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Every time I walked into Dark Patriots headquarters, I got a sense of purpose and a feeling that I was in the right place. I’d enjoyed much of my time in the Marines, but toward the end, I’d grown disenchanted and pissed with them. It started when my sister was taken and then recovered. They wouldn’t authorize more time off so I could spend it searching for her or helping her recover. That began my desire to get out. Until then, I thought I’d stay until I could retire. When my reenlistment came up about a year later, I got out instead. I had sixteen years in.

Most people would say I was crazy to do that when I only had four years until retirement, but they didn’t live in my shoes. Besides, I’d found something I wanted to do more than be a Marine. I’d discovered the Dark Patriots due to Bryony. They offered me a job whenever I got out, so I took it and joined them earlier than any of us anticipated.

My brothers, Bennett, Blake, Brand, and Baron were still serving. We’d all joined the military in various branches. I was the oldest at thirty-eight, and Bryony the youngest at thirty this year. Bennett was the next oldest at thirty-six. He was eligible to retire soon. I’d told him about the Patriots, but I wasn’t sure if he would join. I hoped he did.

I took the elevator to the top floor, where all the executive offices were. We called it the Lair of the Dragons. It wasn’t an insult to our bosses. They were tough men, and it was an honor to be called that. Could they breathe fire if necessary? Absolutely, but they were fair men. Although, most people tiptoed around Undertaker. He gave off a more intense vibe than the other three, even if they were all more than capable of hurting or killing you. It was his years in a motorcycle club as an enforcer that did it.

I’d been messaged to meet them in the conference room on the sixth floor at two o’clock. They didn’t tell me what it was about, only that it was important. I made sure to be here several minutes early. I’d say hello to a few people before getting down to work.

I didn’t spend a lot of time in the office. I was more of the field operative type. I liked being in the thick of things. I took whatever assignments I could that called for my skills and abilities. I was kept busy. According to Bryony, I was too busy, and if I had a family, I’d be more content to stay home.

I wasn’t sure if that was true. Maybe I hadn’t had a girlfriend since before I left the Marines, but I was fine the way I was. When I needed sex, I had those whom I could meet up with to get my urges fulfilled. They were like me. It was a no-strings-attached thing. Even when I did date in the Corps, it always ended badly. They hated what I did. They didn’t like it when I’d be gone for months at a time, and I couldn’t tell them where I was or what I was doing. They were clingy and seemed to need me to be able to function. I hated it. I wasn’t looking for that.

Bryony told me I had been hooking up with the wrong type of woman. She said I needed ones like the bikers we knew had, and I couldn’t disagree with her. Our biker friends did seem to find women with backbone, yet they also had a softness. The same could be said of my four bosses and their wives. They all had a toughness about them. Maybe if I were fortunate enough to find a woman like them, I’d give it a try. But until it happened, or if, I’d stay with what I had.

Walking into the central area of the executive floor, I was greeted by the sight of Margie and Abigail. They were the receptionists slash assistants to the main guys. Without them, this place wouldn’t run half as smoothly as it did. Margie had been with them the longest. She took no crap. She was in her late sixties. I’d heard Sean beg her never to retire. She swore she wouldn’t because Chuck, the armorer, would if she did. He was her husband. She claimed that as much as she loved him, she didn’t want to be at home all day with him.

Abigail was in her early thirties. She was very to the point and somewhat formal. She grew up in a military family, which was the type of environment she preferred to work in. Some might say she was standoffish, but she wasn’t—the one sure way to get her to come after you was to call her Abby. I rarely heard the top Patriots tease her that way, and she always found a way to pay them back.

“There are two of my favorite women in the world,” I called out.

They both smiled at me. I went to Abigail and squeezed her shoulder. She wasn’t comfortable with more contact. Margie, on the other hand, accepted more easily. When I got to her, I leaned down to kiss her cheek and give her a one-armed hug.

“Why is it every time I come to see you, you have someone kissing or hugging you, woman?” Chuck’s voice boomed.

I glanced to my left to find him standing in front of the elevator with a scowl on his face. Margie didn’t miss a beat. She had her hand on mine and kissed my cheek before answering him.

“I can’t help it if they can’t resist me. Maybe if you weren’t so surly, you’d get the same from the ladies,” she taunted.

“Woman, you know if the ladies kissed me, you’d be ready to beat their asses and probably mine for letting them do it.” He smirked.

“True, but you could live dangerously and find out,” she responded.

He shook his head as he walked over to us. I moved back so he could kiss her. He laid a big kiss on her lips. When he was done, he looked at me.

“Take notes, Beau. If you get a woman as beautiful and smart as my Margie, you’ll always have to chase off the men or accept that she’ll be hugged and kissed all the time. I was hoping she’d start punching them, but she doesn’t. I have to watch her like a hawk so she doesn’t get stolen.”

