Page 81 of Ruthless

Chapter 30

Rebel

Vinny.

Five of his friends.

Tanner.

Six of the Sentinels, including Ace.

Moody.

They were all riding with me.

Into hell.

Without question.

Without fear.

We were all working towards the same goal--to save my woman and put an end to Wicked and his bunch, once and for all. We'd be doing everyone a favor, getting rid of a bunch of law-breaking, terrorizing assholes who didn't contribute anything good to society. It was their own fucking fault that it had come to this. They should have just killed Daryl and called it good. Taking my woman had sealed their fate.

Stevie had seen it go down. She’d seen a man in a hospital uniform force Ginger into a white van and into the arms of a biker. The driver had been a biker, too, but she hadn't seen anything that revealed what club they were from. She'd told Skipper immediately, and he'd spread the word. Considering what Ace and I already knew about Daryl and Jack, we’d figured that it was the Kings that had taken her.

Since Tanner knew that the Kings used Tomoka Farms Rd. when they traveled back and forth from Sanford, and the trucker had seen a few bikers before the accident, we’d thought that that was as good a place as any to start looking. We got lucky. Moody had been keeping his eyes open and had decided to follow a couple of the Kings who'd left a bar in a hurry after one of their brothers had rushed in with news. When they'd turned off onto a barely-there dirt road, he'd kept on going. He knew the area well, and he knew that the road leading in that direction dead ended into Tomoka Lake.

He had called in the location and where to meet--behind a country restaurant, so that we wouldn't be seen from the road in case more Kings rode by. It wasn't a social meeting. We remained quiet, some of us smoking, each of us deep in our own thoughts. This was war. Some of us were going to get hurt, maybe worse, but it's what we did to protect our own. We were brothers. We had each other's backs, and we all knew that we could count on each other. Words wouldn’t punish the assholes that had been arrogant enough to take and hurt what didn't belong to them. The only thing that they would understand was a fight. Killing a few of them would send a strong message.

I was fucking ready.

I thought about Ginger in the hands of those men. If they touched her . . . if they hurt her . . . I fisted my hands as blinding rage filled every cell of my body until my blood was so fucking hot that I thought I was going to boil alive. She'd been through enough.

"Brother--" Moody's voice drew me out of my deep thoughts. I gave him a questioning look. His expression was stone, like always. "Your phone's been buzzing for a full minute."

It was then that I realized that I had been so lost in my own thoughts that I hadn’t felt the buzzing of an incoming call. I dug out my phone. Unknown caller. "What?" I snapped, having an idea of who might be on the other end of the line.

"We haven't met?"

"Save the introductions, I know who you are, asshole." His laughter made me want to reach through the phone and ring his fucking neck. "Where the hell is my woman?"

"Well, that's why I'm calling," came his smug return. "My club has her. And we have something special planned for the both of you."

"Just tell me what the fuck you want." I wasn't about to play his game. "You took care of Daryl, he's the fucker who owed you money. My woman had nothing to do with that."

He snorted as if this was all a joke. "This has nothing to do with Daryl or the money he owed me. We want you."

What the fuck? I'd never had any interaction with the Kings before.

"A few of your friends from Red Devils have joined us. They seem to think you're a traitor."

Fuck! That was the last thing I had expected to hear. We'd always known there had been the possibility that some of the Red Devils hadn't been present the day of the shootout, but we’d figured that they'd scattered, because we'd never heard from any of them. Who the fuck was “they”?

"Wouldn't you like to see your old friends again?"

I knew then that they weren't going to release Ginger. They were out for revenge. I could only imagine what that would mean for her. I knew that it wouldn't be pleasant. They'd want to make her suffer, because that would hurt me the worst, and when they were done, they'd put a bullet in both of our heads. I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth to draw in the control that I needed to keep a clear head.

I'd kill her myself before I let any of them hurt her.

---