RIDING DIRTY (Steel Titans MC Book 4) by Franca Storm (ebook voice reader .txt) 📕

of Nik and some club whore named Eleanor Freeman. She kept the kid off his radar for years, until the idiot went looking for his old man when he was a teenager. It ended up getting his mom killed, Nik being enraged that he’d had a kid he’d never known. He’d wanted a son to carry on the bloodline and all that, to continue on the club’s legacy. As soon as he found out about him, Nik brought him into the club, took him under his wing, and basically taught him every fucked-up thing he knew.”

“If that was the intention, why wasn’t the kid a club officer, or in a position of power and significance? He was merely an enforcer, one of Nik’s many.”

“Because their father-son relationship was toxic. Freeman became a wild card, worse than his old man. And Nik was crazy paranoid that the kid was gonna make a play to take the club right out from under him before he was good and ready to hand it over. So, he kept him down and kept him busy.”

She nodded, taking my intel in, working quickly to process it.

“Why didn’t you tell me this immediately? Why wasn’t it in the reports you gave me?”

“Figured you’d think it made it way too personal for me.”

“And you thought I wouldn’t work with you?”

“Well, you ain’t exactly on board with the whole Nolan thing and that’s personal.”

“My issue with that wasn’t about it being personal. It was the unplanned, unhinged way you took it once you let the personal nature of it impact you and take you over.”

“Yeah, well, being so intense and controlled for so long ain’t good. It takes a major toll. And, yeah, there’s times when the pressure gets too much and it has you snapping, no matter how hard you try to reel it in.”

I watched her swallow hard, my words getting to her, and clearly hitting her right where she lived. Interesting.

Before I could make much more of it, she steered back to the subject of Freeman, shaking her head in disbelief. “I had no record of this. There is no record of this.”

“To protect him from Nik, Eleanor kept it off any official records. Nik kept it that way afterward as well, so that Freeman didn’t become a target.”

“You never told your club?”

“No.”

“Why not? If you knew this, you could have used it. You could have taken Freeman out and delivered a debilitating strike to Nik, by extension.”

“Because, darlin’, that’s next-level darkness right there. Taking out the kid of my enemy to win? It’s fucked. I wasn’t gonna become Nik just to beat him.”

Seemingly entranced by my words, she stepped right up to me and pressed her hand to my chest, over my heart. Smiling, she said, “So, this is fully-functional then. You’re not actually the merciless, unfeeling bastard that you’ve made yourself out to be.”

“Looks like. But don’t go spreading it around. Doubt anybody would believe it, but best not to risk it. I can’t have people knowing that.”

I swallowed hard at the intensity coming off her. Her hand on my chest weren’t helping matters neither. Felt like it was burning right through me, heating my blood. The urge to rise to it, throw her down on the counter and fuck the living shit out of her was hardly contained. It was a hell of a strain to hold it back.

But I had to. If there ever was gonna be a time, this weren’t it. We had shit to do.

So, I grasped her wrist and eased it off my chest, telling her, “I gotta give the club a heads up on this. If things go south, they gotta be ready.”

“It could have a domino effect, Slade,” she warned. “Steel Titans could react and spark a war with Nolan and Freeman.”

“Nah, Titans won’t act without my word.”

“Liam West is currently Acting President. He has the authority and the means to take action on a threat like this.”

“There’s more to it than that. He respects my lead, trusts me. He ain’t gonna screw with that.”

“What about the situation with Gabriel Clarkson a few months ago?”

I gritted my teeth at her continuing to question my word. “That was different. He weren’t himself. He’s all good now.”

She didn’t seem fully convinced, or at ease about it. But she gave a nod anyway, probably realizing it’d be more trouble than it was worth to try to stop me from giving my boys the warning they deserved about what might be coming their way. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll step up my investigative efforts where Freeman is concerned. I’ll also reach out to Ricky.”

“Just stick to the investigation. Forget about Rick for now.”

She frowned. “Why would I do that? There’s no closer link to Freeman than him. If anybody can get a handle on what’s going on as quickly as possible, it’s Ricky.”

I scoffed. “Don’t you see it?”

“See what?”

“I’ve had him keeping an eye on this, making sure nobody restarted the Strikers. Now it looks like Freeman is and we ain’t heard shit from him? Don’t sound good, does it?”

“You think he’s betrayed you? Well, us?”

“Why ain’t it crossed your mind?”

“Because he’s a trusted ally.”

“Yeah, an ally until he ain’t.”

She shook her head vehemently. “I don’t believe that.”

I stilled at her words and took her in.

She was as paranoid as me, maybe even worse, actually. She always accounted for every little thing. There was reason to have doubt here. But she wasn’t questioning it, wouldn’t even allow herself to question it. I could only think of one reason for that.

Even knowing it was a risk to get near her again because of the pull between us, I couldn’t help stepping up to her in my determination to get to the bottom of this, to hear the words right out of her mouth. This complicated things. She should’ve damn well told me right from the get-go. “You’re fucking him, yeah?”

She stood her ground like she always did, didn’t move a muscle even