Chapter 27

Axel

When I pulled up out front of the Victorian mansion, Watson and his mob squad—for lack of a better word—were all standing in a neat row in front of two black sedans. There were six including Watson, leaving me as the seventh man involved in the robbery.

I already didn’t like how big this was going to be.

I parked my car and stepped out, shielding my eyes against the bright sun cresting over the roof of the house. I moved into the shade to better see the six men.

They were dressed casually like me, mostly in jeans and long-sleeve shirts. Watson was standing at the end of the line, and his dark eyes were fixed on me.

“Had a feeling you might bail on me, Jeremiah.”

I shrugged him off. “Let’s just get this over with. I’m looking forward to putting you in my past for good.”

Watson chuckled and gestured at the black sedan at the front of the driveway. “Your chariot awaits.”

I rolled my eyes at his dramatics. He was still the same as he had always been. Cocky, obnoxious, and altogether too infatuated with himself. One of Watson’s boys opened the back door, and I slid inside.

Watson took the front passenger seat, and the same man who had given me a hard time when I first showed up at the mansion the other day slid into the back seat beside me. He shot me a look that clearly expressed how unhappy he was to have to be sitting in the back with me, and I gave him a nice, big smile back.

“Morning sunshine,” I said. “Bet you didn’t think you’d ever be on the same team as me, hey?”

Watson looked over his shoulder at me in the back seat. “Don’t go stirring any shit. You’re lucky I’m willing to give you a shot at this. Otherwise, your precious little MC would be on my radar.”

“Yeah, whatever.” I leaned back casually in the seat. I didn’t miss the looks the driver and the asshole beside me gave me. It was obvious they weren’t used to being around someone who wasn’t afraid of Watson. “So, what’s the plan?”

“Driver’s wait by the cars with the trunks popped. The remaining five of us go in and fan out. I’m doing the talking. No one else says a fucking word. First person to reach for the emergency button gets a bullet in the stomach. Straightforward enough?”

“You don’t need to shoot anyone. We can get in and out of there before the cops even get halfway there.” I leaned forward. “No need to kill someone just so you can maintain your reputation with your new buddies. There’s no honor in murdering a fucking bank teller.”

Watson gave me a devilish grin. “It’s not to maintain my reputation. I just like blowing people apart. You can’t have already forgotten that. It hasn’t been that long.”

“If someone dies in there, the deal is off.” My voice was a low growl. I barely recognized it in my own ears.

“Whatever you say, Jeremiah,” Watson chuckled, adjusting his jacket as he turned to face back out the windshield.

That’s when I spotted the pistol on his hip.

I was suddenly incredibly grateful I had told Ellie I loved her.

We parked outside the bank along the curb, and all of us piled out of the cars. The drivers immediately popped open the trunks and went to stand at the back of the cars.

The sidewalks were busy with pedestrians rushing to work. It was Monday morning, and everyone had somewhere they needed to be.

Peering through the bank windows, I could see that there were roughly forty to fifty people inside. The teller windows were all busy, and there was a winding line through the middle of the bank. There were too many targets in there, too many people a stray bullet could easily find.

Or an intentional bullet.

I was in over my head.

Watson and three of his friends began moving down the sidewalk. I stayed where I was, mind racing, heart pounding, until all at once the rage at what was about to happen came tumbling out of me.

“No.”

The word was sharp and angry like a whip, and all four men walking away from me turned back. Watson was smiling like he knew this was what was going to happen. Like this was the real plan all along.

“Don’t have the balls for it anymore, old boy?” Watson teased, his face a mask of pure insanity now. This was the look I remembered, the wide eyes riddled with tiny red veins, the purpling cheeks, the pulsing neck, the deranged and crooked smile.

Watson was going to crack. I had to channel his fury on me, or a lot of other people were going to find themselves bathing in a puddle of their own blood.

“The balls?” I asked, forcing myself to scoff. “I had the balls to walk away from you, you sick bastard. And you never had the nerve to come after me because you knew you were no match for me. Never were. And I know how much it gets to you. I was never afraid of you, Watson. You were afraid of me.”

Watson’s goons looked from him to me. The unease was heavy in the silence between us. I just had to push him a little farther. The implosion was coming.

“Look at you, Watson. You’re still doing the same old shit. You’re irrelevant. You always will be. Nobody will ever give a damn about you—”

Then it happened. Watson let out a furious bellow and charged me.

I bent my knees to brace for the impact and lower my center of gravity. Watson slammed into me, and we both stumbled back. My back collided with the sedan we had just gotten out of, and I heard the metal crumple beneath me.

I buried my knee in Watson’s gut as his hands reached for my throat. He grunted with the impact but didn’t double over as I had hoped he would. Instead, he caught himself on my shirt, hauled himself up, and then lifted me forward and drove me back down against the car again.

The wind was knocked from my lungs, and just as I was almost able to take a breath, Watson sealed off my windpipe with his massive, meaty fingers.

His lips peeled off his teeth, and his gold cap glittered in the sun as he smiled at me. “Bet this isn’t how you saw your day going,” Watson wheezed.

