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  “Next time…” Romeo cut in, narrowing his eyes, “… your personal shit is going to cost you. And those payments come in the form of kneecaps.”

  Cash flinched, the playfulness pushed aside by a dark cloud and replaced with a sharp, eager nod. “Yes, sir.” The polite acknowledgment surprised me after his cocky entrance, but the more I focused in on the little things, the more it began to make sense. The stance—feet apart, shoulders back, eyes ahead, not really looking at anything in particular and definitely not making eye contact with the bastard throwing out the orders—gave him away.

  A soldier, that’s what he was.

  Or had been at some point.

  So why the fuck was he here looking to beat the crap out of some other bastard for cash?

  With a narrowed gaze, I reached out and snatched the bag of money, ripping it open and emptying the contents onto the concrete floor. A quick scan over the piles of notes told me it was legit. “I’d count it, but we’re already running late,” I told him. “But if I find that the whole amount isn’t there, I’ll be the one collecting those kneecaps.”

  He lifted his chin. “It’s there. Can we get this done?”

  The dark shadow had lifted again, his eyes more alive and impatient as he bounced gently back and forth. Romeo nodded to the door. “Let’s fucking go.”

  Him, Cash, and Wallace filed out while I waited a moment for Rylan to poke his head in. He’d been waiting outside, his prospect status not yet allowing me to involve him in the big shit. The kid was good, but when I was working with people like Romeo—though we had family in common—there was no room for mistakes. “Grab this lot. Count it,” I ordered, nodding to the pile of cash. “Then meet me upstairs.”

  “How much—”

  “Just count it. You tell me.”

  With quick steps, I hurried out the door, stomping down the dingy hallway and making it to the arena as Cash was stepping into the large metal cage with some buff bastard twice his size. We took weapons away to make it somewhat of a fair fight, but there were no weight classes, no tests to see if the guys fighting were doped up on steroids.

  You showed up.

  You paid your money.

  And you fought whoever the hell drew the other straw that day.

  A game of chance.

  The only promise made—no blood fights.

  There was no fight to the death here.

  Technically, there was no referee, but there were several doctors paid to sit ringside, letting my boys down at the front know the second they saw someone knocked out or in a position where they could possibly lose their life. Only then would they step in.

  People got hurt—with life-changing injuries—but we’d managed to step in before anyone died.

  So far.

  You walked into this shit, so you knew what the hell you were getting into.

  This was all about high risk, high reward.

  And fucking balls.

  “Wallace’s guy doesn’t look too fazed by the mountain staring him down,” Diddit commented, falling back against the wall beside me.

  Unable to pull my gaze away, I folded my arms across my chest. He wasn’t wrong. Cash’s focus was hard but cool, like he’d done this before. Faced something far bigger than him and put up his fists, ready to throw whatever he had into it and hope to come out the other side the victor.

  Or maybe even simply alive.

  The cage closed with a loud bang, then a second later, a whistle echoed sharply and chaos erupted.

  People jumped up out of their seats as Cash’s opponent rushed at him across the cage, swinging his arm with a roar and barely missing Cash’s head.

  Cash ducked and planted his feet strong before driving his shoulder forward through the larger man’s stomach. It caught the big bastard by surprise, and Cash took advantage, forcefully propelling him back across ring and slamming his body into the cage on the other side. With the larger man stunned for a second, Cash leaped back and threw his first punch, a powerful uppercut straight to the nose while his opponent was still curled over from the pain in his belly.

  I stood a little straighter, dropping my hands by my sides.

  A collective gasp of surprise moved like a wave through the crowd, silence settling for a breath before the roar of delight took over the masses.

  To say Cash’s attack pleased the crowd was an understatement.

  Just a taste of violence and they were salivating.

  Those were the types of people who attended these things. They’d almost pay anything you asked to get the hit they needed, and to get a little taste of that craving they struggled to curb.

  The thirst for blood.

  To watch people hurt.

  To watch them bleed and break.

  It was an addiction.

  One that wasn’t satisfied by the kind of ring fights you’d find plastered on billboards and ads up on the city streets of the Las Vegas strip. In some ways, it was sick, but in others, all too fucking familiar.

  A loud groan from the crowd had me drawn back in as Cash leaped to his feet, shaking his head and spitting blood off to the side, his teeth completely coated in a film of the sticky substance.

  “The big guy is gonna take it out,” Diddit scoffed out, clearly seeing the goliath challenge.

  But honestly, there was something.

  Something about this fucking kid.

  “I’ve got a hundred on the pretty boy,” I announced.

  Diddit cackled loudly, but when he looked over and saw the way my lips were pressed together, all I saw were dollar signs light up in his eyes. “Old man, you’re on.”

  Pretty boy better not make me regret this.

  ZOEY

  Knock, knock, knock!

  “Blair!” I called over my shoulder while trying to stir the ground beef I had simmering in a large pot. “Blair, can you get the door!”

  When she didn’t call back and there was no movement from her bedroom down the hall, I cursed under my breath and switched everything off. Not willing to risk burning the food, or the house down, by stepping away from it for a few seconds.

