Page 97

He smirks. “Not ordinary patchholders, baby. Club presidents. Thomas Quinn—her first husband—well, the bastard often liked to rearrange her face.”

I can’t hold in my gasp of horror, but Cade rubs soothing circles around my back as if to reassure me that it’s okay.

“Then came Jackson Pype.” Cade spits the name like poison. “Now, he was a decent enough husband. Until he couldn’t cover his gambling debts and traded his wife and his stepson to the Cartel to settle them.”

“He what? Wait a second!” I rear back, pushing out of his arms, my voice shaking with indignation. “He sold his own wife and his stepson . . . You!”

“Well, what was the fucker to do?” Cade laughs bitterly. “He had debts.”

“Cade! I’m being serious here!”

“Hey, hey.” He catches the tears at the corner of my eyes with his thumbs, then cups my jaw in both hands, so I can’t look away from his hard stare. “This is the part where I’ll ask you not to cry.”

“Why the hell not? I can’t believe what happened to you—”

“Because seeing you cry makes me want to kill something.” He shrugs. “Besides, most families are messed up.”

“Mine isn’t—”

His single raised eyebrow has me smiling through tears.

“Okay fine, we’re fucked up, too. But yours takes the cake.” My fingers find the scarred bands of skin around his wrists, hidden under ink but telling their story through touch. “Is that where you got these? In captivity?”

“Yeah.” Something dark crosses his face. “A month in, when the buyer was stalling, my mother made her play. She offered herself to the guards. All twelve of them. Created enough of a distraction for me to take off and find help.”

My heart is pounding too loud— like it’s trying to drown out the sound of his voice, and I can’t help the tears now. “And did you manage to get help for her?”

Cade wipes my tears away. “By the time I made it back across the Mexican border and got home, both my scumbag fathers had somehow gotten themselves killed. And I couldn’t get a single biker in either of the clubs to risk their neck to save Matilda.”

OhGod. I know where this is heading, but I ask anyway. “So what happened?”

As if he can’t bear to watch me cry, his hands grip my shoulders, turning me to face the ravine. Then he pulls me back against his chest, his words coming rough against my neck. “I had to leave her there to rot.”

My lids fall closed, and I sob quietly. I want to turn around, to hold him, to somehow take away his pain, his guilt, but his grip holds me firm. “Cade, you were only thirteen.”

“If I was old enough to drink, ride, and fuck like the rest of the men, I was old enough to die trying.” His voice is harsh against my skin. “I just couldn’t do it alone.”

The darkness in his words hits me hard and suddenly it all makes sense. A mother trading herself to save her child—one who was never allowed to be a child.

“Baby,” I whisper reaching for his hands around my waist, grateful when he grips my hand in return. “It wasn’t your fault.”

The moment stretches, me sobbing like my heart is breaking, and Cade letting me. Before him, I can’t remember the last time someone held me while I cried. I’d forgotten how good it feels to let go, to not be alone in the pain.

His thumb draws soothing circles over my hand. “I went back to Mexico a few years later. Matilda was long gone by then.” Something raw edges into his tone. “I spent the next few months hunting down every last member of that Cartel, only to find there were thousands more just like them.”

“And so the crusade began,” I whisper.

He pauses, his grip tightening around me like he needs an anchor.

“I went on total rampage for years, almost got myself killed a dozen times. Then Phoenix returned from the army and took over the club.”

Myfingers drift to the ink on his forearms, tracing the ancient scripts and symbols I’d never understood.

“Phoenix saw what I’d become and tried to straighten me out. When that failed, he begged me to enlist. Said I might as well kill for Uncle Sam.”

I crane my neck to see his face. “You’re ex-military?”

His expression gives nothing away. “Did the standard four years, then I quit.”