I grimaced against the burning in my lungs and the pain in my throat but didn’t give him the satisfaction of watching me struggle.

In fact, I only let him pin me down for another second before I reached out and pressed my thumbs into his eyeballs.

Watson let out a high-pitched wail and tore himself away from me. I pushed myself out of the crumpled groove my body had made in the sedan. I was only dimly aware of the crowd that had gathered at a distance to watch the scene unfold. I wanted to scream at them to get the fuck away from us, but my voice was gone from having my throat squeezed closed.

Watson clutched his hands over his eyes and started screaming at me.

“You fucking piece of shit! I gave you everything you could have asked for, and you repay me by fucking running. Running like a little bitch! You might think you’re too good for us, Jeremiah, but let me let you in on a little secret. You’re just like me. Always have been. Always will be. You and me? We’re two peas in a pod.” Somehow, he managed to open his eyes. They were bloodshot and already starting to swell. I wanted to bury my fingers in his eyeballs up to my knuckles. He swayed where he stood and finally managed to steady himself. He looked me straight in the eyes. “I’ve always known it would come to this.”

I froze as Watson pulled the gun free from his hip. The crowd scattered and screams assaulted my ears as the hundreds of fleeing feet made the ground beneath mine vibrate. I straightened, and the gun followed my chest as I moved.

“I’ve been waiting a long fucking time for this,” Watson snarled.

I braced myself to receive the bullet. My mind was full of flashes of Ellie.

Ellie cooking dinner in nothing but one of my T-shirts and a pair of gray knee-high socks. Ellie sipping a glass of wine while reading a book on my sofa. Ellie playing with Cade in my backyard and chasing him around the outside of the shop. Ellie lying naked on my bed, ready for me to join her.

Then, there were other flashes.

Ellie and Hanna singing in the car on the way to work. Ellie and Hanna dancing in the living room to terrible cartoon music. Ellie and Hanna waiting for me at my front door to come home.

I gritted my teeth.

I had done all I could.

Then someone was shouting. It took me a moment to process what it was that they were actually saying.

“Drop the gun!”

I looked to my left to see four police cruisers all pulled up in a line. Officers were hiding behind the cars, nearly a dozen of them, and all had their weapons drawn and aimed at Watson, who was looking at them with a slack-jawed expression.

His eyes swung back to me.

“Drop the gun!”

I wasn’t sure if he would listen. I could see the hatred burning in his stare, and if the shoe were on the other foot and I was a psychopath with a deranged thought process, I would have shot me.

“Drop the gun! Last chance! Drop the gun and put your hands on your head, all of you!”

I slowly raised my hands to rest them on top of my head. I never took my eyes off Watson.

Then, much to my surprise, the gun slipped from Watson’s fingers, and he put his hands on his head. He turned away from me to look at the cops who were now rushing forward. Most kept their guns drawn while a couple others pulled handcuffs from their belts and approached us with caution.

I let the male cop who came to me take my hands off my head and pin my hands behind my back. As he did that, another cop pushed Watson to the ground and pressed a knee into his back. Watson’s cheek was flat against the pavement, and he was staring up at me.

“Should have taken the shot,” I said.

“Next time,” Watson snarled.

The cops loaded us into the backs of their cars and took us to the station, where we were unloaded separately. I was forced to wait in the back of my car while all the others were escorted into the station to be processed. The two cops in the front seat never said a word as I waited, and I held my tongue as I considered what this was going to do to the rest of my life.

How long was I going to go to prison for? Twenty-five years, at the least? Hanna would be twenty-eight by the time I was released or older, and there was no way in hell I would ask Ellie to wait for me.

She was going to kill me for this.

As that thought crossed my mind, I was taken out of the car and brought through the station to a small office at the back. Most of the cops ignored me, which I was thankful for.

When I arrived in the office, the two cops who had escorted me put their hands on my shoulders and pushed me down into a chair across from a desk.

Then, to my surprise, they undid my cuffs and left the room without saying a word. I was pretty sure they didn’t even lock the door behind them.

Confused, I sat there and waited.

I didn’t have to wait long. The door opened, and I kept my back to it. I listened to the soft footsteps of someone who couldn’t have weighed very much. A woman, possibly.

My guess was confirmed when a short brunette cop crouched down in front of me and gave me a charming dimpled smile that erased all the panic in my gut.

“Dani,” I blurted out.

She nodded and patted my knee. “Yep. Johnny caught wind of your little shindig with Watson. He played it cool. Instead of exploding on going on a rampage, he recruited yours truly to deal with the city’s biggest player. Which makes you my informant. Good job out there. Without you, we never would have been able to catch bad boy numero uno.”

“Wait, Johnny knew about all of this?”

Dani nodded. “Yep. A few people knew about this.”

I arched an eyebrow. All the tension of the day had vanished. I felt lighter, somehow. That was probably because I no longer thought I was going to prison. “Define a few people.”

Dani shrugged. “Why don’t you go find out? They’re your ride home.”