Battles of the Broken (Sons of Templar MC 6)

It was on that that his lawyer ushered him off.

And he went straight to Lauren.

He knew it the second his foot hit the stairs.

It was wrong.

Because the entire place reeked of flowers and raspberries. Perfume that was meant to be alluring and classy, yet the second it touched his nose, it repulsed him.

Because it was Jade’s.

He sprinted up the stairs, yanking out his piece. His mind assaulted him with everything he might find up there, the death he might be faced with.

That was forced away.

Because he wasn’t faced with death.

Lauren sat in the middle of the room, tied to a chair, gagged. Her hair was mussed and matted with blood, an angry welt raised on her cheek.

Blood boiling, he didn’t even think of anything but her as he rushed over. Her eyes bulged in a silent scream.

The prick of the needle surprised him. His body froze in ecstasy at the familiar pain, long enough to let whatever the fuck it was in the drug enter his system.

“Ah, you’ve made it too easy, baby,” a voice purred. “Now I’m going to have to make it hard.”

Lauren

Gage collapsed on the floor in mere seconds. His eyes didn’t leave mine the entire time. Horror spread through my veins at the way his irises began to glaze over, at the way the drug reached in and yanked away the comprehension in his eyes.

I didn’t try to scream from behind my gag. I knew it wouldn’t work. I’d been doing it all night.

Since I got home.

Since I found Jen—no, Jade in my kitchen.

I’d been surprised when I got to the top of the stairs to see her sitting at my island, sipping from a glass of red wine.

She put it down when our eyes locked, smiling warmly at me. But there was something off about it, something that made me go back on my heel and tense up.

“Jen, how did you get in here?” I asked, trying to remember if I’d locked the door in all my haste that morning. Maybe I’d left it unlocked and she’d heard, come over to commiserate. Yeah, that was it. I totally hadn’t locked my door, and of course she’d know. Niles knew of every arrest made in Amber. But then again, Niles had mentioned how she had some sort of family emergency when I’d finally been cleared to go back to work—with a leather clad shadow following me everywhere, of course—and she’d been in and out of the office. I hadn’t even seen her, only spoken to her on the phone once when she’d called to tell me how horrified she’d been to hear about my ‘virus’.

That was the cover story.

To stop Troy from sticking his nose in, as Gage had said. Well, Gage had said “so that cop fucker doesn’t stick his snout in and I don’t have to kill him.”

My doctor had somehow been very cooperative with this story. I had a feeling she was somehow connected to the Sons of Templar.

Or maybe she just knew it was a bad idea to cross them.

Whatever it was, the official story was a ‘virus’. My parents had somehow gone along with this too.

Gage had spoken to them, I had no idea what he said, but it worked.

So it was weird that Jen was here.

Something bitter touched my tongue, but I ignored it.

“It’s sweet of you to come, but—”

She stopped in front of me. “Ugh, I’m not sweet, you stupid bitch,” she snarled, silencing me. “Thankfully, I can show you that now.”

Then she hit me over the head with something heavy and hard.

White-hot pain exploded in my eyes and then there was nothing.

Until I woke up tied to a chair in the middle of my living room. She hadn’t said a single thing since I’d opened my eyes. Not one.

It was deeply unnerving. Well, the whole experience was obviously deeply unnerving. The woman pretending to be my friend was actually Gage’s ex who had tried to poison me, most likely framed him for murder, and now was in my living room holding a gun after she’d knocked me unconscious.

All that was unnerving.

But what was truly terrifying was her silent pacing. Back and forth.

There were no big villainous monologues of what she did and how she got away with it. No insults. No death threats. No more violence.

Just her pacing, swinging the gun in her hand as she did.

She did it for hours.

And I wondered how in the heck she’d ever passed for a sane person. How she’d tricked everyone. Because this kind of crazy should’ve been impossible to hide.

Gage had showed me all the wonderful things that weren’t impossible.

And now I was seeing all the wretched, ugly, and maybe fatal things.

I thought of him a lot. With every heartbeat.

I spent the night hoping he’d stay locked up. That he wouldn’t come looking for me and find the utterly insane woman who had a gun.