Ambition: A Dark Billionaire Romance Anthology (24 page)

I
was lying
on my right side, my shoulder dislocated from when I crashed into the hard, unforgiving vinyl tile, gunfire going off all around me. I should have been panicking, or at least worried about getting shot, despite my low profile. I should have been thinking about my shoulder, and if I'd broken or torn something on top of dislocating it. I should have. But I wasn't.

Instead, those were far from my mind. My focus was centered about four feet in front of me, as Melinda Pressman approached me, murder in her eyes and insanity written on her features. She was as beautiful as she was pissed off. And she was very, very beautiful.

"Fuck it, I'll still get my prize," she said, a long knife in her hand. It looked wickedly sharp and glittered in the fluorescent lights overhead. I was torn between looking at the knife and looking at her face, both of which were filled with deadly intent. She stepped closer, a growl rising in her chest. It was paralyzingly hypnotic, and I found it difficult to move. "That bitch Tabby can't have you ever again."

Her words were like a splash of cold water. At the mention of Tabby's name, I knew what I had to do. With my arms tied to the chair behind my back, I couldn't use them to defend myself. At the same time, the wide base of the office chair that they'd used didn't allow me to rotate my body in any meaningful way. Besides, the same rope that tied my wrists to the chair also looped around my waist.

However, they'd made one mistake when they tied me up. My legs free, a grave mistake. Perhaps they only had one piece of rope to tie me with, or perhaps Melinda Pressman had some other sort of plan in mind when she originally had me tied to the chair. In either case, I wasn't going to let the opportunity pass me by.

As soon as Melinda came closer, she started to kneel, intent on my junk. When she came in range, I kicked out with my left leg, wishing I'd landed on my left side, since my right leg is my stronger leg. Either way, I had to kick as hard as I could and hope that I caught her off guard.

In all of my training with Mark, we'd worked kicks from a variety of angles and situations. After watching my footwork and style, he had me focus mostly on what he called
Thai-style
kicks. It was one of these that I unleashed now, bringing my legs up to my chest like I was defending myself before shooting out with my left foot, aiming for the bottom of her kneecap with the flat of my shoe. She was leading with her right leg, which was helpful since it was at a slightly downward relative angle to where I was lying, making the kick easier.

I'd never kicked a woman before in my life before that point other than light sparring with Sophie. She and I had kicked each other plenty of times, but it was always with light force and wearing shin guards. She was five months pregnant at the time, and I was just learning what to do. There was no purpose to unleash a full power kick on a pregnant woman, even with shin pads on.

That kick against Melinda however was the first time I'd actually kicked out at a woman in anger and with the intent to hurt her. Considering the so-called
ladies
I'd grown up with in the orphanage system and living in The Playground, that was a pretty good run of nonviolence.

I was lucky that Melinda wasn't a trained fighter. Her weapon of choice was her sexuality, which while being much more esoteric, meant she didn't know what to expect. As it was, I connected with the inside of her knee, not hard enough to damage it, but enough to knock her to the ground. Her knife, which was clenched in her right fist, clattered on the tile but was still in her grip. Gunfire rattled around us, and I knew that the counter I'd fallen behind wouldn't stop heavy caliber bullets. I was just grateful that nobody had decided to start aiming low. Melinda looked surprised as she fell, her brown eyes widening in shock more than pain, before her lip twisted in a grimace of hate.

"Fucker," she spat, baring her teeth at me. She leaned over onto her left hand so she could raise the knife up from the floor, and I used the opportunity to kick her left elbow, connecting on the inside with a soccer kick that collapsed the limb. She rolled, unfortunately moving out of my reach, but she also lost her knife, which bounced on the tile a few feet away.

I could only stare as Melinda skittered along the tile towards the knife while the massive gunfire continued. I heard short, measured bursts within the general rattling carnage, and knew that Mark was still alive. I'd heard him too often when he'd taken me out to the woods outside of the city to train to not distinguish his strictly controlled style. It gave me some hope that I might actually get out of the mess alive and possibly with my balls still attached. I had a great fondness for them, they'd been good friends of mine for many years, and didn't want to part with them so early in my lifetime.

