She waited with Jeremy’s shaking form at her side as Kane conferred with Ben. Every few seconds, Ben looked in their direction. His dark eyes were blank, but when he finally nodded and took hold of Kane’s arm, Angeline’s spirit relaxed, and she smiled when Kane shot her a quick glance.
“It’s okay, Angel,” he said. “Stay here.”
Something in his tone made her nervous, and when Kane vanished through a ream of tape, she only obeyed his orders until she heard the sounds of flesh pounding into flesh as Kane fought to conceal his cries of pain.
No. I got it wrong. They’re hurting him.
“Kane!”
Leaving Jeremy’s side, Angeline flew to his side, and when she made her way through the strands of the door, she pressed her hands to her mouth. Waldo, the man who had charmed and protected her little boy, was holding Kane down as Ben smashed his fists into Kane’s face.
“No!” she screamed. “Let him go!”
Thinking only of Kane, she tried to bat Ben back. He caught her arms easily in his grasp and turned her away from her bloodied lover, and when she was ready to strike Ben for breaking their trust, Waldo suddenly helped Kane to his feet, and she felt his familiar arms around her waist.
“It has to look real,” Kane sputtered. “Or else it won’t work.”
Ben’s cocked eyebrow and Waldo’s hangdog smile told her that this was all a show for Lillian’s benefit. And it looked more than convincing. This could still work.
She only wished that he didn’t have to hurt so much.
“Kane,” she said, as her fingers met the blood on his cheek. “I’m—”
“Show me later,” he said. “When we’re in bed, you take care of me, and I’ll be fine.”
If they made it out of this, she would give herself to him without a trace of fear, and she held onto the thought of how he would feel between her legs when Jeremy cried out his wife’s name.
“Go time,” Ben said.
The quartet emerged into the center of the clubhouse as the other Blood Brothers stood guard in the wake of Lillian’s expected arrival. Any one of them could have snapped her neck with one quick twist, but the men held back as Ellen, sweating and crying, walked with her, the gun at her back.
“Ellen?”
As Jeremy’s eyes locked on her husband’s, she reached out for him, but Lillian pulled her back and aimed the gun at her belly. And then she looked at Ben.
“I knew you’d play. How can anyone resist all that money rolling in?” Lillian said.
Ben smacked his lips and grabbed Kane’s arm. Tossing his bloodied body to the ground, he brought his boot down on his neck for good measure. Kane had no choice but to groan in pain, and even though Angeline knew that his was a con, she started back to his side until Ben snapped for Waldo.
“Keep his bitch back!” Ben ordered. “She’s more trouble than she’s worth.”
“Amen to that,” Lillian said.
Waldo lifted her in his burly arms and carried her away from the scene of Kane’s torture. He awkwardly mauled at her breasts as he dragged her into a dark corner, but at the last second, Waldo lowered his lips to her ear.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “Just trying to make it look real.”
It would look even better if she fought back.
“Don’t you touch me!” she screamed. “Get your fucking hands off of me!”
It took Waldo a moment to catch up, but as soon as he caught her drift, he tore at her blouse and turned her back to his chest.
“Nice touch,” he muttered.
“Thanks.”
Lillian seemed sure of her victory, and she forced Ellen to her knees. The pregnant woman clutched her belly as Jeremy tried to hold her, but Lillian was confident enough to take another step forward.
“You know what I can do for you boys,” Lilian said. “So why are we fighting it?”
Ben stroked his chin, nodded, and said, “Why, is right?”
Lillian’s body relaxed, and Angeline could see the lure of the money calming her cold soul. She wasn’t always like this. But then, neither was Angeline. There was a time when she would have trusted Lilian without question. Not now. Now, she only trusted Kane and the club.
“So it’s going to be business as usual, right?” Lillian asked.
“Oh yeah, babe,” Ben said. “Only stopped because this one…” he kicked Kane again and stepped over his crumpled form, “…he wanted us to lay low to keep his piece of tail safe,” Ben said as he smirked at Angeline.
“And you let him do you like that?” Lillian said. “What kind of hardcore rebels are you?’
Ben spit on Kane’s head and smiled at Lillian.
“Careful kind, doc,” he said. “But if she ain’t around and he’s gone, we can go back to the way things was.”
Lillian seemed ready to acquiesce, but then she glowered at Ellen.
“She goes, too,” Lillian said. “Loose ends.”
“No!”