  That’s how confident I was in my cooking skills.

  I tried to avoid it when possible.

  Blair had taken over that job in our house when she was about fourteen and got sick of constantly having to eat the only five meals I knew how to cook—two of which contained three or less ingredients. They were recipes I’d learned when I was little from my grandma, a time when she was still alive, and my dad would drop me off there every weekend while he went out drinking.

  That time was a few months after my mom died, and he was spending a lot of time drowning his sorrows.

  Though at that point, I didn’t care.

  I hadn’t just had my mom—my idol—stolen from me, but now the universe was trying to take my dad too. It was like weights had been tied to each of my feet, and I’d been thrown into the ocean.

  I was slowly sinking.

  Drowning.

  So for forty-eight hours I got to pretend like everything was fine with my grandma.

  She would help me cook, bake, and craft. She’d tell me stories and make me hot chocolate at nighttime so we could curl up on the sofa and watch a movie together.

  That’s how I imagined childhood should be.

  That’s how my childhood should have been.

  Knock, knock, knock!

  “Crap,” I cursed under my breath, stepping around the wall that separated the kitchen from the living room and the entryway. I brushed my hair back with the palm of my hand, feeling a smear of something come off onto my forehead.

  At the same time as I pulled the door open, I swiped the soupy-like gunk from my skin. The stunning businesswoman standing on the other side, her royal blue slacks and perfectly creased white blouse instantly made me hate myself. I shuffled uncomfortably in my crappy stained tracksuit pants, tugging at the hem of the secondhand band T-shirt I was wearing with more holes than fabric.

  After a moment of fighting the urge to crawl back inside, I finally cleared my throat and forced a smile. “Can I help you?”

  The warm grin she flashed back was almost blinding. “You must be Zoey!” the woman sang, tucking her short, blonde hair back behind her ear with one hand while the other grasped a pile of folders in front of her. “It’s so nice to finally meet you. I’m Mallory.” She reached out and unconsciously I met her halfway, shaking her hand firmly.

  “I’m sorry… I don’t—”

  Mallory laughed. “Sorry, I should have mentioned… I’m Drake’s assistant.”

  “Oh!” I exclaimed, pushing the door open farther and stepping to the side. “Shit. I mean, damn. Sorry. Come in! Coffee? Tea? Water?” I could hear the shock mixed with an awkward type of desperation in my voice, but I couldn’t seem to stop my voice from being this high-pitched nervous squeak.

  Not even a week into this job, and so far, my relationship with Drake had been great. Even despite the way he’d thrown me in the deep end on my first day and asked me, on the spot, to explain to the structural engineer and site foreman my vision to make the apartments more accessible, more valuable and more appealing.

  This was my dream job, and the idea that I might actually be impressing these people enough to keep it for a long time—well, it made me more nervous than ever.

  Mallory’s light-hearted laughter floated through the house as she stepped in, and I closed the door behind us.

  “Actually, just a glass of cold water would be lovely. Thank you.” She smiled as I directed her to the sofa and ducked back into the kitchen. “I would have come by earlier to the construction site to introduce myself and give you all this stuff, but I’ve been so damn busy interviewing for a new assistant to takeover when I leave.”

  “
Leave?” I questioned loudly, pouring two glasses of water, and heading back out to the living room. I handed Mallory hers and took a seat on the worn-out armchair I’d dragged across the country with us for years. “Why are you—”

  Then I saw it, the growing baby bump she’d been hiding behind the stack of folders in her hand. Her gaze followed mine, and she smiled down at the perfectly round curve with adoration. “Yup, I’m almost six months, so we have a little while to go, but a few complications here and there have the doctors insisting I spend the next few months on bed rest, and my husband agrees. Stubborn man.” She inhaled deeply through her nose, forcing a smile as she exhaled, though the deep worry knotted in her brow refused to leave. “Anyway! These are all for you.”

  She dumped the thick pile of papers with a thud on the coffee table.

  I leaned in, placing my glass down before gathering everything up and pulling it onto my lap.

  “Obviously, the ones on the bottom are the plans that Drake wants you to adjust as soon as possible. He’s paused everything inside the apartments until you get them done and he can approve them. They’re going to work on the communal spaces for now. He said he doesn’t want to waste any more time or money on those other horrid apartments.”

  He paused almost everything?

  I knew how much money could be lost in a day without essential work happening on site. It wasn’t just hundreds, it was thousands. Tens of fucking thousands of dollars. And he is going to keep it on hold until I fix all of these?

  Jesus Christ.

  “The forms on the top in the manilla folder are workpapers, bank details so you can be paid, emergency details, social security, and all that fun stuff.”

  My chest tightened.

  The idea of having to provide any kind of personal details always made my heart stall. Every time someone wanted information, was an opportunity for them to figure out the truth. All it would take was for them to dig a little too deep, to look a little too close…

  I’d already had my fair share of close calls.

  Times where the job I applied for called to ask questions, and by the next day, I’d already packed Blair and me into the car with the few belongings we owned and were three states away. Somehow hoping they’d forget I was ever there.

