AllFreeNovel
Share Us
22
CANNON
“He…was…mad.”
Piper’s broken, hoarse sobs echoed in my head as I stormed down the hall to the studio that was labeled with the producer’s name on the door. It was slightly ajar, and I heard someone groaning in agony inside.
“He…attacked…me.”
The angry red-and-purple marks on her neck flashed through my mind, combined with the drunken memory of Violet. Piper’s sobs mixed in with Vi’s. Piper’s “He attacked me!” blended with Vi’s “He hurt me!” and I couldn’t fucking breathe.
My chest felt tight, my brain seeming to be on fire as I pushed the door open and saw the producer on his knees, holding his crotch. There were deep, bloody gashes on his face where Piper must have gotten him with her nails. They started out shallow on his forehead and got deeper the farther they stretched down. One was so bad, blood dripped over his mouth and off his chin, mixing with the puddle of vomit in front of him.
We hadn’t even been at the studio for a half hour. I’d let the assistant show me to the green room after Piper had given me a kiss on the cheek and told me to be good. I'd figured I would be bored for a few hours all on my own, but not two minutes after I’d sat down, the Blondes had arrived with Sin.
Two stops on their tour had been canceled due to some kind of protests in one of the cities on their schedule, so they’d decided to fly back to LA to get this over with. Kin and the other Tainted Knights guys would be stopping in later in the day to do their own tracks, but Sin was never far from his wife. Something I was beginning to understand, because just thinking of being away from Piper for more than an hour at a time made me mental.
But not nearly as mental as the thought that this bastard had hurt her. The sight of the blood on his lips was what finally tipped me over the edge. The taste of the blood on my tongue from the night I’d kissed Violet, hurt her, destroyed her world. That wasn’t Vi’s blood now, but it so easily could have been Piper’s. Her swollen, painful neck flashed in front of my eyes.
With an enraged roar that shook the walls, I grabbed the fucker by the shirt and lifted the groaning little pussy to his feet. His eyes registered who I was and then filled with terror as I slammed him against the wall. “That look you’re giving me right now, was that in her eyes when you hurt her?” I seethed, slamming him harder into the wall. “What did you do to my girl?”
“N-nothing,” he stuttered. “Sh-she’s lying.”
I let my fists tell him I didn’t believe him. His jaw shifted under the first hit, and I felt pain shoot up my entire arm, but it barely registered. Laurence’s scream could be heard throughout the entire floor, but my next hit to his mouth shut him up for a few seconds. Throwing him on the floor, I kicked him in the ribs and heard him gasp in a weird way that made me think I might have broken a rib or two with my boot.
Behind me, the doorway filled with people, I was too busy making the motherfucker bleed to care who saw me beating the hell out of him. The feel of heavy hands on my arms, trying to pull me away, was my first clue that security had arrived. Shrugging off their hands, I grabbed Laurence by the shirt and punched him again. His jaw was hanging at an unnatural angle, and when I connected this time, his scream sounded like I’d torn the damn thing off.
Two more sets of hands grabbed me, and the four of them dragged me toward the door while I struggled to get free. It took three of them to get my arms behind my back, while the other zip-tied my hands together. Breathing hard, I yelled at them to let me go so I could finish what I’d started, but they didn’t speak as they half dragged, half carried me to a conference room.
Passing the green room, I heard Piper still crying inside and tried to get free to go in to her, but the security guards only moved faster.
In the conference room, I was pushed into a chair, and two of the guards stood behind me, while the other two muttered something about getting his boss and that the cops were on their way. Groaning, I realized that if I got arrested, then the date I’d had planned with Piper wouldn’t happen.
“Fuck!” I bellowed, pounding my head against the table in front of me.
* * *
The commotion in the hall outside the conference room was the only warning I was given before the door slammed open and Emmie stormed in. Piper was right beside her, and her bodyguards, Rodger and Marcus, behind them. Then bringing up the rear was a slower-moving, clenched-jawed Petrova with a handful of cops.
Petrova appeared to be giving Emmie and the others a wide berth, and from the look in my manager’s eyes, I couldn’t say I blamed him. Too many times, I’d been on the receiving end of that look from my best friend’s mother. Too many times, I’d ended up regretting whatever childish bullshit I’d done to cause it.
The last time I’d seen it was the night everything had gone to hell. She hadn’t just been pissed—she’d been murderous. That same look was in her green eyes now, and Petrova seemed to understand that the redhead before him was a lit keg of gunpowder, ready to explode at any moment.
I wasn’t surprised when the cops moved forward, one of them pulling out a pair of actual cuffs. My only regret was that I’d ruined my date with Piper. No, that was a lie. I had other regrets too, the biggest one that I hadn’t broken that fucker Laurence’s neck as soon as I’d gotten my hands on him.
