MC Romance

ACE

Ace eyed the street carefully. Red Hook was not out of the territory he rode, no part of Brooklyn was, but it wasn’t his usual hangout either. The street was barely populated. Very few cars rode its length, and the industrial buildings looked grimy and half-dead under the blazing August sun. The stink of trash on the curb caught his nose, as the wind kicked up a little breeze that did nothing to beat back the temperature.

The crowded industrial apartments drew his eye. He got off the bike and headed into the door. The elevator sat dead ahead but he ignored it. Elevators were a damn good place to get jammed up, and shot up too. They were death coffins and he was not about to get caught in one if he could help it.

His long legs ate the distance as he raced up the stairs to the fifth floor. The apartment that he was looking for was on his right. Ace’s hand went to his waist. The reassuring shape of the gun met his fingers. His knuckles of the other hand rapped at the door and it opened to reveal a sallow character with yellowing teeth and shifty eyes.

Ace spoke. “Pick up time Corey.”

Corey’s neck, thin as an arm, wobbled back and forth. His protruding Adam apple bobbed up and down. His eyes swept the hallway past Ace and every single one of Ace’s muscles tightened.

Corey said, “Come in. They got cameras out there now.”

Goddammit. That was the last thing he wanted to do. He stepped inside anyway, his eyes scanning every piece of furniture that might hide a person waiting to take him down and out.

Corey wiped his sweating forehead. Ace felt suspicion climb higher. Corey wasn’t the best guy to trust under any circumstances. He was geeked up on crank, and he came off those crank binges with heaping handfuls of oxy.

Corey said, in a high and trembling voice. “I didn’t ask to get stuck babysitting your crew’s cash you know.”

Ace eyed him carefully. Corey wanted something. Might as well find out what it was. “Where’s the cash? Don’t tell me it’s light either. Then tell me what you want. If you tell me you used some of our cash to get your geek on I’m killing you here and now.”

Corey yanked at the cabinet that held the Murphy bed. It came down with a bang, and he grabbed the bags. His head moved from side to side. “Nah, it ain’t right. I don’t wanna die or nothing.”

No? Ace quickly counted cash, his fingers way faster than normal. He said, “So you want a cut?’

Corey swallowed hard. His horsey teeth showed again. “Is that so bad?”

“No.”

Corey’s arms crossed over his chest. He did a little speed freak shuffle. “You holding?”

“You know I’m not.” Ace didn’t mess with drugs. Not him. He reached into a pocket, peeled off a couple of Benjamins. He threw them down on a table littered with trash. “That’s for your twenty-four hours of trouble.’

Corey snatched the money up. A thick film of greasy sweat covered his face. The airless room, filled with the stench of burned meth, drew in tighter around Ace.

Corey said, “Thanks man. I’m down for your crew. You know that.”

“Yeah sure.”

Ace left, closing the door firmly. His legs took him back down the stairs. His eyes scanned the street. No way did he trust Corey not to tell a bunch of his equally tweaked friends that he was holding lots of cash. Corey might be afraid to cross the Brooklyn Son’s, but if someone else did, well how did that impact Corey?

Ace slung a leg over his bike. The leather seat burned under his denim clad ass.

The heavy leather jacket he wore, emblazoned with the Brooklyn’s Sons patch, was a particular misery, but one he wore with pride. Not everyone could get into the MC, and most prospects failed. He’d done it though, and then he had climbed the ranks until he was the second-in command. Six months ago, their crew leader got caught on the bad end of a slippery road and went down, breaking his neck in the process. Now Ace was the crew leader of the most badass club in the Northeast, and if the jacket was too hot on a day like that, so what? He’d suffered a lot to have it.

He pulled onto the street. Taxis weren’t plentiful on that side of Brooklyn and neither were buses, both things he truly hated being stuck behind. He headed toward Greenpoint, riding along slow and easy.

There was a large amount of money in his saddlebag, and he had to drop it off at a high stakes card game. A card game that he and his crew took a cut of every week just like they took a cut of the cash that flowed in and out of the borough in the form of other illicit activities.

Some of the others in the crew handled the drug money. Ace wouldn’t go near dope, and it irritated him that Corey had asked him if he were holding. Not that Corey could have known why Ace didn’t mess with that shit.

His hand tightened on the throttle, sending the bike forward at a higher rate of speed. He didn’t want to think about Margo. He really didn’t.

He did anyway.

It was hard not to.

She was his cousin, and they had grown up together. They’d been tight, facing down everything from their sorry mothers leaving them home alone and hungry at night so they could go out and party. When Margo had been fourteen Ace had hit her then-stepfather with a baseball bat, repeatedly, for laying a hand on Margo in a way he should have reserved for his wife.

Margo had returned the favor by stepping in when thirteen-year-old Ace had been outnumbered and facing down a whole lot of pissed off gang members whose streets he’d gone down by accident.

Margo had run right into the middle of that mess, grabbed him by the arm, and hauled him out before anyone could even get close.

They were more like brother and sister than cousins, and her death had hit Ace so hard he had thought he might not recover. He had, but it had been hard to do. His grief had lessened, but not his rage.

And that rage was directed right at Walker, the leader of the Queen’s Men, an MC from Queens.

The bike purred along toward Williamsburg. His pleasant ride was interrupted when he spotted a young woman walking along in front of a row of trendy shops and boutiques. His booted heel hit the asphalt as he stopped for a light. He recognized her of course. She was Julia, Walker’s youngest sister.

Ace’s eyes crawled over her. Julia was gorgeous, all long legs and shimmering brown hair framing a pale, oval face with wide blue eyes set below dark brows. She had a long thin straight nose, wide Julia Robert’s style-lips, and her tall and thin body had elegant curves of breast and hips. The outfit she wore, a summery little dress that swirled around her tanned and slender legs, was perfect. She could have been a model. Was a model in fact, though not a famous one? Ace knew she did mostly print ads and the like, earning money to put herself through design school. Ace made it his business to know everything about Walker, and what he knew right then was that Walker’s baby sister was in his territory, and she was alone.

Interesting.

The light changed. His foot came up, but then he wavered. His eyes watched her enter the store and then he was moving on, past it. He groaned and turned around.

Julia had always fascinated him. The fact that she was Walker’s sister made her off limits.

Or did it.

A diabolical plan formed in his mind. A wicked grin crossed his well-made mouth. He took the bike to the curb. He got off, and strolled to the windows, peeking in. Julia was inside, not shopping but standing behind a counter.

She worked there then?

His eyes went to the awning. It was a trendy little boutique and the garments in the windows, arranged artfully so that he could see past them to the store’s interior, were obviously expensive.

He made a mental note of the store and then went back to his bike and headed toward Greenpoint.

Chapter 2

Walker stood at the top of the stairs that Julia was trying to go down, blocking the way. His eyes ran along her body in a very unbrotherly way. He said, “Where are you going?”

Goddammit. Not this and not now. Julia managed a tight smile. “Work. I told you I got a new job.”

Walker’s eyebrows lifted. “You get back here right after. Pete wants to take you to dinner.”

Her skin crawled. No way did she want to go anywhere with Pete. That horny bastard was just as likely to bum rush into the trunk of a car and off to a hotel where he could force her into sex without worry than he was to foot the bill for a meal and she knew it. “I don’t know how late I have to stay.”

Walker’s hand lashed out, meeting her cheek. Julia had enough experience with Walker’s brutality to get back from that hand when it came up, but even a glancing blow from Walker was enough to cause pain to explode in her face. Tears welled up but she blinked them back.

Walker’s belligerence came out in full force. “I said get back here soon.”

Walker stepped back, apparently satisfied. “You should be happy Pete wants to take you off my hands. I mean, what good are you anyway? You’re not getting many modeling jobs lately and you’re wasting time at that damn school you spend all your money going to. If you were really smart you’d be a lawyer, and stop mooning over making clothes for those rich fuckers that already have people to buy shit from. We could use a lawyer in the family.”

Julia knew better than to speak just then. How could she say anything? Any answer would be met with an escalating degree of violence.

Walker was her half-brother but she feared him far more than anyone else in his crew and with good reason.

She nodded dumbly. Her mouth formed a yes but her heart screamed no. No to Pete. No to leaving the design school she had clawed her way into. No to him, no to living the hellish life she’d been thrust into when her mother died.

Walker stepped back. “I’m expecting you to have your ass here by seven and no later. If you got something else planned you cancel it. Don’t make me come looking for you.”

Julia swallowed back the salty lump in her throat. “Seven. I’ll be here.”

She fled, running out of the house and toward the bus that would deposit her at her new job while thoughts flew around her head.

She had to do something about Walker and fast. To start with she needed to get the hell out of Queens and out of his grasp. It was too expensive in Williamsburg, especially on a student’s budget. The jobs she worked barely touched the very large amount of debt hanging over her.

Walker wanted her to quit school and he wanted her to get with one of his boys. Pete was someone that Walker needed to take on the larger dealers in Manhattan, and to ride over the crews out in the outer boroughs, but he was the last thing she needed. Pete had a habit of hitting his girlfriends and hitting the bag too, not the punching bag—the bags the dope came in.

Walker was pissed at Julia and she knew it. He had no issue with trying to bring his MC into a higher status by using his sister’s bodies. He’d forced Naomi into becoming his first in command’s old lady, a term that meant that guy never had to wed Naomi and never had to do more than claim her and the kids they had together. Walker said it was loyalty, that Naomi was loyal and so was her husband, Charlie. So, apparently was their other sister Carla, who was a brassy haired mess and strung out on the same dope she handed off to her ‘girls’, the hookers she ran for the MC. Carla and Naomi were loyal, but if loyalty meant having to live under Walker’s brutal thumb, then Julia was happy not being loyal.

The problem was if she didn’t get out of Queens soon, and very soon, and as far from Walker as she could get, she was going to get in that mess he called a family whether she wanted to be or not.

She, Walker, Naomi, and Carla had different mothers, which explained the nearly decade long gap between Julia and Carla, the youngest of that woman’s children. Julia knew her mother had regretted dating Walker’s father, and hard, and had not wanted her daughter anywhere around that crew but when she had died from cancer when Julia was just fourteen that was just where Julia had ended up.

Now she was nineteen, and she wanted out. The only problem was Walker, who was forty and the undisputed leader of the crew now that his father was dead, had no intention of letting her go. He did not give a damn about her desires. What he cared about was what her youth and beauty could buy him, and what it would buy was Pete and his connections.

The store finally came into view and she left the bus she had boarded and hurried inside. Corinne, one of the other salesgirls, eyed her warily. “What happened to you?”

“There’s some crazy guy near my place. He clocked me good.”

Corinne’s eyes widened. “Oh, my God. I hope you called the cops!”

“Of course, I did but I had to leave to get to work. I hope they still do something about him.”

She hung her coat on a hook inside a small cupboard and asked, “How’s it going today?”

Corrine grimaced, “We’ve had a few customers. Lots of the hipsters stopped in earlier but there’s been some real shoppers.”

Julia managed to laugh. “Oh, you mean the hipsters that come in to ironically try on our clothes so they can make fun of the fashion and the cost later over their expensive craft drinks and appetizers?

Corinne grinned back. “Yeah. Well, I’m out. Have fun.”

Corinne grabbed her stuff and left, leaving Julia alone in the store.

Julia blew out an agitated breath as she looked around the empty store. The shop paid on a commission basis, and she needed cash fast. She had been short on modeling work lately, and she knew that was her own fault. She didn’t have the time to run down gigs now that she was in college full time, and the constant commute between Manhattan for school and her home in Queens took hours out of her days.

The door opened again and she looked up with a smile that died immediately as she saw Ace strutting through the door.

Her shoulders went rigid with tension. Working in Brooklyn meant chancing running into him or one of his crew, but so did working anywhere in the sprawling NYC area. Crews were everywhere, and in Manhattan she had to face down the Knights, the Wicked ran the Bronx, and Staten Island had the Furies. None of them would have been able to guess who she was at first glance since she looked nothing like Walker and because she had always managed to put distance between herself and the club in some way or another. He knew what she looked like though because Ace’s cousin Margo had been a regular around the neighborhood and the club after Ace had demanded everyone on his crew cut her off.

One night, back when Julia had first been packed up by the social worker and dropped into Walker’s lap, Margo had been overdosed on some pure heroin someone had tossed her. They were not being generous. They had given it to her to find out just how much it needed to be cut. The joke was that if it could kill Margo it needed a boot heel in it.

It had been Julia who had found Ace’s number in Margo’s jeans, and called him after she had found the comatose woman in the middle of the floor of the otherwise empty multi-family house the crew used for their drug running and to which Julia had been sent to retrieve a package for Walker. She had not known, at the time, that Ace was in a different crew or that Margo’s near-death would ignite an already inflammatory situation.

Then when Margo had died later that day he had come alone, riding hard, in the middle of the night, determined to blow the whole goddamn borough up around their ears. He would have, if one of his crew hadn’t shown up and dragged him off before any real damage could be done.

He had not burned them down that night, and he had never told Walker how he had found his cousin that night either. Julia had never forgotten his face staring at her as he sat on his bike, the unconscious Margo dangling limply in front of him.

He’d said, “You never saw me kid.”

She had shaken her head, suddenly understanding just what she had done. Ace had given her a hard smile. “Who are you anyway?”

“I’m Julia.”

“I mean to Walker. You’re too young to be his old lady. Last I heard he wasn’t running kids. If I find out he is I will torch the joint too. There’s a line nobody gets to cross.’

She had not even known what that meant and it must have shown on her face because he kicked the bike to life. She blurted out, “Walker’s my half-brother. I don’t know him well. My mom just died and I had to come live with him.”

“Tough luck, kid,” Ace had said and then driven off into the night. She had not seen him since and the truth was she had hoped she never would either.

He eyed her carefully. Her face heated. Did he recognize her? It would be hard not to recognize him. His face was all lean angles and blazing blue eyes, tanned skin, cruel lips and stubborn chin. He was trim and toned and very muscular. The jeans he wore fit him like a glove. He moved like a man in his twenties, which he damn sure wasn’t. He was closer to Walker’s age, nearly forty, but there was not a trace of silver or gray anywhere in his black hair. He had taken his jacket off, which was odd. Unless he didn’t want to be recognized.

She asked, “are you looking for something in particular sir?’

She moved toward him, her heart hammering in her chest as she walked across the narrow confines of the shop’s floor.

