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Everyone I cared about in the entire fucking world would be safe.
While I went out and handled this shit once and for all.
I understood what this would take from me.
Snatching up my men from their beds, dragging them to another undisclosed location of mine. This one far away from anyone who would hear the screams. Then, one by one, put the pressure on them until they started to sing.
It went without saying that anyone who’d aligned themself with Luis was going to get a bullet to the head for their betrayal.
But what I was really after was more names.
And once I had all the names, I wanted a location.
For Luis.
Who had to know I was coming.
After the argument with Hope in the room, I was feeling particularly ready to get my fists into someone’s face, ribs, guts. To feel their blood sliding down my hands.
So that was what I set out to do, knowing Hope was safe. Especially with Vi sitting by her side.
All of Hope’s cousins were capable, trained in self-defense, but it was Vi who I trusted the most to keep an eye on Hope’s stubborn ass while I was away.
It was a long morning.
Rounding up four of my men, getting them in the trunk and to my little cabin in the middle of nowhere.
In my experience, men who had to watch other men get tortured tended to start singing before you could even press a blade to their skin.
“Name. Give me a name,” I demanded when I knew I had one of the fucks who’d betrayed me hanging from a hook in the ceiling, looking real regretful for his actions. Not that regret was going to help him now.
He’d aligned against me.
With a man who’d put his hands on Hope.
He was going to die for it.
Even if he wasn’t directly connected.
“I can’t.”
“Vato, I can make this last all night. And tomorrow. Next day too. Lots of ways to bleed you out just enough, but keep you alive. Or you can give me a name and end this now. Your choice.”
They always chose the easiest death.
No one wants to suffer.
By the time evening was coming around, I had a list of six names. And I had two still-loyal men. Ones who now knew what happened when I was betrayed.
Fear wasn’t the best way to keep loyalty intact.
But it worked.
I stopped back at the safe house to let out the dogs, feed them, refill waters, and get my ass cleaned up.
Then I made my way back to the hospital around eleven. After hours. But there were exceptions for the luxury suite floor.
When I made my way inside, Hope was passed out in the bed with half a dozen popsicle wrappers and sticks around her, and the TV playing some old sitcom rerun.
I carefully cleaned up the wrappers, tossing them in the trash, then dropping down in one of the recliners.
I’d like to say I wasn’t a complete creep who stared at her. But I was.
I didn’t know what it was about that woman, but she’d gotten in. Under my skin, sure. Because not many people could get a rise out of me like she seemed capable of. But it was more than that. She was in my mind, in my chest, in my fucking blood.
I was in hers too.
Whether she would admit that or not.
It was why she was picking fights.
It was her last little bit of resistance, and she had a fucking death grip on it.
Once that was gone, she was going to be forced to admit shit she didn’t feel ready for.
Namely, that there was something between us.
Something more than fucking.
And that there had almost always been.
Since we met.
It was why she tried so hard to hate me.
I figured, once this shit with Luis was handled, we had time to explore what was going on with us.
She might kick and bite and scream about it at times. Because she was a fucking biker princess, but eventually, there was going to be no way for her to deny what was going on.
On those thoughts, I drifted off to sleep.
I expected to have dreams of revenge, of bloodshed and screaming, of rebuilding my organization with tested and true men.
Instead, I dreamed about my house.
Only it wasn’t just mine anymore.
It was Hope’s too.
And I was sitting in the library with a kid against my chest, trying to read a picture book when his mind wasn’t quite ready yet.
Then in walked Hope, belly round, Val in tow, lookin’ at me with love in her eyes.
“A,” Hope called, only it wasn’t the dream Hope.
It was the real one.
I startled awake, feeling cloudy and out of touch, still half lost in the dream world where I had a ring on the woman’s finger, a baby in her belly, and another on my chest.
“Yeah, mama?” I asked, scrubbing a hand down my face, rubbing hard at my eyes, dry from the recycled hospital air.
