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Caroline leaned back in her chair, flicking her ponytail. “I don’t need Daddy’s money,” she said, soft but cutting. “But you’ll be giving me yours by the end of the night, Bryce. Along with whatever’s left of your pride.”
The guy’s jaw clenched, but he let the roast slide when the next guy’s turn came. He was burly but a different kind of thick than Tacky Chain. There was a slight sway to his shoulders—drunk. But danger was still simmering in his hooded eyes as he glowered at his cards, flicking between them and Caroline. I suddenly had a bad feeling in my gut. My fingers tensed around my glass.
Caroline sipped her drink—probably something tropical—and urged coolly, “Waiting on you, Asher.”
The bad feeling sank heavier. I recognized that name.
He was a Wolverine.
Why the fuck was she playing against her own MC member—and a drunk one at that?
It didn’t matter because, all of a sudden, Asher exploded. He slammed his cards down and bolted to his feet. He knocked his glass over so it spilled on the table, soaking everything in an instant. All the other players abandoned their cards and alcohol.
Asher pointed an ugly finger at Caroline from across the table. “You fucking set me up, you bitch.”
Caroline barely blinked. She looked at the new mess in disdain like she was actually upset about her chips getting drenched in the stale beer soaking into the felt.
Even from a distance, I saw the flicker of something in her eyes, but she doused it real damn fast. She may have been raised in this life and had Daddy’s protection, but in the face of an unhinged drunk club member, it was hard not to feel threatened. She knew he was dangerous, but if she showed any weakness, even that flicker of fear, Asher would take it as an invitation to make a move. What kind of move, though?
“You said others would fold,” he growled. “You lied.”
My glass was forgotten, and I curled my fingers into fists at my side. Then I tried to shake it off.
This isn’t my fight. Just watch, Nathaniel Knox, and don’t dig your grave even deeper than it already is. She’s Bates’s daughter.
Caroline crossed her arms, watching Asher with an impressive mask of disinterest as if she knew she was untouchable. “And you were idiotic enough to fall for it.”
If I got caught between two Wolverines and things went south, Black Jack was going to seal my casket himself. But Devil’s Luck had rules regarding the fairer sex. I said it myself: We don’t hurt women.
And apparently, my ass thought it applied to not letting other clubs hurt women. Especially when it was their boss’s daughter.
Caroline Bates had fucked up almost all my brothers in one way or another. I might as well have been next for all I knew. Maybe my invitation here was a trap somehow set by her.
She didn’t deserve my assistance, and yet, whatever the case was, I felt my original mission here vanish the second Asher lunged for Caroline.
That was when I moved too.
I stepped between them before he could reach her. I grabbed Asher’s outstretched arm and twisted it, slamming him onto the table so hard it echoed through the room. The table creaked as if ready to collapse.
“Touch her,” I growled, my voice low, edged with lethal promise, “and you’ll be shitting out your teeth for a week.”
The room had gone silent at Asher’s first accusation, but now every pair of bloodshot eyes was on us. I felt the tension swell like a balloon, ready to pop at any moment.
Asher’s breath heaved when our gazes met. He didn’t move from where I pinned him, as if his alcohol-hazed brain hadn’t caught up to the fact that he could put up a struggle. Then it clicked. “Devil.”
Caroline jerked to her feet. “Asher, don’t you fucking dare move right now,” she warned, as terrifyingly unyielding as her father, then fixed me with a glare hateful enough to cut steel. “What the fuck are you doing, idiot?” she hissed. “Do you have any idea what you just walked into?”
I smirked at her, laying the charm on thick. “Do you?”
Then Asher twisted out from my grip and swung with the arm that I wasn’t holding. “You’re dead.”
I blocked it with my free arm easily before his fist could slam into the side of my head. I was taller than him at six-foot-two, but he was almost twice my breadth. But he was drunk, and I was sober as hell and wanted this fight.
I’d been wanting to beat the shit out of a Wolverine for damn near a year. This was my chance. This was my excuse, the permission to unleash all my pent-up anger and frustration for the month the Devils had been sitting on nothing, waiting for the Wolverines to make a move instead of hiding like cowards.
Asher yanked free, swinging again, all drunk rage and bruised ego. I caught his wrist midair and twisted it upward at the elbow. The sound of bone snapping was followed by his yowl of agony.
The room erupted into chaos of scraping chairs and drawn weapons, but I didn’t flinch. I drove the heel of my hand under Asher’s jaw, cracking it upward with a crunching sound.