Ace’s eyes slid over her face, probing at hers. She didn’t drop her eyes and she fixed a wide and pleasant smile on her face. He lifted a brow, quirking it upward just a bit. One corner of his mouth came up but he didn’t look any less hardened and dangerous even with that tiny half smile on his lips.

“I might be.”

He didn’t recognize her! Relived at that Julia took a few more steps toward him. “Oh? We have an excellent men’s section. Are you looking for a suit perhaps? Or a shirt?”

“I don’t know.” His smile got wider and she paused. Her heart kicked into a higher gear, the palms of her hands breaking out into a little sweat. A flutter began in her belly. There was something very powerful and magnetic about him, and the tug she felt in her center told her she should back away and none too slowly. She was in the wrong borough to be checking him out, even if those jeans did sculpt his body perfectly. Looking up was no help at all. All she could see was his wide and deep chest and broad shoulders, the way his shirt lay flat at his taut midriff.

He said, “So, what do you recommend?”

“Um, maybe a royal blue shirt and a silk tie.”

The words made her want to laugh. No way did he belong in a dress shirt and tie. Leather yes, a suit? Never.

Ace nodded. “Yeah, no. Not today, anyway. Maybe another day. See you later.”

She gazed after him, her eyes clinging to the high and firm slopes of his ass. Danger was everywhere. She could not afford to have him recognize her, and yet she wanted to call after him, give him her name and see if he remembered it. How could he have, really? She had been a skinny awkward kid with frizzy hair and eyes hidden behind thick glassed at fourteen.

She had gotten her first print ad because an agent saw her and decided she would be perfect to portray the nerdy gamer girls that the product he was scouting out models for was hoping to target. It hadn’t taken her long to understand that she had something she could use, something that might give her a way out. Clothes were there and she had not been above taking some for herself at a shoot and she knew she could have been fired for that from any number of jobs but Walker could have cared less what she wore, or if she wore anything at all.

Julia had had to grow up fast in that house. She had learned how to defend herself against drunk guys who forgot whose sister she was, and to fend for herself with money too. She got a job at sixteen and eked out a minor amount of money working as a model, and a little more working at pizza joints and coffee shops. The modeling opened her eyes to what she really wanted to do. She not only wanted to wear beautiful clothes, she wanted to create them.

She would never do anything if she didn’t get away from Walker. She had to do it before he forced her into Pete’s bed.

Chapter 3

Ace was amused by the encounter. He doubted Julia knew who he was. He had kept a close eye on her over the years though. A very close eye. He owed her for calling him that night back when she had just been a kid and he never forgot when he owed someone something.

He owed Walker a lot of pain, and he was damn sure not forgetting that.

He had watched Julia occasionally over the years. She was an anomaly. She had class, plenty of it, and she was so much younger than her half siblings. It had been obvious that first night that he had met her that she had zero street smarts, and even less of an idea of just what she was doing by calling him.

He had made sure nobody had ever found out that it had been her who had called him to come get Margo, because he had never told anyone. As far as anyone knew Margo had somehow stumbled back to Brooklyn before calling him and he wanted it to stay that way.

Julia had been the only person to see him after Margo died too. The clubhouse had been empty, save for her, the rest of the crew gone down to Florida for a big run. He would have recalled that if he had not been in so much pain. The only reason he hadn’t torched the place was because he had seen her standing at a window, looking down at the street and him with an expression of sheer and total terror on her face.

She’d been all elbows and knees back then, a frizzy headed kid with thick glasses and a wilted demeanor. Now she was a gorgeous creature, and a full-grown woman. A woman he not only intended to seduce but one he wanted to seduce.

He had heard that Walker was pushing her to get with that low life scum dog Pete, the slimy asshole who had a massive connection that Walker needed to get his dope business out of the boroughs and way beyond.

Ace was no fool. He knew how much that connection was worth and it was somewhere around the tens of millions of dollars as long as the cops held off and the dope held out. Walker had a few cops in his pocket, enough to keep the ones in his borough off his case, but with the kind of money that connection could bring in he could buy as many dirty cops as he wanted.

There was the other issue in a nutshell too. With that kind of money behind him, and with cartel influence that ran all along the upper reaches of Manhattan behind him, Walker could and would declare outright war on the other crews in the NYC area. He would try to run them all to ground and then ride right over them.

Ace, if he had been so inclined and didn’t despise the drug trade so much, would have done the very same thing. Riding his own territory was not always enough, even for him. His crew was content where they were and they always fought off any rivals that tried to horn in on their turf. The last time a crew had tried there’d been mayhem for weeks. That crew, a shady bunch of dudes from right near the border between Brooklyn and Queens, had been doomed to failure from the outset. They were too close to Walker’s territory and too close to Ace’s not to piss them off. Ace had known arrests would follow if things got too dirty so he had called a meeting and they had come up with a plan that had involved pushing that crew further into Queens, just over the clearly drawn lines. Walker’s prospects had gone too far one night and some of that crew had wound up dead. The prospects that Walker had ordered to deal with the dudes had gone to jail, and more than one of them had sung their hearts out to the cops. The good cops had gone after Walker, but the dirty ones had minimized the damage as they always did. In the end Walker lost two dudes that had been riding with him for years because those guys took the fall for Walker. Of course, they had, he always took care of his own and right now those dudes’ families were enjoying a nice hunk of money every month and their very nice and mortgage free apartments to boot.

Fucking with Julia would mean open warfare. No doubt about it. Walker was touting that virginity of hers as a reward to Pete. Pete wanted the girl badly and he was holding out on the connection’s name and so forth. Walker might have tried to press, but he would not have gotten far. Pete was not a crew guy. He was a mercenary predator who liked to ride but didn’t tie his loyalty anywhere unless there was something in it for him.

Walker couldn’t just kill Pete after he found out who the connection was and how to get to him either. Pete had some serious blood ties to the connection, and that made Pete untouchable and gave him a bargaining chip the size of a delivery truck.

Ace paused in that thought. His high forehead wrinkled in thought. Was it a good idea to mess with Julia?

Hell no.

That was risky beyond risky.

But he was going to do it anyway because one she was the hottest thing he had ever seen and he wanted her, badly. Two, he owed Walker a major loss and he had been waiting for years to deliver it.

Now he had the perfect way to do it, and there was no way that he was backing down from that plan that had formed in his mind. No way in hell. Once he made up his mind about something he did it, no matter the consequences.

He pulled into the garage that was attached to the multi- family home he lived in. A garage was incredible, and the towering five story house, a former townhouse for very wealthy people who had died a hundred years or more before, was just one more sign of his success. Like Walker’s outfit most of the crew lived there, in one of the seven apartments that had been carved into the house. That his crew could afford a building, a whole building, spoke volumes about how well they did business.

The building had been in the club’s possession for many years so Ace could not lay claim to that success but the sparkling fresh limestone façade, the new heating and air conditioning units on the roof, and the purchase of that attached garage had all been his doing. Deep down Ace was an accountant, albeit a dangerous one. He had been able to take a mess of unorganized books and carelessly used cash and turn it into clean money by setting up legit businesses, something he had been doing during the time he had been in the crew. That had been what had helped him to climb the ranks so fast and now, under his guidance, the crew had several very legit and profitable businesses in the borough and they used those businesses to wash the dirty money clean before putting it into fund accounts and the like.

That he was good with money was only one of his talents. He was equally good with a gun—or the business end of a baseball bat. His enemies were wary of him for those things and he knew it, and he also knew they had good reason to be.

Jack, his second in command, a grizzled dude with a shock of red hair and pale green eyes, met him at the door. “We got a little trouble brewing with Walker.”

Ace’s teeth flashed in between his thin lips. “When don’t we have trouble brewing with Walker?”

Jack said, “Fair enough. He hit one of our stands last night.”

Ace’s blood boiled. “Oh yeah?”

The stands were little pop up places around the borough. The Chinese set up their bootlegged bags and wallets and clothes and he and his crew provided protection from rival sellers of the same goods and kept the cops off their backs. In return they got a hefty cut of the profits and the sellers also stored a lot of other illegal goods in their little hidey holes around the borough for the crew. “Which one?”

Jack winced. “The one down on Ninth. They were on foot but the seller said he recognized one of them.”

Ace nodded. “You make good on their loss?’

Jack nodded. “Of course.”

Of course he had. If their protection failed they paid what was lost. It was how they kept goodwill. Ace asked, “The seller happy with that?”

Jack stroked his fiery beard with two fingers. “I added an extra fifteen percent to the costs and didn’t take our cut so yeah.”

Perfect. It was a hefty shot in their wallets but they needed the street sellers as much as the street sellers needed them. Ace nodded, “Good deal then. Tell the seller to lie low for a week. Keep things quiet while we work it out.”

“Already on it boss.”

Ace chuckled. “Of course you are.”

Of course Jack was. Jack was good at what he did but what made him invaluable was that he didn’t have an Alpha bone in his entire large body. Jack was happy to be second and the idea of leading the crew was not one he was fond of. In fact, he had demurred when the choice came down to him and Ace and Ace knew that when it came to loyalty Jack was the one who would ride or die all the way to the end of the road with him.

Ace leaned against a door frame. “We got to do something with Walker and fast.”

Jack nodded, “A few of the guys are calling for blood here Ace, just thought you would want to know.”

Ace nodded. “Sure, can you blame them? We need a lesson for that asshole. I have a plan to keep him in check but the boys need to let off some steam now and we need to do something to let our sellers now we won’t take this shit. Get me the guys, now.”

Jack nodded and headed off toward the stairs. Ace closed the front door and stood in the foyer. There were two apartments downstairs, and most of the single guys in the crew drifted between them. On the higher floors were larger apartments and there were a few families up there as well as his own apartment, a large two-bedroom thing with massive windows that looked over the streets and that had a private entrance to the rooftop, where he often spent many hours.

He started up the stairs and to his place. The sound of footsteps on the stairs came to his ears as he unlocked the door and stepped into his living room. He had never done anything with the place after he had inherited it. It was the apartment the crew leader had always had and it was filled with the flotsam and jetsam of lives lived before he had moved in. The furniture was old and sagging and the floors needed a good refinishing. It was tidy though. Jack’s old lady kept it pin neat for Ace.

He steppe din, leaving that door opened and stood waiting as the guys filed in.

There were over three dozen in his crew, all handpicked hard cases with a real love for riding and for doing what they did. Callahan was the one who handled the drug side of the crew’s business and he kept it as far from Ace as possible, even as he let Ace in on his every move.

It was Bert that ran the street sellers and the guns. There were others and they all had jobs. The crew had their fingers in everything from developer bribes to protection and gambling rackets.

Not all of them lived there in the sprawling clubhouse. Some preferred to keep their wives and kids as far away from their crew as possible so it was a mere dozen guys that gathered there just then.

Ace surveyed them all then said, “Bert, talk to me.”

Bert shifted lightly on his feet. He was a former Golden Gloves champ and it showed. His eyes met Ace’s squarely. “They came on foot and basically tossed the stands. They took cash and goods, but we all know what they were really doing was trying to throw a scare into our sellers. And they were looking for info on the caches too.”

Ace nodded. “I bet. Anyone talk?”

Bert snorted. “They all swear they didn’t.’

That meant they hadn’t, or at least they said that they had not but scared people were liable to talk. Ace asked, “You get everything moved?

Bert nodded, “As soon as we got the call last night we were on the move. Everything’s been taken over to the house in Ditmas Park. We found one guy, walking through Prospect Park. We worked him over pretty good but he’s not a crew guy, just a brand-new prospect who didn’t count on getting his head busted.”

Ace’s eyes narrowed. “Where is he?”

“In the hospital.” Bert grinned. “He’ll live but I hear he’s also running right back home to Nyack when he gets out.”

“Good deal.”

Ace knew the guy was not just going to run home, he was likely never to return. They got a lot of Upstaters in, guys who wanted to get in on the action in the city and as soon as they got a taste of it they were out. Since most of them knew that there was no safe place for them to go after they got out, not in the city anyway, they generally did vanish back to whatever burg they had come from originally.

Callahan spoke. “I got my ears to the ground and things don’t sound so good boss. Walker’s putting out word that he’s doing a takeover. It seems old Pete may actually be coming off that connection.”

Ace’s jaw clenched. “Uh huh. Says who?”

Callahan sighed. “Pete’s connection is family, that’s why Walker can’t just kick the info out of him. If he touches a strand of Pete’s greasy ass hair the connection will hit back and the bad news is, a connection with that kind of cash and dope, well they have the firepower to hit back hard enough to slap the crew to earth, if you catch my drift.”

Ace already knew all of that. “I do but what’s with this shit Walker is spreading?”

Callahan sighed. “That sister of his? That’s Pete’s price.’

“I’m going to make sure he doesn’t get paid.”

The words dropped into the room. Callahan blinked. “What are we talking here Ace?’

Ace gave him a wicked grin. “Kidnapping.’

Bert whistled. “You’re going to bring Walker right down on our heads and possibly Pete’s connection too.”

Ace said, “I don’t think Pete’s connection gives a shit about whether or not Pete gets that girl. What I do think is they won’t like Pete being promised something and then Walker not making good on the deal.’

Bert asked, “How you going to…”

Ace cut in. “If Walker doesn’t know where she is, and Pete has no idea we’re the ones who took her who’s to say that Walker didn’t get the connection and double cross Pete?”

Bert frowned. “That would be out of character for Walker he gives zero shits about any of his sisters, and especially that one.”

Ace said, “I know that and you know that too. You know who doesn’t know that? Pete’s connection. Besides I’m betting that Pete loses his mind after the girl gets ghost on him and runs to his connection to holler about Walker not giving him what he was supposed to hand over.”

“Cut his legs off from the jump,” Jack said, “That makes sense.”

“Even if they know it is us it won’t matter,” Ace added, “Think about it. She’s Walker’s bargaining chip. If we can get her and hide her for enough time to set Pete against Walker we might be able to reel Pete in ourselves.”

Jack chortled. “You’re saying we take her and use her as a chip?” Offer her if he gives us the connection?”

Ace nodded. “That is exactly what I am saying. I don’t care about the dope side of this. You know how I feel about that. What I do care about is making sure that Walker does not get a connection that will give him the funds that could see us all having to pull stakes just to survive his having that cash and power.”

The guys all nodded. This was their borough and no way were they fleeing it and o way would they let Walker rip the ground out from under their wheels.

