THARNISHED HEARTS Read online

  THARNISHED HEARTS

  J.C ALLEN

  SYNOPSIS

  The Falcon has taken everything from me.

  My mother.

  My father.

  My brother.

  My wife.

  My child.

  But I have a reason to fight now.

  I have a second chance at love.

  Eve has given that to me.

  I almost failed to protect her. I almost let her die.

  I won’t let that happen again. I won’t let it happen to anyone on our side.

  Make no mistake about it.

  I will kill Falcon. I will have Eve forever.

  Only his death and her love will fulfill me.

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Derek

  2. Eve

  3. Derek

  4. Eve

  5. Derek

  6. Eve

  7. Derek

  8. Eve

  9. Derek

  10. Eve

  11. Derek

  12. Eve

  13. Derek

  14. Eve

  15. Derek

  16. Eve

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Present Day

  Though I had effectively told my men that Derek Knight and his whore—our whore—would be dead soon, it was proving more difficult than I ever could have anticipated.

  For all that we had thrown at them, for all that we had done to kill them, for every moment of almost succeeding but not actually doing so, nothing had actually stuck. We’d put Derek and his fag into comas, we’d split them apart, we’d wounded them severely… and yet, like cockroaches, they somehow seemed indestructible.

  I needed to take a new tact with them. I needed to figure out a new way to kill them.

  But how?

  I couldn’t dare trust any of my men. No, they were incompetent and more like resources to me than actual men to trust. Building up the Black Falcons had been a one-man show, and what little help I had would have gotten done anyway if it was just me. They were cogs in the machine, to be killed when they got too rusty or useless and to be treated as nothing more than what they were.

  No, I needed to figure out how to kill Derek and his whore myself.

  The conventional methods had not worked. Sure, I could drag them out into gunfights, but my men had proved inept at that. I had tried to break their spirits, but that had also proved ineffective. Somehow, their gag-inducing “love” for each other—which I saw as nothing more than a desperate man attaching himself to a desperate whore—meant that even when they came apart, they got right back together. Ironically, it was their weaknesses to each other that prevented them from truly splitting apart. A man and a woman of greater strength would have an easier time being apart.

  And then, smiling to myself in a room, I thought of perhaps my craziest idea yet. Except it wasn’t so crazy as it was a stroke of genius. It would allow me to topple Derek and his whore with such ease, I didn’t know how I hadn’t thought of it before.

  To put it simply, I would show weakness and let them think they were winning.

  Yes, and the arrogance that would follow Derek would make his mind unsuspecting and weak. We would lull them into a false sense of security. And then, when the time was right, that false of security would lead to their deaths.

  I smiled.

  Everything would go according to plan exactly as I saw it would.

  I had decreed it as the Falcon, the leader of this group, and thus, it would happen accordingly. Nothing could stop us, though we would give the appearance of doing so. Nothing could defeat us in the end. No one would stand in our way.

  Through the appearance of defeat, we would emerge victorious.

  1

  Derek

  “I don’t think you understand. There is absolutely no fucking way that she can stay here.”

  Standing in a hospital hallway, just outside the room where Eve had just finished her emergency surgery for the puncture wound from the knife, I stared into the older doctor’s eyes. The man, whose name tag read Dr. Edwin Taggart, seemed determined to stare me down and tell me that he was right and I was wrong. That was a really stupid move on his part, given that it was obvious he didn’t know who I was and what strings I could pull.

  And while I didn’t like to pull the “do you know who I am” card too often because of the attention it attracted and the arrogance it suggested, in this particular case, with my girlfriend’s life at stake, I had no problems pulling it and every other ace I had up my sleeve.

  “With all due respect, Mr. Knight, and your language aside, we cannot move Eve at this time,” he said, his tone like that of a lecturing professor speaking to a student who was naive and foolish beyond all comprehension. “To do so would potentially create complications. And I cannot in good ethics allow that to—”

  “Oh, kiss my ass,” I said. “I know you have your ethics and your code, but that is my girlfriend, and I need her home.”

  “Mr. Knight, if you would,” Dr. Taggart began.

  The frustration I felt was not just at the fact that I couldn’t take Eve home on the doctor’s watch. It stemmed also from the fact that I really didn’t feel that she was safe here. The Black Falcons had not yet done an execution at a hospital, but then again, they hadn’t done much in broad daylight next to a public cafe like they had with Eve earlier in the day. The waters were churning, the piranhas were getting hungry, and soon, they’d jump into new alcoves of water to get their meal.

  Of course, I could protect her if I stayed here, but that would mean that I’d be sending the Saviors out on a mission that I would not partake in—and I refused to do that. I refused to send any Savior out on a mission that either I would never do or would never get the chance to do. It didn’t seem right as a leader.

  And how much of that could I tell the good doctor?

  None.

  “The language you are exhibiting is inexcusable and unprofessional. If you continue, I will be forced to ask you to leave.”

