Chapter Thirteen
MONTANA
The concrete floor beneath me feels like ice against my cheek, but the warmth spreading across my shoulder tells a different story.
Blood.
My blood.
Seeping through my shirt, then my club cut in steady pulses that match the frantic hammering of my heart. Through the haze of pain and the ringing in my ears, I hear someone screaming my name. Not Montana, but Noah.
Mom.
Hearing her scream, Noah, the name she gave me before this life, before the club, before everything went to hell, causes a rush of adrenaline to surge through my shock-riddled body.
She’s the only one who still calls me my given name, and hearing it now, raw with terror, cuts deeper than any bullet ever could.
“Noah! Oh God, Noah!”
I try to push myself up, my good arm trembling as I fight against the concrete that seems determined to keep me in place. My vision swims, black spots dancing at the edges, but I force my eyes to focus.
Because I have to get to her.
She’s right there.
Not twenty feet away, with a Cartel guard’s arm locked around her throat, a knife gleaming against her skin. And blood, not much, but enough to make my stomach lurch, trickles from a thin cut just below her jaw. Her eyes, wide with panic, are locked on me.
Not on the blade at her throat.
Not on the chaos erupting around us.
On me.
Like she’s more afraid for my life than her own.
That’s my mom.
“Stay down, you little shit,” one of the guards snarls, his boot connecting with my ribs. The impact sends fire through my chest, stealing what little breath I had left.
But I don’t stay down.
I can’t.
Not when they have her.
“Let… her… go…” I gasp, my voice barely more than a whisper. Blood fills my mouth, metallic and warm. “Or I swear to God… I will kill you.”
The guard with the knife laughs. “You’ll kill me?
You can’t even fucking stand, tonto patético.
” Then he presses the blade deeper into Mom’s throat.
Grimacing, I try to move, to get to her as she winces, another thin line of red appearing on her skin, but my body is fighting against me getting to her while he moves his mouth against Mom’s ear.
“Your son’s about to watch you die. Just like Javier promised. ”
I let out a guttural moan, trying to hoist my broken body from the floor to get to my mother, and that’s when I hear it.
Heavy footsteps. Combat boots on concrete, moving with purpose and deadly precision as Alpha rounds the corner.
For a split second, I see him take in the scene, me bleeding out on the floor, struggling to get to my mother as she resists at the other end of the corridor with a knife to her throat.
Two armed guards are standing over us like hunters with their prey.
His face doesn’t change.
Doesn’t show surprise or panic.
Just cold, calculating fury.
His military training kicks in, and the nearest guard, the one who just kicked me, doesn’t even see Alpha coming.
Alpha’s hand shoots out, grabbing a broken piece of concrete from the debris scattered around us.
In one fluid motion, he drives it into the base of the guard’s skull.
The man drops like lead, his weapon clattering across the floor.
A slow smile crosses my face as I let Alpha do his thing.
The guard holding Mom spins, trying to bring his gun around while maintaining his grip on her throat.
Big mistake. Alpha is already moving, snatching up the fallen guard’s baton.
He whips it forward, the metal catching the gunman’s wrist with a crack that echoes through the corridor.
The gun goes flying, but the knife stays at Mom’s throat.
“Back off, or I cut her,” the guard shouts, pressing the blade so hard against her skin that another drop of blood appears.
I tense, sitting taller, my shoulder aching like a motherfucker as I watch the standoff.
Alpha freezes, but his eyes never leave the guard’s face. “You hurt her, and I’ll make sure your death is slow, brutal, and filled with every ounce of fucking agony you never knew existed until you’re feeling it rip through your pathetic excuse of a body.”
Mom’s eyes meet mine again, and something passes between us. The same thing that passed between us that night seven years ago when everything went to hell. When she stood between me and Dad’s fists for the last time.
And I know she’s got this.
She drives her elbow back, hard, into the guard’s solar plexus.
He doubles over, gasping, his grip on the knife loosening for just a second, and that’s all Alpha needs.
He lunges forward, his hand closing around the guard’s wrist, twisting until bones snap.
The knife clatters to the floor, and Alpha follows up with an uppercut that lifts the man off his feet before sending him crashing into the wall.
Then, without a second’s hesitation, Mom drops to the floor, picking up the knife that was held to her throat, and slams it into her captor’s chest. His eyes bug out of his face as he stares at her, and she leans in close to him, blood pooling from his mouth.