Jack said, “We’ll back you.”

“Ride or die,” Bert added.

“All in,” Callahan said.

The others all added their agreements. Then Jack asked, “the question is, ow do we get her?’

“Leave that to me. I already have a plan.” Ace chuckled. “And the best part is, I am going to kidnap her without actually kidnapping her. She’s going to be happy to climb aboard my bike.”

Chapter 4

Julia didn’t go home. She was nervous and scared. The sight of Ace walking through the doors of the store had made her feel even more anxious than usual. Not only that she knew that Pete was there and she also knew that his demands for her to be his old lady were ongoing, and that Walker would give her to him any minute now.

The only reason Walker had not yet just picked her up and hurled her into a room she could not get out of and a room that was not only a cell but that contained Pete as well was because he knew she had some friends in some high places. Or thought she did. That modeling work of hers had put her in touch with some very rich people and so she had used that to build a shield around herself that kept Walker from knowing, for sure, whether she would be able to get him and Pete locked up for what would amount to rape, pure and simple.

Her modeling career was fading though and she was scared. Terrified in fact. Walker was getting more antsy buy the day. Pete was willing to wait but for how long was Walker willing to wait for her to decide to bend to his order to be Pete’s old lady? Given what was at stake she was betting it would not be much longer.

Taking the job in Brooklyn had been anxiety inducing in the first place. She knew that if Walker found out she was over there he would beat her. It would not have been the first time though he was always careful not leave marks. He would accuse her of being a traitor and tell her that she thought she was too good for Queens.

It was not that. She loved Queens. It was him that she was too good for, him and that terrible life that held promise of nothing but jail and death and the slow and horrible leaching away of all her dreams and plans and the life she could see in the distance waiting for her.

Fashion design. That was what she wanted.

She took the train to Manhattan instead of going to Queens She had exactly sixty-one dollars and nowhere to go. The hostels would not let her stay since she had a NY ID and she knew that all the hotels were out of her reach but she went anyway because she had no idea of what else to do.

The train was crowded and slow. The L was always that way though so she stood pressed among the throngs of humanity, trying to think of a plan. She had to get out of there and fast but the depressing truth was that without some form of protection she was stuck always worrying that at any minute Walker would drag her back, screaming and kicking if necessary. The cops either could not or would not help her. There were too many of them that were in Walker’s pockets and the ones who were in Pete’s connections pockets were just as useless to her.

So what could she do to stay out of Pete’s bed and to get away from Walker?

The train lurched to a halt. She got off and started walking. The avenues were packed and crowded with people. The crowds made her feel slightly safer. No way would Walker just snatch her off the street in full view of everyone but even that was not a given. There were too many alleys and the crew in Manhattan had their own grudge against Walker. So far she had managed to avoid them, and to get back and forth to school and her occasional modeling gig without getting harmed but how long could she keep that up?

She needed to get out of NYC period. Transfer to a different school. Maybe in LA or somewhere that Walker could not touch her.

She stopped walking, her eyes going wide.

She muttered, “Holy shit. It would work but…but it might get me killed.”

No, there was no might to it. It would get someone killed.

But if she could manage it then she would be safe.

Pete wanted her because she was fresh, a virgin and untouched by drugs. Because she was famous enough that he could brag about having bagged her. She could not change that last part and no way was she about to start doing drugs. But she could have her virginity taken and when she did that would lessen her value.

So why not just do it?

Well, there was the fact that Walker would absolutely kill her if he found out and he would have to find out if she was going to use that to keep him from trading her off to Pete for his connection. If Pete found out he had been swindled he might go after Walker but he would beat her first and maybe even kill her. If he didn’t kill her he would go to his connection and declare it all a bad bargain and cut Walker off from that connection. Then Walker would kill her. Or maybe he and Pete would take turns beating her until she was dead.’ She had witnessed firsthand the brutal beatings that Walker dished out to the prostitutes that he ran. He had not yet killed one as far as she knew but Julia also had no idea how any of those women managed to survive such brutality and come out whole on the other side.

They did survive and went right back onto the streets to sell themselves for Walker. That alone terrified Julia. She knew Carla was not above trick turning and frequently did just that and Walker had been known to whip her ass for coming up short, and in front of her girls too. Walker would blame Carla if her girls did not meet the quota for daily money he set and that was why Carla often took to the streets herself, to make sure she didn’t catch a beating from her brother.

Walker should die.

That thought nagged at Julia. If only she had the guts to kill him! But even if she did what good would that do? There were plenty other equally violent men in that crew who would be willing to take over and would if something happened to Walker. That would leave her without even the very thin protection that being his sister offered.

She muttered, “I need someone who is tough enough to protect me from Walker but who the hell is that tough?”

She froze again, her feet parking her in front of an elegant townhouse. Her eyes focused on her cute little shoes. A thought formed but it was so outrageous and crazy she shoved it aside.

Ace?

Was she really considering trying to get with Ace?

“I really am losing my mind,” she muttered and started walking again.

She left the quiet side street she had fetched up on and stepped out onto Seventh Avenue. Pedestrians floated like shoals of exotic fish. The traffic snarled and horns blared. The street vendors served up their wares and she stopped to look at a few displays of jewelry and then stopped again to buy a small paper bag of roasted walnuts crusted with sea salt and rock sugar. Munching on her treat she let her feet take her past the now quiet stores of the Village. One in particular caught her eye. The windows held a sharp and elegant display of clothing, and the artfully posed mannequins drew her closer yet.

The clothes were industrial inspired, all sumptuous fabrics cut in hones angles and layers. Her heart lightened as it always did when she found an item of clothing that gave her fresh inspiration. She wanted her own shop, a cute little boutique that sold upscale clothes and a nice little apartment all her own just upstairs.

She stared at her reflection on the windows. Her eyes held anxiety and her mouth turned down like a cup rim.

“Ace,” she whispered. “That’s my only hope. I know it is. How in the world do I get him to want me and to want to protect me? I could stay with him just long enough to get out of here?’

Did she want out? NYC was home and had always been her home. It was the center of everything fashion. There were terrific design schools out in LA but the idea of being in a city where she would need a car which she had no idea of how to handle, and that she would be away from all that she knew, was a terrifying one. But she would have to do just that. Get safe long enough to get up the money and to get a transfer out west.

There was so little time. Pete and Walker were pressuring her more every day. Walker had some heavy debts to repay and he needed that connection to take his crew to the next level and deal with those debts. Walker knew how to make money but he had zero idea of how to keep it once he got it. He and the crew were always buying flashy shit and spending like there was no tomorrow.

Her forehead wrinkled. There was another way out if she was brave enough to take it. There was a whole lot of money floating around. She could try to snatch some and run. But that was also something that Walker would kill her for and not just him but the rest of the crew too. And whoever that money was supposed to go too would be happy to put a price on her head.

So that was out.

It was back to Ace.

The empty bag crumpled between her fingers. She was tired and the train was still running but it was not running again for at least an hour. She could not go back this late at night and not expect to find herself in the middle of a serious party. The guys were celebrating taking down some of Ace’s street sellers and she knew that Walker was about to begin harassing the dope boys running along the avenues of Williamsburg, selling heroin and coke to the hipsters and artists and junkies.

Her teeth clenched. Her feet took her back toward the train station. What would Ace do to get the information she held? Would he agree to protect her for that or would she have to offer up her body too?

If she had to, she would. She definitely would. She would be his old lady if she had to. His taking her virginity would guarantee that Pete did not want her. No way would he want Ace’s sloppy seconds.

It was her only option.

And as much as she hated to admit it, Ace had made her feel a leap of desire like none she had ever known in her life. Six had always seemed a little obscene and revolting to her, and she knew that was mostly due to the way she had been educate din it. She lived in a place where people fucked for no reason at all and where hookers would blow anyone for a dime bag of dope.

She had always wanted her first encounter with sex to be good and gentle and intimate and for love.

But that was a dream she could no longer afford to hold onto.

Chapter 5

Ace was in a small restaurant he favored that sat very near the train station. He was parked right at the windows and enjoying a late dinner but his senses were, as always, on full alert. He was forever aware of his surroundings and the people near him. He was always scanning faces and looking at everyone with real suspicion. That was what life had taught him and that was the one habit that served him the most.

So when he spotted Julia coming out of the mouth of the train station his body went rigid. He frowned and tilted his head as she walked slowly across the street and stood near the windows of the diner.

She had obviously just come from Manhattan and he wondered if she had had an evening class or something.

Didn’t matter. He had meant to go back to the store the next day, and get a bead drawn on her. To charm her and then to talk her into coming to dinner with him. He stood, tossing bills onto the table and signaling the waitress before striding out of the place and onto the street.

“We meet again,” he said in a low voice.

Julia jerked and turned to face him. Her lovely face paled. The lights of the diner picked up the small smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, fr4eckles he had barely noticed before. He stared at them suddenly filled with the desire to drop a kiss onto them.

She spoke in a rushed tone. “Oh, yeas. Hello. Did you decide on a shirt?”

He studied her face. Color swept into her cheeks. Her tongue, a small pink triangle, came out from between her kips and swiped nervously across them. Her eyes shifted away from his and then back again and he read fear there.

He dropped all pretenses. “You know who I am, don’t you?”

Her eyes we3nt to the custom bike heeled over at the curb. Her dark head nodded up and down. “Yeah.’

“Uh huh. You know this isn’t your crew’s turf too then.”

Her arms came up and crossed over her firm and small breasts. “I do but…they are not my crew. I can’t help it that Walker is my brother. I am not part of them though. I never have been.”

He knew that for a fact. If anything she was a prisoner over there. Walker gave her a very short leash and tended to yank her back when she strained against it from all accounts. He said, “I don’t that will matter much to some of my guys.”

She swallowed hard. Her fingers yanked at the dangling sleeves of the silk blouse she wore. “I have to have a job.”

“There aren’t any in Queens?”

Her eyes met his. Anger simmered in hers. “Over there everyone knows me. You think anyone decent is going to give me a job? Especially in a place like the one I work in? You think anyone’s going to trust me with their upscale things knowing who my family is? They all just think I am trying to get the number to the safe or the time the trucks are coming in so they ca rob them. There’s a big market for stolen designer clothes you know”

The bitterness on her voice rattled him slightly. He surveyed her face again. She was definitely pissed off. Definitely but he was not sure if she was mad at him or her circumstances. That she was mad at Walker was clear and that made him smile inside. That was good, very good. If she hated Walker and had no loyalty to him she would be easier to manipulate.

He spoke softly, gently, like she was child. “I see your point. Look, I’m not pissed. I don’t care. If that’s what you want I’ll let my guys know you’re cool and I know you are here and that it’s fine.”

She dragged air into her mouth. He caught a glimpse of very white teeth. Her eyes shifted from him to the street. “Thanks.”

He slid a little closer close enough that he could smell her perfume and see the pulse ticking rapidly at the base of her long and creamy throat. Desire rose again, making the front of his jeans tighten. He shifted to hide that growing erection and said, “Sure. Anyone hassles you, come see me. I don’t take lightly to anyone going against my orders.”

Her arms dropped. Her nipples jutted up against the fabric of her blouse, hard little pints that drew his gaze and made his dick stiffen and lengthen yet again. She asked, “Why would you do that?”

He tore his eyes away from those nipples but the very vivid image of him taking those taut peaks into his mouth, sucking and nibbling them, stayed burned into his brain. He said, “I owe you something.”

She looked bewildered. “What do you mean?”

“Margo,” he answered. “You risked a lot to call me.”

Her arms came up again, concealing those nipples. “I didn’t know anything about any of this back then. I wish I still didn’t.”

His eye3s rested on her face. He had the uncanny ability to know when people were lying to him and she wasn’t. She meant every word. He said, “I bet.’

“Yeah well,” she swallowed hard and shot a look around them. People passed by along the sidewalk. They stood under the diner’s awning and she shied nervously away as the door opened to let a few customers out into the warm summer air. “I, uh, look, I need help.”

Shit. Had he just heard her right? ‘Come again?”

“I’m willing to bargain with you. Trade what I know for protection.”

Her words were a breathy squeak. The pulse in her neck began to beat even faster and more visibly. Her face paled and then color slammed into her face, heightening her beauty. She took two long fiery breaths. “I don’t want to be Pete’s old lady. I guess you might have an idea of why Walker’s trying to get me to be, and how far he will go to make sure I cave to that.”

No use in beating around the bush. Especially since she was laying it all out there for him. The whole meeting was crazy and it felt somehow fated. Ace said, “Yeah I know. What’s that got to do with me?’

She studied her nails for a second. When she looked up there was a terrified expression pasted onto her visage. “They’re hitting your street guys tonight. Around midnight. Right out here. They won’t be on bikes. They’ll be in cars. They’re coming in like narcs, but they’re not. They didn’t call in their dirty cops for this. They’re going to pile your guys into cars, rip off their dope, and beat them down. They know you just offer protection from busts and rivals, and that those guys are the street dealers not your personal dealers. They’re betting they will turn on you, and fast.”

His ire rose but he kept his voice low and calm. “You know this how?”

She gave him a glare. “How do you think?’

“And you’re telling me why?”

She swallowed hard and took a step toward him. That luscious perfume of hers came back to his nose, heightening the desire already coiling all through his body. “I told you. I need protection and I need it now. Right now. I am willing to bargain for it and to buy it with whatever I have. Whatever you want.”

Her chest rose and fell in a lust inducing way. His dick stiffened again. Ace smothered a grin. Unbelievably enough she was offering to rat on her brother, and to bed him all in the same sentence. She must either really hate Walker or really not want to be with Pete or a combination of both. He figured it to be the latter.

He said, “You know they’re going to kill you if they find out you let me in on this?”

“They’re going to kill me eventually anyway.” The weariness in her voice smote at him. “I…I won’t be with Pete. I won’t be a bargaining chip for Walker to get what he wants. I won’t…I won’t give up everything I want just so he can have what he wants. I won’t. I won’t sacrifice my life for his….he’s evil. Pure evil. You have to know that. I can’t do it. So they will kill me anyway.’

Damn, she had a point. He said, “You planning on going back?”

Her head shook from side to side. Tears welled up in her eyes. “No. Yes. I can’t but I don’t have anywhere else to go.’

