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Lies and Illusions (Heaven's Rejects MC Book 4) by Avelyn Paige (26)

The moment that bastard pulls her from the car, and he rips that hood off her, I fucking lose. Her face is barely recognizable from the swelling along the right side of her jaw. Both of her eyes are black as the damn night. The only thing left untouched on her face was her nose. How he hadn’t broken that in the process I will never know.

Raze warns me to back down, and every fucking fiber in my body wants to tell him to go fuck himself. She’s hurt. How can I stand here watching him toss her around like a goddamn rag doll? My heart is beating so hard that it’s a wonder that I haven’t had an aneurism or a heart attack

I vow that for every mark on her body, he will receive the same thing. A cut for a cut. Gio Zezza would not leave this place alive, if I had anything to do with it.

Then he caught on. Gio takes one look at our other version of Ginny, and realizes the deception. We knew going into this that we couldn’t give him Ginny. Not a fucking chance, but we had to give him something. We turned to our club girls, asking for their help. Not demanding. This was a dangerous plan. It came with its own risks and that was something we couldn’t just blindly order one of the girls to do. Misty volunteered. Her build was close enough to Ginny’s. Add in a little hair dye, and you have a good enough lookalike from afar. We instructed her to keep her face down, and to not say a word. She followed every rule that we gave her to a tee, but it wasn’t enough.

We had tried and failed.

But I wouldn’t.

This was not how her story was going to end.

The shot that stops my heart rings out. I watch in horror as she and Gio fall to the ground. And then it happens. Police cars come flying in the parking lot followed by dozens of men in bullet proof vests, guns drawn. They circle us and The Zezza’s. The look on their faces tells me all I need to know.

Game fucking over, Gio.

That is if he is still alive.

Good thing I had negotiated a dead or alive clause.

A chopper skims over the top of the clubhouse, kicking up dust all over the parking lot. The air off of its blades, whips through us like a damn tornado. Every pair of eyes are wide in shock, except for mine. Plan B just arrived with the goddamn Calvary. Just in time.

The plume of dust from the chopper blocks Presley and Misty from my view, except for the outline of bodies dotting the ground.

Please don’t let it be her form lying on the ground. Not after all of this.

I start for her, but a swarm of FBI agents surround us. One horse collars me, dragging me down to the ground. I fight against his grip.

“Get off of me. I have to see if she’s okay!”

He shoves his knee against the back of my head, pinning me to the ground. My chest heaves, as I still try to fight. The agent puts even more pressure on me, and I know I’m trapped.

“Get on the ground,” they all scream at us. Raze looks back down at me, knowing what I have done. My brothers take to their bellies in the dirt with their hands on the back of their heads. The armed agents check us one by one for weapons roughly. They find nothing. Just like in the clubhouse. I had made sure of that. “Woah. Easy killer,” I tell the agent frisking me. She must have liked what she found because I’m pretty sure she owes me dinner, after where her hand was just searching. I’d give her a solid B plus for enthusiasm, if I was grading her frisking performance.

Raze rotates his head toward me.

“This you?” he asks. The agent searching him presses his head into the dirt, causing him to growl back.

“Yeah,” I admit to him, as the officers move down the line. “Plan B in case shit went south.”

“This going to work out in our favor?”

“It should.”

“Explain yourself.”

I exhale, and lay it all out for him.

“I knew we were outnumbered. So I did the one thing that no one would ever expect, I called the FBI. They wanted The Zezza’s, and I knew exactly where they would be. It was a dark horse long shot to protect as many of us as I could.”

“You protected us.”

“Yes. In exchange for them,” I say, while I nod towards them. “They wanted Gio, and I gave him up to keep us safe. The club. Ginny. Presley. All of you.”

He’s angry. Just like I thought he would be. I had defied his orders and gone rogue. But that decision just saved our lives. I just had to hope that when the dust literally settled, that Presley was still there.

The clubhouse door kicks open behind us as an officer drags Ratchet out. He looks up noticing the chopper hovering above, and his eyes immediately find me.

“What did you do, asshole?” he calls out, as they shove him down.

