Chapter 32 #2
There’s no getting out of this.
I clear my throat, trying desperately to quell the fear rising up my esophagus, the panic swirling in my stomach, the thoughts racing through my mind.
Gotta get that gun out of his hand. Get Grace far the fuck away from here.
I need this feeling to go away—this punch to the chest, the weight crushing down on my lungs—so I can fucking think.
“Sergeant,” I say, voice level. “What’s the plan here?”
Movement in my periphery pulls my attention. The remaining two Raiders have inched their way closer.
“Where’s Dixon?” one of them asks.
Allen nods at the hangar behind us. “Dead. You can thank Donovan for that.”
Neither seems fazed. The other one simply shrugs. “So long as the Sinners lose their prez and we get paid, ain’t no problems between us. And we want the girl. Bitch owes our club a debt, and we plan on collecting.”
“No one’s taking Grace,” I say. “And no one’s killing her. She’s not part of this, Allen. The women never are. You know that.”
He shrugs. “Casualty of war, Decker. Just like my brother was.”
“She’s ours. We’re taking her,” one of the Raiders says.
“No. You’re fucking not,” I growl. “But you wanna try your hand at making me give her up, come get her.”
“Enough.” Allen points his gun at me. “You’re full of good ideas. Tell you what. You wanna hold on to that dirty little cunt you like so much, then fine. Fight them for her.”
I arch a brow. “Come again?”
“You’re a fighter, aren’t you? You said so the first day we met.
You want me to spare your whore, then prove to me how badly you want her, how far you’re willing to go.
Kill them and keep her, or they kill you and drag her back to the shithole they came from.
Either way, no skin off my back.” He nods to the two men already stalking towards me.
“You win, you can have her. No guns, but everything else is fair game.”
“Doesn’t really seem fair to me,” I say as the bikers advance.
As one pulls out a knife, I push Grace to the ground. He lunges, but I manage to sidestep the blade. I’m not lucky enough to get in a takedown before the other starts swinging a bat at my head.
“Allen.” I dodge the sharp edge of one weapon, then the blunt end of another. “Call this off. Now.”
“Don’t ruin the fun,” he says. “I’m giving you what you want. You just gotta work for it.”
Another slash of a blade, a swing of a bat. I feint left, then right, then as a flash of silver slices at my throat, I jump back. The bat again, but he swings too hard. When he misses, the momentum propels him to the side.
I take the opportunity to strike. Jab to the side of his head, knee to the ribs, there’s an audible crunch as bones break. I slam my elbow between his shoulder blades, and he folds in two. As he goes down, that knife sweeps by the side of my face again.
I twist out of the way and maneuver around a rusted-out car. But he’s quick on my heels.
“Don’t run away, little piggy. I promise I’ll make it quick,” he taunts as he backs me into a stack of pallets.
I snort. “I bet you make everything quick, huh?”
“Not with your girl I won’t, pig. We’ll all take our time with her. Every single one of us. We’ll fuck every hole until she’s a dirty, used-up cum rag, and then we’ll cut open her throat and watch her die.”
Fists clenched, I let the anger I’ve been pressing down burst to the surface, let my temper unleash. My pulse jackhammers in my ears, molten rage flowing through my veins as the fury takes over. Blood boiling, need-to-kill-someone sort of anger. And I really need to fucking kill this guy.
This time, when he lunges, I throw up my arm and block, forearm to forearm. In one motion, I twist him around, get control of his hand, and slam it against the wooden pallets. The knife drops. Knee to stomach. He coughs as he collapses to the ground.
Then the blade is in my hand. But it’s not me holding it.
Not really. It’s like I’m watching. I watch my hand as it grabs a fistful of his hair, as it jerks back his head, exposing the column of his neck.
The blade slices across his skin. Deep. Cutting through flesh and muscle and cartilage.
That hand holds tight as he chokes on blood, as his eyes widen, as understanding hits him.
He won’t survive this. There’s no way out. He dies today.
Snapping back to myself, I level my gaze to his. “You don’t matter enough for me to watch this.”
He chokes as I throw him to the ground and turn around, letting him bleed out alone.
The other Raider is lumbering to his feet as I approach.
His focus drops to his fallen friend, then to the bat lying on the ground ten feet away.
He makes a run for it, but I run for him.
He makes it to his weapon just as I slice into the back of his neck.
When I make contact, his body seizes. I twist, and then there’s a snap.
A crunch as his skull separates from his spine, and then he goes limp.
I close my eyes.
Deep. Fucking. Breaths.
“Jesus, Decker,” Allen says, eyebrows at his hairline, smile locked in place. “Didn’t think you’d have it in you. But I guess this is who you are, isn’t it? You run around with killers often enough, I suppose you become one.”
I can barely manage to get words out, my heart beating so fast I can’t catch my breath. “Grace walks away,” I say.
It almost sounds like I’m begging again.
I don’t look at her. I can’t. She keeps seeing me like this—blood covered, angry, losing control. She said she can do ugly, but I’m not sure how much ugly she can take. How much more of this I can take.
