Under Siege (Winged Enemy MC Romance): Winged Enemy MC, #3

By Olivia Ruin

"I couldn't tell if the pain or the pleasure was greater..."

Life in New Mexico is looking good for undercover agent Leslie Trammel. Jed, the darkly handsome president of the Winged Enemy MC, still rocks her world, and they finally have the time and space to build their relationship.

Just when things start to become perfect, everything begins to unravel all at once when her boss ends her assignment and commands her to report to DEA headquarters in Virginia. More importantly, her new best friend is captured by a ruthless and deadly Japanese Yakuza syndicate with ties to the old club president.

Leslie and Jed must race to Los Angeles to rescue their friend, armed with only the barest of information and hopelessly outgunned. Will they find her before it's too late? And will Leslie find a way to salvage their relationship?

Under Siege is the stunning conclusion to the Winged Enemy MC saga started by Undercover and Under Fire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Olivia Ruin
• Release date: Jun 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781501483318

Book preview

There was a tense silence as the DEA safe tech worked on the large metal monstrosity that my poor fist had discovered behind one of the walls. The dull pain still throbbed in my knuckles as I glared at the offending object.

Here we go, said the small man.

A soft click emanated from the safe, as loud as a bomb to our straining ears.

With a spin and a flourish worthy of any game show host, the tech stood aside as the door yawned wide.

It took a couple of seconds for the light to enter and our eyes to make some sense of what we saw.

Well shit. That’s something, isn’t it? It was a few moments before I realized that I was the one who had spoken.

Inside the mothering confines of the large safe were a collection of long, colorful sticks. It was too unexpected and still too poorly lit for my mind to succeed in figuring out what they were. Each of the objects had the same graceful curve along a smooth shaft, and was about three feet long.

The sticks, six in total, were all that was in the safe.

Really? I couldn’t keep the incredulity out of my voice. Some colored sticks, that’s what Frank kept locked away behind a fake wall that no one knew about?

Actually, I don’t think those are sticks, Kat said, eyes glued to the glimmering objects.

I looked at Jed, but he just stared into the safe, no reaction on his face.

With another look into the safe, I realized that I had missed something. The sticks weren’t one smooth, unbroken piece, but there was more buried in the shadows where the tops rested against the upper back corner of the metal box. Are those… handles?

Kat stepped up to the safe and reached inside. She brought one of the objects out into the bright office lights. One hand wrapped around the handle that I had just noticed, and the other gripped the middle of the longer section. She pulled the two apart.

The long colorful shaft, which I then realized was a case, slid down to reveal gleaming metal. My mind reorganized itself around the new data, and came to the correct conclusion.

A sword?

It was the last thing I had expected to see inside the former club president’s safe. Six swords, and nothing else. Things were getting weirder and weirder.

Not just any sword, Kat said. I’m pretty sure this is a katana. A Japanese Samurai sword.

Jed held out his hand for the blade, and after Kat passed it on he hefted it in his hands. His dark eyes traced the graceful curves of the well-folded steel. There were markings on the blade that had been hidden behind the decorative casing. Japanese characters were written with exacting calligraphic brush strokes. After attempting to find any English and failing, Jed shrugged and passed it off to me.

The haft of the sword felt strong and heavy in my grip. The tip of the blade dove towards the floor as I found out how much the ancient weapon weighed.

What the hell was Frank doing with these? Jed murmured. I looked up at the face that I had begun to learn so well. Someone else may have just seen the handsome features and assumed not much was going on underneath the surface, but I saw the slight quirk in his right eyelid that meant his thoughts worked furiously to piece together the fragmented clues into a cohesive whole.

Frank wasn’t known for collecting rare artifacts, I said. They are in this safe for a reason, and I think both of you know what that reason is.

We shared a nod. After weeks of fruitless searching, we finally had a clue that might lead us in the direction of Frank’s criminal connections.

THE LIFE

I just don’t see why you have to be that way.

What way? What else would you expect me to do here?

Well you definitely didn’t have to attack me like that, you bastard. What the fuck!

I smiled behind my closed eyes as the warm breeze blew through my hair. What might have been the unhappy signs of domestic abuse in another place and time were instead a sign of how great life was at the moment. A book rested on my chest where I had left it, and I bounced my right foot where it crossed my left ankle as I reclined on the grass beneath an old tree. Contentment filled me as Jed and Kat’s squabbles continued.

After the fear and jealousy that torn me apart when Kat had first arrived in town three weeks earlier, the new friendship that had sprung up between us was a refreshing breather. On this side of things it was obvious how the relationship between her and Jed was more sisterly than anything else, but before I had known that she wasn’t interested in men there was nothing that anyone could say that would convince me to trust her.

Of course, she had picked the worst time to come to town, just as the young and misguided Zach had begun to pick apart the unsuspecting Winged Enemy motorcycle club from within. There had been a curtain of fear and apprehension surrounding all of the events during that time, and it had been impossible to see with clear eyes.

I sighed and picked my book back up, continuing where I left off while Jed and Kat stopped bickering over their card game. It had shocked me the first time that I had seen them bet obscene amounts of money over a simple game of cards, but I was used to one of the quirks of their relationship by that point.

Hey Leslie, you gonna come and play, or what? Kat shouted over at me.

I lifted a hand in a lazy wave. You guys keep going on without me, I don’t want to get caught up in your rivalry.

I turned back to my book, but my eyes glazed over the page as I lost myself in thought.

This is the life.

Up until Zach’s death at Jed’s hands three weeks prior, my entire life had been run in one marathon sprint after another. From racing through school to starting a high-powered career at the agency, I hadn’t taken the time to slow down and just enjoy the little things.

It had been no different in my first few weeks in town, as I went undercover and gotten sucked into the whirlwind of craziness that had occurred. I went from trying to get information, to sleeping with Jed in order to win it. Despite myself I had started to develop feelings for the handsome and strong man, and that had perhaps clouded my judgment in areas where it shouldn’t have.

After the mess of murders, I had stopped running at full tilt. I couldn’t, anymore; there had been nothing I could do but wait. Wait for the agency to send someone to crack the safe. Wait for my broken hand to heal. Above all else, wait for my heart to slow down.

I cracked an eyelid and looked towards the table that had been set up on the back deck. Jed’s back was turned to me, but I could just imagine the look on his face as he tried to figure out if Kat was bluffing or not. The powerful lines of his back caused his shirt to drape over his torso in the most alluring way, and even though I tried to pick up the thread of my novel, I couldn’t help but cast long glances towards my lover.

Yeah, this is the life.

INSULT

Yes sir. I understand, sir.

My stomach sank as I hung up the phone. My boss, Arnold, had called with the results from the translation team. They had looked at the Japanese words written on the katanas and translated them to English, but the resultant sentences had been complete gibberish. It was written in some sort of code, but without the key any hopes of deciphering it were close to nil.

There had been one other piece of information. The symbol that had been common across all six blades had not been a word, but instead the brand of the most dangerous Yakuza gang in all of Japan.

Jed had dutifully waited while I talked to my superior, and I left the little room that I used as an office to go and throw myself heavily beside him on the couch.

Bad news? He lifted his arm and wrapped it around me as I laid my head on his shoulder.

You could say that, I said. They don’t know anything more about what the katanas might mean, but they do know where they came from.

Oh? I could hear the eyebrow lift in his voice.

Yeah, they were all stamped with the symbol of a Yakuza group.

I expected an intake of breath, or at least some sort of sign that he understood.

"Yakuza? What