However, at that moment I couldn't waste any of my energy worrying about Mark or my balls. Melinda had scrambled to her knife and recovered it, turning to grin at me. She'd busted her lip when she rolled, a little trickle of blood running down her chin and filling her eyes with madness. "No more games, boy."

I'd expected her to come at me low, recognizing that there was a lot of bullets flying around the room. Instead, she sprang from her low crouch, springing high and quick through the air. I tried to pull my legs up as quickly as I could, but I knew in the position I was in, there was no defense for my side or my torso. She was on the upward curve of her leap when the burst of gunfire took her in the side, once near the hip and another in her left shoulder.

I got to see first hand one of the great myths of movies clearly busted then. In movies, when someone gets shot, they usually end up flying through the air like they just got thrown at least a few feet backwards (exceptions made for the hero, who still gets driven to their knees and grunting in pain). The reality is much different, and I guess grounded in science.

I'm no math genius, I barely pulled a B my last year in high school, mostly because I spent more time worrying about Carrie Brickshaw who sat one row over and three seats in front of me than class. But when Mark took me out and showed me using watermelons on strings, gel packs, and even a dead pig, and combined it with an episode of
Mythbusters,
I believed it. When people fall down or collapse at being shot, it's due to their own bodies motion. They see and anticipate the shot, trying to jerk out of the way.

In Melinda Pressman's case, she was jumping through the air focused on me. The bullets didn't affect her motion at all, except in one critical way. She reacted to the pain, and her right hand, which was holding the knife, relaxed. The handle slipped from her grasp and she landed on me with a thud, the side of the office chair cracking into her chest before she hit my shoulder. While it was my uninjured arm, the force still jarred my dislocated one, and I groaned deeply, trying what I could to get her off of me.

Melinda was seriously hit, but still conscious. Pain and rage mixed on her face as she tried to claw at me, only the pain of her wounds compounded by falling onto the chair and my shoulder preventing her from immediately clawing out my eyes.

That’s when I got lucky. Melinda rolled off of me, her legs tangled up with the legs of the chair I was tied in, twisting her body just a little bit. I kicked, connecting square in her chin. Her teeth clamped down on her own tongue and her head jerked back. Her eyes rolled up and she fell to her back, unconscious. I wasn't worried until I saw the bright red blood flowing out of her mouth and heard the choking sounds.

I tried what I could, reaching with my legs and trying to kick her body to roll over, but that final fall had spread her weight wide and onto her back, making it impossible. My shoves and kicks just thumped against her lower legs, not doing anything except making her thigh move over a few inches. I watched helplessly when she went into convulsions, choking on her own blood, never regaining consciousness. It was the first time I'd killed someone, and while yes it was self-defense, I couldn’t help but feel bad for her.

It wasn't until Melinda stopped shaking that I noticed the gunfire had stopped. I looked around at what little I could see. My world consisted of a three foot wide partially obscured window as well as the ceiling, and I could see nothing. I did however hear someone walking over the glass-covered ground at the front of the store, and I only hoped it was Mark and not one of Melinda's gunmen. I twisted my neck to see what little I could, knowing that if a gunman actually was the one approaching me, there was little I could do to stop him.

When Mark's masked face came into view, I swore I could have kissed him, full tongue even, and I've never wanted to kiss a man before in my life. He was covered with dirt and his cheek was scraped up pretty badly, but he looked more or less uninjured. "You okay?"

"Yeah," he answered, coming over and kneeling next to me. He found Melinda's knife and cut the ropes binding me quickly. "What about you?"

"Right shoulder's out of socket," I groaned as I rolled out of my chair. "Think we can pop it back in?"

"Let's get out of here first, the cops won't be far behind. This isn't Filmore Heights where they wait until they have three cars before doing anything," he said, helping me to my feet. "Besides, Sophie ’s probably better at doing it than I am."

Getting up to my feet, I got my first look around the room. Broken equipment and bullet casings littered the ground, along with the bodies. "Jesus. How many did you take out?"

