Free Hurt: A Bad Boy MMA Romantic Suspense Novel by London Casey, Ana W. Fawkes

Benito would be livid. He’d want Dante to cut my head off. But I had to do this.
    The door slowly opened.
    I heard their damn voices as they walked in.
    “I hope her tits are…”
    I fired the gun.
    Ashlynn screamed.
    I wasn’t sure which was louder.
    “Jesus Christ!” Ricky yelled.
    The first guy fell.
    I then stood up.
    “You shot me!” the guy yelled from the floor.
    The other two started to move, but they froze when I pointed the gun at them.
    “Whoa, man,” one said. “What is this?”
    “Assholes,” Ashlynn said.
    “Ah, fuck,” the guy said.
    “Is he the one?” I asked Ashlynn.
    She nodded.
    I walked to him. “You want to touch my girl’s chest? Because she’s breastfeeding my son?”
    “Hey, come on, man. It was a joke.”
    “Threatening her with a lawsuit? That’s a joke too?”
    “Who the fuck are you?”
    “Noah,” I said. “Never forget it.”
    I smashed the gun into the asshole’s face. He blasted back against the wall, arms flailing. I hit him again and again, taking him down. His buddy threw a punch at me, missing my face, hitting my shoulder.
    I turned to hit him with one hard right and he was out cold on the floor.
    I then took all their wallets, all three.
    The guy I shot was the only one conscious. I crouched and he slid back to the wall.
    “Hey, I didn’t do anything, man,” he said.
    “Okay,” I said. “So I have your ID’s now. I know where you live. Where you work. So what you’re going to do is clean up your friends and leave. You’re going to get your bullet wound checked out. But before that you and you buddies are going to figure out the story. Getting attacked, shot at, wallets stolen, it’s all good. That’s the story. You mention my name… Ricky’s establishment… Ashlynn’s name… and I’ll kill everyone in your life. Got it?”
    The guy’s eyes went wide. They filled with tears. He nodded.
    I turned and put my hand out, pulling Ashlynn close.
    “There,” I said. “Done.”
    “Thank you, Noah.”
    “No, sweetheart. Thank you. For carrying my son.”
    Ricky was moaning with fear, knowing how messy one of his private rooms was right then. There were two men knocked unconscious. The third with a gunshot wound. There I was staring at Ashlynn, the most beautiful woman I’d ever met.
    I let my heart slip up a little bit in that moment. And I said, “I want to go meet my son, right now.”
     
    ~ ~ ~
     
    I didn’t have much cash on me, but I gave Leah more than enough.
    “Thank you for helping,” I said.
    “This is a lot of money,” she said.
    “That’s okay. Stay out of trouble.”
    “Is this real?” Leah asked Ashlynn.
    “This is Noah. This is Jude’s father. I never told anyone…”
    “It doesn’t matter,” I said.
    Leah left and I locked the door. I took Ashlynn by the wrist. “Hey. You don’t have to explain a fucking thing here. I’m the one who has to explain. Not you. You did all the work, sweetheart. You suffered. You were alone. It doesn’t matter what you said to anyone. What matters is right now.”
    As if the damn kid had been waiting for the moment, Jude let out a noise from down the hallway.
    “Your son is awake,” Ashlynn said.
    “Yeah, he is.” I took a step and then paused. “Hey, sweetheart. Let me do this one alone.”
    “Okay.”
    It was the second craziest walk of my life. The way my heart and body felt. The way my head spun. It was almost the same feeling I had the first time I had to walk the hall to get to my jail cell. I was probably just as nervous.
    Christ, this was a life here. This was a baby. A baby that would become a kid and a kid that would become a teenager and a teenager that would become an adult.
    I turned and pushed the door open.
    There was a light turned on resting on the changing table. I walked to the crib and gripped the wooden rail. I stared down as a baby stared up at me. Not just any baby but my baby.
    My freaking baby. A life I created.
    “Hey, kid,” I said.
    Jude just kept