With tears in my eyes, I watched as the two men in my life held each other. I felt so incredibly full, so near to bursting, that I wasn’t sure I could hold out another second without running to them. But as it turned out, I didn’t need to wait much longer.
I could only watch, trembling slightly, as Hawk closed the distance between us. And then he reached for me, pulling me into his arms and against his body. Crying softly, I fell limp against him and let go of all my worries, of my anxiety. Instead of thinking about what was to come, I simply reveled in the gift I’d just been given.
In Hawk.
He was here, not behind those walls, not surrounded by prison guards, but really and truly here. I was touching him and he was touching me, and it had been so long, so agonizingly long since I’d last had him to myself that the people around us, the prison behind us, the entire world seemed to disappear.
“You smell good,” he said softly, dropping his face into my hair and inhaling deeply.
Gripping his back, I closed my eyes.
It was just me. Just him.
Us.
Moments.
And I was never going to let go again.
Until Ripper made me.
“Brought you a ride, brother,” Ripper said, grinning as he shoved in between us. “Irish and I been plannin’ this shit for a while now. Kid even helped build it.”
Both Hawk and I turned to the group and as they parted, they revealed the beautiful custom-made bike that Ripper had ridden up on. Although I knew very little about motorcycles and the mechanics of them, I was aware of the many hours the boys had put into this project, and the end result was beautiful.
But Hawk was no longer looking at the motorcycle, he was looking at me. “You save me that ride, D?”
More tears welled in my eyes. “I saved you everything,” I whispered. “Everything.”
Reaching for me, his thumb brushed several errant tears away from my cheek. “You did good, baby,” he said. “You did real fuckin’ good without me.”
I shook my head. “I was never without you.”
And just like that, as I was staring up into those dark eyes, the gray in his beard was gone, the lines around his eyes disappeared, and in his eyes I saw my own reflection, young and pretty, smiling up at him. Ready to take that ride.
The way it always should have been.
The way it always was and always would be, inside my heart.
“You motherfuckers wanna stand outside a prison all fuckin’ day?” Cox shouted. “That’s on you, but I’m ridin’ my ass outta here. Freakin’ me the fuck out, thinkin’ they’re gonna come chain my ass up or somethin’!”
Shaking my head at Cox, I turned to Hawk and smiled. “Do you even remember how to ride?”
His answering laughter was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.
“Woman,” he said, an eyebrow cocked as he looked down at me. “It’s like fuckin’. You don’t ever forget how.”
Epilogue
Zachary “ZZ” Jeffries slipped the padlock onto the door of the last shipping container and slammed it shut with a loud click. After adding a metal shipping seal, he turned to leave, facing the remaining men on the docks. He gave them a nod to signify that everything was ready and they could start loading, then he walked off.
As he headed in the opposite direction, he could hear the muffled whimpers and cries from inside the container grow substantially louder. It was a heady, adrenaline-inducing feeling that powered through him, making his heart race. Unable to stop himself, his fingers curled, balled into tightly clenched fists.
He knew what those women were experiencing, locked up in that dirty, dark container, their futures unknown to them. He knew all too well that raw emotion as your heart pounded and you could barely breathe because your own fear was fucking suffocating you. He’d been running from . . . well, from everyone for a long time now, so yeah, fear was his fucking middle name.
It was also what had kept him alive this long.
He’d turned the fear into rage. Fought his way to the top of the lowest of the low, and took his place on a throne made of garbage and rot.
He didn’t give a fuck if his empire was built on the blood and bones of innocent men and women, didn’t care that more people would have to die so he could continue his reign, continuing surviving. This was his life now, this was what they had made him, the monster they’d forced him to become.
“Boss man.”
ZZ continued his stride across the docks, cutting his eyes to his right as Tommy, one of his men, fell into step beside him.
“What?” he snarled, coming to an abrupt stop.
Tommy swallowed hard and ZZ fought the urge to laugh. They were all afraid of him, even a mean old son of a bitch like Tommy was scared shitless that at any second his temper would be turned on him and once it was, no one was safe. Not a single fucking person.
“Big guy wants numbers,” Tommy said quietly.
ZZ snorted. “He’ll get ’em when I’m ready to fuckin’ give ’em.”
The Russian mafia might think they owned his ass, but the reality of it was that ZZ had ensured the loyalty of the men who worked under him. If the Russians ever decided to turn on him, make a play against him, ZZ had plans in place to start a war that would crumble the golden ground those fuckers thought they walked upon.
As Tommy reluctantly nodded, ZZ started walking again, cursing quietly over the summer heat, still suffocating even in the dead of night. But wearing short sleeves wasn’t an option for him. His former loyalties, his club colors, were still tattooed all over his body, something he purposely kept as a reminder of why he’d ended up in the fucking ditch he had.
Still cursing, he reached into his pocket, pulling a rubber band from his jeans, and after tying back his long brown hair into a knot, he wiped the sweat from his forehead, cracked his neck a few times, and continued on.
Making a sharp right in the direction of the parking lot, ZZ headed straight for his truck. He was eager to get home—get drunk, get high, jack himself off—even if home was a piece of shit. It was off the grid, out of the way, and that was all he cared about.
He’d just breached the parking lot when the rumble of a motorcycle gave him pause. Self-preservation, ever present in his every move, slammed into overdrive and he sidestepped, slipping behind a nearby vehicle. Crouching down, he pulled his piece from the back of his jeans and waited.
Who the fuck was here this late? He planned his shipments down to the last second, ensuring that everyone here was on his team, their silence bought and paid for. To the best of his knowledge, no other import or export was on the schedule for tonight, and this unexpected arrival was putting a damper on his good mood.
As he waited, not just one but two, three, and then finally five bikes came to a slow stop in the center of the parking lot. Raising himself just enough to see better, ZZ looked over the trunk of the vehicle he was crouched behind, and his breath caught in his throat.
Five leather cuts were illuminated by the moonlight, highlighting the Grim Reaper on the back, the Hell’s Horsemen rocker above it, and the Miles City patch beneath it.
No fucking way. They couldn’t know he was here, and after all this time, why would they bother to look for him? He’d been so sure that once Deuce had come to an unhappy truce with the Russians, his former president would stop sending runners after him. And he had. For years now, ZZ hadn’t heard as much as a whisper of the Horsemen sniffing around his business.
But as the bikes lined up beside one another, ZZ watching as one by one the men riding them cut their engines, toed their kickstands down, and dismounted, he couldn’t help but wonder if that had been the plan all along. Letting enough time pass, letting him believe he was safe, and then pouncing when he’d least expect it.