"Five, three in here and one outside. The scrape come from diving after getting the outside guys," Mark replied. "Let's get out of here. Can you jog?"

"Motivate me enough, and I'll outrun you," I said through gritted teeth. "But I have no fucking clue how I'm going to hang on to you on the bike."

"You won't have to," Mark said as we exited the ruined store. We turned left and jogged off, disappearing into the night. We were a block away when we first heard the wail of police sirens approaching. "Come on, I brought one of my other vehicles."

"You must have been planning on dragging me out of there."

"There was a chance, and I had to plan for it. Tabby...." Mark suddenly blinked like he'd forgotten something. He touched his ear, triggering the ear bud and microphone I hadn't noticed earlier. It made sense, Mark was the sort of guy who tried to use his tactical tools as much as he could. "Tabby?"

Just hearing that word from a friendly mouth made some of the pain disappear, as Mark and I jogged off again. While we moved, he spoke again. "I've got him. Dislocated shoulder, but other than that okay. Tabby? Wha... what?!?!?"

Mark took off running, and despite my earlier boast I struggled to keep up, each step jarring my right shoulder and causing me to gasp. Thankfully, Mark's SUV was close by, only about a hundred meters ahead, because it felt like nearly a mile with the pain magnifying every step. Still, I didn't even have time to close my door and fasten my seatbelt before he had the engine going and was driving down the street. Mark, who'd been listening to his earpiece the entire time, nodded and spoke again. "Gotcha. We'll meet you there. Give us time to change."

"Mark, what's wrong?" I asked, concerned. His expression was confusing me at first. It wasn't quite worry, and it wasn't fear, but it was so intense that it burned on his face like a flare. It took me a minute to realize that we weren’t headed towards Mount Zion, but towards one of his strike bases that he'd pointed out to me on a map but hadn't taken me to yet. His face was a mix of simultaneous joy and worry. "Mark, come on man, what's wrong? Is it Tabby? Sophie?"

He glanced over at me and grinned. "Sophie's having the baby. Tabby said she's going to shut down the computer stuff and lock up the bell tower, and call for the doctor. So change of plans."

"How so?"

"We're going to one of the bases nearby, where we can change clothes and stash this stuff. I have a car there that I can drive, it has a clean license plate as well. Then we drive to the clinic. Sophie's still a few weeks early, so Tabby wants to be cautious and have her admitted rather than just the home delivery that we'd originally planned. We're going to avoid the University Hospital where people may remember what Sophie White looked like. The doctor has his own private clinic. We won't have any problems there. But we need to get cleaned up, we can’t show up like this.”

"Yeah, that scrape on your cheek doesn't look good. What's the cover story going to be?" I asked, excitement creeping through me as well. I mean, I'd known Sophie for quite a few months, and considered her a good friend. Mark thought about my question while he drove the rest of the way to his base, a twenty four hour self storage garage in the industrial district just a half mile from the MJT headquarters. Mark tapped in the security code and the gate slid over silently. We drove through the lines of units, Mark looking for his. "Didn't think you'd have one so close to your old office."

Mark nodded absently as he found his spot and put the car into park. He left the engine running and turned to me. "I needed a spot I could stash things close by."

The base was small, only the size of a two car garage. Along the wall was a metal locker, which Mark led me to. I had my thumb tucked into the waistband of my pants, it helped the injured arm not bounce around as I moved. "Tell me about how you got the shoulder popped out."

"I lurched to the side when you started shooting up the place, landed on my right shoulder," I said. “It popped backwards, if that helps."

Mark nodded and grabbed my wrist and elbow. "This is going to hurt, but we can get it checked out later if you want," he said. "Grab onto something with your free hand, and try not to scream or pass out. This place isn't soundproofed, and there are people in the area almost all the time."

It actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I mean sure, Mark rotating my arm as he pulled was about as pleasant as chewing glass, but he didn't have to yank too hard. Instead, after rotating, he lifted and twisted. My shoulder popped back into place with a muffled clunk and an almost orgasmic wave of relief came over me.