The F King:A Bad Boy Romance(63)

The words were mostly lost to me, but I got the gist of it. I had no  idea if, or even how, Austin could have anything to do with this. We  both saw him on the screen when this all started. I shook my head and  shrugged, trying not to look him in the eye.

Gradually, the sounds of war outside became more scattered, more sporadic. Somebody was winning.

With Renato's handgun pressed against my head it felt like an eternity,  but eventually, even those sporadic gunshots stopped completely. There  was still yelling, still running footsteps, but I had no idea what was  out there.

Neither did Renato. He gathered himself and pulled the gun away from me,  approaching the door as if it might be a demon in disguise.

With air hissing in and out through his teeth he reached out and put his  hand on the doorknob, turning it slowly and then pulling. The hallway  came into view.

From my perspective in the chair, I couldn't see anything different.  Renato cautiously stuck his head out and looked one way, then the other.

Faster than I'd seen almost anybody else move before, Renato cursed in a  screaming tone through his wired-jaw and whipped his head back as a  thunderous roar of some kind of gun splintered the door frame. Shielding  his face from the wooden shrapnel, Renato slammed the door shut again  and frantically retreated behind me.

Misplaced hope ate away at the acceptance of my own death. I gritted my  teeth and squinted my eyes, still wondering if I would feel it when the  bullet tore through my head, even as I watched the door for somebody to  come in and end this nightmare.

Adding to the chaos going through my mind, Renato was undoing my  handcuffs for some reason. Once I was loose, he yanked me to my feet by  my hair and dragged me backwards, until he was in the corner of the room  with me standing in front of him.

Resting his gun-bearing arm on my shoulder, he pointed it at the door  and waited, breathing hard. The door burst open and Renato fired.

This close to my head, the sound was almost deafening. With ringing  ears, I tried to see what had just happened, but nobody was slumped dead  in the doorway.         

     



 

"Let her go, Renato, and I'll let you die with some dignity," yelled a voice I recognized.

Austin! Austin was here! I almost howled in triumph.

"Fuk-oooo!" Renato screeched.

A head appeared low in the doorway for the briefest moment and I bumped Renato's arm upwards, making him miss his shot.

"Ooofukinbich!" The Picolli mobster hit me just under the eye with the butt of his gun.

Pain bloomed there, but it was nothing compared to the ache in my heart  when I saw that it wasn't Austin out there. I could still die, and it  would have been such a relief to see him one last time.

"Over here! Over here!" that voice, eerily like Austin's came again.

With one eye shut against the pain from the pistol strike, I saw another  head peek around the corner, even faster than the first. It wasn't  there long enough for Renato to get a shot off, but it was enough for me  to see that it was Austin this time.

"Imakihdisbich!" screamed Renato, frantically alternating between pointing the gun at my head and at the door.

"Skylar! I'm sorry!"

His voice for sure! He really was here. I sobbed with relief. If he was  here, I could tell him. I could let him know I meant what I said. He  could rely on me to the very end.

"Austin! I love you!"

"I love you too!"

"Wahduhfuk! Thsnomuhfukin' cuppohscunslin'!"

"Think, Skylar! You've been here before! Remember the gym!"

What was he talking about? I'd never been held prisoner by the Mafia before. Had he lost his mind? The gym?

The gym!

All those hours Austin spent teaching me self-defense in the gym after  the mess in Las Vegas! He'd been through all the most common scenarios,  and one of them was being held from behind like this.

What was I supposed to do? I couldn't remember! It was all so different  when Austin had been using his finger as a gun or the edge of his hand  as a knife.

Think, Skylar!

That was the key. I had to think through the chaos. It was all just a  few simple steps. The quicker I did them, the less time Renato would  have to react.

I remembered.

After one last deep breath, I watched Renato's wildly swinging arm,  drowning out his mush-mouthed gibberish. Time seemed to slow down for  me.

Now!

I grabbed his forearm with both hands, holding it across my chest, and  bent down, then quickly bent my upper body forward. I felt Renato's  weight move over me and I extended my legs.