“Aunt Emmie, please do something,” Piper cried, her voice so raspy that I barely recognized it. My gaze landed on her neck, and I saw that the marks had only gotten darker. The need to kill the man who had done that to her intensified, and I struggled a little when one of the cops jerked me to my feet, while another slapped the cuffs on my wrists before cutting off the zip ties.
“I’m doing everything I can, Piper,” Emmie assured her in a hard voice. “But Laurence has a broken jaw as well as several busted ribs. He’s pressing charges for assault.”
Piper’s tears made my knees weak. “But Cannon was only protecting me!”
Emmie clenched her eyes closed for a moment before they snapped open and landed on Petrova. I didn’t know what the billionaire saw in those green depths, but whatever it was had him gulping and taking several steps back from her. “I know, sweetheart.” Turning to my girl, Emmie touched gentle fingers to her bruised neck. The soft brush on her flesh made Piper flinch, and Emmie dropped her hand, fisting it at her side. “Don’t you worry, though. I’ll take care of everything.”
“B-but they’re arresting Cannon,” she whispered brokenly.
Releasing a heavy sigh, Emmie walked over to where the two cops were still holding on to me. “Listen to me carefully.” I gave a nod in understanding. “You’re going to be booked and processed. Keep your mouth shut, no matter what they ask you. Peter Kratt will meet you at the station and will take care of everything.”
I remembered Peter. He was the lawyer who’d handled Jagger’s assault on the photographer who had taken nude photos of my sister without her permission. Jags had broken his hand in three places on a window and then that fucker’s face, but his only punishment had been a fine and one hundred hours of community service. Meanwhile, the photographer was still doing time for having taken nude pictures of underage girls.
“Not worried about me,” I told her, keeping my voice low. “Pipes needs to see a doctor. Her voice sounds worse than before, and those bruises are bad.”
She patted me on the arm. “Don’t worry, bud. The hospital is our next stop. Your mom is going to meet us there.”
“Fuck,” I groaned. There wasn’t a lot that scared me, but a pissed-off Dallas Cage was at the very top of the list. “How angry is she?”
“Enraged,” Emmie told me honestly, and my stomach knotted. “But not at you. Now, remember what I said. Keep your mouth shut. Only talk to Kratt, and hopefully we’ll get you out by tonight.”
“Am I going to be able to go back to the tour?”
“That’s a question for later,” she muttered, pressing her lips into a hard line. “But don’t worry. I’m going to take care of everything.”
If nothing else, I trusted Emmie to keep her promise. When she said she would do something, she always did it. As a kid, I’d thought she was magical, but the older I got, the more I realized she was just a badass boss. Not only was her net worth triple that of her husband, but even the biggest of the bigwigs in the music world said a little prayer when they knew they would have to deal with her.
The cops started to lead me away, but Piper stepped in front of us. Ignoring the officer when he told her she couldn’t touch me, she threw her arms around my neck and kissed me. “I’m sorry. I never thought—”
“Don’t cry, sugar,” I soothed, kissing her brow. “I’m going to be fine. It’s you I’m worried about. Try not to talk too much, give your throat a chance to heal.”
“Be careful,” she whispered.
“Stop worrying about me, Pipes. I swear to you, everything is going to be okay.” I kissed her again before the cops pulled me around her and toward the door.
Behind me, I heard Emmie speaking to Petrova. “This is the second time that fucker has done something like this.”
“I had no idea—”
“Bullshit.” I heard a pounding noise, and I could only assume she’d slapped her hands on the conference table—or punched Petrova in the face. “You covered up the last incident, but I’ll be damned if you do it this time. You allowed a predator with a godlike mentality to work within these walls, knowing full well what he was capable of. You put every one of my clients who came into contact with him in danger. As of now, I’m putting you and Petrova Records on blast. My lawyers are already working on getting my people out of their contracts with you.”
Petrova’s unintelligible sputtering was the last thing I heard as the cops guided me down the corridor to the elevators. As we passed the green room, I saw the Blondes and Sin inside, talking to several uniformed police officers, giving their statements, no doubt. And when we walked by the studio where I’d left Laurence earlier, I saw a few more cops and several paramedics inside.
With a glance, I saw the producer being loaded onto a stretcher, his groaning sounding overdramatic to my ears, but according to Emmie, I’d broken the bastard’s jaw, so maybe he really was in a lot of pain. He spotted me with the cops, and what little color was in his face drained. Smirking at his reaction, I winked at him. He would be drinking his meals through a straw for the foreseeable future.
