“Yes.”
“They aren’t broken, thank fuck. Your old man do this, or Junk?”
Now his hands were on her thigh, sweeping over the large bruise. Everywhere he touched her, there was heat, and then somehow, miraculously, the terrible ache would subside. He had magic in his hands. “He kicked you in the ribs as well, didn’t he?”
“Yes. It was my father. Junk had Zane. He had his hand over Zane’s mouth and I thought he was going to kill him.” She breathed deeply to keep from sobbing. She would never forget that moment. Lying on the floor helpless, her father kicking her while her brother had his hand over her baby’s mouth, a grin on his face.
“I’m going to beat the shit out of both of them before I kill them,” he said. “Break every bone in their fucking bodies.”
He sounded like Steele. Calm. But she knew he meant it.
“If you think I’m going to object, Steele, I’m not. They took my baby.” This time the sob escaped before she could prevent it. She turned on her side, face to the wall, jamming her fist in her mouth. She didn’t want him there to witness her breakdown. That was hers alone. He’d thrown her out like trash, and she’d made something of herself. She hung on to that. She’d even finished high school, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.
He leaned into her, his mouth against her ear. “We’ll get him back, baby. That’s what we do. We don’t let perverted clubs like the Swords take children. We’ll get him back.”
He was gone before she’d turned to face him. What had he meant by that? That was what they did? What did that mean? And how had he made her ribs and her bruised body feel so much better just by touching her? Steele. He broke her heart in so many ways.
THREE
“We’re going to have to clear the calendar to get Steele’s boy back,” Czar said, the moment the twenty fully patched members of Torpedo Ink took their places around the large oval table made of oak.
Czar looked over at his vice president. “You get her settled?”
“She’s going to give me trouble, but I deserve it. I’ll handle it.” Steele knew Breezy wasn’t going to be won over easily, but as far as he was concerned, there was no other choice. He had to win her over for his own self-preservation.
Czar nodded. “First business, where are we with the boy we’ve been bidding on? Is there anything new popping up?”
Code shook his head. “They shut down the auction, saying some member of the crime unit had bid on him. They sent out a warning and disappeared. I had traced them to Las Vegas, but they may have moved the kid and the operation. I’ve done everything I can do to be alerted if they pop back up. My friend Cat is also working with me and she’s got just as many alerts up as I do. Sooner or later they’ll try to sell the kid and we’ll be back in business.”
Finding the little boy they’d heard was being auctioned on the Internet was a fierce need for all of them, and frustration showed on their faces. Now they had to find Steele’s child as well. There was no way they could sacrifice one child for the other. If necessary, they would break into two teams. They’d done so often enough that both teams ran smoothly.
“Ice, Storm, if Code gets anything at all, you may need to head to Las Vegas to poke around. You might uncover something he can’t find online,” Czar said.
“No problem,” Ice agreed without hesitation.
Storm just nodded.
“Anything else pressing before we move on to finding Steele’s son?” Czar asked.
Gavriil nodded. “I’ve been contacted by a former schoolmate. He’s living in the Trinity area and he’s got about twenty others from our same school riding with him. They have no affiliations with any club, and they want to come in under Torpedo Ink. They all have residences and work in the Trinity area and want to stay there. They’re on their way and have requested a meeting with you.”
“Another chapter?” Czar said, speculation in his voice. “You know them? All of them? I imagine he sent names to you.”
“Our school wasn’t quite as brutal as yours, but our instructors did like to torture those of us whose parents Sorbacov particularly hated. I know most of those in their club. I can vouch for a few personally, but not all. I can give you the names of those I know well. They’re assassins, Czar, trained just as we were.”
Czar tapped his fingers on the table and looked to Steele.
Steele knew what that look meant. “Like us, I doubt they fit anywhere.” He looked around the table. “Input?”
“Could be trouble for us,” Reaper said. “The Diamondbacks are looking very closely at us. Pierce”—he named the enforcer for the Diamondback Mendocino chapter—“is no pushover. He saw right through us and knows we’re lethal as hell. Allowing twenty or twenty-five of us in their territory is one thing. Knowing we’ve got another twenty or twenty-five a day’s ride away is something else, particularly if those men were trained the way we were—and he knows we were assassins for our government. He can’t prove it, but he knows it.”