To my utter amazement, Renato went sailing clean over my back with an  almost comical sound of wordless disbelief. I still had his arm trapped  with his gun pointing behind me when he landed flat on his back on the  ground.

Moving so fast he was almost a blur, Austin made a beeline for that gun,  dropping his knee on to Renato's face and ripping the firearm out of  the mobster's hand at the same time. Renato screamed once before Austin  knocked him out with the pistol.

In an instant, Austin was back on his feet. He was still wearing nothing  but the shorts and fingerless gloves he'd had on in the New Ashby event  center.

Then his hands were on me, on my upper arms, moving me away from the  unconscious and seriously re-disfigured Renato. My arms and legs started  going numb and I stumbled.

Austin steadied me, then lifted me up the same way as when it was our honeymoon. I reached out and touched him to make sure.

"Are you OK?" he asked.

"I think …  I think so. Is this really happening?"

"Yes, Sky, you're safe. Look at me. You. Are. Safe."

I stared at his face as other men filed into the room behind the guy  with the Austin-like voice. He tucked his gun into a holster and looked  down at Renato disdainfully.

"You two, search him, tie him up and put him in the car. We're gonna  have a talk when he wakes up." He paused. "You, go to the store and buy a  pack of crayons so this asshole can write down his answers."

"Did you …  mean it?" Austin asked.

I knew what he meant, and I repeated it. "I'll love you forever. I meant it."

"What did I do to deserve you?"

"Everything."

"I love you, Skylar. If anything had happened … "

I rested my head on his chest. "You're going to be a father."

"I saw the test. How about that, huh? Think it'll be any easier than taking down a crime family?"

"How did...?" I asked, gesturing at the guys dragging Renato away, and the whole thing in general.

"It's a crazy story."

"It'd be crazy if it wasn't. Austin?"

"Yeah?"

"Get me outta here, over here."





Skylar
         

     



 




Months Later





The ref waved his arms, signaling the end of the fight, and the crowd  erupted. Austin disentangled himself from Brenton Southgate and stood to  his feet, letting the (now-former) champion's unconscious form slump  unceremoniously face-down on the mat.

Austin bounded to the edge of the decagon and straddled the fence,  raising his arms in triumph instead of fleeing the premises the way he  had the first time these two fought. With those thick arms bulging, he  practically howled in his victorious euphoria.

His eyes sought me out, and he gave me a private smile in the middle of  the seventy-thousand strong crowd, pointing at me before dropping back  into the ring. Beside me, like everybody else in here, Kendall and Jace  were on their feet.

Kendall, about as jealous of my pregnant body as I was of her  returning-to-normal-post-pregnancy body, was holding my hand and  bouncing enough for the both of us. King Austin the Second (I was going  to veto the hell out of that one, but that's what Austin and Jace  suggested) even gave a little kick to show his support.

The announcer declared Austin the new heavyweight champion of the MMA  world, as the Head of NHBFC secured the belt around my husband's waist  and Brenton Southgate started to show signs of consciousness. One of the  commentators approached Austin with microphone in hand and waited for  the noise to die down a little before beginning his interview.

"First of all, Austin, congratulations!"

"Thanks, Pete."

"Thanks for sticking around this time!"

Austin laughed. "No problem."

"Obviously a classic submission victory for yourself. Could you walk us through what happened here?"

"Uh, yeah, sure. I learned from the first fight that Brenton's best  defense against the ground game was avoiding it as much as possible.  That's not to take anything away from him, he knows his sh- …  stuff, he  knows his stuff, but I figured that if I could take him into the later  rounds by standing with him for that long, my conditioning would see me  through, and I'd spot the opening I needed to take the fight back to  where I had the advantage, and I could tie him in knots."

"Well, mission accomplished, right?"

"Yup."

"So who do you see yourself fighting next? A rematch with Coles maybe?"

Austin laughed again. "No. No, I don't think that would be a healthy move for him."