SPARTAN (Iron Kings MC, #2) Read online

  But I had more self-control than that.

  For fuck’s sakes, I was a forty-five-year-old hardened man who’d been around the block more than just a few times. I was long past them teenage years of letting my dick rule my head.

  Sure, Dani seemed up for it now, but I couldn’t trust in it, and I wouldn’t. For her sake.

  She was still in shock about what’d gone down earlier, for one thing.

  On top of that, if I had to wager, it was more about her trying to regain her footing and shake off the way more vulnerable and sweet side of her I’d seen a load of today and a lot more since we’d started this whole slow-burn dating thing.

  I didn’t want it like that.

  I wasn’t gonna take an empty fuck. If I wanted that, I coulda just been fucking around with club pussy all these years.

  But that wasn’t the kinda man I was, wasn’t what I was all about.

  After losing Andrea, I’d known emptiness in a big way. Racking up the notches on my headboard woulda just buried me deeper in all that.

  I eased my hands free and stepped back from her. “I gotta get your car to the shop.”

  She looked put out, not liking my rejection one bit. “Scott.”

  Fuck. Hearing my real name on her lips was… intense.

  I shored up my willpower and shook it off as I walked to the table by the front door and snatched up her keys. “Anarchy’s waiting on me.”

  “Wait, I—”

  I held up my hand quick, cutting her off before she tried to push it further. It would be meaning a world of regret for the both of us. “Get back under that blanket and rest up. Watch some TV to shut your mind off. I’ll send Laura around to take a proper look at you.”

  “Laura? You mean Doctor Viera?”

  “Yeah, she’s the club’s doc.”

  “I told you I don’t need a doctor.”

  “Nah, love, what you told me was you weren’t going to no hospital, that you hate the damned things. Lucky for you, I got another option. No arguing, you’re taking it. She’s coming.”

  “You’re a bossy son of a bitch. You know that?”

  I grinned. “Only when people keep giving me a hard time. Means I gotta lay down the law.”

  “Thank you,” she said, smiling, all sweet and real sincere about it.

  “Anytime,” I told her with a wink. “I’ve got you, love.”

  Feeling the tension ramping up real fast and hard between us again, I gave her a chin lift, then turned away and got the hell outta Dodge.

  I sucked in a breath when I made it back out onto the street.

  Slumping against the wall of her apartment building, I scrubbed my hand over my face, trying to get a handle of my shit and calm my body down.

  “Goddamn, that was close,” I muttered to myself.

  Nobody had ever tested my control like that.

  But Daniella Moore wasn’t just anybody.

  8

  ~Spartan~

  “REAL NICE WORK.”

  “Thanks, Prez,” Anarchy said.

  “In record time too,” I went on as I inspected Dani’s Sunfire.

  It’d only been a couple of days since I’d brought it into him and even though he already had a lot going on at the shop, especially with Tricks gone, he’d managed to take care of it. Also, Wheel’s Up was a bike repair shop. It took care of the odd cage repair here and there, but all the parts and shit it had on hand were motorcycle-centric. Lucky for everybody, between them, Tricks and Anarchy had connections with some real good parts suppliers who had ace turnaround times.

  “I also did what you asked and went over every inch of it with a fine-tooth comb.”

  “And?”

  His normal laid back attitude faded away, a grave, disturbed one taking its place as he confirmed, “You were right.”

  He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and held his hand out to me. Sure enough, there on his open palm was a tracer.

  I took it from him and pocketed it. “Where was it?”

  “Rear wheel well. Driver’s side.”

  Don was a sneaky fucker.

  “Who did this? Who tagged her?” Anarchy asked, all worried.

  I wasn’t surprised by his concern for Dani. Everybody in Ridgefield loved her, especially my boys. She was good to them and even though she hadn’t been up to the clubhouse or spent time around bikers before moving to town, she got the whole respect thing. She was in awe with the life and had struck up conversations with the boys about it and they liked that shit. She could handle herself around them real well, but not in a submissive way like was common with women involved with the club. Nah, she was a hard-ass, a tough cookie who could match that in them all just fine.

  “Some punk.”

  He gave me a look, knowing I was holding shit back.

  Too bad. It was gonna stay that way.

  I’d take care of it, take care of her.

  “I called her to let her know the car’s sorted. She’s coming by later to pick it up,” he told me.

  “Good. Just keep the tracer thing between us, yeah?”

  “Of course, Prez. No worries. But if you need my help, I’m here.”

  He was a good kid, real loyal. “I know.”

  I gave his shoulder a squeeze, then headed on out of the shop.

  Now I had two targets to take down.

  So much for retiring from shit like this.

  ***

  The second I finished up at the shop, my phone buzzed in my jeans pocket. I pulled it out quick, tensing when I saw the call display, my whole body going on alert.

  Was this it? Was this the call with the intel I’d been waiting on for fucking ever?

  “Jesse,” I answered, as I made my way over to my bike in the corner of the Wheels Up lot. “You got it?”

  “First thing’s first.”

  “What?”

  “Swear to me that you’re going to honor our deal.”

  “You know I always keep my promises. This ain’t gonna be no different.”