Gavriil had attended one of the four schools that had been a training ground for assets for the Russian government, although that really meant assassins for Sorbacov. All of the schools had been brutal in various degrees. The school Steele had attended had been the worst. Gavriil’s had been right behind it in cruelty to the children being raised and trained there.
“They’re lethal enough,” Gavriil said. “If they went after the Diamondbacks, the club would never know what hit them. They’d take them down one by one silently, and they’d have patience to do it over time, just the way we would. They’d be in and out like phantoms and the Diamondbacks would never know who the enemy was.”
Czar had six biological brothers and Steele had been around them for a while now. He knew they had attended the other schools, but they were dangerous men, particularly Gavriil. If those asking for acceptance into Torpedo Ink were like Gavriil, they were trained in the art of killing. The Diamondbacks, Pierce in particular, wouldn’t like it, but it would be good for Torpedo Ink to have that kind of backup.
“The Diamondbacks are an international motorcycle club. They’re 1-percenters, outlaws, living their lives their own way. We’re here because they’ve given us permission to be here, but we’ve always treated them with respect and played nice,” Maestro said.
Keys nodded. “We tried flying under the Diamondbacks’ radar, but more than once now, we’ve inadvertently showed our fangs to their club, risking retaliation. It would be extremely dangerous to bring more attention to us.”
“On the other hand,” Savage began.
The others fell silent immediately and paid attention. Savage rarely offered anything to the table. He just listened most of the time.
“These are men like us with nowhere to go. They need what we have to survive. A brotherhood. A family. They need a leader. They need Torpedo Ink.”
That was the damn truth, Steele decided. Savage was right. How could any of them possibly fit into regular society? None of them knew the rules. They didn’t know how to behave. They’d been taught to kill to survive. They knew a lot of ways to kill, but few ways to integrate into society. They certainly didn’t know how to have relationships.
Ruthlessly he turned his mind away from the woman in his bed—at least he tried to. It was hard not to think about her lying there, curled up into a little ball, as if protecting herself. The way she slept had always stolen his heart. He’d wrapped his body around hers to show her she was safe. She’d been so fragile and yet she really wasn’t, he was beginning to realize. She’d had his baby alone. She’d found a way to support the child and care for him when she’d left, not even knowing how to make a decision.
In the world of bikers, Breezy had appeared to be a leader of the women and children, one of the reasons he’d th
ought she was older. She anticipated problems and dealt with them ahead of time. She knew the language of bikers and her father’s particular club. Outside that environment, she was in an entirely different world and had no idea how to interpret or fit into it or make decisions accordingly—yet she’d managed. She’d done it for herself and their child.
She’d depended on Steele entirely when she’d been with him. She’d looked at him as if the sun had risen and set with him. Now that adoration wasn’t there, and he found he needed it back. She’d been the one. He hadn’t said a word to the others. Czar had been sent by Sorbacov to kill Evan Shackler-Gratsos, the international president of the Swords. He had crossed Sorbacov one too many times and the order had gone out.
Evan Shackler-Gratsos had inherited billions from his brother. Those billions included freighters that Shackler-Gratsos had turned into snuff ships. His very wealthy clients paid for sexual partners of any age—from very young children to men and women—used them and killed them after or during sex, and then disposed of the bodies at sea. Of course Czar would want to shut that shit down. He’d risked everything to do so, not just his life but his marriage to the woman he loved. One by one, the other members of Torpedo Ink had followed Czar into the Swords club in order to have his back. Steele couldn’t have left him when a war was brewing, and he couldn’t have left Breezy there, where the Swords would name her a traitor.
Steele had seen Breezy for the first time, and all hell had broken loose inside him. He’d been trained, like the others, to have complete control over his body, and that had gone right out the window the moment he’d laid eyes on her. He’d watched her, couldn’t keep his eyes off her. He’d taken every opportunity to talk to her. She’d been responsible, always looking out for those younger than she was. She cooked for the club. She cleaned up after them and never complained. She was a problem solver when things went wrong and had to be fixed. She never asked for help; she just quietly did what needed to be done.