Contracted Wife to the MC President

Chapter 5

Harper POV

The weight of the 9mm grounded me.

My father raised me to be a prop, a smiling, well-dressed doll for press conferences. But growing up in the Evans house also taught me how to survive a different kind of war. You didn't panic. You didn't freeze. You assessed the threat and you removed it.

I gripped the gun with both hands. Cold metal against my palms.

Gunfire roared above us, wood splintering down onto my shoulders. Reaper crouched beside me, firing over the bar, keeping the mercenaries pinned at the entrance.

A shadow moved at the edge of my vision.

A merc in black tactical gear had flanked us, silent on the floorboards, his rifle rising, a green laser tracking straight onto the back of Reaper's head.

I didn't scream. There wasn't time for that.

I shifted on my knees, raised the pistol, and put the sights on center mass.

Two shots. The recoil bit into my wrists. Both rounds hit dead center, and he dropped, his rifle firing uselessly into the ceiling on the way down.

Reaper spun toward the sound, saw the empty space where the man had been, then looked down at the gun still smoking in my hands.

For a second, the President of the Devil's Saints looked genuinely stunned. Then something feral and approving flashed behind his eyes.

Before either of us could say anything, the wall behind us shook. An incendiary grenade hit the liquor shelves and the whole thing went up at once, a wall of orange heat rolling toward us.

"Move!" Reaper grabbed my hand, iron grip, and hauled me up.

We ran. The clubhouse had turned into a slaughterhouse, smoke thick enough to choke on, blood and cordite in the air, my ears ringing loud enough to drown the shouting around us. My heels slid on floors slick with beer and worse, but his momentum kept me upright.

A mercenary blocked the hallway ahead. Reaper didn't slow down. Two shots, and he kicked the body aside without breaking stride. He wasn't just fighting anymore, he was clearing a path, using himself as a wall between me and everything trying to kill us.

He kicked open a door at the end of the hall. Concrete stairs led down into the dark.

"Down," he said, pushing me ahead of him.

At the bottom, a reinforced steel door waited behind a blood-smeared keypad. He punched in six digits, the deadbolt clicked, and he shoved me through before slamming it shut and throwing the manual lock.

The gunfire dropped to a muffled thud on the other side. Red emergency lights flickered on over racks of rifles and ammo crates. An armory.

That's when the adrenaline finally caught up with me.

My knees gave out. I hit the wall, chest heaving, hands shaking so hard I nearly dropped the gun.

Reaper dropped his Glock on a crate and crossed the room in one stride. He caged me against the concrete, hands moving over my arms, my waist, checking for blood, for holes, for anything he might have missed.

"Reaper—" I gasped.

He wasn't listening. His hands slid up into my hair, tilting my face side to side, checking. He was breathing as hard as I was, smoke and sweat and gunpowder rolling off him.

"Are you hit?" Rough. Urgent.

"No. I'm fine."

He stopped. His thumbs settled over my pulse, and something in the room shifted, the frantic energy folding into something heavier. He stepped closer, thighs bracketing mine, pinning me to the wall with nothing but heat.

His eyes dropped to my mouth. The same hunger from the bar was back, sharper now, fed by everything that had just happened. I'd killed a man for him. He'd killed half a dozen for me.

He pressed his forehead to mine.

"You didn't hesitate," he said, breath ghosting over my lips.

"I told you I wasn't a liability," I whispered back, heart slamming against my ribs.

His grip tightened. He leaned in, a fraction of an inch left between us.

Then the radio on his belt crackled.

"Boss." Knox, breathless, gunfire behind his voice. "Boss, you copy?"

Reaper's jaw tightened but he didn't step back. He keyed the mic without letting go of me. "I'm here. Talk."

"South gate's gone. Breaching charge. There's too many of them. We're outgunned. Compound's lost."

The words landed heavy in the red light.

Reaper didn't curse, didn't raise his voice. The heat in his eyes turned to ice, cold and calculating, a man already three moves ahead.

He let go of my neck and stepped back, and whatever had been building between us went with him.

"Fall back to the tunnels," he said into the radio. "Burn the ledgers. Get the brothers out."

"Copy. What about you?"

"I've got the wife." Flat. Final. "I'm taking her off the board."

He clipped the radio to his belt, grabbed a duffel off the rack, and started shoving in boxes of ammo.

He pulled a pair of heavy boots off a crate and dropped them at my feet.

"Lose the heels." He nodded at the boots. "And turn the jacket inside out. We can't fly club colors anymore. Your father's men will be hunting that patch."

"Where are we going?" I asked, dropping the stilettos onto the concrete.

He pulled an AR-15 off the rack and racked the charging handle, the sound sharp and final in the small room.

"We're leaving everything behind," he said, eyes dead level with mine. "We're going on the run."