“What I had to do,” I answer.

The blades of the chopper echo off the mountains behind us, drowning out most of the sounds from the other side where Presley and The Zezza’s lie.

“Officer,” I yell. “The women. Are they okay?”

No one of them fucking moves. Presley and Misty aren’t who they’re after. That’s not the deal that I made. We’re all after thoughts, until they secure who they came for.

The sound of the chopper above starts to gets quieter, as it hovers away from the clubhouse. I watch as it lands in an open section of our property, kicking up more dust as it lands. Two men exit in the distance, walking towards the scene in front of us. They look over at us, before diverting their attention to The Zezza’s.

My gaze moves instantly to the spot where Presley should be, as the dust begins to settle.

I will sell all my comic books and action figures, if she’s there. I make promise after promise to the man upstairs, hoping that he’s listening. I would give up everything I own to just see her breathing.

The air finally clears enough. Misty sits slumped over by an agent who is talking to her. Another agent kneels on the ground next to a too still Presley.

“I’m sorry to do this, dude, but you need to get your ass off of me.” I twist my body, rolling the agent off of me and releasing his hold on my neck. I’m on my feet in a few short seconds. I scrabble and skid trying to get to her. Ignoring the fact that half a dozen guns and men are chasing after me. I skid, as I get close enough and slide in next to her body. The agents near her draw their weapons on me, screaming at me to get down. They can shoot me for all I care. It won’t stop me from checking on her.

“Let him be,” a voice orders the agent.

“Presley,” I yell grabbing for her. Her body is limp, as I roll her over onto her back in my lap. The damage to her body is much worse close up. I rake her body, looking for wounds from the shot, but find none. She wasn’t hit. “Baby, please wake up.” Her lashes flutter.

“That’s it. Come back to me,” I beg. I pull her upper body into a deep embrace, and I cry like a bitch against her shoulder. It’s when I feel her hand splaying across my back that I realize that she’s awake.

“V?” she whispers in a hoarse voice.

“It’s me, Presley. It’s me.”

She pulls me in as tight as she can, sobbing.

She’s okay and in my arms again. I fucking did it.

For one fleeting second, I look to where Gio lies with a bullet wound right in the middle of his forehead thanks to Ratchet’s crack shot from one of the hidden rooms. You would have had to know this entire clubhouse from floor to ceiling to spot the false wall, where he sat armed and ready for the right moment to take the shot. May he rot in fucking hell.

Presley shakes, as she pulls away from me. She’s weak.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” I cry.

“Sssh,” she hushes me. “I’m okay.”

I sit there in the center of everything just holding her. Not caring about anything else, but the fact that she’s breathing. The time passes slowly around us. It’s like watching a video in slow motion. Men move around us in handcuffs, as The Zezza’s are systemically rounded up, and shoved into the vans that arrived sometime after the raid began.

Nothing in this moment is more important than the woman in my arms. She is the moon to my stars. The Khalessi to my Khal. I could name about a million other pop culture couple references, but none of them would compare to this moment. It’s just the two of us in a firestorm of guns, villains, and heroes holding onto each other for dear life. It’s the perfect ending to a sordid and dangerous tale.

Well, until it isn’t.

The agents gave me my time with Presley, but that’s coming to an end. I spy them closing in on me, and I know my freedom is coming to an end. “Whatever happens,” I whisper to her. “Know that I love you.” My lips touch hers for the first time in days, before the agents rip me away from her.

I don’t even struggle as they do.

“Wait!” she screams. “Where are you going with him? You can’t do this!”

She tries to push to her feet, but she’s too weak to fight.

“Just remember what I told you,” I utter, as they continue to drag me away.

The agents don’t stop, and neither does Presley’s protests for them to stop. I see my brothers now standing with agents all around them. One of the men who exited the chopper stands near Raze, as the agents deposit me in front of him.

“Mr. Martin, I presume,” he asks. His sunglasses conceal his eyes, but I can feel them on me.

“Martinez,” I greet him. “Nice to put a face to the voice.”

