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I wasn’t a messy fighter. I believed in control. You lose control in a fight? You lose permanently. And I didn’t like losing. Or dying.
Asher’s head snapped back and he stumbled heavily, dazed. Tacky Chain caught and steadied the Wolverine before he fell like a tree. He was lucky I didn’t break his jaw. But as he tried to come to, blood trickled from a split lip.
Damn it felt good to see a Wolverine get what was coming to him. He deserved worse than that but the ass-whooping felt like justice.
Adrenaline thrummed through my veins. It bordered on a high. The pressure cooker had finally blown its top.
Who’s next?
Then a booming voice cut through the din. “Get the fuck out of here.”
Someone grabbed my shoulder and hauled me backward—the bouncer. I caught Caroline’s gaze. In a split second, I recognized calculation in their depths, trying to decide what exactly I was.
I had made myself a target. I fucked up big time by letting even a single Wolverine see my face.
I would leave this stink hole, but first…
I whirled faster than the bouncer could react and I knocked Asher out with a single punch. The dude collapsed.
Then I was dragged out of the venue.
The door slammed and locked behind me after I was shoved onto the pavement.
I dusted off my jacket and inhaled deeply, looking out at the dingy scenario. On the exhale, I said to myself, “That felt good.”
“Oh, did it?”
I looked over my shoulder in surprise to see Caroline Bates standing there, hands on her hips, looking at me with a cold expression.
Shit.
CHAPTER 4
CAROLINE
I recognized the cocky bastard from the second he walked in like he was considering buying it in cash. Hilarious. Half the Devil’s Luck were piss poor.
The game had been going according to plan effortlessly. At least until that dolt Asher let his careless drinking and obsession with winning override the plan. And, of course, my own unhealthy habit of causing chaos by outsmarting men with equally unhealthy vices.
Then Royal Flush ruined fucking everything. Everything.
It was my job to know every detail about the members of the Devil’s Luck MC down to the moles on their backs. The Wolverines had been dealing with them for a while, and they kept cropping up like weeds. They all had their roles, but Flush? There wasn’t much on him. After what just happened, that made him a threat.
And a suicidal pain in the ass.
A tall, leanly muscular, dark-haired, strongly blue-eyed pain in the ass.
“Yeah,” he said with a bemused expression as if he wasn’t afraid of who I was—as if he wasn’t afraid of who my father was. “It did feel pretty damn good. Guy’s got a strong skull.” He held out his hand to show off the split knuckles. “Normally, I’m not that sloppy, but it was a small place. Not a lot of room to improvise.”
Sloppy? I thought scornfully. You all but went in for the kill. You were nothing but controlled.
He tilted his head curiously, looking me up and down. “I can put an end to you, too, ice queen. Right here, right now, and you won’t even know my name.”
I stormed up to him, putting mere inches between us, curved my lips in a wicked smile, and hissed, “Nathaniel Knox, also known as Royal Flush of the Devil’s Luck MC.”
Flush’s grin faltered for the briefest moment, the humor in his eyes flashing toward something dangerous.
“And I can end you just as easily,” I said. “Send another Devil back to hell.”