Goddammit. He couldn’t take her to his place, not now. Not if there was some real dirty work to do tonight and what was more the whole thing now felt way too pat. He didn’t trust her. He said, “I tell you what. Go catch the train. Go to Ditmas. Here’s the address, memorize it.” He rattled it off and she repeated it. He nodded. “It’s a small place, in the back of a big house. There’s nothing there but furniture and a TV. It’s a rental for tourists. The key code is four, six, eleven. Got it?”

“Four, six, eleven,” she parroted and nodded.

He made a mental note to change the code as soon as she got in. She would be able to open the door from the inside of course but he had not been kidding, the place was just a furnished rental, one piece of their legit businesses. She would be out of the way there and under the watchful eyes of a man and woman he trusted with his life. If a single soul that was not supposed to be on that dead end and very dead quiet street showed up they would not ask questions, they would just get to work making sure the issue was resolved.

She took a long breath. “I don’t know how to get there.”

He said, “Get on my bike. I’ll take you.”

She looked at the bike on the curb. Her fingers twisted together. She whispered, “You know I just made it impossible to go back there, ever?”

“You asking for my protection?”

Her head bobbed up and down on her neck. He said, “I said I would give it but I swear to God if I smell anything wrong, if I get even a hint that this is some kind of set up you won’t have to worry about Walker killing you. I will kill you myself.”

She said, “I know.’

He walked toward his bike. She hesitated for a second then followed him. He said, “Get on.”

There was a larger fear in her eyes now. “I have never ridden before.’

She had to be kidding His eyes took in the frightened expression and her uncertainty and he deduced she was being truthful. He asked, “Why not?”

“My mom met Walker’s dad and he took her for a ride.” Tears trembled on the edges of her eyelashes. “She fell in love with him without ever knowing him, all she knew was how much she loved or ride on his bike. She got pregnant with me and he beat the hell out o her. She ran all the way to Hudson heights to get away but he always kept tabs on us. He didn’t care about us, you see, he just knew she knew things he didn’t want to get out. Like murder. Like …other things. She always said that she wished she had never gotten on that bike that day. I never wanted to get on one.’

The bare admission made things come a lot more into focus. He knew she had been older, a teen when she had been placed with Walker and his ragtag family. She didn’t want to be there then, and he had seen it then. She did not want to be there now either.

She let him help her onto the bike. Her body shook as he cranked it up and slowly left the curb and merged with traffic.

As they rode Ace was aware of the fact that was a woman on his bike, and aware of it in a way that he never had been before. Most of the women who planed themselves behind them were deliberately sexy in the way they rode, bare thighs hugging the sides of his waist, their hands locking around his belly, their bodies sliding against his and their tits moving across the leather of his jacket in a way guaranteed to turn both him and their selves on.

Not Julia. She was stiff and shaking. Her hands gripped at the loops that his belt ran through. It was like she was doing everything in her power not to touch him in any way that could be construed as intimate or sexy. She was too sacred to relax and let the ride happen. He had to be careful going around curves because she didn’t lean and her rigidity threatened to send the bike to the asphalt. Ordinarily that would have irritated him, and made him pull over and boot off whatever woman was back there because she was a danger to him.

His patience level stayed high as he drove slowly, keeping a good pace but not going fast enough to unseat her if something happened. Her legs jerked a few times when cars got a little too close. That distracted him on more than one level. Her body heat and the smell of her hair as it whipped over his shoulder, the small distressed sounds she made every now and then, they all caught his attention and he had to force himself to focus on the road ahead of him.

Ditmas was a high income neighborhood filled with stately Victorian mansions and single family house but not much else. Ace pulled up in front of one house whose driveway curved around the back. Lights came on. A door opened. He waved a hand and the door shut again.

Julia looked around at the small yard and the tiny converted garage with a wary expression. He said, “It’s safe and you will be fine.”

He led her through the yard and to the door. He tapped in the code and the door swung open. They entered and she took a look around as he found the light switch and flicked it on to reveal a small space dominated by one long room that served as both living and bedroom. A tiny kitchen area was in one corner and a door to the bathroom took up space on the opposite wall.

Julia shot look at the bed, which sat behind a small partial screen. She asked, “does anyone live here right now?’

Ace said, “No. It’s been empty for about a week. It’s clean and there are drinks in the fridge. If you get hungry there are some snack things in the cabinet. We use it as an AirBnB mostly and we…”

He stopped when she burst into laughter. The sound, light and tinkling, made his heart leap. How long had it been since he had heard real and unashamed laughter? Her eyes crinkled a little at the corners and her youthful laughter slowly stopped. She said, “Sorry. I just never thought I would hear someone like you say AirBnB.”

He grinned. “I bet. I have to go.”

She gulped. Her eyes went around the space. It seemed to hit her then, what she had done and the enormity of it. She gasped out, “What do I do?”

“You stay here until I can figure something out.”

“I have classes day after tomorrow.” Her fingers plucked at the long coils of her hair. Her eyes went round the room, a slight frown puckering her smooth forehead. “I…I have to work.”

Ace sighed inwardly. His sigh got longer as she suddenly burst into harsh sobs and sat down abruptly on the side of the bed, her face burying itself in her slender hands. Her shoulders shook. Tears coursed down her face. “Oh my God. I really didn’t think this through. I’m just so scared and…and I hate him so much! I hate him!”

Walker, he realized. She hated Walker. He told himself to go but his feet took him to the bed and he sat down on it beside her, one arm going around her shaking shoulders. “We have that in common then.”

Her head lifted. Tears streamed down her face. She spoke forcefully. “I do hate him. I hate him for all the things he does and wants to do. I hate all the things he uses against me and against anyone who gets in his way but mostly I hate him because when my mom died all he did was laugh and say there was one bitch they never had to worry about ever again. I know, deep down I do know, that the only reason he insisted on me going to him and his family was because they didn’t know for sure whether or not my mother had told me what it was she knew about him and his family and he wanted to make damn sure I couldn’t talk.”

His arm tightened around her shoulders. Her body, slight but so richly curved that it sent passion crashing into his flesh, leaned into his. Her hair, silken and sweet smelling, spread over his shoulders. Her sobs grew louder. “The first night I was there, before that happened to your cousin and before they all took off to Florida? He beat the living crap out of me and told me that from then on out all I was, was property. That I belonged to them and nobody else, not even myself. Then they all left and left me there with that crazy bitch Carla, and your cousin, who was dying. You have no idea what that was like. None. Nobody does and I have had to fight for some kind of normalcy my whole damn life since my mom died. I hate him for that, hate him. Before I was there I had a good life and I want that back. I want that back so badly!”

She was not going to get that yet, and maybe never. There was a good chance that she would not live past the week, not if Walker found her and found out what she had done.

Ace felt a surge of protectiveness that he had felt in so many years. It was the same kind of protectiveness eh had felt for Margo but it was vastly different too. Margo had been family. This woman was not and along with that need to protect her came a rush of wanting of her so strong that it toppled his defenses.

He had meant to seduce her, of that he was sure. He had meant to and he still wanted to but all of his reasons for doing it changed the moment her head lifted and his lips found her soft and trembling mouth.

Chapter 6

The kiss stole away Julia’s senses. Everything she had ever felt before when being kissed vanished beneath the kiss that Ace gave her. Her body shook and her breasts flattened against his chest, that strong chest of his. Her hands came up and clutched at his shoulders. She felt the strength and flex of those shoulders as her fingers sank into the muscles.

His flat belly and lean hips met hers. Her gasp as his tongue slid into her mouth, bringing the flavor of his mouth and even more sensation to her, sent her into a tailspin of desire that she could not deny, and did not want to deny. Her legs trembled and hot and sticky fluids dripped from her core, spilled onto the thin fabric of her panties. Her nipples went thick and stiff, poking against his chest while his fingers fisted her hair and yanked her head back so that he could ravage her neck with fiery kisses and nips that sent his teeth into her flesh in a way that bordered but never became actually painful.

She knew she should stop tis now. He had not asked for this, he had not demanded it as part of the bargain. There were so many reasons not to do this. She didn’t know him well. She had dreamed of a man who loved her and wanted her more than anything and anyone else in the world taking her virginity. He was so much older than she had no idea of how to react to him, but her body seemed to have a mind of its own on that one.

Her legs shook yet again as his fingers traveled down her back, his fingertips pressing into the raised knobs of her spine and then going lower until he was clutching the perky halves of her ass cheeks.

She wanted him His age didn’t matter. The fact that he was an enemy of her family didn’t matter. All that mattered was the way his mouth made little fiery trails run along her flesh and the way that his body melded into hers, made her want to rip her clothes off and show him every inch of her flesh. His mouth came back to hers. His teeth caught her bottom lip and she cried out as he tugged gently at her lip with his teeth while his very masculine hardness prodded against her lower belly, sending more fluids into her panties, which were now soaked and laden with her oils.

He stripped her bare, exposing her flesh to his hands and mouth. He found her nipples and suckled them. She stared, rapt, at the sight of his head lowered to the creamy flesh of her breast. It was so erotic, so fantastic, and then he bit down gently and raised the sensation level until she could barely breathe. Her fingers tangled into his coarse hair as he laid her across the bed.

His tongue moved lower and her body jerked upward as his mouth found her wet center. His fingers plunged into her tight sheath, stroking and teasing until she cried out, her ass lifting higher with each stroke of his tongue across the skin of her clit. His tongue ran in slow circles than lashed back and forth across that flesh, creating a friction like she had never known. Her eyes closed and her hands tugged at his hair again.

She had never felt anything like what she felt right then. She was desperate and begging and she was slightly ashamed of that but so excited she could not stop. She wanted this and she wanted it so much that all she could do was hang on tight as he lifted himself and then moved along the length of her shivering body. His hand guided his dick to her slippery opening and then with one quick thrust of his hips he entered her. A sharp pain struck. Her eyes widened and she screamed, a sharp burst of sound. His face went pale. He looked at her, his mouth, wet with her juices, working. “Holy shit,” he breathed. “I’m sorry. I …”

“I’m okay,” she panted out even though she was not at all sure if she was okay. His organ was large and heavy and she felt filled up, filled in a way that made her body have to stretch to accommodate him. Her legs spread wider in an effort to contain all of his flesh and he slid backward, his ass working. His eyes stayed pinned to hers and then he thrust forward again, his fingers digging into her shoulders as he thrust hard and fast and went so deep that she gasped and rocked below him. His hands went under her ass, lifting her hips. He released her hips and she moved with him, catching the rhythm as he worked her clit again, that time with his fingers.

The friction and heat combined until her eyes rolled back in her head and her mouth hung open. He kissed her again and she whimpered and moaned into his mouth, kissing him back furiously.

The orgasm took her over the edge. She writhed against him, and against the mattress. Her cries grew longer and lustier with every squeezing pulse that left her inner walls soaked and his cock dripping with her fluids. He came too, sending splatters of hot and thick seed into her body.

He collapsed on top of her, his arm bracing him up so that all of his weight was not down on top of her. The tang of sweat and sex hung all over the two fo them as they rode out the aftershocks and the pleasant afterglow.

Eventually he moved. He rolled off the bed and looked down at her. His face held something but she had no idea of what it was. He smiled at her. “I have to go. You will be okay here. I promise nothing bad will happen to you.”

She believed him. She did. She had no reason to but she did. She whispered, “Thank you.’

He dressed quickly. She hated to see his body vanishing below those clothes. She took a deep and long breath then asked, “Would you…will you come back?”

“Yes. Get some sleep.”

She hoped he would kiss her but he didn’t. Instead he walked out and closed the door tightly behind himself.

Julia cuddled down into the tossed bedsheets and covers. Her body was sore but not in a pleasant way and she was exhausted in ways she had never known before. Her eyes closed and she started to drift off to sleep but she jerked back awake again quickly.

For the last five years her life had been a series of broken sleep and extreme stress. The first beating she had taken at Walker’s hands had shown her just how much she had to fear and she had never forgotten that. Most nights the house was filled with the sounds of partying or arguments. Because the rest of the crew lived in the adjacent houses and any neighbor dumb enough to file a noise complaint faced being shut up by the crew nobody ever did anything to keep it quiet in there. She often had to sleep with her fingers pressed against her head and then she would wake a dozen times because she was afraid that she was about to be attacked.

She rolled over in the bed, staring at the wall. She knew she should have done something way sooner than she had but what could she have done? She had been a minor until recently and after she had turned eighteen she had been so scared of Walker and he had been so adamant that she stay that she had been trapped by her own helplessness. Her only hope had been running away and even that had been a slim hope because Walker took every single dime she had ever earned.

Julia lay still for a few moments, listening hard. There was only silence and eventually her body relaxed into the soft mattress and her eyes closed again. Now that she was safe deep and dreamless sleep came in, taking her down into its warm embrace.

**

Ace was not sleeping. He and his bike prowled restlessly along the streets of Williamsburg. He knew he should call Jack or Bert and tell them what Julia had told him. They needed to be informed of the vile plot that Walker had concocted.

His thoughts should have been focused solely on his crew instead they were focused on the incredible woman lying in the bed that he had just left. That he had been loath to leave her gave him pause. Even more troubling was the fact that not only had he not wanted to leave her, his sudden surge of protectiveness toward her could be used against him. It would be used against him, and he knew it. The question was who would use it against him first? Julia or Walker?

He truly wanted to believe everything that Julia had said about Walker. He wanted to believe that she hated her brother and wanted nothing more than to be as far away from Walker as she could get. Only Ace had been raised not to trust anyone with anything and if he bet on Julia he would be betting not only his own life but the lives of the men in his crew. Many of those men had families too, and if Julia turned out to be just a very good liar and prove to be actually working with Walker then all of them were in danger now.

Those thoughts haunted Ace as he rode into Williamsburg. He found a curb on a quiet side street and parked the bike there before taking out his phone. His fingers found the screen and opened it. He lifted the phone to his ear and listened to it buzz on the other side. After several rings Bert picked up.

Ace wasted no time. He said, “we have trouble coming our way. Get the guys on the street on foot and do it now. Walker’s prospects are posing as narcs. There gonna be shaking down our street crew and trying to pin it on us.”

Bert’s voice hissed across the line. “Man, you have to be kidding me. What do I tell the guys out there hustling?”

Ace said, “Tell them to fight back, to do whatever it takes, and not to believe that they’re cops. Let them know it’s Walker’s prospects posing as narcs.”

Bert said, “Man, that’s risky as hell.”

