Extreme Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 7) (16 page)

He paused, looked around again. On every face, he saw understanding and acceptance: they knew what they were doing that night, and every one of them was ready to die to make it happen, if that’s what it took.

“They wanted trouble?” King said harshly. “They wanted hurt and pain? They wanted a war?” He grinned, but it was a hard, merciless grin with no heart and no humor. “Well. They fucking got it. They got it
all
. Let’s take it to them.”

**

In the end, it didn’t take much to end the bloody MC-driven war that had grown, swelled, and destroyed lives for more than twenty years.

Just a perfect alchemy of twenty brutal minutes, seven highly-trained King’s Men, two hardcore Road Devils who hated the rival MC members like poison, and one inside man whose cover was promptly blown for good and straight to hell. Oh, and a
shit-ton
of weapons, used without remorse or restraint or fear of reprisal, and no worries about what might happen tomorrow.

It simply took a group of armed, trained killers with no interest in negotiation, and a fully-loaded ‘give zero fucks’ mentality. People who were perfectly prepared to spare nobody at long last, if that’s what it took, even if that meant damning their eternal souls to hell.

People who really
got
that some things were worth the risk. Taking down the most monstrous MC that any of them had ever come across, with the added bonus of a number of Kirk Fucking Jensen’s crew, was a textbook example of one of those things.

They approached the abandoned factory without even the slightest attempt at stealth or secrecy. In fact, they each picked a different door and hit the gas of their respective vehicles as hard as they could, and just burst on in and through. This meant that five SUV’s exploded into the building simultaneously and without warning, shattering glass, splintering wood, buckling metal.

Before the drivers had even slowed down, the shooting from the passenger sides and backseats had already begun. Hell, it had actually begun
outside
the building, and now six armed guards lay bloody and lifeless at their posts, easily taken out by Val and Quinn, King’s sharpest sharp-shooters, both former snipers in wars that had been waged in faraway lands. To nothing but the shock of the Fallen Angels, one of their own – Hammer Dixon – had started to shoot as soon as the first door had caved in… but he was aiming at his fellow MC brothers. In the chaos and confusion, he managed to bring down seven of them before they figured out that Hammer was, actually,
not
on their side.

The MC and Jensen’s people were stunned, naturally, but not for very long. They’d lived their lives under attack and gunfire, and nothing about
any
of this was unfamiliar or unexpected. Their own weapons came out, places were found to hide and cover, and fire was returned.

King squinted through the madness, looking for Ace. His task – his
only
task – was to find the man. Everyone else was instructed to clear King’s way, and even though he was happy to take down anyone in his way, his focus was on ‘seek. Everyone else could handle ‘destroy’.

He scanned the massive room, ducked as a bullet shattered the window next to him.

“
Fuck
!” he growled as glass rained down on his head and shoulders. “
Goddamn
these assholes.”

He stayed down, popped off a few shots in the general direction of where he thought the bullet had come from, and that was when his eyes fell on the man slumped over in a chair, almost in the exact center of the room. King couldn’t make out the guy’s face, and not just because of the bodies and bullets flying everywhere. The real issue was that the man
had
no face that King could see. It was nothing but blood and gore… and his gut clenched. That could only be one person, and King was already very, very afraid that they were too late after all.

“Wolf!” he shouted at the man closest to him.

Wolf glanced over at King, followed his pointing finger. When he saw Ace, his mouth tightened in grim understanding. He nodded at King, indicated that he should
go
. King nodded back, and then contemplated possible routes.

The middle of the room was a fucking disaster area to get across, since most of the bad guys were gathered there in a tight little circle that was slowly but surely falling apart as men fell injured, dying, dead. They’d clearly been grouped together around Ace when the attack had come, and that was actually great: having them bunched up like that was a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. A few men were hanging around the walls, but they were being picked off one by one as they were surrounded and overpowered.

