48. Butch
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
BUTCH
S printing like my life depends on it, I follow the red dot on my phone marking Candy’s location. When I hear the sounds of a woman screaming curses and what sounds like Punk shouting, I pocket my cell and run towards their voices.
“Hold on, Candy! I’m coming!”
Definitely Punk’s tenor voice. It makes my stomach plummet to my feet. If he’s telling my goddess to “Hold on,” it means she’s in trouble.
Following the troubled voices of my family members, I dodge the other bidders with their security details rushing for the exits. The heavy gunfire and wails of pain make it hard to hear Candy and Punk over the noise. There’s only two ways out on the main level—the front exit where I see Atlas, Gauge, and a group of Piero’s men gunning down all who try to flee, and the back exit.
A female cry of pain has me turning on my heels for the back exit. I know my woman’s voice from all others.
My arms pump, keeping pace with my sprinting feet pounding against the hard marble beneath me. My shoulder screams in protest at how much I work it. I don’t care. I would rather live in pain than have my goddess in danger .
Fighting my way through the crowd to the back of the estate, I witness multiple things happening at once. Chase has Jolie tucked behind him as he guns down anyone trying to escape down the hallway to the back exit. Punk is dodging bullets behind a pillar. And I glimpse public enemy number one jumping through a broken window, with Candy slung over the shoulder.
Seeing my woman in danger cuts me the fuck up worse than any knife could.
“CANDY!”
Charging head-on into danger, I don’t notice the armed guard until he raises his gun and shoots me square in the chest. The bullet impact has me staggering back, falling to the ground. An animalist roar rips from my chest, a mixture of pain, terror, and rage.
Lying on my side, I raise my gun with my good arm to take out the fucker who failed to do the same to me.
Shots fire behind me before my finger has time to pull the trigger. The guard who shot me, his head knocks back where a bullet hit him in the center of his forehead. He goes down like a brick wall, never to move again.
I whip my head around to the shooter. Ziggy still has the gun up, smoke billowing from the barrel.
The team rushes toward me. Punk is first at my side, flipping me on my back. He tears at my suit and dress shirt, ripping them open to see what damage the bullet has done to me. Ziggy hovers over me, asking if I’m okay while Chase stands lookout for any other threats.
“I’m fine,” I grit, rolling to my side before getting on my knees. “The vest stopped it.”
I’m safe. My woman is not.
Staggering to my feet, I ignore the pain in my chest. I’ll deal with it later, when Candy is safely back in my arms.
My brothers help to steady me on my feet. I’m about to tell them to let me go when Punk lets go of me quickly.
“No fucking way.” Punk swings his gun up, aiming at someone behind me and Ziggy .
We whip our heads in the direction he’s aiming, seeing a man in a fine suit running for his life toward the back exit with his entourage of guards. He shields his face with his suit coat over his head, hiding most of his features from our view.
But by Punk’s response, he got a good look at him and knows exactly who he is.
“Go, Punk,” Chase tells his best friend, keeping Jolie right at his back. “Whoever the fucker is, finish him. I can handle the back exit by myself.”
Punk gives us one parting look before racing off in the direction the man in question ran.
“Come on,” I order my partner to follow me.
Racing to the broken window, the one O’Conall jumped out with my woman, I hop over the windowsill onto the hard snow below. Ziggy lands beside me, gun at the ready.
My eyes take a moment to adjust to the darkness outside. The light from the estate window gives me enough visual to spot Candy and O’Conall.
Candy stands across from him in a defensive pose, ready to spar. Pride swells inside my chest, squeezing my heart.
My warrior goddess is fighting back. And it’s a fucking glorious sight.
Moved into action, I roar, charging forward.
O’Conall—cupping his junk for whatever reason—whips around in my direction. His eyes nearly bug out of his head, finding me barreling down on him. He lifts his gun, aiming at me.
The dick better have good aim. The only way I’m not taking him down is if he makes a head shot.
Before O’Conall can fire his gun, Candy rushes at his side, tackling him to the ground. His gun goes flying, sliding far out of reach on compacted snow.
“Candy, no!” I dig deep, pushing forward on the icy snow. Ziggy races behind me.
The two of them wrestle in the snow, trying to get the upper hand on each other. By the grace of Triple, Candy uses all the techniques he showed her on the mats. She winds up on top and lets loose the years of hurt and anger she endured under his rule. Her tiny fists pummel the crap out of him.
Against the odds, O’Conall wrangles her hands. Once he realizes he has the upper hand, he lets out a growl of frustration. He rolls Candy on her side, trying to flip her on her stomach.
I take a shot, missing his head by inches. It hits the mountain face behind them, pelting them with rock debris.