“Oh, you’re ridiculous. I’m old enough to be his mother. We have grandchildren. Beau just likes to make me smile. Just wait. One day soon, he’ll have a lady of his own, and I bet he’ll stop giving me kisses.” She painted on a sad face.

“We’ll never stop kissing you, no matter if we have a woman or not,” Griffin said from the right. He was coming out of his office with a grin on his face.

“Grif is right. We won’t. And you don’t have to worry about me and a woman,” I assured her.

“A good woman makes your life complete, Beau. Grif, Sean, Gabe, and Mark all know that,” Chuck added.

“I want all of you to have someone special. That includes you, Abigail,” Margie said.

Abigail shook her head. “Thanks, but I don’t need a man mucking up my life. I’m great the way I am. However, I think the guys around here need a woman to keep them in line. They’re lost without one.” She gave me a sly smirk.

This got us all talking, and it continued until the other three Patriots joined us. I knew that was my cue to get moving. I said goodbye to Margie, Abigail, and Chuck, then followed the bosses to their private conference room. I sat and waited for them to take their seats and tell me what this was all about. I was offered something to drink, which I declined.

Looking around the room, I had to smile. Anyone seeing them would be wondering if they were all owners. Sean, most of the time, wore a suit. Gabe and Griff wore more casual dress clothes, so they didn’t wear ties or jackets unless they had to meet with a prominent customer. Mark, aka Undertaker, was the biggest difference. He dressed like a biker in his boots, jeans, and T-shirts. He didn’t wear a leather cut to the office, but he had one for when he rode. All the Patriots knew how to ride, but he lived it more than they did. Hell, I had a bike, too, and loved to ride it, but I wasn’t a biker, not like Undertaker and my brother-in-law Storm.

“I’m glad you could join us, Beau. I hope you enjoyed your couple of days off,” Sean said, starting the conversation with small talk.

“I did, but you know me. I’m always glad to get back to work. I gotta admit, you have me curious. What’s going on? Why did you call me into the office rather than talk over the phone? Whatever it is, I’m ready. Where do I need to go? Who do I need to deal with? Is it just me or a team?”

They all chuckled. “I told you he’d be raring to go,” Griff told the others.

“I didn’t doubt that,” Gabe responded.

Undertaker gave me a chin lift, but he didn’t say anything. After meeting all their gazes, I focused back on Sean.

He continued, “We wanted to talk to you in person because this is delicate. It’s not our typical thing. Actually, we’d like to hear your thoughts on what we should do. The four of us are at a stalemate.”

It was unusual for them not to agree, which increased my curiosity. I leaned forward in my chair. “Tell me, what’s up?”

“You know what we’ve been into with the whole shitstorm Agony and his club uncovered when they helped Mace’s old lady, Jessamy. Due to that, we’ve gone in and cleaned up more than a couple of groups. And we all know there are tons more. The search for those they took and sold is tedious,” Sean stated. He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know.

“Sean, no offense, but I know this. Get to the point.”

He smiled. It was Griffin who spoke, though. “We’ve set up through our various computer techs here and those in the clubs to monitor for any mention of certain names. Those are flagged, and the techs get an alert if they occur. Well, it seems we have someone researching not just Agony’s club but the Black Outlaws of Spartanburg and Thurman James Thacker III. You can imagine that got our attention,” Griff added.

I stiffened. If someone was digging, there might be a chance, however slim, that they’d connect us to them. If they did, would they find evidence that we and the clubs had a hand in their demise? It would be a disaster if they did. None of us wanted to spend the rest of our lives in prison.

“Do you know who it is or why they’re poking around?” I asked.

“We do. It seems a young woman from Billings, Montana, went missing about two months ago. She hasn’t been recovered. The police there have no leads. However, that hasn’t stopped her sister from searching on her own for her. Something led her to the Pagans, the Outlaws, and Thacker,” Gabe said.

“Do you think there’s any connection or that this sister will be able to connect us to the deaths of those bastards?”

“Connect us? Probably not. As for there being a connection between those cretins and her sister, who knows?” Gabe replied.

“Then what’s the problem? Why do you need me? I can’t monitor her like the techs can.”

“No, but you can go and speak to her. We’ve just discovered she’s preparing to fly to Spartanburg several days from now. We don’t need her snooping around. The cops are leaning toward the fire and the explosion as the work of a rival club that wanted to eliminate the competition. They don’t know why Thacker was there, but they know he wasn’t an angel due to the things we leaked. They’re not actively investigating another reason other than the rival one. We don’t want them to,” Sean stated.

“Sure, I can go speak to her. How do you want me to do it? Go in soft and feel her out or go in tough and scare her away from nosing around?” I asked.

“We want you to go in kind of in the middle. Find out how she found them. Determine how much she knows. Then, convince her to leave it alone. If you have to, tell her we’re investigating it, and if evidence is found, we’ll investigate further. If we find her sister along the way, we’ll let her know,” Gabe said.

