Restrained Under His Duty (Dirty Little Secrets 3)

Then there’s nothing. No Tobias Harrington. No killer. No cold and dismal room.

There’s just me and the gun aimed at my head.

Ryder

I raise my gun, passing by the governor’s BMW parked in front of the abandoned asylum in the south end of the city, and I hurry through the front doors with my team at my back. Once inside, a staircase leads up and down, and I gesture for Shawna and two other team members to move upstairs, as Lee and I will clear downstairs. Logic tells me the basement is the perfect place to hold Hadley—pe

rfect because this building is meant to hold in the sounds of screaming.

Slowly, stair by stair, we make it downstairs, guns aimed at any threats coming our way, as we begin the painstaking task of clearing, room by room. Some are empty. Some are eerily still full of hospital equipment. And one room even has children’s toys. But the silence remains until we reach the end of the hallway. That’s where I hear voices. Not only male voices, but Hadley’s voice is there, too, and it’s exuding fear.

I don’t hesitate. I move swiftly toward the open door.

There’s a lot I can handle as a man. But even I have my limits, and so I burst into the room with Lee at my back. And my limit is reached when I find a gun trained at Hadley’s head for the second time. I can’t even process what it does to me, as it strips all my training and all my logic, sending me into a fury that knows no bounds.

Training tells me to shoot on sight. But the desire to protect calls for action.

I plow into the man holding the weapon at Hadley’s head. I hear Lee behind me bark an order at the governor, but he’s not the threat here. He’s weak, and he’s also not the one I currently want to school. He’s not the man holding a gun, threatening the life of the woman who has claimed my soul.

I lunge forward as he turns, firing off a shot. The sound is deafening in this small space. I leap to the side, but not fast enough, and the bullet grazes my shoulder. I grit my teeth, not allowing the burning of my flesh to steal my focus. I’m on my feet in nearly the same second and lurch forward again, determined to ensure the only person getting hurt here today is the man in front of me.

Hadley’s screaming my name, building more and more fire within. I keep my mind blank, ignoring both the fear and the relief in her voice. I stay focused on the man as we crash to the ground.

He makes his move, attempting to raise the gun. My gun slips from my hand as I grasp his wrists and fight to keep his arms pinned to the cement ground. Though the force of my hands around his ignites his fingers to pull the trigger, and the bullet crashes into the wall, far too close to Hadley.

Done with the use of weapons and relying on my MMA training, I strike a hard blow to his face. Day after day, the stress has been building, and today I plan to release it entirely on the one man who deserves it. This should be a logical decision—knock him out and disable him—though logic can’t stand in comparison to emotion. I want this man to hurt.

I want him to bleed.

Using the rawness staining my soul, I crash my skull against his, causing his head to smack against the cement. His elbow comes up, smashing into my nose. The loud crack and the rush of blood tells me that he’s broken it, but that’s not the first time and I highly doubt it’ll be the last.

I spit the blood from my mouth, groaning as I take another blow to the head. But I manage to finally get the gun out of his hands, although sadly the gun isn’t in my hand either. It slips away from us both and I jump to my feet, ready to pounce.

The other guy gets there first, tackling me to the ground, and I grunt with the force of his weight on mine as I hit the cement. He goes to deliver a punch, but I roll out of the way and dodge the hit, quickly jumping to my feet.

He’s slower this time, and it gives me that split second to see that Lee has his gun trained on the governor’s head, while his knee is pressing into his back, pinning the governor to the ground.

“Do. Not. Kill. Him,” I bark at Lee, right as my opponent starts toward me.

There are still too many unknowns. I need answers not only for myself, but for the senator when he awakes and demands to know why this has happened to his family. For all he’s done I want the governor to suffer in jail, not be let off easy by death.

The hitman attacks again, using the full strength of his muscles, sending us both flying toward the opposite wall, and I nearly see stars. I shake my head, clearing it, not allowing the darkness to take me, hearing a strangled groan above me.

But suddenly, I realize I haven’t injured him, as a crash followed by a piercing scream fills the air. I’m on my feet a second later, greeted by the sight of Hadley lying in the mess of the broken chair, blood pooling along her cheek from an obvious gash on her forehead.

And that’s when I see it. The flash of metal aimed at her head. “Fucking bitch,” the man growls.

I’m sure what happens next is only seconds long, but time seems to halt as I dive for my gun by the door. I have one shot. That’s it. And that shot is either going to come from my gun or my opponent’s.

My fingers wrap around the cool metal as I near the ground, spinning my body and aiming the gun in the guy’s direction. The loud bang echoes painfully off the walls as my arms shake with the power of the gun.

Slowly, his body crumples to the ground.

Then, “Police,” a man shouts, entering the room. “Get on the ground.”

A dozen men rush into the space around me, and I drop to the ground face-first and lace my fingers behind my head, staring at Hadley, unsure if my gun was the only gun that went off.

There’s more blood by her head now than what had been there before. But I don’t know if that’s because she’s made the wound she had worse by tackling the man, or if she’s been shot. I also know better than to move in the presence of police with their guns trained on me, but I shout in nothing short of desperation, “That’s the senator’s daughter. Help her.”