Jeremy could not hold back, and when he tried to reach his wife Lillian turned her gun on him.
“No!” Angeline screamed.
Kane started to fight through his pain when Ben smoothly wrestled the gun from Lillian’s hand. The metal fell to the floor with a thud, and he pushed her into the tape and trapped her neck in the spooling reams.
“Only loose end here is you,” Ben said.
Lillian’s eyes registered total shock, and Angeline watched in silence as he crushed her neck, using the tape and his hands. Her eyes bulged as she tried to fight for air, and her tongue protruded. Angeline buttoned her blouse as she left Waldo’s hold, and their eyes locked in the last moment of Lillian’s life.
“I had a real reason,” Angeline said. “But all you had was greed.”
The life let her body in the same way that it had left Noel’s. It was fitting. She drank in the sight until Kane crawled to her side. She felt his hands around her legs and bent down to hold him. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Their eyes met, and he kissed her lightly as he shook his head. “You never listen, Angel.”
But she heard now as Ellen’s screams ripped through the room, and Jeremy held her.
“It’s okay now,” Jeremy promised. “I—”
“No!” Ellen said. “It’s the baby. It’s coming!”
A puddle fell to Ellen’s feet, and Angeline knew that this was never what she would have wanted. Her baby born on a floor strewn with ashes. Ellen was only here because of her, and she owed Jeremy.
“Here,” Angeline said.
Rolling up her sleeves, she gently lowered Ellen’s body to the ground and pressed her hand behind her head.
“I can’t!” Ellen screamed. “It’s not time. Not… not here.”
Angeline knew what that felt like, and she was not going to leave her to face it alone.
She was going to return Jeremy’s favor.
“Get me something to cushion her head,” Angeline said.
Ben removed his jacket and pushed it behind her head as Jeremy held one hand and Kane grasped the other.
“What do I do?” Waldo asked.
“Get the body out!” Ben said. “No one can know.”
Obeying, Waldo hauled Lillian’s corpse away. Angeline knew that she would never be seen again, and the woman that she had once been deserved better—but not the person that she was as she died. And now there was another life that demanded total attention. Someone who still had a chance.
“Ellen? I need you to push.”
She shook her head against the dirty floor.
“I can’t!” Ellen said. “I’m not ready!”
“Come on,” Angeline urged. “You can do this.”
Those had been Jeremy’s words to her.
She held her husband’s hand until it seemed at the point of breaking, but Jeremy did not leave her even as he grimaced in pain. Focusing all of her attention on the body under her hands, Angeline felt the baby’s head, and she ordered Ellen to make a final push.
“I…”
“You need to listen to me!” Angeline said. “It has to be now!”
Screaming through her teeth, Ellen obeyed, and as the baby slid into Angeline’s hands, she patted the slimy back and tried to will breath into the little girl’s lungs.
Ellen was too dazed to speak, but Jeremy found his voice.
“Why isn’t she crying?” Jeremy said.
Suctioning Mary’s mouth and nose with only the power of her fingers, the silent room burst into rapturous applause as the little girl took her first breath. Kane kissed Angeline’s head as the flashing lights of the ambulance pierced through the windows, and Ben looked to Waldo’s return for some assurance as the big guy said, “Not to worry. She’s hidden until we need to move her again.”
She gave the baby back to Ellen. Jeremy briefly clutched his brother’s hand as his wife was loaded into an ambulance, and they sped away. Angeline thanked whatever god there was that it had worked out, but her bloodied hands shook until Kane pressed her to his chest.
“They owe you everything,” Kane said. “So does the club.
Ben was there, nodding at their side. The new boss patted Kane’s back and gave Angeline a quick grin. “I’m glad I helped him bring you back,” Ben said. “Gina’s gonna get better. And now we can be a real club again.”
“But I—”
“You’re a real angel through and through,” he said. “And we’re all going to be better off now.”
This was how it should have always been for him—for all of them. She knew all too well the darkest depths of this place. However, it could also be a place of miracles when they worked like the team that they had always been.
Ben tousled Kane’s hair.
“And if you want back in, you’re golden.”
Kane looked into Angeline’s eyes. If he wanted this, now that she saw them all for what they really were without the shadow of Noel, she would not deny him. So, she said, “Kane, if you… if you want…”
He shook Ben’s hand firmly and slapped his back.
“I want to see my niece,” he said. “But I know that the boys are in good hands.”
Just like that, it truly was over.
And something else was beginning.