Page 41 of His Princess (A Man Who Knows What He Wants)

“Apologize for what?” Aaron yells. “I don’t know what poison you’ve dripped into my dear niece’s ear but you can’t honestly believe you can take on all of us.”

“I can. And I will. So what’s it to be?”

Rider turns to me, nodding firmly to the ensuite door. I stand at the threshold and shake my head.

My thoughts are spinning with everything I just learned, with the absolute depravity of it. I always knew there was something sick about Uncle Aaron, something twisted.

He killed my Dad and he’s ruled the mob like a warlord ever since.

But to set us up so the guards could eavesdrop on us?

If it was just the guards who’d lied to us, maybe it wouldn’t bother me.

But my own flesh and blood?

I’m sick of being a so-called mob princess.

I don’t want anything to do with it ever again.

All I want is my man, the family we’re going to build.

Rider glares harder at me, nodding once again to the ensuite.

I can read the message in his eyes, Do it or we’re going to die here.

“You know what it’s going to be, Rider,” Aaron snarls. “War.”

Rider glares at me even harder, as though he thinks he can move me into the bathroom with his eyes alone.

But then he moves his gaze to my belly and I read the message there.

Do it for our baby.

My belly swirls the same way it did when he asked if I could feel our child growing inside of me.

I told him, yes and I meant it.

Even now, I feel something deep inside of me, throbbing, beckoning to me as though to the future we’re going to build together.

I sigh and walk into the ensuite, shutting and then locking the door, telling myself it’s for our baby even if I feel like a coward.

But what the heck am I going to do out there?

I can’t fight armed men.

But neither can Rider, surely.

Almost ten against one, and this time he doesn’t have the element of surprise.

“Fine,” Rider snarls, his voice loud and rumbling even through the closed door of the ensuite. “Then let it be war.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Rider

Their plan could have worked.

They had men on the inside and they had the element of surprise.

They could’ve busted in here with their guns out before I had a chance to react.

But they made a fatal fucking flaw.

They insulted my woman. They let other men hear her moan.

Now every inch of me burns with the need to cause these men harm, to beat them until they’re bloody and they’re not sure if I’m ever going to stop. I’ve spent years trying to keep the beast inside of me caged, the beast that was born the day the Cartel murdered my parents.

I’ve done everything by the book, never overextending myself when dealing with the criminals of this city.

But to bring my woman into it…

They’ve crossed the fucking line.

“Last chance,” Aaron says, with that pathetic junkie’s shiver in his voice.

The weak piece of shit couldn’t even stay sober long enough to follow through with his plan.

I creep to the other side of the door, aiming my pistol at the threshold, steadying my breathing even as the monster inside of me tries to send chest-trembling breaths moving through me.

My fucking woman… my child… my future…

These men are threatening all of it.

There’s movement on the other side of the door and then – bang – the door explodes inward.

I prepare to leap forward without thinking about my own safety.

The only thing I can think about is my woman hiding in the bathroom and what will happen to her if I don’t do what’s necessary.

Two men rush through the door guns raised.

They spin to me and a gun fires, but the motherfucker shoots wide and I’m not going to give him a second chance.

I roar and crush the barrel of my gun into his face.

There’s a bony crunch as his face explodes in a torrent of blood, and then I spin to the other one, swinging my fist around in a violent left hook.

The words Aaron threw at my woman bounce around my head, the words he threw at his niece, the sick bastard.

Slut, slut, slut.

He’s going to pay for that.

I grab the second man by the back of the neck and spin him around, putting him between me and his men.

A gunshot goes off, hitting the man in the chest, the reverberation of the impact moving through my body.

I can feel that he’s wearing a Kevlar vest as I wrap my arm around him and drive him forward, using him like a battering ram as I charge into the hallway.

My vision is honed down to animal inputs, nothing more.

All that exists for me is the fight, the atavistic compulsion to keep my woman – my mate, the carrier of my future – safe from these bastards.

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