Ace started walking, his boots making quick time along the sidewalk. “I know it is. We don’t have any choice. If we don’t tell them that it’s Walker’s prospects they will think we are weak. The only way we keep them in line is by making them feel protected. If they feel like we can’t do anything for them they have no reason to pay us or run our shit.”

Bert asked, “Do you think that’s Walker’s end game? I mean, do you think his whole goal is to make our crew look weak and unable to handle our borough?”

Ace walked faster. “I think that’s exactly what he is trying to do. I think he’s trying to prove to not only our borough but to Pete’s connection that we can handle our own. He’s trying to make us look like clowns over here. I think he believes that once he gets Pete’s connection and has the money and the dope he can go to the dealers here on the street, our dealers, and get them to take a slice of his pie.”

Bert said, “If he manages to pull this stunt tonight it would give them every reason to think we can’t protect them.”

Walker’s jaw went tight. A small muscle jerked up high in his cheek. “Even more reason to make sure this does not go down the way Walker plans, don’t you think?”

Bert chuckled. “I’ll grab my brass knuckles dude. I think we should leave the guns at home, there’s going to be a whole lot of people out on the streets since its warm and the weekend.”

Ace said, “you are absolutely right. We can’t afford to have some neighborhood millionaire or a tourist from some small town in the middle of the Midwest get shot. Not even the cops on our payroll would be able to keep that from coming back to bite us in the ass.”

Bert hung up. Ace stuck the phone in his pocket and went around the corner. He spotted a guy named Carlos, a streetwise hustler with a penchant for expensive shoes and even more expensive cigars. Carlos’s favorite spot to deal from was a club about a block and a half down. The club drew a lot of trust fund babies and Wall Street types who came over to Brooklyn on the weekend to do a little slumming with the locals and to keep from being seen buying coke and meth.

Ace said, “Hey man, need to holler at you.”

Carlos slowed and said, “About what? I got no bill due.”

Ace gave him a grim smile. “This is not about a bill. I’m going to owe you a little extra in fact.”

Carlos lifted an eyebrow toward his hairline. “Now you have me intrigued. What’s up?”

Ace quickly outlined the situation. Carlos listened until Ace finished what he had to say. Carlos scratched a finger along the side of his nose and said, “man, how sure are you of this? Maybe your source is really working with the cops. You thought about that?”

He hadn’t. Ace felt a quiver of misgiving. It all did seem far too coincidental. He had been considering seducing Julia in order to get her to turn against Walker and so that he could thwart Walker’s plans to give Julia to Pete exchange for an intro to his connection. But before he could implement his plan she had struck a bargain with him.

Another thought occurred to Ace just then. Could somebody in his own crew be working with Walker? Could whoever that was have told Walker what his plan was for Julia? Could Walker have sent Julia to him for the sole purpose of having her tell him about the supposed fake sting tonight?

No. She had been coming back from Manhattan, and if she had been looking for him to trap him into this situation she would’ve gone straight from her job very Williamsburg to his clubhouse.

He said, “I tell you what. If those dirtbags don’t show up then I was wrong. If the ones who do show up are narcs and anyone gets extra charges because they fought against going down then I will personally pay their bail and a lawyer fee.”

Carlos said, “That’s cool. I will let all of the guys I know in on it.”

Carlos headed up the street in one direction while Ace went in the other. As Ace walked the thoughts that Carlos had just put into his head followed him. How did he know he could trust Julia?

He didn’t. There was no way he could know if he could trust her unless he did trust her.

Chapter 7

Julia slept soundly and woke up the next morning with a slight headache from the unaccustomed rest and with the soreness between her legs even more pronounced. She lay there stretching and taking stock of her body.

She knew it was silly, she was nineteen after all. Most of her friends, what few friends she had had in school, had lost their virginity somewhere around the 10th grade. None of them ever seem to feel differently about themselves afterward but she felt very different.

Her body somehow seemed more womanly. There seemed to be more living packed into it now. She sat up slowly and that’s when she spotted the slight bruising around her wrists. She stared at her wrists, remembering how Ace had held her arms high up over her head while he had made love to her.

A slow shudder rolled through her body, but it was a shudder of sheer pleasure as she remembered each and every incredible, mind blowing moment of the sex that they had shared. A thin trickle of wetness slid from between her lower lips and smeared along her inner thighs. Her nipples became erect and stiff. Butterflies filled her stomach and the urgent need to press her fingers to the taut little bud of flesh at the top most section of her sex hit her hard. Julia had always known what her clit was for but she had never quite dared to learn how to pleasure herself by stroking it.

She lowered herself back into the bed, spreading her legs widely. Her fingers caressed her own flesh, sliding along the pert slopes of her breasts to her nipples. She tweaked her nipples gently, causing them to stiffen yet again. The pebble – hard peaks stuck up, pointing toward the ceiling, as her fingers moved lower still. Her fingernails raked across her belly, ever so lightly, but causing intense waves of pleasure to ripple through her.

Her breathing became fast and shallow. Her eyes closed. Ace’s face swam up in her mind’s eye. She could picture his virile and masculine body moving toward her and her need increased a thousandfold.

Just as she was about to delve her hand between her own thighs she heard the unmistakable sound of the door opening. Julia’s eyes flew open. Ace appeared, and his gaze flicked across her nude body sprawled across the bed.

There was a slight bit of amusement in his voice. “Are you keeping it warm for me?”

Julia knew she should feel shame for having been caught but all she felt was a wild, keening desire. Her eyes darkened by that lust, she spread her legs even further, revealing her innermost flesh to him.

She spoke in a thick, desperate voice. “Yes and I thought you would never get here.”

Ace walked across the floor his eyes lit with intention. His fingers found the hem of his T-shirt and lifted it over his head to reveal his magnificent broad shoulders, flat belly, and wide chest. His fingers found the buttons on his jeans and he gave them a careless tug that opened the jeans. His thick and heavy staff sprang out of the parted denim.

Julia’s eyes fastened to his blood – engorged flesh. She was fascinated by the sight of the heavy veins wrapping the shaft of his rod. She was equally mesmerized by the dusky purple head of his organ. The jeans were kicked off along with his boots and then the mattress sagged beneath his weight as he climbed into the bed with her.

His mouth found hers. Her lips parted for his and his tongue slid into her mouth. Her breath rushed out of her lungs and her body arched towards his. His hands roved across her smooth skin, making sensation slide through her body in a far more intense way than her own hands had been able to do.

Her heartbeat increased as his tongue continued to caress her tongue while his hands leisurely explored every inch of her body, making her shiver and whimper as the kiss grew far more passionate with each passing second.

Julia squirmed as his mouth left hers and traveled down the side of her neck. His teeth grazed her flesh and her nipples stiffened yet again, the rosy peaks becoming more roughly textured as his fingers found the fleshy globe surrounding them and squeezed that flesh.

The weight of his body on hers made her feel sexy and abandoned in a way she had never felt before. His mouth continued to move downward while his fingers kneaded the skin of her breasts. His lips closed around her nipples, sucking and tugging at them. The scrape of his teeth against that tender flesh sent shock waves of pleasure through her system and her ass lifted higher as she ground against his hardened organ.

He continued to torment and tease her breasts, sucking and licking and lightly biting at them. Unable to bear that sweet torture Julia writhed against the mattress, tangling the sheets and covers into her fingers as she clutched at them.

His head moved lower, his teeth found the flesh just below her navel and his hands ran along the span of her ribs. He tugged at that flesh there, his teeth nipping at the delicate skin of her belly. Intense sensation ran through her, sending a flush of heat along her upper thighs. Her core clenched and her inner thighs began to spasm.

His hand delved between her thighs. His fingers found the wet flesh there and stroked it. Julia moaned loudly, her fingers leaving the sheets to tangle into his hair as she attempted to tug him lower to the pulsing bud of her clitoris.

Ace did move lower, his tongue leaving burning trails along her skin. His breath stirred the wet curls covering her parted lower lips. His fingers moved inside her, making her gasp and cry out. Her ass moved higher yet again as she sought to give him a better angle of penetration. His tongue found her aching bud and then pressed against it before describing slow and gentle circles around it.

Julia’s teeth clenched and her fingers move deeper into his hair, her nails scratching at his scalp. Her body trembled all over, a fine long quivering that sent her flesh to jiggling, as his tongue pressed harder against the delicate and sensitive flesh that he was working on so well.

Julia was sure that she would go mad from desire and need long before he allowed her to find release from the incredible friction and sensation spiraling through her entire body. More heat spread through her and her heels dug into the mattress as she lifted her body higher, her legs spreading wider, her breath growing shorter, and her eyes fluttering open and close as he kept up the steady pressure on her clit while his fingers thrust in and out of her in a hard and fast rhythm that took her breath completely away.

Julia wanted to please him as well. She wanted him to feel as good as he was making her feel. She just did not have enough experience to know what to do. His tongue and fingers continued to work on her body, driving her nearly insane with the need for climax.

Her nipples stuck up in high peaks that she could not resist touching. Her fingers stroked those crests without shame and her legs spread even wider. She needed that orgasm, needed it so badly that her mouth opened and she screamed his name in a plea for relief.

Hot liquid spurted from her core, splashing over his face and running down the crack of her ass to wet the sheets below her body. Julia’s body went first rigid and tense and then limp as the pink folds of her inner walls opened and closed around his fingers.

Her ass cheeks went tight and her heels drummed out a fast tattoo of sound against the soft mattress. Her cries were guttural and made up of words that would not quite form. Julia’s body bucked up and down and her hands gripped his head tightly as he lapped at her heated oils and overheated body.

He came up slowly, his face glistening with her juices. He kissed her, and she kissed him back tasting herself on his tongue and lips. Her inner walls continued to flutter and she wanted more than anything to feel him inside of her body. She craved the hard and erect length and girth of his member inside those swollen, dripping walls. She craved it so much that when he slid between her legs her hands moved between them gripping his organ eagerly.

She paused, the need to feel him overshadowed by her need to pleasure him. She swung her leg over his waist and rolled sideways until she was on top of him. His stiff rod poked against her entry and the temptation to simply glide her hips down, and to take him inside of her was almost more than she could bear.

She managed to get down the length of his body without giving into that temptation. She found herself face-to-face with his dick. Julia had never seen one that up close and she gazed at it in sheer wonder. She raised a reverent hand and stroked it along the satiny skin covering the heavy and unyielding muscle below. His veins stood up in relief against that skin, they wrapped his shaft with their pulsing blue tracery, providing her a roadmap to his desire. Julia put her face closer to his prick. A rich masculine smell arose from his body and that smell, tantalizing and intriguing, moved up higher into her nose as she bent her head and took a tentative lick along the head of his cock.

Ace had an immediate reaction to the feel of her tongue on his organ. His fingers fisted her hair and his hips bucked upward, bringing that thick and wide flesh closer to her mouth. Julia, turned on and now even more eager to please him, gave the head of his prick yet another lick. That time instead of just giving it a simple swipe she used her tongue to run around the entire head. Her fingers fisted his shaft lightly and she pumped her hand up and down experimentally as she continued to twirl her tongue in a circular pattern along the head of his cock.

Ace grunted out, “Suck it Julia.”

She looked up at him, “I don’t know how.”

Ace looked down at her and his hands guided her mouth back to his organ. He said, “Open your mouth and take it down your throat.”

She did as he had told her. His enormous penis filled her mouth and throat with heat and a slightly salty and bitter taste that was not at all unpleasant. Julia, remembering the way he had sucked on her nipples, tightened her lips around his shaft and began to bop her head up and down. To her enormous satisfaction Ace let out a hiss of breath. His hips lifted and lowered and his hands guided her head.

Julia, feeling emboldened by the obvious pleasure he was experiencing, decided to try twirling her tongue around the head of his dick while it was deep inside her mouth. The result was a low moan breaking from his throat and his hands going so deep into her hair that his fingernails left tingling little cuts along her scalp.

The taste of his body was incredible. It was so delicious and the fact that she was pleasuring him was so satisfying that Julia barely noticed the discomfort that she felt as his rod scraped along the sides of her throat and tongue. Her lips and jaws ached slightly but the sounds that he was making kept her going.

The more excited that Ace became the more lust grew inside Julia. That she still wanted him after he had made her have such a huge and powerful orgasm frightened her slightly. How could he have so much control over her body?

She had control over his at the moment however. She realized that as his ass jerked and his cock pulsed as it pounded in and out of her mouth. Julia, caught up in that moment and in the intense sensations that knowing that she was pleasuring him was giving to her, worked harder. Her fingers found the heavy sac of his balls and he grunted out a pleased sound that caused her to cup those balls gently and then run her fingers across them as she continued to suck his rod down her throat.

She was so excited that her stiff nipples scraped along the sheets, sending pleasure squirming deep into her core. She needed to feel him inside her, needed it so badly but she was not sure if that was what he wanted to do or if he wanted her to continue with sucking his prick.

Julia’s lack of experience with sex kept her sucking even though she wanted a different type of pleasure. She had no idea how close to a climax Ace was at that moment. His fingers yanked her head back and away from his member. He came out of her mouth with a wet pop and she stared at him, confused.

“Did I do something wrong?” Julia looked down at his prick, wondering what it was that she had done wrong.

Ace chuckled, “No. You are doing everything absolutely right.”

Julia, bewildered, asked, “Then why did you make me stop?”

Ace said, “Because I want to fuck you and if you make me come it will be a while before I am able to get it back up again.”

Julia blinked at him, still a little confused. “Um… Okay.”

Ace said, “Ride my cock.”

Julia had no idea what he meant by that. She gaped at him. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Ace’s hands guided her upward until she was perched right above his quivering staff. He helped her straddle his body and then his hands found her hips and guided them down. The wet head of his rod pressed against the soft, slippery outer lips of her tunnel. Then he was inside her, moving upward at a sharp angle.

Julia slid all the way down, taking in every heated, powerful inch of his prick. Her inner walls clutched and clenched at his flesh, milking him as she lifted her body up yet again and then lowered herself back onto that steel – hard member of his. Aces fingers curled around her hips and guided her first up and then down. His hips and hands worked along with her body, and the feel of him inside her, screwing her from that angle, was even better than the first time.

Julia’s breasts bounced up and down and her ass cheeks jiggled as she began moving faster and faster, trying to get closer to that feeling of friction and heat combining to form an intense and fiery pleasure deep within her aching core.

