Billionaire Ransom by Lexy Timms

said, “You know, we had one hell of a ride, bro.”
    Morgan turned and put his fist out. Craig bumped it. “All to the end, right?”
    “Yeah,” Craig sighed. “Man, I’m so fuckin’ sorry. I don’t even know what the fuck I was doing for a long time. Now I do and I can’t take it back. I messed this shit up and I can’t fix it.”
    Morgan had no response. He loved Craig like he was his blood, but what he’d done was unforgivable.
    He walked out of the bar, taking long breaths of the almost-clean air outside. He got on his bike and started it, thinking hard.
    Wilkes was scared, that was obvious. He’d sent a car and men Katie had recognized; their failure to kill her would send him into a tizzy.
    Those men would come back, again and again.
    Until she was dead.
    The thought chilled him to the bone. The idea of Katie being killed was horrific, and utterly unbearable. He couldn’t stand the thought of a world without her in it.
    He had to figure a way out the mess that he, and the whole crew, and Katie was in. The whole thing hinged on him finding a way to get the guys who might be picked up out of town before they got locked down. Once they were in jail, hitting them with murder charges would be all too easy.
    He also had to find a way to make sure there was evidence to prove he and his crew hadn’t killed that other crew, and he had to find a way to prove it soon. They hadn’t done it, but evidence could be placed, witnesses coerced.
    Not to mention that if Katie ended up dead, it would not only kill his heart, it might be a charge he found hung on himself too. Blake Wilkes was worse than street scum.
    He rode through town, trying to figure out his next move. He wanted to go right into Blake Wilkes’ office and strangle him with his bare hands. He wanted to bring as much pain to Blake as that piece of shit had brought to him.
    He sped down the road; his anger pushed into the roar of the engine. There was a way to stop Wilkes. It would involve the one person he didn’t want mangled in this mess.
    But he had no choice.
    He had to enlist Katie’s help to really take down her father.
     

CHAPTER 8
     
    At the bar, Katie got talked into a game of pool. She demurred at first. She kept saying no, but eventually a couple of the crew members bugged her until she agreed. She wasn’t going anywhere until Morgan came back, and after a few more drinks, she grew restless.
    “Let’s play,” she said to Clive when she walked over the pool table. She set her glass down on the table beside it, and began looking for a pool cue that seemed about her height.
    Clive grinned. “Don’t worry, honey, we won’t be mean when you mess up.”
    She flipped him the bird and smiled broadly. “Why, thank you.” Her amusement level was at an all-time high, and she knew that was odd since just an hour before she’d been ducking behind a row of cars, praying she wouldn’t get her face shot off. But she was safe now, and she knew it.
    The men in that bar, the Orphans, would die to protect her because she was Morgan’s.
    That thought was both unsettling and comforting.
    She was Morgan’s.
    She belonged to him, and every man in the crew would do whatever it took to protect her in his absence. So she’d bloody play pool with them and kick all their asses. She smiled again as Clive racked the balls.
    She glanced around, comforted by the fact that she was surrounded by people who cared. The realization was a little frightening, but welcoming too. The Orphans were a family. An odd, criminal family, but a family nonetheless.
    Her biological family was no less odd or criminal, she reminded herself as she picked out a cue stick and then looked over at Clive, “Is this the right one?”
    Clive chuckled. “That one has a bad tip. Try the one to the right there.”
    She took down the one she’d chosen, letting its weight fill her palm. It was decently balanced and she saw that the tip was in good shape, but she held it out to him anyway.