Chapter 39
ZANE
My anger was fire red as I raced after the car Sienna got into with her husband.
And just as hot. Hotter even. I saw the car swerve onto the gravel lot to the side of the road, but it was going too fast to stop right away.
And as I braked hard, I saw her standing there with a gun pointed at her husband, her hair blowing in the breeze, catching the last light of the sun—pulling it right back from under the horizon.
She didn’t betray me.
That was the only thought racing through my mind as I went to her. As I tackled and incapacitated her husband.
It changed to, I love this woman with all my being, as we kissed in the dust and twilight. And for the first time, I truly believed I was being given a new beginning.
If I could just stay there kissing her for the rest of time, I’d gladly have done it. But my brothers and sisters needed my help.
So I drove back to the clubhouse. Rogue and the others had managed to get back to safety behind the thick walls around the Rogue Angels MC compound.
Sienna and I had to go in through a hidden gate at the back, but we made it too.
I made sure the husband was locked up and Sienna was safe in our room, before joining the others in the war room.
The clubhouse is now surrounded by Hydras and they’re showing no sign of going away until they get into this place.
“This is a proper siege,” Creed says. “How long do you think we can last?”
The rest of the execs around the table in the war room give him bemused looks.
“We don’t have much of a future if we don’t deal with these Hydras somehow,” Rogue says. “Even if they leave here today.”
“So we gotta make the husband send them away,” I say, cracking my knuckles. “Give me half an hour with him.”
I’d like nothing more to be the one to make him do what we need him to do. But so far, the guy has refused to cooperate, and Rogue has held me back from making him.
“That’s the last resort,” Rogue says. “We don’t torture people.”
“Right, because you think that makes you just as bad as the criminals you hunt,” I say. “But you have me now. I’m worse than the criminals you hunt.”
That gets me a bunch of bemused looks. But not from Rogue.
“Don’t you have that cousin at LAPD?” I ask him. “Call him. I’m sure there’s gotta be a bunch of illegal shit the Hydras are doing out there right now.”
“If we call the cops, they come after us even harder the next time,” Rogue says. “No, we gotta fix this by ourselves. No cops until we can take them down for good.”
“Do you think offering them money would send them packing for the time being?” Creed asks. “It usually works.”
“But then they’ll just keep coming back for more,” Alice puts in. She appears even stronger and tougher than she was before. More present. Like she’s finally fully herself after getting rid of the guy who broke her.
“So what? We just keep fighting them?” Blade asks. He’s not a coward, he already almost died once in a fight with the Hydras, so he’s just speaking sense. I guess. “So many have already been hurt.”
“But some pests need to be squashed completely. That’s just how it is,” I say.
Rogue fixes his bright eyes on me. But from the expression on his face, I don’t know if he really sees me. He’s thinking hard.
After a few moments he nods slowly. “We need a vote. Keep fighting. Or find another suitable solution until we can figure out a way to take them out for good.”
The room falls silent. I can hear people breathing, the occasional groan of a chair as someone shifts their position, but that’s it.
“I say we live to fight another day,” Blade finally breaks the silence. “I vote we offer them money and get rid of them for now.”
Alice joins his vote, as does Creed.
Rogue is looking at me like he’s expecting a vote from me too.
“I’m not officially an exec of this club,” I say. “I don’t get a vote. But I would like some time alone with the husband. Maybe if I can get him to talk, this decision will be easier.”
The rest exchange looks with Rogue, and I think I’ve gotten through to most of them. Rogue takes his time thinking about it, his eyes practically glowing now.
“Fine,” he finally says. “You have an hour. After that we’re offering to buy our way out of this.”
I stand up fast before he can change his mind. “Good. And I won’t need a full hour.”
They all look at me, and it’s not primarily doubt in their eyes. It’s something more like hope. Hope that I can make this go away. No one’s looked at me like I could be their savior in a very long time. Except Sienna. And I’m doing this for her as much as anyone else. So we can have a future.
“Try not to kill him,” Rogue says.
“I’ll do my best,” I say and leave the room because I’m sensing he’s very close to changing his mind.
Sienna is standing by the bar as I come out of the war room on my way to one of the outbuildings where we stashed her husband.
A small voice in the back of my mind is saying she’s about to plead for her husband’s life and I hate that thought.
“I’m going to speak to your husband now, Sienna,” I tell her. “Make him call off his hounds.”
Out in the yard, I hear nothing. But I know the Hydras have surrounded the compound and are plotting to find the quickest way in. I’ve seen it on the cameras.
“I’ve been thinking, Zane,” she says and I brace to hear the plea for her husband.
“Kurt must have been working with these Hydras or whatever you call them for a long time. I think he might be their lawyer. Why else would they help him chase me? He was always taking me to dinners and parties with shady, but powerful characters. And if I know Kurt at all, which I do, then he’ll have insurance policies in place.
Stuff he can use if his business partners ever decided to screw him over. He was always paranoid like that.”
She’s talking so fast I missed about half of it.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I mean, the Hydra’s are bad, right? So they gotta have secrets they don’t want anyone knowing,” she explains more slowly. “And I bet Kurt has some of those secrets on a disk somewhere. Stuff they don’t want getting out. Maybe your hacker can hack into his files and check.”
I’m still nodding to her words as Rogue and Blade come out of the war room behind me.
“What do you think?” she asks, sounding unsure of herself. Probably because I’m still just nodding like an idiot.
“I think that’s fucking brilliant,” I say. Though I was looking forward to smacking her husband around some, but maybe I’ll still get to do that if Skye has too much trouble deciphering his passwords.
“What’s brilliant?” Rogue asks.
“Sienna’s idea,” I say. “Tell them.”
And she does. In a little more detail, but just as breathlessly as she told me.
Rogue has the same look of awe on his face that I hope is on mine. There’s also stark relief on his.
“This could work. Come,” he says and rushes off back to the war room.
I follow with Sienna more slowly, taking her hand as we walk.
“I hope this works,” she says. “Otherwise, I don’t know what we’ll do.”
“Oh, it’ll work,” I assure her. “We still need our happily ever after, don’t we?”
The look she gives me is mostly love, with just a little devotion mixed in for spice. If I could, I’d kiss her right now and not stop until the sun comes out again. But we don’t have time for that right now.
We need to do this thing first. And then we’ll have all the time in the world to just be together. Which is all I actually ever wanted.