His fingers found her clit and manipulated it, tweaking and rubbing and lightly pinching as she bounced up and down, her hands now pressed flat into his wide chest. Sweat flicked both their bodies, dripped along the sides of her face and across his shoulders.

The scent of that sex, slightly musky and tangy, rode the air, making her even more excited. Her inner walls opened and closed as more juices gathered and began to flow. His dick thrust upward, opening her even further and she felt it begin to twitch slightly within her walls.

Julia lost her breath, all she could do was continue to ride him, her eyes rolling back in her head and all of her inhibitions falling to the wayside in the face of the tremendous pleasure and sexual power that she had found herself in possession of.

Ace grabbed her, curling her close to his chest and then he rolled them over again so that she was on her back. His hands went to her thighs he pushed her legs far back and then hook them over his shoulders. He pumped his hips, moving much faster now.

He grunted out, “Touch your pussy. You know where it feels the best.”

Julia, overcome by sheer lust had no shame. Her fingers went to the spot where it did indeed feel the best. She began to rub it, moving her fingers from side to side and pressing down in an effort to relieve her powerful need to come all over his pounding and turgid prick.

Ace said, “You were about to do that to yourself weren’t you? If I hadn’t come in when I did you would’ve played with your sweet little pussy all by yourself.”

Julia knew she should feel embarrassed at having been caught but she felt nothing but the first fluttering of her inner walls and her need to come. “Yes,” she panted. “I was doing just that. I can’t help it. I’ve never felt like that before.”

She came then and as she did she felt his flash give off several hard throbs with in her walls. She felt his sticky thick seeds splatter into her body. He collapsed on top of her, groaning.

Chapter 8

Ace managed to finally get his breath back. He pulled Julia into his side and cuddled her close to his side. She fit into the hollow spaces of his body like she had been carved to fit.

He smoothed her long and tangled hair back from her face, marveling at its silky, useful luster. He gave her a rueful smile. “I think I may just be a little too old to be having that kind of sex.”

Julia giggled. “I was just wondering how I’m going to keep up with someone of your experience. Not to mention your stamina.”

He grinned at her, “Oh, you think I have stamina now? You should have seen me twenty years ago.”

Julia said innocently, “How could I have seen you twenty years ago? I wasn’t even alive then.”

The age difference between them was not something he had considered, at least not to any real degree. Her words however brought home to him just how much difference there was in their ages and more misgivings set in. How was he supposed to keep up with this hot, young woman who a previously untapped well of deep and vital passion within her?

“I just might have created a monster,” He thought to himself.

Julia snuggled in deeper, breaking off his thoughts with the feel of her body next to his. She asked, “Are you okay?”

How the hell could he be okay? She had just brought home to him how stupid this whole thing really was. That not only could he not trust her because she was Walker’s sister, he couldn’t trust her because she was a woman. A very young woman, and one who might prove to be incredibly fickle as most young women were. He opened his mouth to answer her but found he had nothing to say.

Julia said, “The whole thing last night, you know with the fake cops? Nobody got hurt did they? You didn’t get hurt, did you?”

No he hadn’t gotten hurt. He said, “The guys who were posing as narcs screwed up long before they ever hit the street. It didn’t hurt that we were already warned about it happening and had a chance to warn all of the people they were going after either. Thank you for that.”

Julia’s fingers rested against his hip, sending little flares of heat into his skin. “Oh, don’t worry about it. We made a bargain right?”

Ace gave her a long and speculative look. Was that why she was in bed with him right then? Did she view her virginity as nothing more than a bargaining chip? She had to have known that Pete found it valuable. Then again, he was a psychopath with some real issues with women. Ace had no idea what kind of mindset a psychopath like Pete would get himself into once he knew the woman that he wanted the most was no longer the virgin that Pete had set so much store in. What Ace did know was that her losing her virginity to anyone would’ve put that deal between Pete and Walker into jeopardy. Julia losing her virginity to him meant that Pete would never touch her.

All of that aside, he didn’t want this to just be a bargain between them. Ace wanted to protect Julia for reasons that had nothing to do with that bargain. That bothered him, and he knew he needed to put some space between the two of them as fast as possible.

He stood and began gathering his clothes. Julia sat up, the sheets tangling around her lean body. She made a lovely picture but he deliberately looked away from her.

Julia asked, “do you have to leave?”

Ace said, “Yes, I do. I have a lot to do. I have an entire crew to run. I can’t stay here with you all day.”

He knew his terse answers felt cruel. He wanted to reassure her that he was not being unkind but given that he could not trust her and he certainly couldn’t seem to trust himself with her, he stayed silent and finished dressing.

As he made his way to the door he added, “The man who lives in the big house up front is delivering you groceries. He should be here with them at any minute in fact. Stay inside and stay out of sight. I don’t think I need to tell you that Walker knows by now that someone ratted out his plan. You did not go home so he would have to be a complete idiot not to know was you.”

Julia’s already pale skin turned an even whiter shade. She said, “But I don’t even have anything to wear. The clothes that I wore yesterday are dirty.”

Ace paused on his way out of the door. “I will make sure you get some clothes today.”

Julia asked, “When are you coming back?”

Ace couldn’t look at her. He knew that if he did he’d be right back in that bed with her, making love to her and forgetting about everything and everyone else. He said, “I’m not sure because I have a lot to take care of right now. I will be back. You will be safe. I know you’re frightened, and I’m sorry that I can’t stay. But I can’t.”

He went out the door and closed it behind himself. As he began to back his bike out of the driveway the door that sat on the side of the house opened and the same large man that had looked out the night before came outside, holding up a hand.

Ace paused. “How are you Randy?”

Randy’s eyes narrowed a little bit as he looked back at the guesthouse. “Good. I sent Jenny to the store for some groceries. She will be back any second. Anything else you need for her?”

Ace slung a leg over the bike. “Yeah have Jenny pick her up some clothes would you? And keep a good eye on her, as much as I want to trust her I really don’t.”

Randy asked, “How could you possibly trust her given who she is?”

Ace said, “Get out of my head man. I was just asking myself that very same question.”

Randy shrugged. “I will call Jenny right now and tell her to pick up some clothes. She looked to be about Jenny’s size, at least from the glimpse I got of her when you rolled past last night.”

Ace said, “No, I think she’s a little bit thinner and a few inches taller than Jenny.”

Randy said, “Well, Jenny can figure that out.”

Ace nodded. His eyes went back to the guesthouse. The blinds were still tightly drawn but he had a feeling that Julia was inside watching him. He cranked up the bike and rode off, heading back toward Greenpoint and the business that he had to attend to that day.

Chapter 9

Julia had indeed been looking out at Ace. She was anxious and now that the sex was over she was also slightly bored. She knew she should not feel that way, especially considering the circumstances but she did.

Ever since she had turned sixteen and had been able to get regular jobs as well as modeling jobs her days had been packed full. Between work and school she had never had very much time on her hands to just do nothing.

She knew that Ace was right. She had not gone home the night before and Walker had to know that someone had let Ace and his crew and on Walker’s plan. Walker was not stupid, and a new set of worries came to her as she made her way into the bathroom and took a fast shower.

When she emerged, clean and wrapped in a towel, it was to see a woman standing in the kitchen. A short, sharp scream burst from her mouth before Julia could stop it. The woman turned around and gave her a wide, sunny smile.

The woman said, “I’m so sorry. My name’s Jenny. I live in the house in front of this one. Ace had me pick you up some clothes. I had to just guess at the sizes, sorry. I think they will fit though.”

Julia clutched the towel tightly around herself. Gratitude filled her. Ace had had someone to get her clothes? That was very kind of him and she was happy to hear that she no longer had to wear the same clothes that she had worn the day before. “Oh I’m sure they’ll be great, thank you so much for doing that for me.”

“Oh, no worries.” Jenny went back to lifting things out of the grocery bags on the counter. “I didn’t know what you liked so I tried to buy things that were sort of everyday items.”

Julia spotted a shopping bag from a discount retailer on the sofa. She went to it and began to lift the clothes out. She found three T-shirts in various colors, several pairs of jeans, underwear, a bra that looked to be a reasonable fit, and some comfortable looking sneakers. Nothing that she would’ve chosen for herself, of course. That she would not have chosen them for herself did not lessen her gratitude.

She hastily took out an outfit for the day and dashed back into the bathroom to dress. When she emerged that time it was to find Jenny making coffee and munching on a delicious looking Danish.

Jenny waved a hand at the counter. “I got several of these. You’re going to have to forgive me for taking one, my husband isn’t allowed to have sugar anymore so I have to eat it when he’s not around.”

Julia went to the box and helped herself to a large and dense pastry filled with a decadent amount of creamy cheesy filling. “Take as many as you want, you bought them.”

The two women poured coffee and took seats on the sofa. Jenny finished her pastry without another word. After the last bite was gone she took a large sip of coffee, Acecleared her throat, and said, “So, you’re our new guest.”

Julia gave her a questioning look. Was it common for Ace to bring women there and to ask Jenny and her husband to take care of them? That was probably not the question she should ask and she knew it, if that was the case she didn’t want to know.

Instead Julia said, “Have you lived here long?”

The other woman nodded. “Yes, about six years now.”

Julia realized she had nothing else to say and she sat there feeling slightly uncomfortable she had the uneasy feeling that Jenny was checking her out, trying to find something out about her without coming right out and asking questions. The silence spun out. Julia had a terrible urge to simply speak, to say something just to break that silence but she remained quiet because she had long since learned not to speak.

Walker often put her in a literal corner, crossed his arms, and said nothing. When she had been much younger Julia had broken under that treatment. She would babble out all sorts of things just to fill the silence. It took her years to understand that that was his intention the entire time. And everything that she said was just one more thing that he could use against her.

Jenny finally stood. She said, “I should get back to the house. It’s nice to meet you. I brought along a lot of fresh produce from the little stand down the street. If there’s anything I didn’t get that you would like to just let me know.”

Julia stood as well. She wrapped her arms around her body, feeling like she had just missed the opportunity to make a friend. Inwardly she was cursing herself for that. A sense of defeat filled her. Walker’s cruelty to her over the years had left her unable to trust anyone. The few friends that she had when she first moved in with Walker had been lost to her. She had been so ashamed of her new circumstances and so afraid that someone would see how he treated her that she had stopped trying to make friends.

All of the people that she met after moving in with Walker and the rest of her family seem to fall into two categories; those who were terrified of the crew and wanted nothing to do with them, and those people who only wanted to be her friend because her brother was Walker.

Julia said, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do just sit here and… Well, it’s just that I’m sort of out of everything that I know and I’m a little bit confused today.”

Jenny gave her a sunny smile. “Oh I’m sure. It’s okay, I was just happy to be able to sit here and munch out on my Danish. I’ll come holler at you later if you like.”

Relief filled Jenny. “I’d like that, thank you very much.”

Jenny departed. Julia went back into the kitchen to see what all Jenny had brought. There was indeed plenty of fresh produce for salads or even just for steaming. There were ripe bananas, beautiful apples, and some plump grapes. There were also various boxes on the shelves and a rotisserie chicken as well as a very nice cut of steak in the refrigerator.

Julia helped herself to an apple and another cup of coffee, thanking the heavens that Jenny had bought both regular milk and cream. Now that Jenny was gone she found herself at even more of a loss. What was she supposed to do all day? She really had no idea at all.

Julia went to her purse and fished out her phone. She didn’t have classes that day but she needed something to do so she tapped the screen, meaning to open a page that would let her read up on one of the current topics she was studying. Her fingers paused and her mouth dropped open as she saw that she had dozens of unread text messages as well as a dozen missed calls.

Oh my God! I turned the ringer and sound off yesterday while I was in the store and forgot to turn it back on! Her heart sank all the way to her stomach as she realized that all of the messages were from Walker. Her hands shook so violently that she could barely get the text messages up. She staggered backward and the back of her knees hit the sofa and she sat down heavily.

Julia’s eyes went down the column of texts while her heart hammered so hard in her chest that she was afraid, truly afraid, that she would have a massive heart attack at any given moment.

The text messages were vile. Walker was clearly pissed off.

Where the fuck are you? You better be dead. You were supposed to be here two hours ago. If I find out that you are out screwing around I will kill you. You know who you belong to.

The messages just got worse from there. Tears dripped off Julia’s face as she read them. She had known something was wrong when she left yesterday, there was just something about the way that Pete had leered at her as she had gone out the door. Looking at the text messages it became very clear to her that Walker and Pete had finally come to some kind of agreement, and that her agreement had been deemed unnecessary.

The text messages from that morning were worse. Walker was furious that his little plan to intimidate the street leveled drug dealers in Ace’s territory had not gone well. Ace had been right, Walker knew damn well that somebody had betrayed him. None of the text messages from Walker came right out and said that Walker thought she had done it. Walker didn’t have to come right out and say he thought she had done it for her to know that she was in a whole lot of danger and trouble.

Those thoughts had barely crossed her mind when she heard some odd flat reports coming from outside. A frown wrinkled her forehead as she turned toward the window that looked up through the driveway toward the house in front. Those dull cracking sounds came again. Julia’s stomach dropped as she realized exactly what those sounds were.

Gunshots.

Terrified and scrambling she grabbed her purse and headed for the small bathroom. There was a window there, a very small one that led into the alley behind the house. It was her only chance and Julia knew it.

The door rattled and shook. She could hear voices now, and they were voices that she recognized. Her blood raced through her veins as she ran for the bathroom door then closed it tightly behind her as quietly as possible.

How had they found her? She managed to pry the window open and then start to crawl out of it. She got all the way outside before she heard a shout. She turned her head to the right to see Pete racing toward her with a drawn gun in one fist.

Too afraid to scream Julia hurled herself over the short fence. She ran up the alley, suddenly grateful for the plain and unadorned shoes that Jenny had bought her. Jenny! Had she been killed? Julia was terribly afraid that she had been.

She ran on, her purse banging into her hip and her phone in her hand. She could hear the sound of bikes cranking up and a car whizzed past her, sliding up along the curb and onto the sidewalk that she was now racing down. Two guys from her brother’s crew jumped out and raced towards her, clearly meaning to intercept and capture her.

Julia threw the phone at one of them as hard as she could.

The phone spun through the air and she felt a wild satisfaction as it connected solidly with her pursuer’s face. The edge of the phone hit him squarely between his eyes right at the bridge of his nose. He let out a long howl of misery and she managed to grab a large and very full trashcan and tip it over into the path of the second man, slowing him down somewhat.

