MY HUSBAND'S SECRET SIDE CHICK

THE BARGAINED LINE

"Lower the weapon, Ethan." My voice didn't shake. It cut through the suffocating, deadly pressure filling the tiny interrogation room like a sheet of pure glass. I didn't wait for either of the towering Blackwood brothers to answer. I stepped straight into the line of fire, placing my body directly between the barrel of my husband's gun and the massive chest of the forbidden Alpha.

"Laura, get back!" Ethan choked out, his wide with a frantic, sweating panic. His hands were trembling violently against the grip of his handgun, his knuckles white, his breathing ragged. The blood from his shoulder graze was dripping down his sleeve, staining his white tuxedo cuff. "You don't know what he is! He isn't human, Laura! He'll destroy you just to spite me!"

"I said, lower it!" I repeated, stepping closer until the cold, black metal of Ethan's gun barrel pressed directly against the emerald-green silk covering my heart. I stared into his dark eyes, the eyes of the man I had loved, the man who had lied to me, the man who had just bled to save my life. "If you pull that trigger, the bullet goes through me first. I'm done letting men decide who gets to bleed in my name."

Ethan let out a broken, agonizing sound. The raw, possessive desperation in his gaze was enough to break my heart, but the Alpha in him couldn't override his love for me. Slowly, painfully, he lowered his arm, his gone pointing harmlessly toward the concrete floor. Behind me, a low, deep chuckle vibrated through the air, sending a treacherous, electric chill straight down my spine.

"See that, little brother?" Damien Blackwood murmured, his velvet baritone sweeping over my neck like winter frost. He didn't move an inch. He stood in his long dark trench coat, his molten amber eyes glowing with a malicious, triumphant pleasure as he looked over my shoulder at Ethan. "She protects me because her blood already recognizes the truth. You can hold a woman captive with a marriage certificate, but you can't shackle her destiny."

"Shut up, Damien!" Ethan roared, his knuckles flexing as he took a furious step forward, his jaw was tight enough to snap bone. "You haven't been in this city for ten years. You don't own her nor know her."

"I knew her name before you ever put that cheap diamond on her finger," Damien hissed, his amber eyes suddenly flashing with a dangerous, primal dominance that made the fluorescent lights overhead flicker violently. The air in the room grew so heavy I could barely breathe. "I was the one who signed the blood pact with her biological father before the Sterling family ever bought her. She was promised to the Northern pack line. She belongs to the iron crest."

"Stop talking about me like I'm a piece of meat to be traded!" I screamed, turning on my heel to face Damien. I raised my hand and slammed my palm against his massive chest, pushing back a fraction of an inch. His body felt like solid stone beneath the dark wool of his coat, burning with a strange, unnatural heat. "I don't care about your blood pacts or your iron crest. I'm a human being and I'm not leaving this precinct with either of you until I get the real truth about my family."

Suddenly, the glass window of the two-way mirror shattered inward behind us with a deafening crash. Natalie shrieked, ducking under the table as shards of glass rained down. The lights in the entire precinct went completely dark, replaced instantly by the flashing red emergency lights of a building-wide lockdown.

The heavy steel door of the interrogation room slammed shut and the mechanical locks clicked into place with a definitive, electric thud.

"What the hell is happening?" Natalie cried out through the red darkness. Ethan instantly lunged forward, his strong arms wrapping around my waist from behind, pulling me securely against his bare, hard chest. He raised his gun again, his eyes scanning the broken mirror. "Damien...did your Northern extraction team do this?"

"Don't insult my intelligent, Ethan," Damien growled, his hand moving to his pocket as he pulled out a small, glowing military satellite device. He tapped the screen, his amber eyes narrowing in the red strobe light. "My men are still at the city limits. This isn't an extraction, this is a cleanup."

"Cleanup?" I asked, my hand clutching Ethan's forearm as the heat of his body anchored me against the rising panic.

"Look at the screen," Damien said, tilting the glowing device toward us.

A high priority federal alert was flashing across the satellite feed: CADE FILE 15-B: RECLASSIFIED. WITNESS TERMINATION ORDER AUTHORIZED BY THE BLACKWOOD TRUST MINORITY BOARD.

My blood ran completely cold. "The minority board...that's your mother's allies," I whispered, looking from Ethan to Damien. "She's inside a jail cell downstairs, but she's still pulling the strings. She ordered the precinct to be locked down to kill us all before the media can broadcast the adoption files."

"They've flooded the ventilation system with chemical suppressants," Ethan said, his voice dropping into a tense, possessive growl as he sniffed the air. A faint, bitter smell of almonds began to leak through the ceiling vents. He tightened his grip on my waist, his lips pressing against my temple. "Laura, we have to move. The lower drainage pipes under the precinct cell blocks lead to the old subway line. It's the only way out."

"We won't make it to the cells through the main hallway, the guards will shoot on sight," Damien said, walking toward the shattered two-way mirror. He effortlessly ripped a massive jagged piece of the metal frame away, exposing a dark, narrow brick shaft behind the wall. He turned his head, his molten amber eyes locking onto my face with a terrifyingly possessive intensity. "We take the service shafts. Together. If we want to survive the night, little brother...we have to share the asset."

Ethan's jaw tightened so hard a vein surfaced on his temple. He hated every syllable coming out of his brother's mouth, but looking at the smoking vents above my head, he had no choice.

"Only until we reach the surface, Damien," Ethan hissed, his voice vibrating with absolute lethal intent. "The moment we get her to safety, I'm putting you back in the dirt where you belong."

Damien smiled, a dark, dangerous flash of teeth in the red strobe light. He vaulted through the broken mirror frame into the dark shaft first, clearing the way. Ethan turned me around, his hands cupping my face in the dark, his eyes burning with desperation. "Trust me, Laura. Just stay close behind me, I'll get you out of this nightmare."

I nodded, my fingers tightening around his wrist as the bitter gas began to fill the room. The target on my back had just gotten bigger. I was locked in a dark, underground labyrinth, trapped between the husband who would bleed to keep me and the forbidden brother who claimed he owned my very blood.