But the problem was that right now, the group of men was smack between King and Ace, so that meant hugging the fucking walls as best he could, and slowly making his way around the room as the walls were cleared. That was taking time though, too much time from the looks of Ace, but options were limited here. Running break-neck speed directly to his target – while the fastest way through the mess, and King’s preferred route in all aspects of his life – was out of the question.

Patience was what was needed here. If Ace was gone, he was gone, and King getting himself killed to verify that wasn’t going to help the situation.

He sucked in a few deep, steadying breaths, and moved. Waited for the path to clear, moved a few steps. Shot one of Jensen’s guys, moved again. Did it again. Then Quinn took someone out for him from about sixty feet away, and King gained a good six feet, ducked behind a stack of crates to reload.

Inch by inch, slowly and carefully, King circled the room that way. It took almost twenty minutes, but finally,
finally
, he was within ten feet of Ace, though still jammed up against the wall and hiding behind a piece of machinery. King lay flat on his stomach, peered under the equipment, trying to get a better look at Ace now.

What he saw did not reassure him. Not in the slightest.

Ace was tied to the chair, shirtless. He’d been severely beaten, and King winced when he saw the shiny glint of bone sticking through his left shin; clearly, someone had broken it badly enough to actually force the jagged edge of bone through the skin.

Skin. Fuck, his
skin…

King had seen lots of bad shit in his life, but
this
. This was something that went well beyond inhumanity. It was… well. It was beyond any words that King knew, too. He wanted to gag at the sight in front of him, to just turn away from what was so damn hard to look at, but that was pure self-indulgence. Ace needed him to hold it together, and get to him. Ace was counting on him.

Assuming that Ace had survived it, of course.

King took another deep breath, then he went for it. He made a point of shooting Joker Kane in the chest with nothing but savage glee, paused to make sure the fucker was down – and hopefully dead – and moved. He got to Ace, swallowing bile at the raw, open, oozing mess that had once been Ace’s chest, and his right arm. Neither of these things had any skin left on them, and King thought that that was bad enough… but when King lifted Ace’s head to look at his face, it actually got
worse
.

“Ace,” King whispered, totally unaware of what was happening around him now. Dimly, he heard Quinn and Valentina shouting, heard Scars responding, but he was far removed from any of all of it. All King saw, heard, felt, knew, was Ace Cuddy. “Can you hear me?”

Unbelievably, the bloody, shattered wreck in front of him grunted: “Yeah.”

“Holy fuck.” King was floored. “Ace… hang on, alright? I’ve got you. Help is coming.”

Ace’s remaining eye opened no more than a slit. “Liam?”

“He’s OK, man.”

“…OK?”

“He’s totally, totally fine, I promise you.” King
had
to touch Ace now,
had
to offer the other man some basic warm, physical comfort, but he didn’t see a single damn place that looked safe to put even so much as a fingertip on. He finally rested his massive open palm on the back of Ace’s neck, so gently, so carefully, like King imagined that he’d one day cradle his newborn son or daughter’s head. “He’s waiting for you.”

Ace actually smiled, and it was obvious to King that he’d been holding on just to hear those words. Now that he had, he was going to let go.

So he
did
let go; he let go hard. Ace fell into the deep, black pit of oblivion… and at that second, King was sure – absolutely, totally
sure
– that he wasn’t ever coming out again.

And considering everything, maybe that was the kindest, best thing.

Sometimes, death was a loving, tender mercy.

Chapter Fifteen

The first thing that Ace felt was softness, all around him. It was like he was enveloped in a cloud. Or maybe a shroud.

He gave a groan, just to make sure that he wasn’t actually dead, and that was when he knew that he
had
to have succumbed to his injuries and shuffled on off the mortal coil, because he heard the voice of the only person who’d ever made him believe in anything.

“Ace?”

In Ace’s heaven, Liam was his personal angel… and it was Liam’s voice that was right there, right next to him:

“Babe? Babe, wake up. Come on… please.”