Julia ran onward. She could hear Walker and Pete shouting as she jumped fences and crossed streets, her eyes scanning everything in an attempt to find a safe space. She saw nowhere that she could hide and terror kept her running despite the burning stitch that had flared into life on the right side of her body.

There was nowhere to go and she knew it. Walker would find her and as soon as he did he was going to kill her. That thought just made her run faster. Everything that Walker had ever done to her, surged up in her mind. All of his cruelties, both large and small, came floating back up into her memories.

With those memories came hatred. That hatred was so huge, so dark and vicious that it blotted out the fear that threatened to freeze her into place. That hatred gave her the will to keep going even though her body screamed at her brain that it was done, that she had nothing left in the tank.

Her breath hissed in and out of her burning throat. Her eyes stung and watered as sweat poured down her face. The intense heat and humidity baking down from the sky and up from the sidewalks threatened to send her toppling, and even though Julia knew deep in her soul that there was no way that she could out run Walker and his crew, that he would catch her, that the heat and her own body would eventually betray her and send her crashing to the ground, she refused to give up. She would run until there was not a single breath left in her.

The sound of a motorcycle, a loud angry throb that beat the air, filled her ears with its sound and her heart with utter despair. The bike came hurtling toward her and one look at the rider on the back of that raging chrome beast sent long shudders through her entire body.

Ace rode right up beside her but did not slow down. He held one hand out and Julia grabbed for it. Ace’s skill was so great that he managed to swing her off the ground and onto the bike behind him with one hand and in one long smooth motion.

Julia’s right leg kicked up high as her legs and feet left the ground. That leg went over the bike and she settled in behind him, her face going into his jacket and her arms going around his waist.

She had been terrified of riding on the back of a motorcycle just the night before. She had been stiff and unresponsive as he had taken them to the little house she had just fled from. She was no longer afraid of the bike or of the man riding it. He and his bike were the only things standing between her and certain death.

Julia took her cues from Ace’s body. When he leaned she leaned with him. When he moved forward she moved forward. It came to her as he rode hell-bent for leather that riding that bike with him was a whole lot like making love with him. Even the vibrations coming up from below her, those vibrations that stroked her most sensitive areas and made her highly aware of them despite everything that was happening at that moment, were highly sexually charged.

She looked back, her eyes widening as she saw Walker and Pete and the other guys from the crew following behind them in the car. Horrified and sick from her long run through the heat and the fear that had propelled her all Julia could do was shout, “They are right behind us!”

Ace jumped the curb, hit the gas and roared into a small business section that featured block after block of restaurants, schools, and stores. He zoomed down an alley and came out on the other side then passed a blot of traffic. Julia looked back again. The car was still coming though not as close as it had been before.

Ace went down another road and Julia hung on, clinging to him for dear life. Ace stopped the bike. He pointed to a doorway, “Go through there. Go all the way to the fourth floor and up onto the rooftop.”

She stared at him. “What?”

Ace goosed the bike forward. “I said go God dammit!”

Julia went. She ran through the door to find herself faced with a tall staircase. There were doors on all sides and she passed them as she raced up the stairs. The stitch in her side grew with every step and by the time she reached the third floor her energy was completely gone. She staggered and fell, rolling several feet down before crashing onto a hard landing that would have sent her body tumbling down the next flight if she had not managed to catch on to one of the posts of the staircase.

She made it to her feet and started upward again. Her breath sobbed in and out of her mouth. She could barely walk, and bruises were forming all over her skin. Pain lacerated through her side and her left foot. She kept going, not just because she was afraid but because Ace had told her to. She had to trust that he had a plan.

On the fourth floor she found exactly two doors. One was locked and had a number written on it. The other was unlocked but when she opened it all she found was a large but empty apartment.

Sobbing and desperate Julia went back out into the hallway, turning from one direction to the other until she finally spotted a very narrow and practically invisible doorway set into a series of panels along the wall. She opened the door to find a steep spiral stairway.

She climbed that staircase slowly barely able to drag herself upward. Sunlight hit her face and she stumbled along the rooftop, crying and trying to tamp down her fear and her pain long enough to think.

She huddled in a small patch of shade, dragging long heated gulps of air into her lungs. She got her bearings finally and as she sat there with her legs spread in front of her she began to hear the sounds coming from below. When she tried to stand her foot gave way and she tumbled back to the rooftop.

Her foot was broken, there was no other way around it. Julia did not know if she had broken it during her run or during the fall. What she did know was that the adrenaline had finally worn off and now she was feeling every inch of agony shooting through that foot.

She hopped to the tall wall that ran around the perimeter of the roof and gazed downward. What she saw made her hands fly to her mouth to keep a scream back.

The crew that Ace ran, Brooklyn’s Sons, were down there dragging Walker, Pete, and the other two from the car. Julia felt a wild thrill shoot down her spine. She hoped, with everything in her being she hoped, that they would kill Walker.

Then the innocence that she had never lost, the sweetness that Walker had never been able to beat out of her, surfaced. She was not a killer and she didn’t want anyone to die, not even Walker.

They were all fighting down there, it was a full blown street brawl. Horrified and yet unable to do anything because of her injury, Julia stood there watching it go down.

Chapter 10

Ace had been waiting years for this opportunity. He wanted nothing more than to beat Walker into a bloody mess. Walker had just come into his territory, and he had just fired shots at Randy and Jenny.

Randy was a former Navy SEAL. Taking him down was not something Walker was capable of. Randy had pushed Jenny into a room and exchanged gunfire with the other men. He had hoped to lay down enough cover fire to get to Julia but that hadn’t happened. He had managed to slow them down so that she got a good running head start. He also managed to call Ace, who had been less than half a mile away.

Now that Ace knew that Julia was safe, well out of reach on the rooftop of the clubhouse, he was no longer worried. Now he was just pissed off.

Walker stalked closer. Pete and his other men were already engaged with Aces crew. It was just Ace and Walker facing each other now.

Walker sneered, “You think I don’t know that you’ve already turned her into a little whore?”

Ace gave him a nasty smile. “Don’t talk about her like that.”

Walker got a little closer, but not close enough. Ace was biding his time, knowing that Walker had more strength but a lot less speed and stamina. Ace also knew that it took more energy to throw a punch that missed then it took to throw a punch that landed. He intended for all of his punches to land, and write in Walker’s face and gut.

Walker asked, “What do you think you’re going to do with her now that you have her? Huh? Do you think she has a single loyal bone in her entire body? Her mother was a traitor. She’s a traitor. How long do you think it will be before she betrays you?”

Ace knew exactly what Walker was doing. Everything Walker was saying was true. Julia’s mother had run out on the man she had sworn to ride or die for. Julia had turned her back on blood. Walker was hoping to use those truths to plant doubt in Ace’s mind and heart.

The truth was Ace had no idea at all if he could trust Julia. What he did know was that if Walker had not treated her the way that he had she would not have turned her back on him. He did not know what had happened between Julia’s mother in Walker’s father but considering that Walker’s father was far more violent than his son he could guess.

Ace said, “That’s where you’re getting this all wrong. This is not about her. This is about a debt you owe my family. This is about you coming into my territory, riding into my borough, and firing at somebody in my family.”

Walker put his hands up. All around him men were fighting. Pete was using his gun, which must have been empty of bullets by then, as a weapon but it wasn’t doing him much good. There were too many of Ace’s crew to face down.

Walker said, “Well you just bring it on then.”

Ace said, “Thought you’d never ask.”

He charged in, fists flying. All the hatred and rage he had ever felt for Walker came spilling over. Ace let his fist connect with Walker’s jaw while he hoisted one foot upward into Walker’s crotch.

Walker was used to street fighting. He didn’t even go down. Instead he began hitting back. Ace ducked the blows easily enough. The impact of his knuckles on Walker’s flesh sent waves of pain spiraling down his arm but he just kept hitting.

Blood flowed. Both men had a score to settle. For Ace it was about Margo and the death she had not been able to escape thanks to Walker first getting her hooked on heroin and then using her as a guinea pig for a batch that he had not been sure of in the first place.

Walker had his own score to settle. Ace had just cost him a connection that could have made him the king of the entire city. He would have had the kind of money that could have squashed the cruise in every other borough. Ace had taken away all of Walker’s leverage.

Asphalt met Ace’s hands and knees. His palms stung and his jeans shredded away from his kneecap. Walker’s foot connected solidly with his ribs, threatening to break them. Ace reached out one hand and grabbed the blade that he saw glittering from that boot.

Walker realized his mistake too late to stop it. Ace drove the blade deep into Walker’s calf. Walker let out a high-pitched scream and staggered backwards, the blade still buried in his flesh.

Ace made it back to his feet. Someone tossed him a very long and heavy piece of steel and he advanced on Walker with it in one hand. Before he could crush Walker’s skull with the steel Pete and the other two men, all bloodied and pulped, grabbed Walker and rushed back to the car.

Ace held up one hand as his crew tried to rush the car. It would’ve been way too easy to kill them but the truth was the fight had already drawn more attention than they could afford. His eyes scanned the neighboring buildings. Blinds that had been opened moments before were closed. Stoops that had held people were now deserted. There were no sirens to be heard but that did not mean much. It was the digital age, and people tended to take a video and put it on the web rather than call the cops when it came to street brawls. Ace would much rather they just called the cops. Lying to a cop was easy. Lying to a judge when there was video that had gone viral was a whole other thing.

They staggered into the clubhouse. Ace, battered and weary, climbed the stairs slowly. He made it up onto the roof to find Julia standing near the wall with both hands pressed against her mouth and her face soaked with tears.

She hobbled toward him and that slow and uneven gate of hers told him that she’d been harmed. He caught her in his arms and asked, “Are you okay?”

She sobbed out, “No! No I am not okay. I did this! I brought this to you! This is my fault!”

Ace shook his head. His hands rested on her shoulders. Blood streamed down his face from a small wound on his scalp. He wiped it away with his shoulder. He said, “No, it isn’t. This has been coming for years.”

She gave him a long, intense look. “For you, this is over Margo isn’t it?”

Ace said, “What else would this be over?”

The expression on her face almost imploded his heart. She wiped her eyes and nodded. “What else?”

Ace knew then that he had to let her go. He didn’t want to. He wanted to keep her forever. He wanted her to be in his life and to be his old lady. He wanted her to ride on the back of his bike and be in his bed every single day and night for the rest of his entire life. There was just something about Julia, a sweet and un-ending innocence that made him want to build a wall around her around himself to keep the rest of the world out forever.

And that was why he had to send her away. If he didn’t that innocence of hers would die a terrible and unfair death.

That was not the only reason either. There were so many reasons why he needed to send her away. He couldn’t trust her. He couldn’t trust himself with her. He didn’t have anything to give her but more of the same life that she was running away from. He was over twenty years older than her. It would never work out.

She deserved better, far better, than him.

Chapter 11

Julia refused to look back. The taxi had picked her up at the front entrance of the hospital and had driven her all the way to LaGuardia Airport. There was a mobile boarding pass on the cell phone that Ace had procured for her. There was twenty thousand dollars hidden in various pieces of the cheap luggage that Randy had picked up on the way to the hospital.

She had clothes and money and a destination. What she didn’t have, was Ace. He had walked away from her on that rooftop, calling for a woman who was married to one of his higher ranking crewmembers.

That woman had helped Julia down off the roof and into the car that Randy had shown up in. Jack had told her that she would be leaving the city immediately. Julia knew that as soon as she got to her destination she would have to attempt to find a way to get herself back into design school.

Nobody, except Randy, knew where she would be going. Walker’s crew could not get to Randy because he and Jenny were also leaving the city. They were heading in the opposite direction. And the flight that Julia was on would only lead her to a connection. She was flying into Atlanta what she did after that was up to her.

Julia was not just out of sorts and upset due to the pain from her broken foot she was out of sorts and upset due to the pain of her broken heart. Her heart was literally broken. She knew it shouldn’t be. She barely knew Ace. All she really knew of him was that he was her brother’s enemy and that he had taken her virginity and protected her and made her feel safe and sheltered and cherished just to drop her like a lead balloon.

She still hated Walker. She always would. But now she had a new hate in her heart. Now she hated Ace too.

LaGuardia was packed. An attendant got her wheelchair and helped her get through security then to her gate. As Julia sat at the gate she made herself one solemn vow. Nobody would ever own her heart ever again and she would never ever trust a man on a bike as long as she lived.

Chapter 12

Jack leaned against one wall, watching as Ace bandaged his bloody knuckles. Ace looked over at Jack’s swollen and battered face.

Ace asked, “how you doing?”

Jack laughed. “I have had better days.”

Ace looked in the mirror. “Yeah, me too.”

Jack said, “If you think sending that girl away is going to keep Walker off our shit you’re dead wrong.”

Ace watched blood swirled down the drain, crimson against the white porcelain. “I don’t think that at all.”

Jack asked, “Then why send her away?”

Ace said, “She’s no good to us anymore. Everything I needed from her, I already have. Pete’s not giving up his connection to Walker without her and without her virginity she’s useless to Pete.”

Jack whistled. “That’s cold man, even for you.”

Ace said, “Yeah. That’s me, cold as ice.”

Jack said, “I’m not so sure that girl didn’t get to you.”

Ace gave him a hard and baleful glare. “What the hell does that mean?”

Jack said, “Just what I said. You could have sent her home, let her deal with the fallout herself. You don’t usually cotton to traitors.”

Ace turned the taps off and looked down at his bandaged hands. His heart ached, as much as he would have liked to say it didn’t. He said, “I couldn’t let her get killed. I owed her. That night, the night Margo died, she called me. She was just a kid and she had no idea what she had just stepped into, all she knew was that there was a woman on the floor and she couldn’t call the cops. She found my number in Margo’s pocket and called me, asked me to come get her and get her some help. That took guts, and a lot of them.”

Jack’s eyes went wide. “I always wondered how she could have gotten back here in the shape she was in.”

Ace braced his hands on the sink. He couldn’t look at his own reflection. His shoulders slumped. “I kept my eye on her over the years,” he admitted. “I owed her and now we’re even. So that’s why I sent her off the way I did.”

It was a lie. He had sent her away because he was not good enough for her, and he knew it. Julia deserved so much better than a dirt bag biker who would likely end up in prison for the rest of his life, or dead on a street somewhere. Ride or die was exactly what they did, and when it came down to it, most of them died.