“I have to say when you called, I only expected Gio and just a few of his men. I never thought that I’d be walking out of here with Don Zezza, and so many of his men.” Martinez looks around the scene, gesturing with his hands.

I shrug my shoulders. “I aim to please, I guess. Is our deal still intact?”

“You gave me what I wanted, so you’ll get what we agreed to. Agent Billings,” he says to the man on his left. “Take Mr. Martin into custody.” The agent whips a pair of cuffs off of his belt, and slaps them tightly around my wrists. They click as he locks them hard enough around me to stop the blood from flowing into my wrists.

“I don’t fucking think so,” Raze roars. “You got what you came for. You don’t need him.”

Agent Martinez turns to my president about to reveal the last bit of my plan.

“Mr. Sanders, I would watch what you are about to say every carefully. Mr. Martin offered himself up to us as a part of this deal.”

“Is this true?” Raze sternly inquires.

“Guilty as charged, Prez,” I admit, raising my cuffed hands in front of me. “I knew they wouldn’t come just for a random tip, so I gave them something to sweeten the deal. I gave them me. The man who has been hacking their systems for years, in exchange for a free pass for the club.”

Raze glares at me, before his gaze softens ever so slightly in the realization that I had sacrificed myself for them all. One man for many. I was proud to do this for my brothers and for Presley.

“Keep her safe, Raze,” I ask. “Please, keep her safe for me.”

“You know I will.”

He shoves Agent Billings out of the way, and brings me into the tightest bromance embrace I think that has ever happened in the history of the world. I wish someone would have taken a picture for black mail later, but it wasn’t exactly the best time for that.

“Time’s up, Martin,” Billings declares, pulling me away from my club, towards the car. My brothers yell, as they pull me away. Not knowing that this was of my own making. Martinez says something to Raze, before he follows behind us.

Step by step, I look to Presley. A medic is checking her injuries, as I walk past her. She cries out for me, but I can’t look back to her. If I do this won’t happen, and the club will take the brunt of this shit. That can’t happen.

“Wait!” a voice calls out from behind me. I turn, seeing Slider jogging towards us, as Billings starts to shove me into the car. Martinez steps between us, as Slider skids to a stop.

“It wasn’t him who hacked your systems,” he expels with heaving breaths. “It was me.”

“What the fuck?” I exclaim. “What the hell are you doing, dude?”

Slider shoots me a shut the fuck up glare.

“He was protecting me. I was hacking into the government databases. Not him.”

“Is this true?” Martinez asks me.

“It is,” Slider interjects. “I should be the one going to jail. Not him. He’s innocent. I broke into your mainframe just this week looking into The Zezza file. You should find the trail hidden away in the code.”

Jesus. Has he been watching me work?

Martinez and Billings look at each other, trying to figure out if this was another fucking game or if Slider was telling the truth. I try to mouth to him to shut up, but he shakes his head no. Why is he doing this? Just let me go down for the club. It was my bed, and I was going to fucking lie in it.

“Release him, and arrest this man,” Martinez orders. “Didn’t catch your name, son.”

“No, Slider. Don’t do this,” I argue, as the cuffs come off of me and onto him.

“It’s my time,” he utters. “Can I have a minute alone with my brother?”

Martinez agrees after everything we just handed him and steps a few feet away with Billings watching us both. It was a courtesy I doubt many got from the FBI. Then again, not everyone drops half of their America’s Most Wanted List in their lap at one time. What can I say? We’re overachievers.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask him.

“Because for the first time in my life, I know what it means to have a family. You saved us all, and I will not let you go down like this. Now go get your girl,” Slider smiles, before calling back Billings and Martinez.

They shove me back, as they shove him in the back of the squad car and shut the door. Billings hits the trunk a few times. The patrolman in the driver’s seat puts the car into drive, taking my brother instead of me away. He turns away just as they reach the edge of the drive, and disappear down the road.

I sacrificed everything for my brothers, and in turn, Slider did that for me. I would be re-paying him the best way I knew how. By using the information that I had pulled from the federal server and stored on my secure server. He would still have to serve time, but I would make for damn sure he would be within the year.

It was the least I could do for the man who just gave me my life back.

 

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