Chapter 13 #2
"I'm the father of the baby you just threatened to cut out of her." I keep my voice steady, my rifle trained on her head. "And I'm the one who's going to kill you."
"Big words from a man who can't pull the trigger." She presses the knife harder against Dalla's stomach, and Dalla cries out. "Go ahead. Try it. See how fast I can open her up."
"Solveig."
Tor's voice cuts through the tension, quiet but commanding.
He's stepped away from the wall, into her line of sight.
His hands are empty, raised slightly, non-threatening.
Solveig's head turns toward him, her brow furrowing. "Who—"
"Remember me?"
Something shifts in her expression.
Recognition, maybe.
Or the ghost of a memory she can't quite place.
"I knew your mother," Tor continues, his voice eerily calm.
"Knew her very well, actually. She used to keep me in a room not unlike this one.
Used to visit me at night, when she was feeling lonely.
" He takes a step closer, and Solveig's grip on the knife falters, just slightly.
"She made the same mistake you're making now.
Thought she was untouchable. Thought her hatred made her invincible. "
"You..." Solveig's voice wavers. "You're one of them. One of her—"
"One of her victims. Yes." Tor's eyes are hard as flint.
"I was twelve years old when she took me.
Fourteen when I finally escaped. And I spent every day in between learning exactly what kind of monster she was.
" He pauses, letting the words sink in. "You want to talk about suffering?
About having your childhood stolen? I wrote the book on that, little girl. And your mother was the author."
Solveig's composure is cracking.
The knife wavers at Dalla's throat, her attention split between Tor and the rest of us.
Her guards are shifting nervously, unsure what to do.
This is the moment.
"She thought she was special too," Tor says softly. "Thought she'd live forever on the blood of innocents. But in the end, she died just like anyone else. Scared and alone and begging for mercy."
Solveig snarls, her focus locked on Tor, the knife pulling slightly away from Dalla's throat as she turns to face this new threat—
I take the shot.
The bullet hits her square between the eyes.
Her head snaps back, a spray of red misting the air behind her.
The knife slashes across Dalla's throat as Solveig falls—a shallow cut, but enough to spray blood across the floor.
Everything happens at once.
The guards open fire, but our men are already moving.
Gunshots explode through the room, deafening in the enclosed space.
Bodies drop. Someone screams. Glass shatters.
I don't see any of it.
I'm already at Dalla's side, my knife out, sawing through the ropes that bind her to the chair.
She's gasping, her hand pressed against her throat, blood seeping between her fingers.
But she's breathing. She's alive.
"I've got you," I say, and my voice is shaking. My hands are shaking. Everything is shaking. "I've got you, love. You're okay. You're going to be okay."
The ropes fall away and she slumps forward into my arms.
I catch her, pulling her against my chest, one hand pressing against the wound on her throat.
It's shallow.
Shallow enough. Not deep enough to hit the artery.
She's okay. She has to be okay.
"RJ." Her voice is barely a whisper, rough with tears and blood and fear. "The baby—"
"I know." I press my forehead to hers, breathing her in. Alive. She's alive. They're both alive. "I found the test. In your bag. I know."
"I was going to tell you tonight." She's crying now, tears cutting tracks through the blood on her face. "I was going to make it special. I had this whole plan—"
"Shh." I kiss her forehead, her cheeks, the corner of her mouth. "It doesn't matter. None of that matters. You're alive. That's all that matters."
The gunfire has stopped.
The room is silent except for the groans of wounded men and the drip of blood on hardwood.
I look up to see Runes standing over Solveig's body, staring down at the woman who tried to destroy his family.
His face is unreadable.
"Dalla." He crosses the room in three strides, dropping to his knees beside us.
His hands hover over her, wanting to touch but afraid to hurt. "Baby girl. Are you—"
"I'm okay, Daddy." She reaches for him with one bloody hand, and he takes it, squeezing tight. "I'm okay. RJ got me out."
Runes looks at me.
For a long moment, we just stare at each other—two men who've spent weeks circling each other, sizing each other up, neither willing to give ground.
Then he nods.
"You saved her life," he says quietly. "You saved both their lives."
"I did what anyone would do."
"No." He shakes his head slowly. "You did what family does." He reaches out and grips my shoulder, hard enough to bruise. "You're one of us now. Officially. Whatever you need, whatever you want—it's yours."
The words hit me harder than I expected.
This man—this fierce, protective, terrifying man—just accepted me into his family.
Not as a bodyguard, not as a temporary fixture, but as something permanent. Something real.
"Thank you," I manage.
"Don't thank me. Just take care of my daughter." He looks down at Dalla, and his expression softens. "Both of them."
"Always."
Tor appears at the edge of my vision, his face spattered with blood that isn't his.
His eyes are distant, haunted—the confrontation with Solveig clearly stirred up memories he'd rather forget.
But his voice is steady when he speaks. "We need to move. Neighbors might have heard the gunfire. Police could be coming."
I look around the room, taking stock for the first time since I pulled the trigger.