Julia was so young, and so innocent and so beautiful. She should be with someone who could promise her forever. Someone her own age. Someone who wouldn’t end with a bullet in their heart or wiped out along a street.

For the first time in his life Ace found himself thinking of all the things he had done with some real shame. He was a badass, and he had grown up hard and fast. The things he had done to get to where he was had seemed like just things he had to do, and he had never felt guilt or shame before but he did just then. That pissed him off. This was his life. He had chosen it because he wanted it. This was what he had always wanted, to be at the head of a crew and to be respected, to have money in his pockets and his pick of women.

But there was only one woman that he wanted right then.

He wanted Julia, and she was out of his league all the way around.

Bert appeared, his face creased with concern. “Ace, we got trouble.”

That was starting to be a sentence that Ace truly hated hearing. “Oh yeah?”

“They’re riding right for us. They’re threatening to burn the entire borough to the ground if we don’t give the girl back.”

Ace snorted. “She’s long gone. They could burn the city and it wouldn’t get her back.”

Bert frowned. “We know that but they don’t. It’s war Ace.”

Ace looked into the mirror. His lips thinned. He said, “It’s been coming for a long time. You know it has been. Walker’s never been content to keep his territory and let us keep ours. If it wasn’t this it would be something else. Get the hood ready. You know it is about to get ugly and we can’t afford to have the neighbors killed in our dispute.”

Bert nodded. He turned to leave and then turned back. “Uh, Ace?”

“Yeah?”

Bert fiddled with the butt of the gun sticking up from his hip pocket. “You’re wrong.”

Ace’s brows drew together. “The hell I am. This war was started the minute Walker climbed on that bike and took the lead spot in his crew.”

Bert grinned. “No, not about that. We all know that. I mean about that girl being long gone. She’s not gone. She’s right downstairs and she says she ain’t leaving. She’s got some sand, I’ll give her that.”

Ace’s mouth dropped open. “Come again?”

Bert chuckled and walked out. Jack lifted his eyebrows and said, “Looks like you might have to try sending her away again then, huh?”

Ace sent a glower his way. He pushed his way out fo the bathroom and headed down the stairs. The foyer was empty but he could hear guys moving around in the apartments. The air was charged with an electric tension and he felt his heart tick up a few extra beats as he paused on the second floor landing to look down at Julia.

She stood there, balanced on the crutches. Her suitcase was beside her. Her eyes lifted to his and his first instinct was to smile and then to run right down those stairs and grab her and hold on tight.

Instead he took the steps slowly. He asked, “What are you doing?”

She lifted her head. “I’m standing here.”

“You shouldn’t be.”

“You’re right. I keep wanting to put weight on this foot and I’m not supposed to.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Her eyes were steady. “I know what you meant.”

He shook his head. “Goddammit Julia, there’s an out and out war about to kick off here. You could get killed.”

She shifted a little but her eyes didn’t drop away from his. “So could you.”

His jaw clenched. “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“Ditto.”

Goddamn her! The girl was infuriating and impossible and he wanted to turn her right over his knee and spank her lush and ripe bottom until she learned to do as she was told. He descended the stairs again, his dick stiffening at that thought of her across his knees and his hope and fear growing with each step.

“Julia,” he began but she cut him off. “Ace, listen. I don’t know what’s happening between us, I don’t. I just know I want to see where it goes. I am not leaving you, not even if it means I have to be in the midst of a war with my brother. Half-brother. I don’t…I know my walking away from their and giving you information makes me a traitor. Not just to him. I know that makes people wonder if they can trust me. I get it. I do. But I walked on him because he is a terrible person and just because he kept me prisoner does not mean I owe him my loyalty. If anything his holding me prisoner like that stripped away whatever need for loyalty to him I might have had. I won’t betray you. Ever. Let me stay. Well, I am staying so really what I am saying here is go ahead and try to make me leave.”

He shot a look around the foyer. He spoke in a low voice. “I am way too old for you.”

“I’ll get older.’

“This isn’t the life for you.”

“I never said it was, but then again why can’t I have a life too? I mean, there are plenty of guys in the crews who have a family and a wife who does other stuff besides be someone’s old lady.”

God that was so true. He shook his head. “I can’t let you get hurt. I can’t let him hurt you.”

“He spent five years hurting me. You see? He already has hurt me, so there’s no way you can stop that.”

Frsutration set in. Every single reason he had to send her away was being shot down right out from under his feet. He studied her face for a minute. “You could change your mind.’

Her face didn’t change out of its obstinate expression. “So could you, but I am willing to take that chance and hope you never do.’

He wanted to hold her, to pull her in and keep her close. He wanted to love her and give her everything in the world.

He said, “We barely know each other.”

“Well then, we should probably spend as much time together as we can so we can get to know each other then, shouldn’t we?”

“You are the most stubborn…” He moved closer. Julia’s lips called to him. He intended to claim that mouth, to kiss her until he either lost his mind or she regained hers but before he could the glass in the front door shattered.

Chapter 13

Julia heard the breaking glass and ducked. Ace grabbed her and they went down on the floor together, rolling. His body covered hers as a hail of bullets poured in through those broken doors. The door beside them popped open. Screams echoed throughout the building and Ace stayed over her, telling her to go, pushing her and using his body as a shield as they scrambled into the apartment.

A tall man shouted something. More bullets hit, shattering the windows at the front of the apartment. They retreated. Ace hauled her along, one hand solidly on her shoulder. He grabbed a door, a thick and heavy thing. It opened with a heavy creak of hinges and the smell of a dank basement wafted up.

There were shouts and screams. Footsteps pounded down the stairs. The front door flew open and more gunfire echoed as did more screams. The sound of bikes roaring and clashing their gears out on the street rose higher, adding to the din.

Women appeared. Ace shouted at two of them to help Julia and then he was gone. One woman grabbed kids and herded them down the stairs. More women appeared and several of them carried guns and wore grim expressions.

The woman who had grabbed Julia shouted, “Get down the stairs!”

“I can’t leave Ace!” Julia’s scream held desperation.

The woman gave her a hard stare. “You can’t help him with a bad leg. You’ll just get in the way.”

Julian went down the stairs, leaning heavly on the other woman and praying. Terror and exhaustion nagged at her.

The door swung shut and the woman who had herded the kids down the stairs shot a bolt home. They raced into a small room with an outer door. The woman said, “We may have to go out. If we do, shoot anyone who isn’t one of us.”

She shoved a gun at Julia. Julia stared at the hunk of metal in her hands, recoiling from the thing. The other women gathered the kids close and held them tightly. Julia clutched the gun and stared wildly around herself.

One of the woman looked at Julia, “You’re his sister, ain’t you?”

“Not by choice.”

The words held all the bitterness in her heart. “I’m sorry about all of this.”

The woman snorted. The kids huddled on a low sofa, not crying or speaking. The sound of gunfire had ceased but the sound of bikes roaring away was loud even where they were. The woman said, “This war’s been on the brink for years. Walker’s been after the borough for …shit. Forever. He wants the whole city and he doesn’t know how to stop.”

No, he didn’t. Julia licked her lips. “Why don’t the other crews in the other boroughs stand against him?”

The woman gave her a grim look. “Because so far he’s just attacking us. As long as he kept off their turf it wasn’t their prob;em.”

Julia looked down. “Why? I mean why has this been so close to happening for so long?”

The woman stared at her. “You really don’t know, do you?”

Julia shook her head. “Oh, wait. Margo, right?”

The woman snorted. “Margo hell. She’s just one more reason for Ace to hate Walker. This started long before that. Your mama, she was one of us. She was born and raised right here. Her dad was a Brooklyn Son. He was the leader of the crew, all up until he died and Ace took over."

All the air left Julia’s body. Little spots danced before her eyes. The world spun on its axis. “No.”

“Oh yeah. She got scooped by Walker’s dad, your gramps. He got her hooked on him and dope and then treated her like shit for years. She ran and he tried to get her back, he tried to burn us down then too but your gramps stepped in and made sure she and you were safe. When she died Walker took you, and there was nothing your gramps could do about it because he wasn’t listed as your mom’s dad on her birth certificate so the courts didn’t want to hear it. Walker only wanted you to get even with your gramps for killing his dad.”

Oh God. The world went gray. Julia’s body sagged and she took a seat on the sofa, tears streaming down her face. “Nobody ever told me that.”

“Of course they didn’t.” The woman stuck out a hand. “I’m Megan.’

“Julia.” Julia took her hand. She swallowed hard. “Did you know my mom?”

“We all did. She saved Ace’s life once, did you know that?”

Julia shook her head from side to side. “No.”

Megan nodded. “She did. She found him back when he was a snotty ass teenager trying to face down a street dealing pimp who had decided that his cousin was just what he needed in his stable. She hit that dude in the head with a bat and brought Ace and Margo here.”

Julia bent double. Sorrow filled her. Her mother had never told her that. Walker had never told her and Ace had never told her that either.

She wiped her eyes. A little hiccup of laughter came from her mouth. She said, “I guess that explains why I feel more at home here than I ever did at Walker’s.”

Megan smiled at her. “Girl if we don’t all die over this shit, I think you’ll do just fine.”

The other woman looked up. She said, “And there’s the cops. You all stay here. I got this.”

She went up the stairs and shut the door behind her. Julia looked at Megan, “Do you think they will be all right?”

Megan sighed. “You know what? I don’t know. Someone’s going to go to jail for this one. Walker really lost his mind this time. I can’t even believe that he did this. I mean shooting up a house in broad daylight? That’s bold as hell but more than that, it’s crazy. The cops are going to have to come down on them and us for this one. So I don’t know. I really don’t.”

The cops were the least of Julia’s worry. She was more afraid that Ace would die without her ever being able to tell him that she loved him. That she loved him with all her heart.

Come back to me, she prayed silently. Just come back to me please.

Chapter 14

The bikes raced through traffic. Sirens started. Cars tried to get out of the way but failed and the bikes went past them, the men on their backs as angry and determined as any of them could be.

Ace spotted Walker riding just ahead. He bent lower over the bike, relaxing his body and hitting the gas as they spun around a long series of curves. The world flashed past. His eyes spotted obstacles a few feet before he reached them and he rode hard, his body slicked with sweat and his shirt flapping in the wind.

The gun resting on his hip warmed under the sun and next to his body. His entire being was focused on catching Walker and ending this once and for all.

Walker took a sharp curve. The bike came dangerously close to eating the pavement but Walker got it under control just in time. Ace had to admire Walker’s skill even as he hoped the bastard would eat it, just ride himself right into Hell.

The other bikes had fallen away as his crew caught up to the men in Walker’s crew. They were in a long and mostly deserted stretch of industrial buildings whose businesses had closed years ago and nothing had ever come back in. Ace was no fool. He knew Walker had come that way for a reason. He had drawn him away from the residential and busier streets to a spot where there would be no witnesses.

Ace didn’t care. Live or die, it didn’t matter. What did matter was that if he was going to die that he took Walker with him. Walker’s need for vengeance would die with him. Ace thought as the bikes kept moving, dipping over a hill and then bouncing along a rutted two lane that led into a mass of buildings now haunted by burned out squatters and mental cases.

Walker spun his bike in a circle, kicking up dust and gravel. He kicked the stand below the bike and came off of it, his gun already drawn.

Ace came off his too. His gun was in his hand and he faced Walker, both of them breathing hard. The sun beat down, baking along Ace’s head and shoulders.

Walker grinned at him. “You topok my sister.”

“You took my cousin.”

“Yeah but you know what? That bitch was useless. All she was, was a skanky whore. You were the only one who didn’t see that. You were the only one who didn’t know just what a whore she was.’

The words would have hurt, if they ha dbene true. Ace didn’t drop the gun a single inch. His smile didn’t falter. “Yeah, I did. But you see, I know what made her into what she was and I didn’t blame her for being what she was. No matter what, she was the only family I ever had, the only person who ever knew what loyalty looked like until I got into the crew.”

Walker sneered. “Yeah the crew you never would have gotten into if it hadn’t been for that bitch Melinda. My sister’s sorry ass mother. You know what? I told my dad to let her be, to leave her alone and stop trying to mess with her. He wouldn’t hear it. Not him. He had to have her, had to. I don’t know what it was about her that made him so crazy for her. Hell I don’t know what it was about that bitch sister of mine that made Pete so crazy about her. What I do know is that she was the key to everything and you fucked her and you fucked me right out of what is rightfully mine in the process.’

“Rightfully yours?” The hammer on the gun went back. His thumb was steady as was his eye. “She’s a person, not a bag of dope or money. You don’t get to trade her off because it suits you.”

“The hell I don’t! She’s property, just like every single other person who ever comes to my crew. I own her and I own them and I will do whatever the fuck I want with them!”

“How’s that working for you?”

Walker twitched. Ace understood something then. Walker was beyond violent, he was completely fucking off his rocker. He was insane and the mental illness that was driving him would never let him stop until one of them was stone cold dead. That was fine by Ace, really it was, but he knew that if he was the one that died there Julia would never be safe.

Walker didn’t just want Julia as a form of revenge against the former leader of the Son’s. He didn’t just want her to trade off for his schemes. He wanted her because as far as he was concerned Julia was just a possession, one that he wanted and he was not going to let go of, no matter what.

Walker smiled. His finger twitched. The gun went off.

**

Julia stood in the middle of the room. The cops were gone. The kids had been hustled out the back and taken somewhere else. She was alone now, waiting for someone to come and tell her what was happening. She was more frightened than she had ever been in her entire life too. The woman who had taken the kids after talking to the cops had not told her what to do. Megan had vanished with her. What should she do?

Unable to stand it anymore Julia managed to crawl up the stairs, taking her vcructhes with her. The broken glass was everywhere. She eyed it and then went back into the apartment that held the door to the basement. She found a broom and dustpan and began to clean up the glass. She cleaned the foyer and the broken glass in the apartment. She hobbled outside to see more glass on the sidewalk and she cleaned that up too. Neighbors stared at her and she lowered her head, shame eating into her.

This had nothing to do with those people and it was not fair, that they had to handle it. Had anyone who was not in the club hurt? She managed to get the full dustpan to a set of trash cans and dump it then she swept more glass off the sidewalk, tears threatening. She knew it was probably stupid, being outside like that, but she was at a total loss as to what else she could do just then.

A cop car pulled to the curb and she stared it, wordless as two uniformed men got out and headed toward her.