Unaffected by the near kill shot, O’Conall yanks Candy into the air. Her bare feet barely touch the ground as he holds her back to his front. I come to an immediate halt when I see the glint of a blade held against Candy’s slender throat.
My windpipes constrict at the new danger I find my woman in. A bit of my past comes flashing in my head—the bite of a steel blade sawing into my neck.
Instead of being gripped by fear, adrenaline floods my system, much like it had that night my attacker tried to kill me and I turned the tables on him. My heart races, yet I remain collected on the surface. There is not a thought in my head except one.
I. Will. Kill. This. Man.
O’Conall squints at me, like he’s trying to understand why holding a knife to my woman’s throat isn’t causing me to go into full panic mode.
“Stay back. Or I’ll hurt your precious Candy .” He spits her name like it’s the vilest word.
I make a mental note to remove his tongue from his filthy mouth and give it to my goddess as an offering. If I know my woman, Candy will laugh before setting it on fire.
With my gun raised, I inch forward and keep my focus trained on O’Conall. Beside me, Ziggy matches my steps—gun aimed at our enemy, slowly inching forward. Candy watches me—I can feel her dark gaze penetrate my armor. She worries .
“Stay still, Goddess,” I instruct in a warning tone, gambling a quick glance at her face.
Candy’s body goes ramrod straight. She grips onto O’Conall’s forearm locked across her chest. Her fixated stare tells me she’ll listen.
Returning my attention to O’Conall, I take another tentative step forward.
The evil bastard presses the blade against the delicate skin of her neck. She screws her eyes tight as a dark line of blood runs down her throat.
“Nu-uh. Not another step, or she’ll have a scar to match yours.”
Blood roars through my ears, hearing him threaten my woman.
However, Candy responds differently than anyone could have predicted.
Candy’s shoulders shake with silent laughter, getting more pronounced with each passing second, until she lets loose a sinister laugh, one that makes all of us halt.
Sobering, she twists her head enough to look at the dickhead’s perplexed face.
“Do it,” she dares, deadpan. “Slice my throat to match my old man’s, a carbon copy of my biker boy.”
“Goddess,” I whisper to myself, my heart tumbling painfully in my ribcage.
Taken aback by Candy’s blunt request, O’Conall lowers his blade enough to give me all the opening I need.
As I take the shot, I watch as the bullet connects with his hand and exits out the other side. The knife he held falls into the snow at their feet. A beautiful scream of pain rips from the prick’s mouth. With his hand mangled, his hold on Candy slips. She pries herself away from his grasp, tumbling in the snow as she races down the decline toward me.
Instead of embracing my woman like I want, I charge past her the short distance up the incline toward O’Conall. Seeing me rush in his direction, Candy turns and races after me .
Desperate pleas slip from her cupid lips. “Butch, stop!”
Forgive my disobedience, Goddess. There’s no stopping.
This piece of shit hurt my woman. No one hurts what’s mine .
Wounding O’Conall is not enough. After everything he’s done, he doesn’t deserve an easy out.
Still gripping his injured hand, O’Conall isn’t prepared for my ambush. Using my good shoulder, I attack him head on, tackling him. A grunt of pain puffs out of him when he hits the ground with me on top of him.
Straddling his chest, I spin my Glock in my hand and rain down on him, pistol whipping his face, repeatedly. The bastard’s blood splashes me in the face from where I injure him. It doesn’t deter me, though. Instead, it ignites a beastly energy inside of me, fueling me to hurt him more.
When the blood coats my gun and hand makes me lose my grip, I drop the weapon, using my bare hands as battering rams instead. My knuckles crack from my assault, but I’m not hurting as much as I’m sure O’Conall is.
As I alternate my hits with my fists, I throw my weight behind my punches.
“YOU. CAN’T. HAVE. MY. WIFE!” I roar between hits.
Though I’m zeroed in on my target, I can faintly hear Candy and Ziggy in the background, pleading with me to stop. I can feel their hands on me, trying to stop my punches. But I can’t seem to end it.
Somehow Ziggy gets his arms around my torso, prying me away, still swinging.
“Butch, stop! You’ve proved your point.”
“No,” I mutter in a crazed growl, clawing at the air to get back to my kill.
Candy appears in front of me, her pink locks a tangled mess from the wind, ripped free of the hairpins. Tears streak her round cheeks. She places a soft yet firm hand around my neck, covering my scar.
Feeling her touch me there, my eyes home in on the clean slice along her throat—nowhere near as gruesome as mine, but deep enough she’ll likely have a scar, a mark to complement my own.
“Butch, look at me.”
My stare automatically meets Candy’s doe brown eyes at her command.
“It’s done.”
A groan from the bastard lying on his back in the snow and the sound of spittle says otherwise.
