Page 10 of Property of Brute & Axl

The rumble of our bikes' engines indicates that the prospects have arrived. Finleigh still looks like a spooked horse, and I wouldn’t be shocked if she tried to run if we left her alone.

Dropping her bag on one of the couches, I stroll into the office, pull a picture off the wall, and open the safe. Retrieving one of the burner phones and a small envelope of cash, I lock it back up, replace the frame, and go out to where she’s sitting at a table with a bottle of water and Brute standing guard a few feet away with his arms crossed.

Yanking back the chair across from her, I sit and enter my and Brute’s numbers into the phone, then hand both items to her. “I can see you’re ready to run.” Her eyes widen in surprise, and Brute glares at me. “We don’t want you to, but if you do, these are yours. Our numbers are programmed into them if you ever need us or want to come back.”

Gripping them in her hands, Finleigh swallows loud enough that we hear the gulp before she glances back up at me and asks, “Why?”

“Why, what?” I want her to get used to saying what she’s thinking. We’re not mind readers, and neither of us has the temperament to decipher her meanings when she speaks.

Brute grabs a chair next to me and waits for her answer. “Why are you helping me?”

I can tell my friend is getting pissed, not at her, but the situation. Scrubbing a hand along my face, I pinch the bridge of my nose to fight back the bite that will be present in my tone. “You’re carrying our baby. Someone is very clearly after you, and right now, you need some friends, Finleigh. We can be that.” I don’t add the ‘for now’ because I know us well enough to realize that our attraction to her will only grow, to the point we won’t be able to hold back.

She appears to accept that answer, but before anything else can be said, the sound of multiple bikes breaks the silence, and moments later, Easy and Swamp enter the building with more members behind them.

The sight of Viking and Priest causes Finleigh to gasp and scoot out of her chair, backing herself into a corner. They’re covered in blood and laughing until they spot the fear contorting her face. Time seems to stand still as her eyes roll to the back of her head, and she drops dead on the spot.

“Not my fault.” Viking points to Brute, who’s about to attack the man. They stand toe-to-toe, not an uncommon scene for them, but Brute is riled up something fierce.

“Hey, man, we didn’t know,” Priest says and steps between them. He can usually calm any situation down when he’s not riling them up.

“You should have fucking known!” Brute shouts, getting in their faces, fists balled.

Picking up Finleigh from the floor, I shout, “Brute! They were out of touch on a job.”

He growls like a rabid wolf and shoves Priest into Viking, who has no choice but to catch the man, or they’ll both fall to their asses. “Get fucking cleaned up before I toss your asses out.”

We all watch Brute storm into his office and slam the door, followed by the sounds of glass shattering.

“What crawled up his ass and died?” Viking growls, glancing at the woman in my arms.

“She’s pregnant with our baby,” I tell him, and several sets of jaws drop. Most of them knew what happened to Fin, but this is new news.

A baby in the club.

Chaos is about to become our new way of life.

Chapter 7

Finleigh

The woman in the mirror? She’s not me. Not the “now” me—the one with no memory. The one with injuries so excruciating that it makes it hard to catch my breath sometimes.

That woman in the mirror… She’s a car wreck. It should have been unsurvivable, yet somehow, here I stand. Cheating death with every intake of breath and wishing the Reaper had come for me.

Fear pulses through my veins every second that passes. I want it to end. To know who I am and what my real life is like. Most of all, I want to understand how I felt about the baby growing inside of me. Was I happy? Angry, sad, excited? Did I plan to keep it? Or was I giving it away?

Who am I?

Am I really a girl who sleeps with two men? Has a relationship with them? Are we even in a relationship? One minute they say we are, and the next they say they haven’t seen me in a while and didn’t know about the baby. What should I believe?

The more I stare at my nude body in the bathroom, noting all the scars on the inside of my thighs, the bruises in their stages of healing, the stitches holding me together, nothing makes sense.

Nothing at all.

Surviving a shot to the head is still a mystery to me. I was told the bullet skimmed my scalp, never breaching my skull. Logically, I understand. Emotionally, though, nothing adds up.

Who did I hurt so badly that they tried to kill me? What did I do to them?