25. Liam
25
LIAM
“ S he’ll be okay,” Eva repeated frantically on the drive home. “She has to be okay.”
I squeezed her hand, taking the risk to hold it as I drove as fast as I could. “She has to be,” I agreed. Eva had more experience with this. She was more familiar with the layers of protection at that house. I’d been trained—so far—with more duties suited for spies and handling men we captured to interrogate.
Eva had grown up with this lifestyle, but when she repeated that panicked claim that Olivia would be all right, it sounded more like a desperate wish than a convinced belief.
It seemed that silence was a better option. As we rushed to the house, neither of us could confirm whether Olivia was all right or not. Eva kept calling Danicia to no avail. Franco had to be calling the guards at the house. No one was answering, and that couldn’t be “okay”.
We settled for not speaking, though, because trying to think of something to say seemed too difficult, a distraction we couldn’t afford as we hurried to the house to check on Olivia.
Tense and stiff, we sat on the edge of our seats until I slammed to a stop in the long circular driveway to the mansion I’d more or less called home for months now.
I had my gun in my hand as I opened the door. Franco and other soldiers came to a stop abruptly, but I didn’t waste time telling Eva to stay back. She wouldn’t, so concerned and panicked to know that Olivia was safe. And I wanted her with me, anyway. She wasn’t a liability, but a partner. If I needed backup with my daughter, she was who I wanted at my side, always.
The soldiers ran in with me, fanning out but also surrounding Eva. Franco rushed in hot on our heels. As we ran up the steps, two soldiers stayed back to check on the guards down on the ground. I ran past them so quickly that it was a blur. I didn’t slow, dead set on finding Olivia, but from a quick glance, it seemed that no blood was spilled. The men were unconscious, but others could help them.
My goal was my daughter. My mission was to find out what the hell was going on and reset the balance of right and wrong. No one would touch my child for any reason without my say-so, and it was with a violent fury that I ran inside.
Olivia’s cries reached me instantly. She lay on the floor within the pack and play structure, clutching Danicia’s shirt over the edge of the short fencing. The doctor—babysitter for the night—was on the carpet, prone and unmoving.
“Olivia!” Eva cried out and hurried close with another guard.
I wouldn’t have hesitated to rush to my crying baby for many reasons. Spotting the man running out toward the back of the house was one of the reasons I’d let Eva handle her instead.
She could comfort her. She had a good rapport with Olivia even though I was her father.
And while I counted on my woman, on my partner, I sprinted after the motherfucker who'd dared to sneak into the house.
“Liam!”
I turned slightly at Romeo’s voice. He’d arrived, also alerted about all of this.
“This way!” He was running with me, helping me chase down the man who’d busted through a window in the back. Soldiers and guards swarmed the place. Other patrollers lay on the ground, all of them unconscious.
If this asshole brought backup, the arrival of the Constella forces would keep Eva and Olivia safe. They would. I was one of these men now, and I trusted them with my life, with the lives of my daughter and my future bride.
In the meantime, there was no fucking way on earth that I’d let someone else chase down this perp and kill them. This was my duty. This responsibility would fall on my shoulders, and it was with this rabid need to slaughter this trespasser that I ran harder and faster through the house with Romeo’s shortcuts.
We burst into the back yard and cleared the patio, hot on the trail of this Devil’s Brothers bastard. Spotlights popped on, set off with the motion sensors, and under the rays of illumination, the dark leather cut was visible. The biker’s patch swished back and forth as he pumped his arms to run faster and evade us, but between me and Romeo, there wasn’t a chance in hell that we’d let him escape.
Reaching the perimeter wall, we slowed to a stop and watched the biker drop down. A volley of gunfire rained down on us, and Romeo and I both dropped and rolled toward trees for safety.
Romeo gritted his teeth, shot in the arm. I covered for him, my new brother in arms, and I struggled against the parallels and flashbacks that hit me at the similarities of this situation and what I experienced overseas.
Shielding a comrade from gunfire. Lying on my stomach with a firearm, gauging where to fire and when. Checking that the soldier who was down would make it.
All the while, as the memories battered me, I focused on Romeo.
“That motherfucking MC will regret the day they ever tried to fuck with us,” he growled as he compressed the bleeding injury.
I shushed him. While I didn’t want to request that he shut up, the shooting was stopped. That silence was telling and with it, I took a chance to figure out where the bikers were shooting from and how many were out there. This double-trunked tree offered some protection, but it wasn’t infallible.
Romeo clenched his teeth, not needing to be told twice.
I narrowed my eyes, straining to see and hear. I wished I had my rifle. I wanted some sights. Night-vision goggles would be best, and I suspected that was what these bikers were using.
What they hadn’t taken into consideration was that I had other senses to rely on, other ways that I’d been trained to root out the enemy in dangerous territory.
Every one of those dumbasses stank. Of booze and weed, but mostly cigarettes. Staying as still as I could, I waited to acclimate to the darkness and mark them.
These weren’t trained soldiers, men with advanced practice in covert ops like I was. And their clumsiness showed.
One fidgeted in the tree, showing me the shiny barrel of his gun. Another sniffed, likely fighting the urge to cough. Someone was closer yet, reeking of the cigarette he still smoked.
Stupid motherfuckers.
Romeo was pissed. I would be too if I were shot on my own property. He’d want to kill them all right now and then and end this war, but I had to agree with what Eva mentioned a long time ago. What Dante seemed to believe.
The Giovanni Family and Devil’s Brothers MC had teamed up to attack the Constellas, but it might pay off to let them cancel each other out. The Giovannis hired a sniper previously, and that spoke of higher intelligence and a better skillset. But they had no money. The MC seemed to be raking in cash, but they were stupid motherfuckers.
If this was how these bikers fought—with gutsy, rash ambushes or sloppy, inexperienced attacks in the dark, I had to agree that these opponents deserved each other. Neither could beat the Constellas, regardless of their numbers.
I caught Romeo’s attention and tried to wordlessly convey that he should stay still. The biker we’d chased was still on the ground, and he was the outlier I couldn’t account for. But the other idiots in the trees who’d been waiting for him to come back?
They were sitting ducks. Dead men waiting.
This was far from the first guerilla form of combat I’d had to endure, and I doubted it’d be my last. I wasn’t in the army anymore, but some things never fucking changed.
Romeo seemed to understand that I was moving out. Other Constella soldiers would come soon. They were busy at the house, but more would follow where we’d run.
Once they arrived, they’d prompt these bikers to fire their assault weapons again, recklessly, even blindly in a fit of trigger rage.
I couldn’t let that happen. I refused to allow the asshole who made my daughter cry get away, either.
I drew in a steady breath to brace myself, and with a razor-edge of anticipation coursing through my blood and priming me to act, I eased out of the shadows of the trees and aimed for the first target I’d marked.
This is what happens when you scare my daughter.
I aimed and fired at the first man in the trees. He didn’t scream, dead upon the bullet’s impact between his eyes. Before another man could hit me, I dropped and rolled behind another tree.
Then I stepped out again, aiming at the second man.
This is what happens when you frighten my woman.
The second one was another successful pop of a bullet, through his open mouth. He fell, and another biker shouted, afraid as he fired his assault weapon into the next tree that I hid behind. I tensed, waiting out his gunfire.
Once all seemed to settle, once we were engaged in a terse game of suspense, I feigned a step to the left before whipping around to fire at the last biker hiding in the trees.
He was down, dead with two shots into his head, but I feared I’d receive the same as the biker we’d chased out here stood up and aimed his gun straight at my face.
Fuck.