Page 59 of Savage Fire

Until the sounds of laughter filled the room. Men’s laughter.

Jerking, Tessa tensed, pulling away from her mother.

Jacob.

He was there, standing right inside a doorway that connected the two rooms. A smarmy, ugly smirk on his equally ugly face.

He’d found them.

“Condesa, my dear girl, I missed you,” the living nightmare announced before taking a step into the room.

Her mother seemed frozen to the floor, her eyes big, filled with terror.

“Mom,” Tessa shouted, pulling her mother behind her. She’d kick the motherfucker’s ass, then she and her mom would get the hell out of there. Her mother would find protection at the club, and she’d finally be free of the man she married once and for all. “What the hell are you doing here, Jacob?’ she snarled.

Behind her, her mother shifted, her hand on Tessa’s back.

Balding, tan, with wrinkles and jowls that made him look like an angry shar pei, Jacob Mannerly hadn’t aged well at all. He was stooped with years of wear and tear on his body, his belly all jelly behind his blue flannel shirt, Tessa couldn’t understand how his much prettier “wives” would ever climb into bed with him willingly, let alone let his tiny dick anywhere near their coochies.

He shook his head, his gaze moving between her mother and Tessa. “My wife is here, why would I be anywhere else?” he asked, his tone condescending, as though she was an idiot for asking. “After all, after you left, I had to keep a tighter leash on the women. Couldn’t have any of the other ones thinkin’ they could just leave whenever they wanted.”

Controlling piece of shit. His words begged the question, though…how had her mother gotten away from him long enough to get to Vegas in the first place?

God, she hoped Davey was nosy, because she needed him to come check on her now!

Tessa flicked a gaze to the window facing the parking lot, wondering if she could get her mother out the door and into the truck before she had to engage with Jacob. Yeah, she was trained to fight, but she hadn’t actually fought since her injury. She’d hit the bag but she hadn’t sparred—much to Skathi’s disappointment. While Jacob was in his sixties, he’d spent every day working the ranch. He was stronger than he looked, and he was taller than her. And Tessa had her mother to worry about.

“Just let us leave, Jacob.”

Jacob sneered. “After all the resources I put into tracking you down? I don’t think so.”

Tessa knew Jacob wouldn’t take her escape lying down.

“I doesn’t matter,” she spat. “You can’t have me, and you can’t make me go back with you. You leave, right now, and I won’t kick your ass. My mom stays with me.”

The man actually had the audacity to laugh.

“Your mom stays with you?” he laughed, crossing his arms over his chest. “She’s how I knew where to find you.”

Just as she thought, that man followed his wife to Las Vegas after the goons he sent to take Tessa had failed.

“Oh, I see your mind spinnin’, and you’d be wrong. I didn’t follow her here.Ibrought her. Her and Ronnie and Jimmy.”

Betrayal unlike anything she’d ever felt before sliced through her. It couldn’t be true.

“Mom?” she rasped, turning to look over her shoulder at her mother who was staring a hole in the carpet, her features blank.

Jacob chuckled.

Then, from behind him, through the door from the connected room, a familiar massive man holding a gun appeared. From behind him, another familiar man appeared, holding zip ties. She recognized the dark, ugly look in their eyes. No doubt they were Jacob’s ranch hands.

“Now, we’re gonna calmly, quietly move into the next room where Jimmy’s gonna secure you nice and tight, and we’re gonna have a nice long chat. Then, once Ronnie here deals with the man parked outside, we’re gonna get in my truck and head home. Where you belong. Wife.”

Fang stood, legs apart, arms crossed over his chest was watching two club brothers do their thing. He’d come to Savage Ink to talk with Wolf who had a contact, who knew someone, who knew someone in the Romano family who wouldn’t mind dropping a few loaded whispers to get things stirred up proper.

“You’re not gonna have any room left on your back pretty soon, brother,” Wolf, a fucking talented tattooist and the manager of the club’s tattoo shop, remarked while wiping the extra ink from a newly completed tattoo.

A dragon clutching a golden egg was stretched out over Dragon’s lower back. Dragon, the brothel manager and sometimes bouncer, was as addicted to tattoos as many of the club brothers. His, though, always featured some part of the dragon or some part of the dragon lore from the Middle Ages or ancient Asia.

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