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

her arms across her chest, she eyed me steadily and said, “I did what I had to do. It worked. The militia is called off. Freeman is on his own now. Nolan is running scared. Instead of a whole army, we’re down to two individuals who’ve had their power stripped from them in more ways than one. We’re back on top now. We have the advantage. They’re easy targets now.”

I could feel my rage dissipating as she explained, as she drove home what her deal had accomplished.

I wanted to run with it, to relax and revel in it.

But it weren’t that simple.

I walked to her. “What exactly did you sacrifice here, darlin’?”

A bittersweet smile ghosted her lips. “Everything.”

34

~Willa~

 

DAMMIT.

I hauled myself up from the bathroom floor and flushed the toilet.

That round of vomiting had seemed endless. This baby was really putting me through my paces. Maybe it was a warning to take it down a notch and calm the hell down. Soon enough, kiddo.

My successful meeting with Will Decker had gone a long way toward that.

I was sure Slade could see that too, even if a lot of that relief for him was clouded by what it’d cost me. Didn’t he get it? There was always going to be a cost involved. We were just damn lucky it was only financial, because it just as easily could’ve been our lives.

I’d amassed substantial wealth over the years. People paid a lot to have their obstacles removed without a trace. To say I was wealthy was a gross understatement. I had a dozen properties spread all over, most being safehouses, which I took turn at staying at, rather than settling at one permanent address. Doing the work I did, that was too risky. To go along with that, I also owned several different vehicles. I had clothing, rations, tactical equipment, surveillance and security equipment, numerous high-priced gadgets conducive to my profession, as well as a large cache of weapons and ammunition, many military-grade.

Now, after the deal I’d made with Decker, all of that would be stripped away. I’d be back to square one financially, back to basics.

But with what Slade and I had, the family we were creating, the new life we were embarking on, I’d be leaps and bounds ahead in other ways.

A heavy knock on the bathroom door jolted me from my thoughts.

“Darlin’, you all right? Said you were just ducking out to take a leak, and it’s been fifteen minutes.”

That long? Shit. “Just freshening up,” I called back.

I snatched up my toothbrush, put more toothpaste on it than normal, and hurriedly started brushing my teeth to rid my mouth of that putrid taste of vomit.

The door opened and Slade walked in warily.

He put it together without me needing to say anything. “You’ve been in here chucking up.”

I gave a nod as I finished up brushing my teeth.

“I thought those meds I got for you from our doctor were helping to curb that?”

Spitting into the sink and rinsing off, I put my toothbrush back in the holder, then turned to him. “I forgot to bring them with me.”

“You what?”

Yeah, letting anything slip my mind wasn’t like me at all. I didn’t make mistakes. And knowing I’d actually made one with this got my back up. My eyes flashed his way and I snapped, “I had a lot on my mind, all right? I wasn’t… thinking, I guess.”

“Yeah, I know you weren’t.” He stepped up to me, taking his harsher town down a few notches as he said, “It actually worked in my favor.”

I cocked an eyebrow.

“I tagged you. It’s how I found you. You think I was gonna wait around for Mason to get the location on Decker when I knew you already had it? Every second counted. I did it just after you fell asleep last night.”

“Shit.” Running my fingers through my hair in distress, I eyed him worriedly. “I’m off my game, big time.”

“We’re both desperate. That’s when mistakes get made. It’s why we need to do this together.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t fucking believe you went rogue on me after the promises made last night and—”

“I get it!”

“The fuck you do. You never would’ve done it then!”

“I did what needed to be done!” I bit back, my voice shaking with the ire coursing through me that was quickly reaching an uncontrollable level.

“The price was way too high, woman!”

“It would’ve been your life if I hadn’t stepped up!”

“What?”

“Don’t you get it? I did this to keep my promise to you!”

Confusion blanketed his face, cutting into his temper, pulling him up short for a few moments. “How?”

I took a step back and sucked in a breath to get a handle on my wild state, to rein in my temper enough to answer him coherently and rationally. Calmly. All this yelling was getting us nowhere. It had each of us blurting out things in the heat of the moment that just generated more questions than anything close to substantial answers.

“You and me, we’re both strategists. We’re both able to rise above all the bull and emotion and see a situation rationally, figure out all the possible tactics and outcomes from each. But in this case, out of the two of us, only I could follow through with that. It’s why I didn’t clue you in on this plan. You were compromised. Because of your history of already losing somebody and your first child.”

Pain flashed on his face and he started shaking his head. “That ain’t—”

“I’m not judging you, baby. And I get it, big time. The situation with us is way too close to that, the danger and threats out there against us, just like what existed back then. But there’s also a major difference. Me. I’m a world away from incapable or inconsequential.” I took a step closer to him. “I’m not a helpless damsel in distress. I control my fate. I control my enemies. I find a way through when there seems