Semua Bab THE BIKER'S NEW FOUND MATE : Bab 21 - Bab 30

The hospital doors exploded before we reached them.Not metaphorically. Literally exploded. Glass and metal erupted outward as we pulled into the emergency bay. Albert slammed the brakes, throwing us forward. Another contraction ripped through me, stealing my breath."Stay in the car!" Albert shouted, already moving."Like hell!" I pushed the door open as gunfire erupted from inside the hospital. Screaming. Running. Chaos.Victoria had not waited. She had struck first.Knox appeared beside us with four Vipers. "East entrance is compromised. We need to find another way in.""I am in labor!" Another contraction doubled me over. "I need a doctor. Now.""Then we get you one." Albert grabbed my arm, supporting my weight. "Sienna, call the club doctor. Have him meet us at the safe house.""The baby is coming too fast!" I gasped. "I will not make it to—"More explosions. The hospital's north wing erupted in flames. People poured out of exits, patients and staff fleeing for their lives."She

Three weeks of peace shattered at two AM when Grace started screaming.Not normal baby crying. Screaming. Raw, terrified sounds that sent me stumbling out of bed before I was fully awake. I grabbed her from the crib, checked for fever, for pain, for anything wrong.Nothing. She was fine. Just screaming."Eva." Albert appeared in the doorway, gun in hand. "Someone is here."I heard it then. Footsteps. On our roof.We had moved into a fortified house after leaving the hospital. Guards on rotation. Cameras everywhere. Security that Knox personally designed. Nobody should have gotten close.But someone was on our roof.Albert handed me a gun. "Stay here with Grace. Lock the door. If anyone comes through except me or Knox, you shoot first.""Albert—"He was already gone, moving silent as the ghost he was named for.I locked the door, held Grace close, gun in my free hand. She stopped screaming the second the door clicked shut. Just stopped. Stared at me with Albert's gray eyes, calm as dea

The welcome home party lasted three hours before everything went to hell.Knox had organized a celebration—both clubs together, toasting the legitimate transition, the new businesses, the hope of something better. I held Grace while accepting congratulations from bikers who looked genuinely optimistic for the first time in years.Albert stood beside me, one hand always on my back. Protective. Present. My husband and my partner in rebuilding what our fathers had broken."Speech!" someone called out. "Eva, say something!"I handed Grace to Sienna and stepped forward. "I am not good at speeches. But I want to say this—my father built these clubs on blood. My family poisoned them from within. And for years, I thought the only way to escape that legacy was to run from it." I looked around at the assembled faces. "But I was wrong. The way to escape it is to transform it. To take what was violent and make it purposeful. What was destructive and make it constructive. We are going to build som

I woke in a hospital bed three days later.My body was wrapped in bandages. The acid burns had been treated but would scar permanently. My wrists were stitched and splinted. Pain medication dulled the worst of it, but I could still feel everything underneath—the ghost of Catherine's torture imprinted on every nerve.Albert was in the bed beside me. Still unconscious. The doctors said he had coded twice during transport. His hands were in casts. His back was a patchwork of skin grafts. But he was breathing.And Grace slept in a bassinet between us, monitored constantly but recovering. The smoke inhalation had caused damage, but the doctors were optimistic.We were alive. All three of us."Eva." Knox entered quietly. "You are awake.""Catherine?" I asked immediately."Critical condition. Two floors down. Under guard." Knox sat in the chair beside my bed. "The doctors saved her life. She will survive.""Good."Knox looked surprised. "Good?""Because I want her alive." I kept my voice low

The clubhouse war room was silent as James Cross dropped a manila folder on the table between us.We had agreed to meet on neutral ground—an abandoned church Knox had swept for explosives and surveillance. James came with two guards. We brought four. Everyone armed. Everyone ready to kill.But James did not come to fight. He came to destroy me in a different way."Open it," he said, lighting a cigarette. He looked exactly like my father—same sharp features, same cold eyes, but older, harder, twisted by twenty-seven years in prison. "Go ahead, niece. See what kind of man your daddy really was."I did not want to touch that folder. Every instinct screamed it was a trap, a lie, another psychological weapon designed to break me.But I had to know.I opened it.The first document was a life insurance policy. My mother's. Taken out by Marcus Cross six months before her death. Five million dollars. Beneficiary: Marcus Cross."Life insurance is not proof of murder," I said, keeping my voice s