Ride or Die (Rejects Paradise 4)

“And you’re fucking stubborn,” he shoots back. “Just go and sit your ass down, and it’ll all be over soon. I’m not about to let you go running in there to save the asses of douchebags who don’t deserve you.”

As if remembering the gun in my hand, I raise it back to his head, this time aiming right between his eyes, my hand steady as fuck. “Move.”

“Do it,” he says, almost daring me. “If anyone around here has got the fucking guts to do it, it’s you, baby girl.”

I clench my jaw, feeling as though I’m about to be sick, but what choice do I have? Either take him down or let over a hundred of my men burn. There is no fucking choice. One life to save a hundred others. It’s simple math.

BANG.

Nic’s eyes go wide as though he can’t believe that I pulled the trigger, and not a second later, his body collapses heavily to the ground. Tears instantly well in my eyes, and I race into him as he stares up at me in shock.

I drop to my knees beside him as blood pours from his thigh and instantly pull the bandana from his head. “I’m sorry,” I cry, my hands shaking as I fumble, trying to wrap it around his leg then pulling it tight like a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. “I can’t let you do this.”

He grabs hold of my arm. “Don’t do this, Ocean. Don’t go.”

“I have to. I can’t let you senselessly kill all these people. Why can’t you see that I’ve been trying to save you?” I cry, desperately wishing for the old Nic as he groans in pain beneath my hands. “All of this is changing you. You’re becoming someone that I don’t even recognize anymore. I want the old Nic back, the one who would be sick at the thought of ending another’s life. Let me save your soul. Why do you think I went to the Wolves in the first place? I needed to stop you, not hurt you. You need help.”

Nic shakes his head. “My soul can’t be saved, Ocean. It died a long time ago. Worry about saving yourself. No one can help me now.”

“I can’t do that,” I tell him, pulling tight on the bandana and making him groan in agony. I reach into his pocket and find his phone and car keys before jamming them into my pockets. I know damn well that he’s going to try and call someone to get me, but he’s also going to need an ambulance.

I lean forward and press my lips to his forehead. “Please forgive me, Nic. I never meant to hurt you, but you murdered my father, and I’ll never move past that. I hate you so damn much, but a part of my heart will always be yours. Which is why I need you to stop this. Step down from the Widows. Be a good man again, be the man I know you can be.”

“Ocean,” he snaps, desperately trying to cling onto me as I pull away. “Don’t… you’ll get hurt. It’s too fucking dangerous.”

I get to my feet and race to the door, tucking his gun in the back of my jeans. I look back at him, helplessly bleeding out on the ground. “I’m sorry,” I tell him again. “I’ll call you an ambulance as soon as I get out of Breakers Flats.”

With that, I throw myself out of the door and race toward Blaxlands Grove with fear pulsing through my veins and tears staining my cheeks, hoping to God that this isn’t true.Chapter 33I race down the street in the same car I learned to drive in, way too familiar with all the little ins and outs to need to concentrate on what I'm doing. I throw Nic’s phone down at the floor space on the passenger side of his car after calling an ambulance and letting Colton know exactly what’s been going on.

I hardly got three words out to Colton before he was already in his Veneno racing toward Blaxlands Grove. He told me that he’s been calling all afternoon, worried sick about where I’ve been. He knew that I was collecting the paternity results this morning, and figured that I just needed time to myself.

What a big fucking joke. The fact that this baby is Jude’s seems so pitiful compared to the bullshit that’s going on now.

I turn one last corner, and as I race closer and closer to the Wolf Den, I finally see it.

Thick, dark smoke billowing up into the sky. My eyes instantly go wide.

No. No, this can’t be true. Surely I’m seeing things. I push Nic’s piece of shit car faster.

A familiar car comes screeching down the opposite side of the road, and I gape at it, instantly recognizing Kairo in the driver’s seat with both Sebastian and Eli in the car. As they pass me, all three stare at me in horror, realizing that not only some shit must have gone down for me to be in this car, but that I’m more than prepared to throw myself inside the Den to save as many men as I can, even fucking Snake and Scarface.