Page 68 of Under His Control

Reaching the perimeter wall, we slowed to a stop and watched the biker drop down. A volley of gunfire rained down on us, and Romeo and I both dropped and rolled toward trees for safety.

Romeo gritted his teeth, shot in the arm. I covered for him, my new brother in arms, and I struggled against the parallels and flashbacks that hit me at the similarities of this situation and what I experienced overseas.

Shielding a comrade from gunfire. Lying on my stomach with a firearm, gauging where to fire and when. Checking that the soldier who was down would make it.

All the while, as the memories battered me, I focused on Romeo.

“That motherfucking MC will regret the day they ever tried to fuck with us,” he growled as he compressed the bleeding injury.

I shushed him. While I didn’t want to request that he shut up, the shooting was stopped. That silence was telling and with it, I took a chance to figure out where the bikers were shooting from and how many were out there. This double-trunked tree offered some protection, but it wasn’t infallible.

Romeo clenched his teeth, not needing to be told twice.

I narrowed my eyes, straining to see and hear. I wished I had my rifle. I wanted some sights. Night-vision goggles would be best, and I suspected that was what these bikers were using.

What they hadn’t taken into consideration was that I had other senses to rely on, other ways that I’d been trained to root out the enemy in dangerous territory.

Every one of those dumbasses stank. Of booze and weed, but mostly cigarettes. Staying as still as I could, I waited to acclimate to the darkness and mark them.

These weren’t trained soldiers, men with advanced practice in covert ops like I was. And their clumsiness showed.

One fidgeted in the tree, showing me the shiny barrel of his gun. Another sniffed, likely fighting the urge to cough. Someone was closer yet, reeking of the cigarette he still smoked.

Stupid motherfuckers.

Romeo was pissed. I would be too if I were shot on my own property. He’d want to kill them all right now and then and end this war, but I had to agree with what Eva mentioned a long time ago. What Dante seemed to believe.

The Giovanni Family and Devil’s Brothers MC had teamed up to attack the Constellas, but it might pay off to let them cancel each other out. The Giovannis hired a sniper previously, and that spoke of higher intelligence and a better skillset. But they had no money. The MC seemed to be raking in cash, but they were stupid motherfuckers.

If this was how these bikers fought—with gutsy, rash ambushes or sloppy, inexperienced attacks in the dark, I had to agree that these opponents deserved each other. Neither could beat the Constellas, regardless of their numbers.

I caught Romeo’s attention and tried to wordlessly convey that he should stay still. The biker we’d chased was still on the ground, and he was the outlier I couldn’t account for. But the other idiots in the trees who’d been waiting for him to come back?

They were sitting ducks. Dead men waiting.

This was far from the first guerilla form of combat I’d had to endure, and I doubted it’d be my last. I wasn’t in the army anymore, but some things never fucking changed.

Romeo seemed to understand that I was moving out. Other Constella soldiers would come soon. They were busy at the house, but more would follow where we’d run.

Once they arrived, they’d prompt these bikers to fire their assault weapons again, recklessly, even blindly in a fit of trigger rage.

I couldn’t let that happen. I refused to allow the asshole who made my daughter cry get away, either.

I drew in a steady breath to brace myself, and with a razor-edge of anticipation coursing through my blood and priming me to act, I eased out of the shadows of the trees and aimed for the first target I’d marked.

This is what happens when you scare my daughter.

I aimed and fired at the first man in the trees. He didn’t scream, dead upon the bullet’s impact between his eyes. Before another man could hit me, I dropped and rolled behind another tree.

Then I stepped out again, aiming at the second man.

This is what happens when you frighten my woman.

The second one was another successful pop of a bullet, through his open mouth. He fell, and another biker shouted, afraid as he fired his assault weapon into the next tree that I hid behind. I tensed, waiting out his gunfire.

Once all seemed to settle, once we were engaged in a terse game of suspense, I feigned a step to the left before whipping around to fire at the last biker hiding in the trees.

He was down, dead with two shots into his head, but I feared I’d receive the same as the biker we’d chased out here stood up and aimed his gun straight at my face.

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