The three of us look towards O’Conall’s prone body. His limbs are moving, though sluggish. He coughs blood, trying to clear the river of it rolling down his sinuses and throat. With jerky motions, O’Conall rolls to his side, his eyes possibly focusing on us—hard to tell with the swelling growing on his face by the second.
The monster looks as ugly as he is on the inside.
He attempts to climb to his feet, falling back down in the snow.
“He can’t think he’s going to flee,” Ziggy mutters in disbelief. “Can he?”
When standing proves too hard a task, O’Conall switches gears, crawling up the incline to the mountain face.
“No,” I hiss through my teeth.
Candy’s hand squeezes a fraction around my throat, bringing me to heel.
Pleading with my eyes, I gaze at her. “Goddess, please.” But she shakes her head.
“Let me.” Candy stoops over, pulling my Glock free of the snow. Gracefully, she stands before she turns away from me, prowling after O’Conall up the incline.
She only gets a few paces ahead before I’m pushing Ziggy off me in pursuit of my woman. Ziggy hangs on to my arm, following but holding me back.
“Bro, let her have this.”
Let her have what? A chance to get hurt if that fucker turns on her?
Nope. Not going to happen .
My woman’s steps are measured. Not rushing to catch up to O’Conall, but staying close enough to him to make a quick grab at him if he tries to run. She’s stalking him, a cat playing with its prey.
“What the hell?” Ziggy mumbles as we watch O’Conall crawl for the safety of the abandoned mine shaft, the one deemed unsafe by the state.
Candy trails him, her pace not increasing.
We watch as the scum creeps his way into the shaft.
“He’s got an escape plan,” I say, with a twinge of panic in my voice.
Ziggy and I rush to catch up with Candy. By the time we reach her, she stands at the threshold of the mineshaft, not making a move to step inside. We watch as O’Conall creeps along deeper into the darkness.
“ Cú Sidhe,” Candy calls out to him in the darkness, her voice saccharine sweet and mocking, echoing off the stone cavern.
He halts, looking over his shoulder at us.
“You’ll never make it,” Candy taunts, a smile in her voice. “Whatever is on the other side of this mountain waiting for you, you’ll never see it.”
With a groan, O’Conall faces back around, crawling forward out of spite.
“Did you know this mineshaft is condemned?” Candy shakes her head at herself. “Of course you did. That’s what made this a great exit plan—no one would check the scary old mine until they covered all the safer avenues first. You’re clever, always were.”
Something in the icy sweetness of Candy’s tone sends a chill down my spine. She’s toying with O’Conall, her voice a slow poison.
Sensing trouble, O’Conall attempts to get to his feet. He stumbles, grasping at one of the support beams of the ancient shaft.
“Too bad I stand in your way.” She giggles, her laughter echoing into the dark space.
Ziggy comes to Candy’s left side, while I approach Candy’s right, trying to get through to her. “Candy?— ”
She sobers, pressing a slender finger from her free hand to my lips. “Shush, biker boy. As I said, I’m handling this. Waited for too many years for this moment.”
Before she can pull her finger away, I kiss the digit and say no more. My goddess is in charge—she’ll lead, and I’ll follow.
With eerie calmness, she looks back at O’Conall, who somehow stands upright. He sways on his feet, turning to face us.
“Leslie,” he chokes out in a garbled groan, almost like he’s pleading.
Candy smiles, showing all her pearly teeth. As beautiful as she is, she looks downright terrifying.
“Still refusing to use my chosen name, I see. You always were an arrogant ass. Looks like it’s to my benefit this time, though. Your stubbornness will be the death of you. I must say, you chose a fitting place.”
“Place?” O’Conall mumbles around his busted jaw.
“Mm-hm. A resting place.”
At those fatal words, O’Conall stands a little straighter.
“Look how the tables have turned,” Candy muses aloud, motioning with the gun between them. “Before, I was the trapped one. Now, it’s your turn to be trapped.”
My eyes dart between Candy and O’Conall. Does she plan on shooting him? What does she mean by trapped?
“What the fuck is happening?” Ziggy whisper-shouts at me, his gun aimed at O’Conall. I hold up my palm, telling him to wait.
“You’re not going to shoot me,” O’Conall mumbles with a shake of his head, blood and drool spilling from his lips.
“True,” Candy admits with a pout, like it’s a damn shame. She cocks her head my way. A smile tugs at her lips as she gives me a wink.
For a moment, I think she’s going to give me the honors. I’ll gladly put the cocksucker down. I hold my hand out, waiting for her to give me my gun.
It never happens .
Another giggle spills from her pretty mouth as she slowly raises the gun, aiming at the support beam above O’Conall’s head.
Holy shit!
As soon as Candy fires the gun, I loop my good arm with hers. Ziggy grabs her other arm, and the two of us race down the hill with her, back toward the sanctuary of the estate, before all hell breaks loose.