  There was a delay, where I figured he was making his decision on whether to open this door and let all hell rain down.

  He fucking had to.

  Knox was way too dangerous to be left alive.

  He deserved to be put to ground just as much as he damn well needed to be.

  I’d be doing the world a favor.

  And then I’d know for sure that the threat he’d posed for so long was finally over, once and for fucking all.

  I was sick to death of all the waiting, of hoping for the best.

  That wasn’t what warriors did.

  We worked off reality, not the way we wished the world was.

  We prepared, anticipated, and then fucking well acted without regret.

  And this was necessary.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “We’re doing this.”

  “Good. Now, give me the address. Where’s that motherfucker at?”

  9

  ~Daniella~

  MY FACE STILL ACHED.

  The graze and bruising that I’d sustained a few days ago was still healing up. Smiling all day long as well as chatting away with customers had really aggravated it.

  The pain wasn’t the worst of it, though.

  It was that it served as a reminder of Don’s attack outside Ricky’s.

  It meant that he hadn’t decided to stand down and finally let his vendetta go after all of this time.

  I’d been a complete fool to even hope for that.

  In fact, from my continued training with Finn, I had proof of just how truly foolish that state of mind was, how dangerous. He’d been teaching me to hone my senses, my instincts, to anticipate danger, as well as my opponent’s moves and fight patterns.

  That was what a competent, experienced fighter did.

  And it was exactly the person I needed to be.

  A warrior.

  No more simply accepting being a victim.

  It was time to step out from the shadows and fight back at long
last.

  Scott’s words to me from the other day kept playing on my mind.

  “You know me, know my rep. Means you know I can sort it.”

  Part of me wanted to take him up on his offer to handle the situation for me. His way of handling things was actually legendary. Problems just went away once he got involved.

  But I couldn’t put that on him. At a glance and with the way Scott had been able to best him so easily physically, Don probably hadn’t seemed like much of a threat. But Scott didn’t know how truly dangerous he actually was. I couldn’t put that on him. I wouldn’t put him in the crosshairs of a psycho like that.

  Besides, from the talk around town, I knew he and his club had already been through a hell of a rough go of it with those Rogue Riders assholes.

  No, I wouldn’t involve him.

  It was something I had to do on my own.

  To get my power back, it had to be me who handled it.

  “Dani? You hearing me?”

  I jolted out of my thoughts to see that I was still drying the same glass from several minutes ago and someone had come up to the bar.

  I blinked and looked out at Anarchy. He was eyeing me worriedly.

  I wasn’t surprised, given that I’d been spacing out like an oddball.

  “Sorry, what can I get you?”

  “Nothing. I’m good. Spartan just asked me to check on you, make sure your car’s all good since I gave it back to you.”

  “Oh.”

  That was incredibly sweet and thoughtful of him.

  Just like him sending his doctor around to do a special house call to check on me on the eve of that awful day.

  I hadn’t seen him since he’d left my place. I’d expected to see him in the bar at some point today, but he hadn’t come in. He was a regular, so it was a bit strange that he hadn’t shown his face. But he was also a busy guy, so something could’ve easily come up.

  “It’s great,” I reported to Anarchy. “You and Tricks always do top-notch work.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I know.”

  “Then, why—”

  “This is Spartan being overprotective.”

  The thinly-veiled suggestion there had my cheeks heating.

  I saw him register it, a smile lighting his eyes. But he didn’t call me on it. Instead, he said, “You know, there’s a barbecue up at the clubhouse in a few days. For family and close friends. You should come on by. I’ll put you on the list as Spartan’s guest.”

  “I… uh… I don’t know. If he’d wanted me to come, I’m sure he would’ve invited me.”

  “He’s got a lot going on, being Prez and all, managing us assholes and the businesses. I’m sure it just slipped his mind.”

  “Okay, I’ll think about it,” I told him.

  I’d known Scott long enough to know that he wasn’t the type of man that missed things, or let things slip his mind. He was too disciplined and organized for that, always on the ball and at the top of his game. Traits I really liked about him.

  It wasn’t like we were officially together, that he had an outright, spoken obligation to me, or anything. Sure, we’d kind of started dating, but we were taking it at a snail’s pace. Inviting me to that barbecue right on his turf, in full view of his club family would fly in the face of all of that. It would basically be making a statement.

  Still, despite our best intentions to keep it slow and casual, I’d thought something had shifted between us the other day when he’d asked me to call him by his real name. At the same time, though, he’d also turned down my come-on and he’d also seemed like he’d been in a hurry to get out of my apartment that day. But he’d insisted on taking my car to the shop, going out of his way to do it actually, and he’d even sent his club doctor around to check on me. It was a clusterfuck of mixed signals. Maybe I’d misread things and it’d just been a case of him being a good guy.

  I could float all the theories I wanted, but, in the end, the only way to know for sure was to ask him directly, whenever I saw him again. “Is he away from Ridgefield? I haven’t seen him around and about today,” I asked Anarchy, unable to keep my curiosity in check.

  It was clear right away that I’d failed at pulling off a casual query, because Anarchy grinned back at me, seeming highly amused by the entire situation between me and Scott.

