Chapter Nine Dixie

Abra and Zip follow me out to the common room, where I find Levi behind the bar. He's opening a beer for Lake.

"Where is your sister, Olivia?" I ask him.

Levi frowns, but answers without delay. "She's at work. She's a nurse practitioner at Omega Hospital. Why?"

"We think Maxim may go after her because you helped Delphine and her daughters. We're going to go get her and bring her back here," I explain.

"I'm coming, too," Levi says, rushing around the bar to join us. "She won't come unless I'm with you."

I nod in agreement, because no woman with any sense would willingly go off with a group of strangers, especially bikers.

"Take an SUV. Here are the keys," Zip says, handing him a set of keys.

Zip and I lead the way with Abra and Lake behind us. Levi brings up the rear. The hospital is twenty minutes away, but we make it in fifteen, because the fear in Delphine's eyes told me we didn't have time to waste. The plan is for Levi to go inside the hospital, find his sister, and convince her to come back to the clubhouse with us. However, that plan's shot to shit when we arrive in time to see three men dragging a woman toward a waiting vehicle. I recognize two of them as ones who accompanied Maxim to our meeting the previous day.

Levi drives straight toward the group and barely puts it into park before he slams out of the SUV.

"Get your fucking hands off of her!" Levi yells as he races forward. The man who has his arm around Olivia's waist pulls out a gun and shoots at Levi. I see the bullet hit his shoulder, slamming him into a 180 spin before dropping to the ground. The rest of us take out our weapons and aim them at the assholes as they slink backwards toward their vehicle. It looks to be a standoff, but Olivia takes us all by surprise.

She screams like a banshee when Levi goes down, but instead of crumbling, she comes out swinging. I grimace when her left fist pounds into the crotch of the asshole who shot her brother. When he buckles, she knocks the gun out of his hand before dropping to the ground and disappearing from view.

We advance on the three assholes, our guns aimed at their heads.

"Son of a bitch!" Maxim curses as he climbs out of the SUV. "How incompetent are you? You just had to grab one small woman! Get in the car, let's go." He turns to me. "We're leaving. The girl and the boy are yours. But Hex still owes me that favor we discussed. If he doesn't follow through, I'll destroy him and his club. So far, I've held back, seeing as he's my son. But that ends if he doesn't do what I want. Tell him. I don't normally deal with the skin trade, but his mother and sisters will fetch a handsome price."

"Wrong thing to say," I growl. "Delphine is mine. I'll kill you before I let anything happen to her or her daughters."

He smirks at me. "You're courageous or stupid. Delphine is a dangerous woman. Ask her what happened to the father of her daughters."

The sound of sirens breaks up our party. Maxim and his men duck into their SUV and drive off. I rush over to Levi where Lake and Olivia are patching up his wound.

"We need to take him inside," Olivia says, her hand holding the bloody bandage against the wound.

"We can't," Lake says. "The cops will be here in a few minutes. We need to get to the clubhouse. I have everything we'll need to remove the bullet."

"Not a chance," Olivia says, but stops when Levi squeezes her hand.

"Please, we need to go to the clubhouse. It's the only place where you'll be safe."

Olivia glances at each of us as if searching for an ally, but she must see the resolve on each of our faces. She mutters as she removes the bandage and tears another strip of material off Levi's shirt to press it against the still seeping wound. "Hold this tight. Let's get you in the car so we can get going."

Lake lifts Levi up in his arms and deposits him in the back of the SUV. He walks Olivia to the door of the SUV and helps her inside, even buckling her seatbelt. He says something to her, placing his hand over hers on the steering wheel. The sound of the sirens grows louder.

"Let's go, the cops are almost here," I yell out. Lake closes her door and hops on his bike. Zip and I take the lead and let Abra and Lake follow behind the SUV. I hope she stays with us. I'm not in the mood to hunt her down if she does a runner. However, she proves to be smart and follows us straight back to the clubhouse.

She's out of the car as soon as she parks. Opening the back door, she lets Lake pick up her brother before following them inside. We follow as far as the common room where we find Hex, Delphine, and Vladimir waiting for us.

"What happened?" Hex asks.

"Maxim's men had her and were dragging her to her car," I explain. "Levi played kamikaze and interrupted them. They shot him and she went ballistic on their asses. May want to see if she wants to prospect for the club. She reminds me of Viper from Vegas."

Abra laughs and nods his head. "I agree. She punched the asshole in the junk after he shot her brother. Then she knocked the gun out of his hand. Following all that p with some ninja move before vanishing."

"She ducked under a car," Zip supplies. "I saw her getting out the other side so she could take care of her brother. She impressed the hell out of me."

"What happened to Maxim's men?" Hex asks.

"He told them to take off, but not before he gave me a message to deliver to you," I tell him. Once I give him Maxim's message, Hex glances at his brother.

"Does he know where we are?"

Vladimir shakes his head. "I don't think so. He has someone looking for you, so he might have discovered your location. However, I think it's just a threat. He needs your help, so of course he's making threats. He'd never show vulnerability by asking."

"What does he need from me? He never got around to the specifics. He mentioned having made arrangements with Cleo's father for transportation of something valuable. But he wouldn't say what he needs transported. Could it be women or children? He said no, but I don't trust him to tell me the truth."

Vladimir shakes his head slowly. "He never got into the skin trade, at least I'm fairly certain. I don't know every detail about his business, but I know more than he tells me. If he was involved in human trafficking, I'd know. He prides himself on dealing with only exclusive merchandise like jewelry and art. All stolen, of course. He used to sell drugs, but no longer. He considers himself a criminal connoisseur these days."

Delphine snorts, which reminds me of Maxim's comment about the father of Sasha and Shayna. I knew the story about his death. How he died in a fire in his office. Maxim implied that she may have had something to do with his death, but I don't see how. Pulling Delphine to the side, I tell her about what Maxim said. Expecting her to scoff or laugh at his words, I'm unprepared for the guilty glint in her eyes.

"Delphine?" I say, wrapping my hands around her arms to force her to look at me. "Tell me he was lying. Tell me you had nothing to do with the death of Shayna and Sasha's father."

She glares at me before shrugging out of my grip. "I can't. Okay? Maxim's right, I was responsible."

"You need to explain," I growl at her.

"Yeah, Mom, you need to explain what happened to our father," says Shayna, who had come up next to us when I wasn't looking. Shayna and her sister send matching glares at the mother.

"You said a disgruntled client killed him. Is that not true?" Sasha asks.

I shift my attention to Delphine to see her face crumble; the tears falling fast. The sight breaks my heart, but before I can reach for her, she pushes away from me and runs up the stairs.

"What the fuck did you say to her?" Vladimir demands.

"Shut up, Hex. This has nothing to do with you. Dixie said your mother had something to do with the death of our father," Shayna says, gesturing between herself and Sasha. "Wait. Why are you dressed in a suit?"

"You're not Hex," Sasha says, stepping away from Vladimir and pulling her sister with her. "Who the fuck are you?"

"He's my twin brother. Now everyone shut the fuck up and tell me why my mother just ran upstairs in tears." Hex glares at his sisters.

"They discovered I'm responsible for the death of their father," Delphine says, slowly coming back down the stairs.