  “God—”

  I took a deep, deep breath, exhaled very slowly—not quite on the doc’s face, but close enough that it drove home the point—and looked him back in the eye.

  “I need her,” I said. “I can’t go into why. But if you leave her here, she is at greater risk than you know.”

  “Oh, I think I know the risks, I went to Harvard medical, you know.”

  I rolled my eyes. Dr. Taggart was about as likely to let me release Eve as I was to forgive Falcon for murdering my entire family. Suffice to say, this wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Good for you,” I said before leaving him behind, going into Eve’s room.

  It was still relatively early anyways at 3 p.m. I hadn’t slept a lick all day and had only gotten about three hours of good sleep the night before, but we didn’t have the mission until the sun had set and the moon had risen to hide behind the clouds. We had time.

  Well, not much of it, but still.

  I checked the time of sunset, observing it would come around 7:45 p.m. I decided that if Eve did not wake up by seven, I would have to get her out of there somehow. I’d have to bribe someone that wasn’t Dr. Taggart… but who?

  My mind ran through a laundry list of possibilities, from the chief medical officer to the nurses who had seen my buck naked profile a couple of weeks before. The real issue, I knew, was seeing if Dr. Taggart would be on at that time, or if he was going to be off by then. This job would be a hell of a lot easier if—

  “Derek?”

  I turned to Eve. Her eyes were open.

  Her eyes were open!

  “Oh, God, Eve!” I said, reaching over to hug her.

  She let out a painful gasp as my shoulder went into
her chest, and I quickly pulled back, apologizing profusely.

  “You’re OK,” she said.

  She sounded weak, but not critically so. It was more the weakness of someone who had slept for several hours than the weakness of someone at risk of dying.

  “I’m OK? Of course I’m OK!” I said with a laugh. “I think you’re the one that needs the help here.”

  “Yeah, sorry,” she said, wearing that sheepish grin of hers.

  God, how cute that grin was. How cute that face was. How cute everything of hers was.

  I don’t know how I got so lucky as to wind up with Eve Kellerman in my life, but it had sincerely been a life-saver—and given what Roost had said about having contingency plans in the event I killed myself, I knew I wouldn’t be the only one thining that.

  “Baby, what happened? What happened at the cafe?”

  “I…” her voice trailed off for a second as a look of confusion came over her face. “Did I die?”

  “What?”

  I laughed at the question, unsure of how she could think of such a thing.

  “I was thinking of you as I began to fade from consciousness. The guy said some things, I closed my eyes, and then I heard a gunshot and passed out. I woke up with you next to me, so, maybe this is heaven.”

  That was oddly adorable. I leaned over and kissed her on the head.

  “That was my gun. I shot the blonde guy who was about to kill you.”

  “Ohhhh,” Eve said, although she still didn’t look quite convinced of my words.

  At least now I could laugh about it, given that she was healthy enough and not in any risk of dying. We’d have to give her a lot of sugar and keep her under watch, but for her to be alive for what she had gone through… that was a miracle. And so was the timing, her texts, her having the knife—everything. We might have used eight of the nine lives cats had, but we still had the one!

  “You’re OK,” I said. “But can you tell me from the start? I know you texted and said someone was following you. What happened when you left the apartment?”

  “I see,” Eve said. “I had this feeling I was being followed when I walked outside. It was almost immediate, like someone was just sitting at the door frame, waiting to capture me.”

  Fuckers. I’m not surprised they know where I live, but that’s cold. To stalk a guy’s place. At least I know now this war is coming to its final days.

  “I turned around and, sure enough, three of the guys were following me. I had my hand on the knife and my gun, but I really didn’t have much interest in starting a fight if I didn’t have to. Being outnumbered and probably with less skill than they did, I thought I should hide. So I quickly ducked into a side street and found an alleyway I could hide in. The guys came by and I knew immediately they were Black Falcons. They were referring to me as ‘the whore.’”

  For some reason, hearing that directed at her always got my nerves going and my mind racing. It was factual that Eve had been a whore, yes, but it was also factual that Rock and the Black Falcons had forced her into that spot. There was something about it that seemed less factual and more of a slur toward her that just pissed me off more than anything else about the Falcons.

  After all, people didn’t say “the lawyer” or “the doctor” like they said “the whore.”

  “I managed to elude their presence and got to the cafe where I saw Tara. I wish it hadn’t affected me, but I didn’t have much of an appetite.”

  “Don’t tell Roost, he’s gonna go berserk that you wasted bacon.”

  “Oh my God, you’re right,” Eve said with a laugh. “But Tara was weird. I told her about what had happened and she said we should go find them and hunt them down.”

  I sighed.

  “That’s my fault,” I said. “I’m the one who let her come on the mission to rescue you from the neighborhood raid. I’m the one that gave her a gun. At the time, I just thought ‘the more the merrier.’ I didn’t think that it would create a monster of sorts.”

