My emotions were skidding out of control. When I started to help Samantha up, she drew herself away from me. “Sam, I’m—”

“Just leave.”

“But—”

She shoved herself off the desk and pinned me with a death glare. “You got what you wanted—to fuck me again—so leave.”

I wanted more than anything to pull her into my arms. I wanted to sit her down and tell her that somehow we would work things out. I wanted to tell her I was sorry for being the stubborn prick she had called me.

But I turned and walked out the door. That was it. The last time I would see her, touch her. It was the way it had to be.

TWENTY-TWO

SAMANTHA

After the door slammed shut behind Bishop, I calmly went about putting my clothes back together. Once I finished, I collapsed into my chair. Placing my head in my hands, I began to cry with abandon. Harsh sobs tore through my body with such intensity I didn’t know if I would ever recover.

I didn’t know how much time had passed, perhaps five minutes or maybe ten. I was too lost in my grief to notice. In some ways, it felt like losing Gavin all over again. As if I was somehow destined to always lose the ones who I loved to the MC world.

At the creak of the door, I kept my head buried. “Give me five minutes, Tompkins. Then you can walk me out.”

“You’ll make time for me now,” a raspy voice said from the doorway.

I snapped my head up. Although I’d only seen pictures of him from his file, I knew without a doubt that it was Eddy Catcherside. “Where’s Tompkins?”

With a vicious sneer, Eddy said, “I’m afraid that Tompkins is indisposed. Indefinitely.”

While my mind wanted to spin in a hundred different directions, I worked to keep my focus. My life depended on it. There was nothing else I could do for Tompkins, but I could save myself. In the top right drawer of the desk was a gun, and I needed some way to get to it.

“Agent Vargas, I can’t allow you to testify for the Raiders. They have to go away, and I have to get access to their gun trade. But first, you have to go away.”

He raised his hand to reveal a knife with a long blade that caught the light. When I started to reach for the desk drawer, he dove at me. Frantically, I struggled to open the drawer and get the gun. Before I could, the knife pierced me in the arm. A scream tore from my lips with the onslaught of pain. I didn’t have time to recover before he stabbed me again in the chest and then in the stomach.

In agony, I collapsed onto the floor and tried to block some of Eddy’s hits. But I began to grow weak and soon couldn’t lift my arms. It was then I heard a shout from the doorway. As hard as I struggled to keep my eyes open, it was futile, and I felt myself slipping away.

TWENTY-THREE

BISHOP

I felt like the biggest bastard imaginable as I made my way out of Samantha’s office building. What the hell had I been thinking? Well, I guessed I knew what I had been thinking—I had once again let my dick control my decision-making. Just the thought of the angry sex we’d had caused my cock to throb for a second round.

When my phone rang, I dug it out of my pocket. It was Rev. “Yes. I got the depositions delivered. I’m not a total idiot.”

“That’s not why I’m calling.”

“What is it?”

A pause came on the other end. “Was Samantha okay when you saw her?”

I didn’t think Rev would want me to answer that question honestly, so I replied, “Yeah. Why?”

“She wasn’t alone?”

“No. She had a bodyguard outside her door.”

“Oh. Good.”

“Rev, what the fuck is going on?”

He sighed. “Eddy’s gone off the grid again, even from the Diablos. And I’m worried about what he said before he disappeared, B.”

Anxiety spiked in my bloodstream as I gripped the phone. “What?”

“He said that without Samantha’s testimony, there wouldn’t be a case against us Raiders, so she needed to disappear. Then we would be behind bars, and he and the Diablos could take on the Rodriguez cartel for the guns.”

“Fucking hell.”

I didn’t hear anything Rev said next. Instead, that eerie sixth sense feeling of dread pricked up my spine. “I have to go,” I spat. After I hung up, I sprinted back into the building. When the elevator didn’t budge, I hit the stairs to Samantha’s fifth-floor office.

When I burst out of the stairwell, I froze at the sound of Sam’s screams. Then I raced forward on a burst of speed, zigzagging my way through the maze of desks. I barreled into Sam’s office, only to find her crumpled on the floor and Eddy stabbing her.

“Over here, motherfucker!”

My outburst momentarily stunned Eddy, and it gave me the leverage I needed to tackle him. After we tumbled to the floor, I drove my fist into his jaw and then his cheek. He was the extreme opponent I needed to take down in the ring, except the stakes were so much higher here.

Eddy launched three punches back at me before I began pummeling his face with both my fists. Over and over, I beat him as I screamed in agony.

The next thing I knew I was being lifted up and dragged away. When I came to myself enough to realize what was going on, paramedics were dragging a gurney into the room. “Samantha?” I pushed away from the two men holding me and stumbled over to the desk. “Oh Jesus, Sam,” I moaned.

She lay in a pool of blood with jagged cuts along her arms and legs. The worst were the wounds in her chest and abdomen. Tears seared and burned my eyes like acid as I dropped to the floor beside her. I took her limp hand in mine and brought it to my lips. The metallic taste of blood entered my mouth, and I didn’t know if it was Sam’s or Eddy’s or mine. “Oh, Sam, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”