Ace groaned again, with a bit more gusto, but that was only because the pain was starting to move up his whole body. It felt like he was being set on fire,
and
being crushed by a bulldozer,
and
being stabbed from the inside by a million tiny blades, all at once.

Yeah, he’d
definitely
felt better than he did right this second.

“Ace?”

It took a lot for Ace to force open his eyes –
wait… eyes? No. Oh, Christ, no. Eye. As in singular
– and look up. He blinked, raised his hand to his face. Liam grabbed his trembling hand, pulled it away and held it tight, but not before Ace had felt the gauze covering his left eye.

No. Where his left eye used to be.

“Babe?” Liam’s voice was shaky. “Can you hear me?”

“Aaarrgghhoooooouuutttffaaaa,” Ace managed, which was utter gibberish, of course, but Liam seemed pretty happy to hear it. Or at least, Ace
hoped
those were tears of joy.

“Cry?” Ace rasped, trying to touch Liam’s face with his free hand. That was when he noticed the thick bandages swathing the whole length of his right arm, and he once again felt the razors delicately slicing off his skin. “Sad?”

“No, you idiot,” Liam snuffled. “I’m not
sad
, I’m fucking
happy
. Now shut up and go back to sleep. You have lots of healing to do.”

Too exhausted and hurting to protest, Ace shut his eyes –
eye
– again, and let the blackness take it all away.

Plenty of time to remember later. Plenty of time to revisit the horror.

Years, actually. Decades.

A lifetime.

**

The next time that Ace resurfaced from the sweet, sweet darkness, it was to more darkness. He lay very still, squinting and trying to get some sense of his bearings.

He was in a hospital, clearly and obviously, and he seemed to be in a single private room. There were soothing watercolor sunsets and mountain vistas hanging from the walls, there was a sofa that looked pretty damn comfy to sink in to, and an IV was beeping softly with every
drip drip drip
of some clear fluid into his veins. Ace focused on the needle inserted in the top of his left hand for a second, wondering about the drugs. The job of ‘MC President’ had never come with perks like private healthcare, so idly, he found himself wondering who was springing for all of this, and then his gaze fell on the man sleeping in the chair next to his bed.

Liam
.

Knowing better than to try to sit up, Ace stayed still and quiet, and just looked at Liam, just drank him in like a parched man downing water after crawling through the flames of hell.

His long, lean legs were stretched out in front of him, clad in black jeans. His arms were crossed over his chest, which rose and fell steadily as he slept, and he was wearing a loose black t-shirt. His hair was messy and tousled, his sharp cheekbones were dark with stubble, his mouth was soft and untroubled in slumber – but the area under his eyes was purple and puffy. Ace knew that Liam hadn’t been doing much sleeping, but he
had
been doing plenty of crying.

Unable to wait even one second longer to see those beautiful brown eyes, Ace cleared his throat.

“Sweetheart?”

Liam stirred, sighed.

“Liam?”

At that, Liam’s eyes shot open and he jumped up, almost at the exact same time. When he saw Ace looking at him, he froze for a split second, then he threw himself to his knees beside the bed.

“God,” he breathed. “Ace… oh,
God
, babe…”

“Hey.” Ace tried to smile, but his whole face hurt. “Hi.”

“How – oh, God. I don’t
believe
it, I still don’t believe
any
of it. How do you feel?”

“Not awesome, I have to say.” Ace stretched a tiny bit, winced as everything pulled and burned. “How are you?”

“Me?” Liam was incredulous almost to the point of being offended at the question. “
Me
?
Seriously
?”

“Yeah, seriously. You look like hell, baby.”

Liam blinked in stunned disbelief. “
I
look like hell?”

“Yeah.”

Liam stared at him some more, then suddenly, he burst into laughter. It was hysterical laughter, laughter close to the cliff-edge of tears, but Ace quirked his own lips up in a half-smile, just happy to be there and in one piece.

Well. Kind of in one piece. In one piece, but with pieces missing.

“OK,” Ace said as Liam calmed. “Tell me.”

