For the Taking

Ten years was a long time, but for a year of that, he had no choice but to go into rehabilitation because of the damage done to his leg from the single bullet. What he hadn’t realized was his good friend John had shattered his femur bone from the impact of the bullet. He doubted even John knew what he’d done. After all, he’d trained that bastard.

“She took a hard beating.”

“Welcome to the consequences of not doing business with David Peace.”

“She turned him down?”

“That’s what she told me before I knocked her out.”

“You did this?”

“No. I didn’t hit her. I drugged her. Gave her something to keep her quiet and hopefully asleep. I don’t deal with mindless chatter.”

Stephen was the only person he trusted.

He was a doctor and had fixed him up many times over the last ten years, and what’s more, his enemy didn’t have a fucking clue about it, and Riley intended to keep it that way.

“Do you need me to examine you?” Stephen asked.

“I got out unscathed this time.”

He was able to kill ten of Peace’s men. Not one of them had seen him coming, but then, since he’d begun to take down Peace’s operation, it now brought a grand total of fifty kills to his mission, and he wasn’t worried for any one of them.

He was going to hurt them all.

“Fix her. She needs it more than me.” Staring at the table, he wondered what he should do with her. He hadn’t exactly thought this through when he drugged her. Leaving her there had been an option, but not one he wanted to take.

“Can I say, this is not like you,” Stephen said.

“None of this is like me. Would you have been able to leave her?” he asked.

“I’m not the one with this crazy death wish. Have you ever considered not going through with it?” Stephen asked, setting up his equipment to make sure she was okay.

“No.”

“You could die.”

“I don’t have anything to live for, Stephen. My wife, she made a simple mistake, and I took care of it, and yet, he saw fit to make me watch him kill her. There is no way I would ever let that go.”

“There are more things to life, Riley, than revenge.”

“Right now, that’s all I want. I want to stare him in the eye as I hurt him. As I peel the flesh from his body and laugh as I do. Nothing will be more satisfying than hearing the screams of the man who took everything from me. I vowed I would kill him, that I would have my revenge for him taking the one good thing from my world. I will have it, and if I die in the process, I will take that fucker with me, and laugh as I do.”

Chapter Two

The moment Meghan woke up, the first thing she recognized was the pain. She was all too familiar with it. The next, she couldn’t see out of one eye. She lifted her hand, and with her good eye, she could see the cast on her arm.

She didn’t need to take a moment to remember the intense pain of the beating she’d taken.

Touching her face, she felt a bandage over it.

“It’ll heal.”

She turned to the masculine voice. The room she was in, she didn’t recognize. The sounds outside of moving cars had her thinking it was a hotel. Motel, maybe? Her memory right now was a little foggy.

“What?”

“Your story checks out. I happened to hear on the street of a woman being taken. I even went to your place of work, asked a couple of questions,” he said, throwing down her ID badge onto the bed.

Everything was moving too fast.

She remembered who he was. He’d killed all of David’s men. She didn’t have a problem with that.

“You drugged me.”

“Are you in pain right now?”

“Of course I am!”

He sat down on the edge of the bed. This man, whoever he was, she couldn’t help but notice how sexy he was.

No!

She shouldn’t even acknowledge his looks.

“You drugged me. Why?”

“You’re in a great deal of pain, and it would only get worse, Meghan.”

“Don’t call me that. It’s not my name.” She hadn’t grown up in the system and not learned a thing or two. Like, don’t tell complete strangers your name.

It was high on her list, and something she never did.

Until now, it would seem.

He smiled. “You can lie. Doesn’t change the fact you’re called Meghan.”

Gritting her teeth, she wanted to slap the smug smile off his face, but lying in this unknown bed, and after he’d saved her when he really didn’t have to, she didn’t want to make a bad impression.

“Okay, fine. You’re right. My name is Meghan. I’m sorry I was going to lie to you.”

“You don’t have to worry about a thing right now.”

“Where are we?”