“I told you. You do as I say tonight, then you walk away from this. I lose the evidence I have on you. I’ll keep my word. And I’ll even let you walk out of here with the She-Donovan.” He cocks his head, reading me, sizing me up. “One more task for you.”
“And what’s that?”
“It’s simple. The final fight. Kill Donovan.”
I swallow. This is what I’ve been waiting for. The moment we go head-to-head. Fist-to-fist. Me and Axe in a ring, fighting it out. The fight I’m ready to die for. To ruin my life for. The understanding that, if I win, I’ll need to disappear because he’s made sure that if I come for him, I’ll lose.
Much as I hate Allen, he’s about to hand me the thing I’ve been dreaming about for ten fucking years.
But there’s a problem.
Three problems, actually.
“I can’t kill him,” I say as I survey Axe. “Look at him. He’s barely holding it together. It’s not a fair fight.”
Problem number one. The part of me that won’t die.
The part that still for some fucking reason can’t shed its morality.
If I killed Axe when he’s in this state, his death would fucking haunt me more than any other.
This isn’t vengeance or justice. It’s not tipping the scales back into place.
This shit between Axe and me is so much more than a life for a life.
It’s bloody. Complicated. A raging decade-long battle.
He doesn’t go out like this. Not by my hand.
“You’ll kill him, or I’ll kill the slut, and then I’ll kill you.”
Problem number two. Grace. In the time she’s been here, she’s seen the ugliest sides of me. But I won’t fucking kill her brother in front of her. There’s no part of me that could stomach it and no part of Grace that could ever forgive me for it.
“This is your kill,” I tell him. “It’s what you’ve been waiting for. Why let me take that from you?” I’m stalling. Working out a way to get him closer to me, to get that fucking gun out of his hands.
“I’m not a killer,” he says. “I’m not like you.
Sure, I’ll end a life when I’m in a bind, but why do that now when you can end it for me?
Why waste the moment worrying about the blood on my hands, the clothes I’ll have to burn, when I can watch you do it.
It’s like my own little movie. One I can play in my head over and over again for the rest of my life. ”
Problem number three. Somehow in all of this, Donovan has become the lesser evil.
Axe dies, the Sinners weaken. Then maybe the Raiders move in, and with them, comes their drugs and their guns and their own brand of violence.
Then there’s Allen. Hiding behind his badge, using it to bend the world to his will.
None of us are good, but I think Axe might be the better man in all of this.
I finally chance a look at Grace. Tears streaked down her face. Rag mostly out of her mouth. She shakes her head, telling me no. There’s a way out. There’s always a way out.
“How do you want me to do it?” I ask, swinging my head back to Allen.
A wide grin splits across his face. “Just make it hurt.”
With a deep breath, I step towards Axe. I raise my knife. Grace sobs. I ignore it. Allen gets closer, and then closer, waiting for me to make my move.
Axe sighs. “Don’t… don’t let her suffer for this, Deck. Get Kat out. I need you to protect her. All right? She’s not… she’s not part of this.” He shudders. “Get her out of that fucking cell. She can’t rot in there. Please. Just… please.”
Nodding, I grip the hilt. He’s begging. I can’t fault him for it.
If it were me on my knees and him with the knife, I’d do the same.
Tell him to keep Grace safe, that she can’t suffer for the sins we’ve committed.
In my last breath, it would be Grace’s name on my lips, it would be her life I’m begging for instead of mine.
“Linc!” Grace yells. “Please don’t. Linc! Please.”
I close my eyes to drown her out. It’s like that night ten years ago.
I made a choice. The night the lines between right and wrong blurred.
Justice, vengeance, tipping the scales back into place.
I did a bad thing to right a wrong, and now I have to do the same thing.
I have to eliminate the threat. End the life of a man who doesn’t deserve the privilege of breathing the same air as the rest of us.
I have to make it right.
“Nothing quite like this kind of justice,” I say to Allen.
The anger festering under his skin is palpable, ready to overflow.
I feed into it, let it touch me, wrap around my hand, steady the shake of it. “You ready?”
He inches forward, waiting. A foot away so he can catch every second. Watch as a heart stops, as justice is served.
The knife is weightless in my hand. An extension of me. Curved to fit. Gleaming silver. And red. The two lives I’ve already taken with it marking the blade. More notches on my soul.
“Don’t do this,” Grace pleads.
I look at Axe one last time. The man I’ve hated all my life. The man I’ve so deeply wanted to suffer like I’ve suffered, to feel the weight of the sins he’s forced me to commit, the sins I forced myself to commit when I made that choice all those years ago.
Like that night, the choice is easy. It’s not about justice anymore, or vengeance. It’s about protecting my town. It’s about protecting Grace.
“We’re even now, Donovan. You understand?”
He stares at me a long time, eyes dazed, blood crusting the back of his neck, the sides of his mouth. And then he nods. “Yeah, Linc. We’re even.”
Grace’s screams hammer the inside of my head as I swing and meet flesh and bone.