“Let me get the doctor –”

“No. That can wait… tell me what’s happened while I’ve been out. How long have I been out, by the way?”

“Six days, off and on.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. So… which part do you need to hear?” Liam asked, gingerly taking Ace’s hand with the IV tube. “What first?”

“Tex? Honey? Jack?”

“Honey and Jack are home recovering. They’re both going to be fine.” Liam paused. “But Tex… well. He’s going to need extensive reconstructive surgery. The bullet shattered his face, babe, just wrecked the whole right side.”

“Shit,” Ace muttered. “He’s lucky to be alive.”

“Agreed.” Liam stroked Ace’s unbandaged cheek so, so carefully, avoiding the bruising as best he could. “And he’s not the only one.”

“OK.” Ace sucked in a deep breath. “Now me. How bad is it?”

“It’s – well. Some of it’s really bad. But you
must
know that, right?”

Ace thought about the beatings that had gone on for hours; the crunch of lower leg bone; the knife carving out his left eye; the razors cutting the skin off his chest. Joker had insisted on removing his Fallen Angels tattoo personally, claiming that a cock-sucking traitor had no right to have it on his body any longer, and Ace
still
wasn’t sure if Joker had been more outraged by his disloyalty to the club, or his homosexuality.

Despite all the pain and damage, though, the thing that had devastated Ace was when Nails had sliced off the tattoo that Ace had had done for Liam, just sliced it off his right arm in long, thin strips which had then been held in front of his face to taunt him.
That
had been when Ace had almost abandoned any desire to hang on for King to come and get him somehow, by some miracle;
that
had been when he’d despaired and lost faith and wanted to just fucking
die
.

In that moment, he’d come close to begging for the kindness of death. Damn close. But his belief in King had proven stronger than his own weakness, and he’d just held on a bit longer.

And thank fuck he had. Because now here he was, holding the hand of the man that he loved, though not for much longer.

Ace was damaged. Lacking things, missing things. Permanently scarred. Angry and frustrated at his own powerlessness. Looking at months of recovery, at years of dark thoughts, at a lifetime of ‘
maybe if’s
’.

Ace wasn’t going to ask Liam to stand next to him through all of what was coming. He sure as
hell
wasn’t going to ask Liam to look at the ugly, awful body hidden under these bandages and skin grafts, and demand that Liam touch it, kiss it, love it.

Ace was selfish enough to want Liam here, just a bit longer… but he loved Liam enough to not even ask that much. It was time to let him go.

“I know it’s bad, sweetheart,” Ace said quietly. “I was conscious through quite a bit of it. I know what they did to me.”

Liam blanched. “God… I’d hoped so hard that you’d been out for most of the time.”

“I wish.”

“Oh.” Liam gazed at Ace, horrified and enraged all over again. “I’m so sorry.”

“No need to be.” Ace forced a smile. “The MC?”

Liam’s face hardened. “Fucking ripped to shreds. Nails and Joker are dead, most of the Fallen Angels are dead. The rest have been rounded up and are sitting in jail. A couple are on the run, but King’s Men and the cops are looking for them, and if King is the one to catch up with them, then I don’t like their chances. The Men are on a mission, and they aren’t being distracted by anything.”

“Jensen’s people?”

“Every one of Jensen’s guys in that warehouse is dead.”

“Seriously?”
That
was a surprise. “That’s incredible.”

“Yeah, well, King and his people went in shooting, and anyone who so much as raised a finger – let alone a weapon – was taken down. Jensen’s idiots all opened fire, but some of the MC members saw the situation for what it was, and they backed down. That’s why some of them are still alive, and nobody else. Though I get the feeling that even if Nails or Joker had laid down their weapons, someone may well have taken the shot anyway, just out of principle and to rid the world of their odious souls.”

“Right.” Ace rubbed his eye, feeling suddenly exhausted, feeling a drop in his pain tolerance. “I get it.”

“So it’s done, Ace. The Fallen Angels are done. It’s
all
done.”

