Hot and cold flashes erupted across my skin as I shouldered my bag once more and brushed past an eager looking Lily on my way out the door and I couldn’t tell if it was a common side effect of the lymphoma or because Mr. Warren had seriously creeped me out.
I wasn’t paying attention.
Later, I wouldn’t blame myself because I was still reeling from the complete loss of my childhood idol, the broken heart I nursed at realizing my first love was nothing but a dream.
Still, I was taking the trash out to a poorly lit back alley behind a titty bar. It was straight up dumb-blonde of me not to take note of my surroundings.
I paid for it when something heavy slammed me into the brick wall. The trash bag fell to the ground beside me as I tried to bring my hands up to push away but someone strong captured them in one hand and brought them around to the small of my back.
“Stupid bitch,” Quentin Kade hissed into my ear. “Think you’re too fuckin’ good for me to fuck, huh?”
I tried to buck him off but there was no torque.
“Fuck yeah,” I bit out, enraged by my helplessness, so angry with myself for being oblivious in a dark fucking alley.
He chuckled in my ear. “Don’t worry, bitch, I’m not going to stick my dick into a bitter cunt. I have a better idea. We’re going to play a little game, okay? Zeus fuckin’ Garro thinks he can intimidate me? He’s not the only game in town anymore and it’s about time he knew it.”
He spun me around, kicked my legs apart and pressed something cold and hard to my left temple.
A gun.
Fear spilled over my head like an ice bucket and for a moment, I was afraid I was going to pee myself.
Instead, I worked the minimal saliva left in my mouth into a pool and spat it at him. “You think I’m the right thing to send a message to the Prez of The Fallen? I’m just some girl that works in his titty bar.”
Quentin’s grin glinted dimly in the grimy light cast from the red stripper sign over the side door. “You know, you’re probably fuckin’ right? But I don’t really give a shit. He’ll know it’s a message when I kill one of his filthy new dancers and if I don’t kill you, I want you to give it to him for me. Tell him that the Nightstalkers are back and they aren’t fucking around this time.”
I watched as he stepped back, the gun in front of my face now, leveled just between my eyes so that they crossed as I stared down the small barrel. He kept chuckling as one of his lackeys handed him a shot glass.
“Hope you like vodka,” he said as he placed the shot on top of my head. “Now stand real still or this game will be over a lot quicker than either of us want it to be.”
I frantically thought about who might come out into the alley to see us, who might save me. There was no one left inside but Michael, a sweet middle-aged man with Autism that I’d convinced Debra to hire a few months ago.
Everyone else was gone and I didn’t think Michael would recognize the sound of a gunshot and come running.
I closed my eyes. Maybe dying from a bullet in the head would be a better way to go—quick and done—than from the cancer, slow and creeping.
Silver lining, right?
I opened my eyes again and glared at him as he took position two yards away from me in the narrow alley. I decided if I was going to die, I was going to do it with sass.
“Betcha twenty bucks, you miss,” I goaded him, like a reckless fool.
He laughed as he brought the gun up in his right hand, used the left to steady it, squinted one eye and… POP!
The bullet exploded up and over my head to the left, shards of metal and brick raining down on my face. A tiny sliver caught my left cheek but I didn’t flinch because I didn’t know what he’d do if I spilled the shot myself.
He laughed uproariously and it was clear he was higher than a fucking kite.
I was going to die at the hands of a coked-up drug dealer just because I wouldn’t grind on his lap. Sometimes, I seriously questioned my morals. As in, were they necessary?
“Told ya,” I sneered at him.
“Bitch,” he chuckled, waving the gun erratically back and forth. “You talk like that when I got the gun? You’re whacked.”
I managed a small shrug without dropping the shot, keeping an eye on his loose gun hand. If I could disarm him enough, I figured that I could make a run for it and duck back into the bar before he could get a clean shot off.
“I’m just saying,” I continued, as if I was having a casual conversation instead of a deadly one. Panic was a knife’s point at my throat but I forced myself to take a deep breath and forge on. Zeus had once told me that being high made you feel like a king, invincible in an ironic way because being high made you anything but. “I don’t think you can hit it clean off. Ask your buddies, I bet they agree with me.”
Bringing his friends into it was the right move.
He turned to them with exaggerated horror, flapping the gun around as he demanded that they vouch for him.
It was my moment and I took it without conscious thought.
I pushed off the wall, leapt over the mounds of garbage and sprinted the four steps to the huge metal door, yanking it open just as a shot popped against the brick beside me. I slammed the door shut, my heart thudding in my throat, then bolted it shut with a finality that made me want to cry.
Seconds later, I heard them cursing as they tried to get in.
I didn’t wait around even though I knew the door would hold. We still had a front entrance and I couldn’t afford to be stuck there all night. It was already two in the morning and I had school the next day.
I turned and ran through the darkened halls. They were so familiar that it was easy to grab my rucksack from the back room and dash back into the main bar toward the front.
When two huge hands grabbed at me, I screamed and swung around to thwack my bag against the intruder.
“Stop.” A tall, broad shadow of a man ordered as his strong hands held me still by the shoulders.
“Get off me,” I ordered, struggling under the hold.
He didn’t budge.
“Brother of The Fallen,” he explained in a low voice that seemed rough with disuse.
Immediately, I settled, peering harder through the dark to see the glint of the small white patch on the front of his leather cut that claimed he was a member of the MC.
“Thank God,” I said in bone-deep relief, sagging against him.
He stiffened in intense discomfort, so I sprung away from him instantly. I wasn’t normally an overtly affectionate person, but I’d been weak with relief that I wasn’t alone with a group of four stoned, misogynistic assholes just outside.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “There’s a group of guys outside that literally just tried to shoot a shot glass off my head.”
The Fallen brother blinked huge brown eyes at me then turned away, squatted slightly and jerked his chin at me from over his shoulder. “Up.”
I stared at him a little slack jawed because if I didn’t know better, it seemed like he wanted to give me a piggyback ride.
“Up,” he repeated.
A guy that clearly didn’t like to be touched was going to give me a piggyback ride out of the bar?
“Um, I don’t think that’s necessary,” I tried.
He sighed impatiently then lifted his hands to show me the small black gun in one palm and the glint of a sharp blade in the other. “Up.”