Total Knock Out / Book Two

Chapter Twenty Seven: Guns Blazing pt 2

Stanford watched in silence as Jaxon and Landon slowly handed over their weapons when the front door opened, Kyle Harrington taking them with a gleeful smile on his face while a smaller man with dull green eyes held a gun on them from over his shoulder.

"James," Kyle called, throwing the front door open even wider and stepping back like he was inviting guests inside of the run down house. "Let's make sure that no one else has any surprises hidden on them before they come in, shall we?"

Stanford felt Elijah tense up from behind him, saw Damion and Maddox do the same thing when a man with a patchy beard and twitchy hands patted them down. He held himself still when the man moved on to him, barely breathing and hands clenched at his sides. The gun his mother had pressed against his temple prevented him, prevented all of them, from doing what they came here to do. She would pull the trigger and splatter his brains all over the porch if he tried to move more than what she wanted.

"Well, come on in. We have a lot to discuss," Kyle laughed, keeping the guns Landon and Jaxon had handed over trained on them as they filed through the doorway.

Stanford looked around the depleted living room and saw Razor standing near a doorway with who he assumed was Brody. A quick glance at Elijah confirmed that the biker was in for a royal ass chewing if he was ever around his friend alone. Although from the look in Elijah's eyes, it might be a royal ass beating instead. He had allowed them to come to the house without so much as a warning of what was waiting for them and while Stanford didn't know much about how motorcycle clubs worked, he knew that Razor had fucked up and there would be hell to pay.

They all watched in silence as his mother moved from her spot beside the window to stand beside Kyle, her eyes bloodshot and glassy. It didn't surprise him that she was drunk, she had been a raging alcoholic for as long as he could remember. It stung that his own mother had been roped into a scheme like this, but it wasn't surprising either. He had started to accept that his mother wouldn't ever truly care about him in any other way than viewing him as a walking ATM and this just drove that point home.

"It wasn't that hard to convince her to get on board," Kyle said, following Stanford's line of sight to his mother. "Even easier to convince her that she would get more out of you if you were dead, life insurance policies can be so high these days. It's a mutually beneficial plan. She gets the money and I don't have to worry about you showing up unexpectedly when Rori comes to live with me."

Stanford swallowed past the bile that had risen in his throat. He knew his mother had wanted him dead since he was born, but the fact that she had agreed to benefit from his death was like a blow to his solar plexus. The small part of him that had always hoped for her to see that she did love him shriveled up, the broken child he buried deep inside of himself quiet for the first time in years.

"And then there's Logan," Kyle continued, "and the fact that she refuses to see that I love our daughter. That I'm the best choice for her."

Stanford felt a hand grab onto his shoulder when he tried to surge forward, fingers digging into the flesh and holding him in place.

"You stay the fuck away from my kid," Stanford snarled, trying without any luck to remove the hand that was keeping him back. "You touch her, or Logan, and I'll fucking kill you."

Kyle grinned at him and shook his head, leveling the gun in his right hand at Stanford's chest. The finger he had on the trigger twitched, a barely there movement but Stanford had seen it. He knew that it was stupid to taunt a man holding a gun but this was his family that was being threatened. He'd take six bullets in the chest before letting anything happen to them and he knew that his friends felt the same way.

"She let you fuck her, didn't she?" Kyle asked, moving closer to their small group and Stanford saw Landon and Jaxon tense up at the same time. "Is that why you think you have a right to my daughter? Because Logan let you between her thighs like a good little whore?"

Stanford struggled against the hand that was holding him back, knew that it belonged to Elijah. He was always the practical thinker, the one who preferred a plan over acting on emotion. But right now the logical thinking that his friend was using, the fact that he wasn't letting Stanford go stomp Kyle until he was nothing but dust on the Earth, was starting to piss him off.

"Rori is my perfect creation. God gave her to me to do what I please with her. Some bitch who thinks she knows best isn't going to take that away from me," Kyle shouted, waving both guns in his hands around.

Stanford watched as Landon surged forward the same time Jaxon bent down, the unmistakable glint of metal in his hands when he shot back up. Landon grabbed onto Kyle's left hand and twisted his body underneath Kyle's arm, stomping on the back of his knee to send Kyle tumbling to the ground.

Jaxon leveled his gun at the smaller man that had been behind Kyle when he opened the door and pulled the trigger, a loud bang that would have been almost comical if not for the small hole in the center of the man's forehead and the blood trailing down the wall from where he slid down it.

"Shoot him!" Kyle screamed from his position on the ground, Landon sitting on top of his back with his own gun pressed against his head. Stanford turned in time to see his mother raise the gun she was holding before being shoved to the side, stumbling into James and knocking him into the front door.

He saw Razor herding Brody out of the living room from the corner of his eye and reminded himself to let them go, turning his attention back to the man in front of him. James held his hands up in surrender and Stanford shook his head in disgust, sending a fist flying at his nose and bearing his teeth in a savage grin when he heard the crunch.

Another gunshot pulled Stanford's attention away from the man in front of him and he turned around in time to see Maddox tackle his mother to the ground, her head thumping against the floor. He had seen Maddox do that move in the cage more times than he cared to count, knew that his mother had been knocked out.

"I'm never taking a bullet for any of you fuckers ever again," Elijah growled, hand pressed against his arm and Stanford could see the blood welling up between his fingers.

Landon pulled a pair of handcuffs off of his belt and put them on Kyle's wrists, making sure that the metal would dig in and be uncomfortable for as long as he was in them.

"Quit bitching, it's just a flesh wound. Darcy can patch you up when you get back to the clubhouse," Landon sighed, rubbing his hand over his face and Stanford looked around the chaotic living room just like his friend was doing.

The fact that there was a dead body would weigh heavily on Landon's mind, Stanford knew that. Not because he felt sorry that someone who had been helping Kyle was dead, but because he would be the one to inform his family of his death. He wouldn't pass that job onto someone else, he would suck up whatever distaste he had for the man and be the shoulder to cry on if it was needed. Stanford could truthfully admit that Landon was a better man than he was.

"We need to call it in. This is about to be a shit show," Jaxon warned, pulling his phone out of his pocket and moving to the corner of the room so he could have some sort of privacy.

"Shit show or not, it's just finally over," Damion said softly, slapping his hand against Stanford's shoulder before going and helping Maddox roll Shelia over so Landon could slip a pair of handcuffs on her.

Stanford couldn't wait to tell Logan that her nightmare had finally come to an end, and that Rori wouldn't ever have to worry about her real father coming to destroy her life. He just hoped that she wouldn't kill him for making her worry, because from the look in Jaxon's eyes when he hung up the phone they would be here for a while.