“No.” Ace shook his head tiredly. Yeah, he was going to need some more painkillers soon, but he was going to hang on a bit longer. He
had
to have this conversation with a clear head. “It’s
not
done. It’s
never
done. Not when we’re talking about fuckers like this, baby. Plea bargains will be struck for the guys being held. The guys on the run and in the wind will regroup at a pre-determined meeting point. Guys will show up out of the blue, looking to patch in, and if they’re hardcore enough, they’ll be accepted and welcomed. The MC will rebuild, Liam. It won’t look the way that it did, not even close, but the guys
will
start again.” Ace considered. “Almost definitely not in Denver – way too much heat here now, and not nearly enough friends – but they’ll start again somewhere. Maybe in Vegas, close to what’s left of Jensen’s crew.”

“But they’ll leave you alone?”

“Never.” Ace’s tone was resigned. “That’s why, as soon as I can walk, I’m leaving. I’m changing my name, I’m going off the grid, I’m looking for the quietest, safest, most fucking
boring
place on earth, and I’m gonna live out the rest of my life there, avoiding trouble.”

“Sounds good,” Liam said. “I’m coming with you.”

“Hey, no.” Ace was totally alarmed, and knew that he needed to shut this down here and now, and pretty decisively. “No, sweetheart –”

“Don’t you fucking ‘
no, sweetheart
’, me, Ace Cuddy. Let’s get this straight: I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.
I. Am. Coming. With you
.”

“But –”

“Shove your ‘but’ up your butt,” Liam snapped. “This is happening.”

“But –”

“
What did I just say
?”

“No, baby… let me say this one thing.”

“Fine.” Liam’s expression and tone were both closed as tight as a bank vault. “It won’t change anything, but go on.”

“But I’m not the man that I once was, Liam,” Ace said, gesturing at his missing eye, his chest, his arm. “Not even
close
. I – I don’t know
who
I am anymore, where I fit in this world anymore, and asking you to come with me now is like asking you to leave with a stranger, and worse, one with zero idea where his place is. I can’t do that, baby. I won’t.”

“You done?” Liam asked him. “That’s it?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“OK. Two words for you, Ace: You. Are.”

Ace paused. “I am what?”

“
You are
the man that you once were. At least, you’re some parts of him. The best parts, I’d say.”

Ace’s throat tightened. “Liam –”

“No. Shut up, and I mean for real. You did all the damn talking out at the safe house, and I barely got to say anything, even though I thought I’d never see you again, so now it’s
my
turn. You hear me?
You
shut your face and you let
me
talk.”

“Uh.” Ace stared at Liam’s fierce expression, and suddenly wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or snap a salute. “OK. The floor is yours.”

“You
are
the man that you were before this whole fucking nightmare, Ace. Before this happened, you were the man who stepped between me and danger over and over again – and you did that again six days ago. You were the man who broke his own damn
heart
to keep me safe, and to protect me from hurt – and you just did that again now. You were the man who saw me scared and vulnerable, and who had enough strength for the both of us – and God knows your strength was in awe-inspiring form when you were standing there facing down your ex-brothers, unarmed and alone, and I was scared and useless. You were the man that I fell in love with ten years ago – and you’re
still
the man that I love. The
only
man that I love, and the only man for me.”

“Liam…” Ace whispered, moved beyond anything he ever knew possible. “I –”

“I denied it, but I’ve been waiting for you for seven years,” Liam said. “Waiting for you to come to your senses, waiting for you to come back to me. And now you’re finally here, I’ve finally got you back again, and if you think that I’m letting you go, that I’m losing you one more time, then you are out of your goddamn
mind
.” He shook his head. “I lost you once, and six nights ago, I almost lost you once more, and it’s never happening again. You hear me?
Never
. We’re going to figure this out. We’re going to make this work. No discussion, no negotiation, no fucking ‘maybe’ or ‘one day’. We are
doing
this, Ace, you and me, and that’s the
end
.”