Page 136 of Full Throttle

Without looking back, I stepped inside, my eyes darting around the space quickly. Sounds of people fucking filled my ears, and I avoiding looking for where the sound was coming from. I heard men laughing and someone in the face back cussing up a storm, and I ignored that, too.

Sure enough, there was a bar to my left and as quickly as I could, I made my way to it, taking a seat in a cheap chair at the end of it. The floor was the same as the rest of Devils Den: damp, sticky concrete. The only difference between outside and in this shitty little bar, it didn’t smell as bad.

But it still fucking stunk.

Women were screaming, but I kept my head down, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from crying. “Teal. Teal. Teal. Teal,” I pushed out in a rush.

After a moment, I heard Agent Garner’s voice. “Roger that.” His voice was softer than last time, and my heart skipped a beat. So the cold agent had a fucking heart after all.

“You need something?”

Keeping my head bent, my eyes darted up to find an old fat man with a few missing teeth staring at me from behind the bar. I shook my head.

“You waiting on someone, boy?”

Oh fuck.

Panic shot through me like a bolt of lightning and the longer the man stared at me, the more eyes I started to feel on me. From all sides.

We still had two more minutes before the FBI stormed the place, and I hadn’t even found Kavi yet. Suddenly, a hand wrapped around my wrist and before I knew what was happening, I was yanked from the stool and pulled to another body—one that wasn’t Cain’s.

If one more fucking man grabbed me—

“They’re with me.”

My chest folded in on itself at the sound of Xander’s voice, but I couldn’t look at him.

The bartender assumed I was a boy, and Xander didn’t clarify. If I exposed my face, it would put us in more danger that we already were. Swallowing down the nausea, I moved with Xander as he turned us, and then I felt his mouth close to my ear—right next to the earpiece. “This is no place for a person like you. Especially on a Monday.”

Monday. That meant things were bad.

We walked by a table with a few men sitting around it, watching a trembling woman dance on it. Then, he brought me around the other end of the bar, and I was pushed against the thin wall, Xander’s arms bracing on either side of me as he hid me from sight. His dark eyes met mine, and he gave me a nod.

For the first time today, I felt a spark of hope in my chest.

He lowered his head before he said, “Throne.”

“Got it,” Collin said in my ear.

“Roger that. My team is on the ground. You have two minutes to get Kavi out of there," James said.

“Baby, get somewhere safe,” Cain ordered me.

“She’s with me,” Xander said, his eyes meeting mine.

My bottom lip trembled as I breathed. “Thank you, Xander.”

Something flashed in his eyes as regret twisted his face, but he blinked, and it was gone. “Light this bitch up, Cain,” he said, looking to the bar.

A second later, I heard a loud bang and popped my head around the corner to see that Leon had kicked the door in, his gun pointed at the men with their pants down. He fired multiple rounds, and within seconds, Cain, Dontell, and Mina were inside too, firing off bullets. Xander wrapped his arm around me, holding me against him and out of sight as my family kicked ass.

The women scrambled, ducking and crawling underneath tables as they screamed. The men didn’t have enough time to right their shit and get their guns out. Mina turned to the bar, firing her gun, and the fat, ugly man landed on the ground.

“Xander, let me go,” I demanded, needing to fight with them—for them.

“You know how to use a gun?” he asked.

“Probably a better fucking shot than you,” I shot back, looking at him. “Let me go.”

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