We know King is slowly losing his sense of control.
And none of us want to be here when that happens.
My leg throbbed. I took another pull from the bottle, the alcohol soothing the pain at least a little. I don’t know which one was worse: the pain right then, or the pain of everything up to this point. Only one was “allowed” in this club.The club that I’ll be getting my ass out of.
I wanted out of Vegas. I could run the Phoenix chapter—assuming we ever won that fucking battle—if it came down to it. Anything to get away from King’s proximity on this planet. He paid me well, but Ash’s words rang through my skull.
What if you’re not getting the full portion of your kill?
If this fucker was hiding money from me, I was going to be fucking enraged.
Another pull from the bottle. I was seeing red at this point. King groomed the rage in me. It would only seem appropriate that the monster he’d created would lash back out at him when the time came.
There was only one way out, and that was me taking King’s life. Hence, the situation was delicate, to say the least.
But I had to take the chance.
However, as I lay waiting for some goddamn treatment, I realized I hadn’t thought through everything well. There was only so much I could do as one man—I needed to start recruiting allies.Fucking help—the very thing I hate fucking asking for.
I threw the bottle of Goose at the wall in anger, watching as it shattered and the vodka ran down into a puddle on the floor. The commotion startled the guy waiting outside the door, and he came in, pale as a ghost.
“Clean this shit up before the doc gets here.”
The prospect moved quickly, picking up the glass shards, his hands shaking as he did so. I wondered if I could get support from the little underlings. They listened to me. And I knew that it was men that made clubs, not a singular person.
Something that King didn’t seem to understand, especially when it came to making hits on the Black Reapers.
The Black Reapers—the supposed enemy. Ash was playing both sides, but his loyalty was more to the Reapers than anything. There was some hope that maybe they could be helpful, but I didn’t want to walk into the lion’s den that was the Black Reapers. I wasn’t their most favorite person, to put it lightly.
And yet, who was it that I’d reached out to in order to put this whole “get shot, get close to King” plan in action?
Just as the prospect finished, a very beautiful woman walked in. She wasstunning. Wearing a tank top that showed her golden tan skin, and with bright blond hair tied back in a ponytail, she looked like she could be a model, not a doctor. The scrub pants she wore were the only hint that she was the person to get this bullet out of my leg. She had bright blue eyes, despite how dead tired she looked.
Let’s just say, upon first glance, I was hoping she could take more than a bullet out of my body.
“Well, hello, sweetheart,” I said, to which she just rolled her eyes. “Here to take away the pain?”
“Be careful or I’ll leave it in there and let you die of infection,” she snapped, her blue eyes cold as they met mine.I like a woman with a little bit of bite. “I need gloves,cleanwater, a cloth, bandages, tweezers, and a suture kit.”
Through she hadn’t spoken to him, just to the area around her, the prospect froze in shock. No one in King’s Men took orders from a woman. No matter if they were a hot doctor, and even if he was a low-ranking member.
But goddamn, she commanded attention like she owned the place. She turned to me expectantly, waving her hands to signal for emphasis, and I barked at the guy to get what she asked for. I didn’t miss her jump a little at the boom of my voice. He scurried off to grab the supplies, and she turned to me with her hands on her hips.
Fuck, this woman was going to be the best kind of problem.
“Dr. Brianna Gold,” she said when we were alone, her tone formal.
She was young, probably a little younger than me, maybe by a year or two. Though everything about her radiated sexy beauty, I could see hints of hardness to her—somethinghad happened. I recognized the caged look—I saw it every time I looked in the mirror.
“And you can call me anytime, sweetheart,” I said.
I tried out her name in my head.Brianna. It had a nice ring to it for sure. And fucking forbid, I was enormously attracted to her. Like, not the kind of attracted where I’d fuck a woman and leave her for some prospect to pretend he loved.
I meant, the kind of attracted where I’d keep her as a prize for some fucking time.
She gave me a glare, but whatever cold, detached doctor she was trying to play, I saw right through it. But I couldn’t figure out what that deeper look was. There was tension between us, and I felt a change in the air. Like this woman, hard and rough, was in need of help.
In need of…freedom.Like me.