  “A funny monster, at least. But I tried to tell her she was crazy and out of her damn mind. She wouldn’t listen to me and got angry. I told her to just lay low and that I’d be fine. I texted you but—”

  “I didn’t answer, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Eve said, grabbing my hand and taking it in her own. “You came all the same.”

  As I always do.

  “So anyways, Tara left, and I stayed to see if three guys would start moving purposefully toward the direction she came, but they didn’t.”

  She’s not as valuable a target as Eve is. I won’t come out for her. But for Eve, I’d go to hell and back just to see her.

  Not that I can say that to Eve.

  “Thinking that they had gone elsewhere, I left and started back home when I saw them coming. I ducked into a side street, or what I thought was a side street, and got pinned. I… I killed the one man and wounded the other. The blonde thought the guy I wounded had killed me and so shot him in the head. Then the blonde asked me if I had any last words, but I was thinking of you. And… now we’re here.”

  “Now we’re here,” I said, squeezing her hand.

  Though I obviously wasn’t happy about her current state—not angry at her, just angry at the situation in general—there was a strong sense of pride that my girlfriend had killed a Black Falcon. It was kind of badass, and it certainly told me that Eve was more than capable of defending herself in a one-on-one situation. Few people would have survived a three-on-one scenario, so for Eve to have done what she did was impressive.

  “The important thing is that you’re alive,” I said. “We can figure out details and such later. But unfortunately, this isn’t like when I went into a coma, where we had some time to relax. Nor is it like when we rescued you from the neighborhood, where we basically got a three week vacation from serious club activity. We’re in the end game now, Eve. We have four locations where the Falcons are actually setting up shop.”

  “But the clues—”

  “Nothing more than a distraction that we fell for. In fairness, we didn’t have anything else to go on, but yeah, it was just a giant trap. Fortunately, Eagle has eagle-like eyes and discovered the new spots where they’re building. And we’re going to hit them one by one.”

  I sighed.

  “Starting tonight.”

  “That fast, huh?” Eve said.

  Then she uttered the word that made me so proud to call her my girlfriend.

  “Good.”

  “Good,” I repeated, liking how it sounded from her. “Good!”

  “Good!” she said, laughing at how we had become like an echo chamber. “Good! They need to fall. I’ll be fine.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. This is sore as hell, but—”

  “Well, I’m glad you said that, because we need to get you out of here.”

  Eve’s expression was one of bewilderment, but fortunately, not disagreement. I suppose her mind might be racing through the worst-case scenarios, some—but not all—of which were rather applicable. Nothing bad was present, but surely, word had gotten back by now to Falcon that I had killed the three goons. It wouldn’t take much effort on his part to deduce that either we were on the loose or Eve was in the hospital.

  And there were only so many hospitals I would have taken Eve to near my place.

  “Is everything OK?” Eve said, concern obvious in her voice.

  “Well, for now, sure. But I’m worried about the Falcon sending men here to finish the job. And I can’t stay here. I mean, if I absolutely have to, I will, but I need to go with my men if I’m able to.”

  “And how—”

  At that moment, the nurse that had helped me walked in with a smile.

  “Oh, you’re awake, Miss Kellerman, how—”

  “Do you mind?” I said, annoyed.

  But then a thought crossed my mind, and just before the nurse turned after apologizing, I held my hand up, asking her to stop.

  “It’s me w
ho should apologize,” I said with a smile. “I shouldn’t have treated you so rudely upon you walking in. However, I do need a favor from you. A big favor. Much like the favor you helped me with last time.”

  The nurse arched an eyebrow at me and gave me an askance look.

  “You know, thanks to some strings pulled, I never got in trouble for that,” she said quietly after shutting the door behind her. “But if you expect me to pull that stunt twice, you—”

  “How much did I pay you last time?”

  The nurse struggled to remember. It didn’t matter, because I was going to pay whatever it took to get me out of here.

  Without hesitation, I pulled out a stack of bills, about fifteen hundred worth, and gave them to the nurse.

  “Fake a diagnostic and say she needs to rest at home.”

  The nurse looked at me, looked at the money, grabbed it with caution, and looked me back dead in the eye.

  “What in the hell do you two deal in?” she said.

  I just laughed, knowing full well that if I told her everything, she either wouldn’t believe it or would be moving to a new city within her shift.

  “Let’s just say she’s a prominent figure in our community, and we need her to look as strong as possible.”

  “Ohhhhhhh.”

  Oh shit.

  “You’re like in that cult, right? The Witnesses of Arrival?”

  “Err… yeah, yep. And she’s the prophet who sees all.”

  “Ahh, gotcha,” the nurse said, winking at me.

  I winked back, and it took much of my power not to burst out laughing. I suppose in some weird, twisting-the-definition way, we could be a cult? But I certainly wasn’t a religious or cult figurehead, and if I ever thought I was, Roost had a way of quickly chopping me down to size as need be.