly. Something must have gone terribly wrong for them.

That was good for me. I hoped.