Solveig's body lies crumpled on the floor, a neat hole between her eyes, the back of her head a ruin.
Her guards are down too—two dead, one groaning weakly in the corner until a Raider puts a final round in him.
The killing doesn't bother me.
These people took Dalla.
Threatened my child.
They deserve worse than a quick death.
"Hospital," I say immediately, turning my attention back to what matters. "She needs a hospital. The baby—"
"I'm fine," Dalla protests weakly. Her voice is rough, barely above a whisper. "It's just cuts. I don't need—"
"You're pregnant and you've been held hostage and you're bleeding from multiple wounds." I'm already lifting her, cradling her against my chest like she weighs nothing.
She doesn't resist, just curls into me, her bloody hand fisting in my shirt. "We're going to the hospital. That's not a request."
"RJ—"
"The baby needs to be checked." My voice breaks on the word, just slightly. "You need to be checked. I'm not taking any chances. Not with either of you."
She looks up at me, her blue eyes swimming with tears.
I see the fear there—not for herself, but for our child.
For the life growing inside her that's been through so much already.
"Okay," she whispers. "Okay."
She doesn't argue.
That, more than anything, tells me how scared she is.
How close we came to losing everything.
"Tor, handle the cleanup," Runes orders, his voice shifting back into command mode.
The father has stepped aside, the MC president is back in control. "Make sure there's nothing left to connect us to this place. No prints, no shell casings, no bodies that can be identified. Burn it if you have to."
"Understood." Tor nods, already turning to organize the men.
"The rest of you—we never came here. This place doesn't exist. If anyone asks, we were at the compound all afternoon. Clear?"
Murmurs of agreement.
The club knows how to handle this.
They've been handling things like this for decades.
The police might investigate the gunshots, but by the time they arrive, there will be nothing to find.
Just an empty farmhouse with a questionable history.
One of the younger members—a prospect whose name I can’t remember—approaches with a first aid kit.
I let him press gauze against the cut on Dalla's throat while I hold her, watching the white fabric slowly turn red.
"Shallow," he says, examining the wound with surprising expertise. "Won't need stitches, probably. But she's lost some blood. Shock might be setting in."
"Hence the hospital," I say flatly.
He nods and backs away.
I carry Dalla out of the farmhouse and into the fading afternoon light.
The sun is setting, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink.
Beautiful. Peaceful.
The yard is littered with shell casings and the bodies of Solveig's perimeter guards—four more, taken down by our men as they tried to flee or fight back.
None of them made it far.
The Raiders are efficient when they're motivated.
And they were very motivated today.
She curls against my chest, her face pressed into my neck, her hand resting on her stomach.
Protecting our baby, even now.
Even after everything she's been through, her first instinct is to shield the life inside her.
I'm struck, suddenly, by how much I love her.
It's a physical sensation—a tightness in my chest, a burning behind my eyes.
This woman.
This fierce, stubborn, beautiful woman who looked at a broken soldier from Dublin and saw something worth loving.
She's carrying my child.
She was going to tell me tonight, make it special.
And instead she spent the day being tortured by a madwoman, terrified not for herself but for our baby.
"I love you," she whispers, as if reading my thoughts.
"I love you too." I press a kiss to the top of her head, breathing in the scent of her hair beneath the blood and sweat. "Both of you. More than I know how to say."
"I was so scared." Her voice cracks. "Not for me. For the baby. She said she was going to—" She can't finish the sentence.
A sob tears from her throat, and she buries her face in my chest.
"Shh." I hold her tighter, wishing I could take the memories away.
Wishing I could undo the hours of terror she endured. "She's gone now. She can't hurt you. She can't hurt either of you. I made sure of that."
"You killed her."
"Yes." I don't feel guilty about it. I don't feel anything except relief that it's over. "I'd do it again. A hundred times. A thousand times. Anyone who threatens you or our baby—I will put them in the ground. That's not a threat. That's a promise."
She's quiet for a moment, then she lifts her head and meets my eyes.
"I know," she says softly. "That's why I love you."
I carry her to the truck and settle her gently in the back seat, climbing in beside her.
Runes takes the wheel, gunning the engine before the door is even closed.
Gravel sprays as we pull away from the farmhouse, tires squealing on the dirt road.
As we pull away from the farmhouse, I look back one last time.
At the place where I almost lost everything.
At the white clapboard walls now splattered with blood.
At the body of the woman who tried to take my family from me.
She's gone now.
The threat is over. Dalla is safe. Our baby is safe.
And I am never letting either of them out of my sight again.
Runes catches my eye in the rearview mirror. "The hospital in town is twenty minutes out. They'll have questions about the injuries."
"I don't care about the questions. I care about making sure the baby is okay."
He nods slowly. "We'll handle the questions. Just focus on her."
Dalla's hand finds mine in the darkness of the back seat.
She squeezes, and I squeeze back, and I don't let go for the entire drive.
Twenty minutes.
Twenty more minutes until a doctor can tell me that everything is okay.
The longest twenty minutes of my life.