Chapter 87: More Behind The Cover

Draven POV

What if I got shot? That was the end for me. I would die in an instant, all for nothing.

So I had two options ... beg for my life, or take it the hard way.

Guns were fucking pointed at me.

"I’m being honest, Rex. They’re coming here and they’ll kill everyone," I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could manage.

"You’re a rebel. You took an oath and you broke it ... so you deserve to die," he said, still holding Jade in his grip.

"Please ... don’t kill him. Kill me instead," Jade said.

"What the fuck! Do you even know what you’re saying?" I snapped at her. "Don’t listen to her, Rex. Don’t."

"Shut up," Rex said, turning back to me. "Give me every detail you have on who’s coming."

"Drop the guns first," I said.

"Are you crazy? I’ll shoot her right now." He pressed the barrel closer to her temple. Jade was crying. I could see it in her face ... the way she was trying to hold herself together and failing.

"Okay. Okay." I gave them the coordinates on the Glocks, told them how I had tracked one of them down. I spilled everything.

But even as the words left my mouth, I was thinking ... how was I supposed to know they wouldn’t just kill me the moment I finished talking? The secret was the only thing keeping me alive. I had to stretch it out. Had to buy more time.

That was when I noticed Jade’s eyes.

She’d been giving me signs this whole time and I hadn’t been paying attention. I caught it now ... her eyes moving, deliberate and controlled, trying to tell me something. A countdown.

I kept talking while I watched her.

Three. Two. One. Go.

I dropped and hit Rafael hard on the leg, snatching his gun out of his hand before he could react. At the same moment, Jade drove her elbow into Rex’s side and ripped his gun away in a split second.

I didn’t wait. I dove under the nearest bar table before anyone could get a shot off. Jade ran and took cover somewhere across the room. They were shooting at us from every direction and we were shooting back ... bullets tearing through wood and glass and everything between us.

Jade scrambled behind the same table I was using. We kept firing until we managed to break through the front door and get out.

I thought I saw a bullet catch Mia in the leg on the way out ... I didn’t see it clearly enough to be sure.

We ran like our lives depended on it, because they did. Hit the bike and were gone within seconds.

My heart was still pounding when we pulled up to the nearest empty building and killed the engine.

I couldn’t get myself together for a solid three minutes. Jade and I were both breathing hard, backs against the wall, saying nothing.

"You came for me," she said finally.

"Of course I woul..."

She kissed me.

Full on the lips, no warning, no build-up.

I pulled back and looked at her. "Should I say thank you for that?"

She ignored the question. "Rex is a bad wolf. He’s always mistreated me, and now he wants to kill me."

"He can’t kill you. You’re far from him now." I paused. "But how were you even sure your plan back there was going to work? That was risky as hell, Jade. You could’ve gotten both of us killed."

"I had it all figured out." She met my eyes without flinching. "And you’re here now, aren’t you?"

"We have to keep moving," I said.

"Exactly. They’ll track us here." She was already looking around, thinking.

"Where do we even go? I don’t know this area at all," I said.

"I know a place." She stood up and walked to the bike. "And I’m driving. Consider this your first lesson on how to handle one properly."

She got on, I climbed on behind her, and we rode.

We drove for a long time ... far enough that we stopped at a gas station to refuel before we finally pulled up somewhere.

A motel.

I’d known it the second I saw the sign.

"You know Carlos’s men are going to be looking for me, right?" I said.

"They can’t find you here, Draven," Jade said.

"Neither can Rex and his people," she added.

The place had a nightclub attached to it. Loud music bleeding through the walls, lights flashing behind frosted glass. I wasn’t sure what kind of operation this was, but it was clearly more than just a place to sleep.

Jade must have had a whole other life before I met her. There was still so much I hadn’t uncovered.

She walked straight up to a big wolf ... broad-shouldered, all muscle, the kind of man who didn’t need to say much to make a point ... and said something in his ear.

"Meet Draven. My friend," she told him.

He shook my hand. She whispered something else to him, and whatever she said, it cleared the path for everything that followed.

He took us downstairs ... down a narrow staircase to what looked like a basement room. Exactly the kind of place built for someone hiding from something.

"Who is he?" I asked once the door was closed behind us.

"Lucas. Old friend of mine. I helped him out a while back, so now he owes me." She picked up a folded shirt and a pair of jeans from the bed and threw them at me. "Put those on. You want to blend in with everyone else out there ... trust me."

She was already pulling on a pair of skinny black jeans and a fitted top. Her whole demeanor was sharp and efficient, like she’d done this kind of thing before.

I wasn’t going to lie to myself ... she looked good. But that wasn’t what I needed to be thinking about right now. All I had in my head was one word: survive. Survive, and kill if you had to, but survive above everything else.

"We have a lot to talk about, Jade. There’s more to you than I know," I said.

She smiled at that. Then she came in with another kiss ... she really loved doing that. A real badass, and she knew it.

I wasn’t about to let myself get pulled in. We were in skinny jeans in a borrowed basement room with men hunting us. No inappropriate behaviour, I told myself firmly.

"Who I am just saved you today," she said against my lips. "I’ll tell you everything, I promise. I’m not a closed book, Draven ... I’m just a complex one."

We went back upstairs to where Lucas had received us.

With the music rocking the whole room, I took a second to actually look around properly.

It was a lot to take in.

People doing drugs in corners. Men hunched over snooker tables, others throwing money down in gambling circles. Strippers working the pole like it was a full-time job ... because it was. And in the darker corners of the room, people were doing things that had no business being done in public.

This wasn’t just a nightclub. This was something else entirely.

"Don’t judge what you see," Jade said close to my ear. "It’s not what you think."

Why the fuck was everyone around here so mysterious? I was starting to lose my grip on my cool. I told myself to find it again.

Lucas appeared with drinks.

"You’ll need these. Cool off ... forget everything that happened back there for a minute," he said.

So Jade had told him everything. Of course she had.

He wasn’t wrong though. I needed something to take the edge off. I took the first shot.

It hit my brain like a spark.

Lucas laughed. "Your friend doesn’t know how to take a drink, Jade."

He slid another one across to me. Jade had already knocked back three like they were water.

"Take this one. It’ll cancel out the first," Lucas said.

I took it like I wasn’t already feeling the first one. Kept my face straight. Acted like I had it together.

I did not have it together.

I was seeing double and trying very hard not to make it obvious. The strippers weren’t helping my focus either ... those women were really holding it down up there.

Jade tapped my shoulder.

"You want one?" She nodded toward the pole with a straight face and a smile at the corner of her mouth. "I can sort that out for you, baby."

I looked at her. She was dead serious.

I was under the influence and hiding from two different criminal organizations in a basement motel attached to what was basically a brothel.

This was way too much.