It took me a moment to get myself together enough to grab my leather jacket and keys. I stormed out, slamming the door behind me so hard that it rattled the doorframe.
Chapter Thirty-Three — Ryder
The bike roared under my ass. Screaming down the road, I made my way to the nearest highway, accelerating through the gears as fast as I could.
My Princess is fucking bleeding and I’m not there. How the fuck did this happen?
Merging with the traffic on the highway, I noticed a group of motorcycles ahead of me. Great. It was the L.A. Demon fuckers I had managed to avoid successfully up to this point. Christ. Was this my unlucky day or what? Any kind of drama with our rival biker gang right now was the last fucking thing I needed.
What was I to do? If I caught up to them—as was most likely at the speed I was traveling—they’d see me. I couldn’t know how they’d react. But most probably, they’d be after me, and there were four of them, so it could be real nasty if they succeeded.
An image of Jade, my Princess, bleeding and calling my name, flashed through my mind. Fuck this. I had no choice. I had to take my chances.
My baby could be dying. My woman could be dying. I had to get there. Fast.
I went for it. Full throttle. I'd never pushed my Harley that hard. I leaned forward to decrease the wind resistance, pushing the bike and myself to the extreme. I had to fly past those fuckers before they could even catch on that I was the one overtaking them.
As I gained on them, weaving through the traffic, adrenaline spiked through my bloodstream and my heart nearly leapt out of my chest. I was going forty miles per hour over the speed limit, racing like a madman. The wind whipped my face, but I didn’t care. Nothing mattered more than getting to Jade.
When I was only a short distance behind the L.A. Demon bikers, I opened my metal horse up to capacity. If I were ever going to die on my Harley, there was a good chance of it being tonight. The motherfuckers were riding abreast of one another, taking up all four lanes as if they owned the fucking road.
Part of me wanted to squeeze my eyes shut, closing out the world. Another part of me loved living on the edge, challenging my manhood and my machine to the limit. It was time to do the latter and let the chips fall where they may. If Jade and my baby were going to die, I wanted to die too. There was no fucking way in hell I could live without her.
Going for the widest gap between two of the bikers, I went to the far left and squeezed between them, accelerating full throttle until my bike redlined. It was now or never.
It took them completely by surprise; they never saw me coming and now I was riding right alongside them. The ugly fucker to my right whipped his head in my direction, his eyes widening as he recognized me. He shouted something, but I couldn’t hear him.
My trusty bike didn’t let me down. She roared past them, leaving a trail of smoke as she burned rubber. For an instant I nearly lost control, feeling the wheels slip beneath me.
My life flashed past me, all thirty-three years in a matter of seconds. I didn’t like a lot of what I saw, which only accentuated how meeting Jade had changed my life for the better. I'd become a good man, in spite of what had happened to me. I couldn’t lose Jade. Fuck no!
An immense calmness came over me. Righting the beast as best I could, I was back in control. I’d get through this. Jade would get through this. That was all that counted.
Glancing into the rearview mirror, I saw the L.A. Demon fuckers give chase. They’d probably figured that they outnumbered me four to one and that this was as good a time as any to finally take me out. They’d accelerated and were hot on my tail.
But I felt invincible, stronger than ever, and confident that I could get away through sheer determination and skill. I understood the pack mentality, and I knew I could outsmart them. I waited until two large trucks who were virtually driving side by side were perfectly lined up before I held my breath and squeezed through between them, a hair’s breadth between my bike and the trucks. One wrong move and I was dead.
It felt like the longest moment in my life, but finally I burst forth ahead of the trucks as they braked in their panic, trying to avoid a collision. The L.A. Demon bikers were right behind the trucks—they’d have to bring their A games if they didn’t want to slide in underneath the wheels and have their heads severed. Tough shit.
Nothing could stop me now. Not even Satan himself.
Adrenaline was pumping through me, every nerve ending more alert than I’d ever been. But it wasn’t over. Above me I heard the sound of a chopper, low enough to cause a wind force to knock me off my bike. Fucking cops.
Didn’t they know this was a matter of life and death? That I wasn’t going to slow down? I gritted my teeth, ducking so they couldn’t see my face. I pulled my T-shirt up over my nose just to make sure. Luckily Ratbag was a genius at making false plates, so I knew they wouldn’t be able to trace my identity through those. Now all I had to do was lose the fuckers.