  Thankfully, he took pity on me, revealing, “Yeah, he’s gone for the day on some personal errand.”

  Personal errand? Had he—no. He wouldn’t be that impetuous. Would he? It wasn’t the man I’d known for the last couple of years. But he had been extremely riled up and pissed at Don for what had happened outside the gym. Could he have actually gone after him? I’d expressly told him not to and insisted that I could handle it on my own without any help from him or Iron Kings.

  “Okay,” was all I could say. I’d figured he hadn’t made my problem public knowledge, or the whole club would’ve been all over me, fawning over me, asking if I was okay, how they could help, monitoring me every second of the day in that overly-protective way of theirs. I’d already been putting on an extra layer of foundation just to ensure I’d managed to cover up the bruising so I could avoid all of that.

  Even though I wasn’t technically club family, the men of the Iron Kings MC had taken a liking to me. I treated them well, showed them great respect, sometimes pushed through free beers for them when the manager wasn’t around, and they enjoyed my interest in their club life. They kind of treated me like a little sister actually. It was sweet. And it was another reason why I didn’t want Scott to get involved, because it would drag them all into my bullshit. They’d been through enough lately without having to deal with more. They deserved some peace and happiness.

  “I’ll see you around,” Anarchy said. “Stay safe.”

  “Have a good night,” I returned, as he pushed his stool back and headed on out.

  Stay safe. Those were the parting words that I was used to hearing from all the Iron Kings guys, just like telling someone to ride safe, or have a safe flight.

  But, in this case, they were a little too pointed for comfort, given what I’d been planning ever since that awful run-in with Don.

  It didn’t exactly scream safe.

  Unfortunately, in some situations there wasn’t reward without risk.

  I had to do what was necessary.

  I’d been working on an idea to handle it myself, quickly and quietly. It was still just starting to take shape, but once I’d finalized all the details in the strategic, accounting-for-every-eventuality way I went about everything, I’d be able to end Don’s long-standing threat to me.

  It involved me doing something I really hadn’t wanted to ever do, making a compromise that sickened me and that the psychotic bastard didn’t deserve in the least.

  But getting my old life back would be worth it.

  My days of running would finally be over.

  10

  ~Spartan~

  WHAT THE FUCK?

  I eyed my rearview mirror again.

  The first time I’d seen it a few minutes ago, I’d figured I’d just been overreacting, because I was in my hyper-vigilant state. Jesse and me were in a crazy-ass paranoid zone right now. I was driving an untraceable black RAM truck, Jesse checking his GPS and his phone every few seconds, me scanning every inch of the dilapidated industrial district in the cesspool part of the city we’d come to in search of Knox.

  But I’d gone off-route twice now, turning when I weren’t needing to, taking the truck a roundabout way that nobody else would. And I was still seeing the same unmarked SUV in my rearview mirror.

  “We got a tail,” I told Jesse, now I was certain.

  His eyes snapped to mine. He moved to take a look behind us, but I slapped my hand to his shoulder, stopping him. “You do that, you’re gonna alert them.” I’d been right. He weren’t field-ready. That was a rookie mistake if I’d ever seen one.

  “An automatic reaction,” he told me.

  Field training and experience woulda
worked that outta him.

  Well, it was the way shit was. I just had to deal with it and work with what I had. The guy had other strengths. And where he was weak, there was me. Between us, we could work it.

  “We’re looking at military-type maneuvers,” I reported. “These guys ain’t civilians in any sense of the word.”

  “What?” He shifted in his seat and went to his phone, trying to find answers via the wild level of tech he was packing in that thing. “Military?”

  “I recognize the driver. He was part of Nemesis.”

  “One of Hammer’s guys?” Jesse gasped. “Shit, no. How the hell is this possible? Knox doesn’t have that kind of background. He shouldn’t have those kind of connections.”

  “He doesn’t. I do.”

  We locked eyes and I saw he’d got my meaning. “You’re saying—”

  “We were tight once, remember? We ran Iron Kings together. That needed us trusting each other, being open and all that. To defend the club, I made him aware of any shitheads out there who had a beef with me. At the time, that included Hammer and his guys, due to my close connection to Finn.”

  “Jesus. Now he’s found a way to reach out to them and got them working for him.”

  “Reaching them woulda been the hard part. Getting them to work for him woulda just been about him paying the right price. These guys are disgraced ex-military, dangerous, sick fuckers. They ain’t nothing but mercenaries working for the highest bidder.” I scrubbed my hand over my face. “Problem is, now they’ve latched onto me, it puts everybody connected to me at risk.”

  Just the thought of it had a bout of rage taking me over. I slammed my fist into the dash, roaring, “I knew I shoulda taken that fucker out when I had him in my sights!”

  “If you’d done that, the Feds would’ve nabbed you along with the Rogues.”

  I sucked in a breath, squeezing the steering wheel, trying to focus and bring myself back from the rage that wanted to roar so much louder through me and tear everything and everybody to shreds.

  “All right,” I breathed, regaining my senses. “Hold on tight.”

  Shooting another glance at the SUV in my rearview mirror, I saw it was keeping a steady pace a little ways behind us.