  It still scared the crap out of me, even though the lies I told had become so second nature, sometimes I forgot they were lies. Sometimes I was actually able to convince myself that part of my life, those years full of pain and abuse, was someone else’s nightmare.

  I swallowed hard, fighting to wet my suddenly dry throat. “Yeah, sure,” I agreed with a smile, reaching for the forms. “A lot of my stuff is packed up, so I’ll drag out the info you need as soon as I can.”

  Mallory seemed unconcerned, waving her hand around. “Just whenever you can. Drake is already completely enamored by the way you came in… and in his words, saved them from making a lot of shitty decisions.” My cheeks warmed, and I pressed my shoulders back, soaking in the secondhand praise. “I heard him speaking to Huntsman about you on the phone. There is no doubt you’ll be offered a permanent contract given this project is a success.”

  My chest swelled even more, and I let out a shaky laugh. “Huntsman like the spider?”

  She scoffed. “Huntsman like the sexy silver-fox president of The Exiled Eight MC.”

  My brow knotted, and I sat forward, placing the folders back down on the coffee table. “I’m sorry, are you speaking English?”

  Her head fell slightly to the side, and she smiled softly. “Oh wow! You don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what?” I asked slowly, nerves suddenly beginning to stir in my stomach and are now slowly churning. “Oh hell, what am I getting into?”

  Mallory waived her arms in front of her and laughed. “No, honestly, it’s no big deal,” she insisted. “The company that Drake runs, it’s owned by an outlaw motorcycle club. Huntsman is the president of the club and also Drake’s dad.”

  Lost for words.

  That’s what I was.

  Though, the longer I took to process the information Mallory was giving me, the more things made sense. The handful of motorcycles I’d seen the past few days lined up outside the site, the glimpse of dark, haunting tattoos I’d seen under the cuff of Drake’s dress shirt, and not to mention how confused I’d been when he’d introduced me to his younger brother, Ripley, and asked if he was going to make it to church that night.

  The idea of the two buff-looking, tattooed brothers attending church had thrown me a little, but I’d seen my fair share of biker shows and documentaries.

  And that had begun to sink in.

  “Huntsman is something else,” Mallory continues to ramble, her eyes alight and oblivious to the way my breaths had become shorter as I tried to control my heart rate. “Muscular, tattooed, has a thick beard with a little bit of scattered gray. The man doesn’t say much, though. And he has this permanent frown that I think attracts more women than it scares off. There’s just something about him.”

  I choked out a laugh. “Didn’t you mention a husband before?”

  “One I love very much,” she insists with a sly smile. “But there is nothing wrong with appreciating a hot man from afar. And I’ll tell you, this club has no shortage of them.”

  This club.

  This biker club.

  Suddenly, my stomach began to twist again, and I pressed my palm to my chest, trying to keep my heart from pounding right through it. Motorcycle clubs like this, they’re outlaws, criminal enterprises who made their own rules and refused to conform to society. It was a world I knew far too well.

  Was I really about to step right back into the darkness I’d spent half my life trying to escape? They might not be the same people, but the world was the same.

  It would always be the same.

  These people who believed they were above the law, who lived for power and money and didn’t care who the hell they stepped on or destroyed to get there.

  It was people like that who almost destroyed me. People like that who I ran from, who I’ve spent years hiding myself and my daughter from, hoping like hell that they’ll never find me.

  Because I put them away.

  I was the one that made their empire crumble.

  I was a snitch.

  And that is not something an outlaw motorcycle club would want hanging around.

  “They’re good men,” Mallory announced loudly, cutting through my daydreams and shocking me back into the present. I blinked, bringing her face back into focus, the amusement in her eyes replaced with an air of concern. “They’re a little rough around the edges, and their pasts are plenty colorful, but once they let you in, you’ll never find a group of men more loyal.”

  The protective tone in her voice told me there was something else.

  Something deeper to the connection she had with these men.

  I held my hands up and forced a smile. “My past isn’t exactly sunshine and rainbows,” I admitted, though it may have been stretching the truth a little. “I just want to work hard, be acknowledged for that work, and prove to the people in my past that I can be something without them.”

  That part was all honesty.

  All I wanted to do was give Blair a better life and not be that young girl with no future, my father, Lisa, and Steven, and all those goddamn men who used me, told me I would be.

  The girl who’d never get anywhere without having to spread my legs first because that was all I was good at.

  Gritting my teeth, I powered through the burning deep in my throat, tears threatening to break through.

  “Oh, hun,” Mallory whispered, dragging herself from her seat and shuffling her giant belly around the coffee table so she could crouch beside me, her hand now on my knee. “You can do it. Trust me, with everything I’ve heard about you since you started, what? A few days ago? You are already so damn valuable to these guys. They are not going to let you go.”

  She sounded so sure.

  So fucking positive that there would be nothing I could do to make them turn their back on me.

  But the truth always comes out.

  And when it does…

  My eyes closed as I cleared my throat, then sat a little straighter.

  I could do this.

  I’d been doing it for sixteen years.

  I could do it for a few more.

  “So,” I started with a grin. “Tattoos and a beard?”