Page 70 of Raiden

We had to park well down the street, but my brisk steps and Gunner’s eerily silent ones, eat up the sidewalk in far less time than it took us to walk here when we arrived. A single minute can change a lifetime and all those moments I just spent in there have fundamentally changed me like molecules in an experiment getting irrevocably altered.

I glance behind me at Gunner, his bike staggered just behind mine, as I slam my helmet onto my head. “The clubhouse.”

He nods.

I should have known that my dad wouldn’t just let me go. You don’t get the last word with Zale Grand. I thought it wasweird that his men weren’t in sight, but I knew they had to be here.

I’m about to kick my bike to life when I see the sets of shadows converge, closing in on us. Men wearing the Berserkers cuts surround us like a black leather fog, closing a ring around us.

I could ride my way out and I have no doubt that Gunner would fight and kill his way out without blinking, but I’ve had my fill of blood. Holing up at the clubhouse won’t change anything. It won’t make this nightmare go away. I won’t ride off, I won’t cower, and I won’t hide.

I get off my bike and stand straight and proud beside it. “I’m Widow Grand and you willnottouch me,” I shout at the assembled circle, most of the faces hid by black bandanas pulled up to obscure them, but I still recognize a few of the men by their hair and eyes. If Skinny Bones thinks I can’t see the skeleton tattoo carving down the side of his shaved head, he’s laughably wrong. “I don’t care what my dad told you. You’re out here to ambush me like I’ve done something wrong, and I haven’t. You want me to go with you? Fine. But you will not bind me, and you will not touch me. Is that clear?”

Two men with dark eyes and dark, greasy hair pulled back into thinning ponytails glance at each other. One cracks his knuckles anxiously.

“Okay, Widow.” Creed pulls down his bandana, stark blue eyes flashing. He’s mid-thirties, not an officer of the club, but built like a tank and not afraid to get his hands bloodstained. I’ve seen him crush the face of his own club brother in a backyard fight at one of the club’s grills over the guy winking at the club whore who was supposed to be with him for the night. He pullsa few long zip ties out of his pocket. “You come without a fight on your word, but we’re still binding you. We have our orders, yeah?”

I throw back my head and laugh wildly, spilling my torment and all my aching emotions into the psychotic sound. I present my wrists anyway, in front of me because it’s easier to break a hold like that if I get the chance and I need to.

Creed binds me and gives me a quick pat down that makes Gunner growl.

I didn’t dare speak for him and I knew that asking for him to be left alone would be akin to the impossible.

When one of the men still cloaked in black tries to grab Gunner’s arms, he bursts into violent action, moving faster than I was aware was humanly possible. He punches the man behind him in the face, breaking his nose in a spray of blood. A half a second later, he’s moving in on a second and third, slamming his fist repeatedly into the throat of the man closest to him until he drops to the ground, gurgling sickly. He stabs two fingers into the eyes of the third and he drops beside the other, screaming horrifically.

Creed grasps my bound wrists and starts to drag me away. The men in this club only have so much loyalty to each other. Gunner bends and yanks a small, evil looking blade from beneath his jeans where he’d hidden it strapped above his boot. He tosses it from hand to hand, looking gleefully at the circle of five men around him.

Vastly outnumbered, he’d still probably have the odds in his favor if there was betting on this fight.

I think these men realize it too.

No one attacks, but that just lets Gunner go on the offensive. He picks one, slashing out madly. A spray of blood bursts across the sidewalk, blooming like a flower. There’s another horrible gurgle and the weight of a body hitting concrete.

The next two attack together. One goes for Gunner’s legs and the other tries to grab him from behind. Two quick slashes of that knife and they’re both on the ground, one screaming and grasping at the side of his head where his ear used to be, the other holding his hand against a nasty slash in his chest, blood bubbling from between his fingers.

For a second, I have hope that we can get out of this, even if we leave one hell of a mess in our wake that is going to cause all sorts of problems for Satan’s Angels, but that fragile, glass-thin dream shatters with the sudden burst of three loud shots.

I whip my head around wildly, trying to discern their direction. I don’t see who fired the gun until Gunner drops, silently writhing onto his side to wrap his hands around his thigh and knee.

My dad stands silhouetted by shadow and streetlight, an evil grin slashed across his face. I barely recognize him looking like that, a man possessed, a beast gone mad, eyes wild and wide in a rugged face flushed with triumph. I recognize the rings on his hand first, silver gleaming against the dark pistol.

“Let’s fucking go,” he curses, shaking his head at his men. He knew I’d be an easy target, counting on the fact that I wouldn’t hurt members of either club, but Gunner? He’s annoyed like he didn’t expect him to be a problem.

He hasn’t killed him, but he does leave him and his own men behind on the street, bleeding out, groaning andwhimpering in agony, some dead and some who very clearly need a doctor andfast.

“Call a fucking ambulance!” I yell at Creed, but he shakes his head, mouth a grim line, and turns me around, marching me quickly down the sidewalk in front of him.

I struggle, trying to turn back and look at the carnage, trying to see if Gunner is moving.

“Creed! Please! Those men are your club brothers!”

He snorts. “Fucking idiots fucked this up. You think our president is going to forgive them? They’re better off there. If either of us wants to keep the skin on our hides and our fucking appendages attached to our bodies, we’ll shut the fuck up and let him do as he pleases.”

Up until this moment, I clung so hard to that foolish, childish notion that I meant something to my dad and as such, he wouldn’t harm me. For the first time, a chilling fear sinks so deep into my bones that it twists my stomach and makes saliva gather bitterly at the back of my mouth like I’m going to vomit.

If my dad would take me and leave the rest of Satan’s Angels and their families alone, I’d happily go.

But I know he won’t.

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