“No one threatens to hurt my son and fucking lives!” She growls out the words before slamming the knife into his chest again, and then it’s as if a frenzy takes hold.
She sees red and continues stabbing him, screams echoing out of her body like a woman possessed.
Flashbacks of her stabbing my father, of her protecting me, of the very reason she ended up in this hellhole flood my mind. And it takes me a second before I yell at her. “Mom!”
She continues her rampage as I try to stand, but I can’t, so I crawl toward her, screaming, “Mom, stop!”
Alpha stands back, letting her have this moment.
Blood splashes all over her blue jumpsuit, my heart pounding in my chest, seeing her back in fight mode. The mode my father put her in all those years ago.
“Mom, he’s not Dad,” I scream, stopping on the spot. My heart is hammering in my chest, as blood drains from me, making me feel so fucking woozy.
But it’s enough.
And the second she hears me, the knife drops from her hand to the concrete, her breathing ragged.
The corridor falls silent except for the distant sounds of the riot raging through the rest of the prison.
Then suddenly, Mom drops to her knees, her hands shaking as she presses them to her throat.
For a moment, we just stare at each other across the blood-stained concrete.
My mother. The woman who killed my father to save us both. The woman who’s spent seven years in this hellhole, paying for a crime I helped commit. The woman I’d die for without hesitation.
“Noah,” she whispers, her eyes flooding with tears as she starts crawling toward me. “Oh God, baby. I’m so sorry. You should never have to see me do that again.”
I crawl to meet her in the middle of the corridor, and I try to sit up, pain shooting through my shoulder like liquid fire. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve seen worse. But I should have been able to save you. I failed you again. I couldn’t save you again.”
She reaches me, her hands fluttering over my wounded shoulder, afraid to touch but needing to assess the damage.
“Shush, you stop that right now. It is never your job to protect me, Noah. Never! I’m always supposed to protect you.
That is my job as a mother, and that is what I have done all your life.
” Her hand caresses my face. “Jesus, you’re bleeding so much. We need to get you to the hospital.”
Shaking my head, I clear my throat. “I’m okay. I’m okay, Mom. Are you hurt?”
Her hand slides over the blood on her neck, and she weakly smiles. “Baby, I’m fine. I need you to be okay.” She turns to look at Alpha, who’s not paying much attention to us, but keeping guard to let us have our moment. “Alpha, we need to get Noah to the infirmary to patch him up.”
“No.” I grab her wrist with my good hand, probably gripping too tightly, but I need her to understand. “We’re getting you out of here first. That’s the only thing that matters. I need you safe, Mom—”
“Noah—”
“No, Mom. I’m not leaving you in this place another second. I should have gotten you out years ago. I should have—”
“Stop!” Alpha’s voice cuts through our argument. He’s crouched beside us now, his eyes scanning my shoulder with the practiced gaze of someone who’s seen plenty of gunshot wounds. “Bullet went clean through. You’ll live, but we need to move. This place is about to become a warzone.”
With Mom’s arm around my waist, trying to support me, I struggle to my feet, my body aching like a motherfucker. The world tilts sideways for a moment, but I force it to steady. Adrenaline is one hell of a drug, and right now, it’s the only thing keeping me upright.
“Can you walk?” Alpha asks.
“I can do whatever I need to do to get my mom out of here.”
He nods, respect flickering in his eyes. “Good. Because we’re about to walk through one gigantic shitstorm.”
We help each other move toward the corridor that leads deeper into the prison. Mom keeps checking my shoulder, her maternal instincts warring with the need to keep moving. Every few steps, she whispers apologies for being here, for me getting shot, for everything that led to this moment.
I want to tell her she has nothing to be sorry for. That if anyone should be apologizing, it’s me. For not protecting her. For not finding a way to get her out of this place sooner. For dragging her into this mess with the Cartel.
But there’s no time for words now.
As we round the corner into the main cellblock, the sound hits us like a physical force.
Screaming.
Shouting.
The crash of metal against metal.
The riot Haven triggered is in full swing, and it’s everything I imagined and worse.
Women prisoners and guards locked in brutal combat. Bodies on the floor, some moving, some not. The pungent smell of tear gas mixes with smoke from fires that have been started in several cells. Emergency lights strobe red, casting everything in shifting shadows.
“Jesus!” I murmur.