“Okay, I can do that. I don’t see what the stalemate is. You all seem to agree,” I said.

Undertaker cleared his throat. Until now, he hadn’t said a word, but it wasn’t unusual. He was frowning. “I’m the stalemate. I don’t think they should approach her and do what they plan to have you do. It’s the wrong approach to take.”

I was taken aback that Undertaker wasn’t for it. “What do you think we should do?”

“This woman, the older sister, isn’t a fool or one I see backing down. No matter what someone tells her, she’ll continue to look for her sister. She’ll keep at it until she finds her or she dies trying. Telling her to let us or anyone else do it won’t work. And before you say we could threaten her, even though it’s not what we do, that won’t work either. She’ll stand toe-to-toe with you.”

The conviction in his voice and the way he said it made me ask, “How do you know she will? Do you know something about her that tells you she’ll be that way?”

“It’s the way she was raised. She can do no other. She has no back up in her,” he said with conviction.

I glanced over at the others. “And you think Undertaker is wrong.”

“We’re not sure, to be honest. There’s a chance she’ll be that way, but we don’t believe if it’s correctly handled, she can’t be turned away,” Sean said. The other two nodded.

Undertaker snorted, drawing my attention back to him. He was eyeing the other three. “You’re not reading the same report I am, then. She’ll dig in and be even more determined to keep searching. I say we need to find out what she knows, and after that, we can think about what to do next. Telling her to stop and let us handle it won’t fly. Hell, I say let her help us.”

This shocked the fuck out of me. Undertaker was very much into keeping our work between us and those closest to us. He didn’t like what he considered outsiders being in the mix. He always argued against them. What the hell did he see in the report?

“Can I see this report? What about how she was raised makes you think this, Undertaker?”

While all the Patriots had names from their military days, just as I did, they were mainly used occasionally or in the field during an assignment. Undertaker was the exception. He was rarely called Mark. In fact, his wife, Sloan, used it the most, not the rest of us.

He had a folder under his hand on the table. He patted it. “Her dad was in the military, in special forces like us. When he got out, he had two daughters. He started teaching them the way to live that would guarantee their survival as toddlers. He was what some call a survivalist. His wife left right after the youngest one was born. He raised those girls on his own in the wilderness of Montana. After his death, when the youngest was seventeen, her older sister finished raising her and continued to live mainly as they were taught.

“When Kensington, the one who’s missing, was twenty, she moved away from her sister to live in Billings. We’re not sure why. The other sister, Keeley, remained in their home near Missoula. Her upbringing and job tell me she’s tough and not someone to back down.” He paused at his point.

“What was the dad’s special forces training? And this Keeley, what is her job?” I asked.

“The dad was a Green Beret in the Army for years. We’ve asked for his military records to see what he specifically did. Anderson is getting it for us. However, we know they were known for their unconventional warfare tactics, doing special reconnaissance, and a whole lot more. You didn’t fuck with them just like you left the SEALs and Marine Raiders alone unless you were looking for a fight you couldn’t win,” Undertaker added. I knew what I’d done as a Raider and what they had done as SEALs. The Green Berets I’d met were no slouches.

“As for what Keeley does. She’s mountain search and rescue in Montana. She goes into dangerous situations all the time to help others. The shit they do is no joke. Combine that with what we suspect her dad might’ve taught her, and her mind won’t be changed,” Undertaker said firmly.

He pushed the folder over to me. I took it and opened it. They sat there quietly as I read what they had gathered. I had to admit, she was impressive. She’d been working for rescue since she was twenty-one. She’d just turned twenty-eight. The list of her feats as a rescuer was incredible and, as Undertaker said, highly dangerous. Combining those with what I knew of Green Berets and the tiny amount I knew of survivalists, if she’d been taught those things, then Undertaker could be right. The last page in the folder was a picture of her. I swear my breath stalled for a moment, and a fist squeezed my heart and gut simultaneously. Just to be sure, I held it up.

“This is Keeley?”

“Yeah, and here is her sister, Kensington,” Gabe said as he slid another picture toward me.

Looking at it, I saw they were both very similar in looks, but something about the older sister held my attention. No one could argue that either of them wasn’t beautiful. If Kensington had been taken and trafficked, I could see why she would be. And the bidding was probably fierce.

The picture of Keeley was from the chest up. Her dark brown hair was blowing in the wind. It was long and straight. Her skin was slightly sun-kissed. With how much she would be outside, I would’ve expected it to be darker, like mine. Her dark arched brows drew more attention to her stormy, dark gray eyes. The shape of her face, her lips, and even her nose all combined to make her a remarkably stunning woman. I couldn’t see passing her on the street and not pausing to look back at her.

The thing was, I’d been around a lot of gorgeous women and had sex with many of them. Looks alone didn’t cause the reaction I’d just had. I wondered what her body looked like. Her tits were impressive in the shirt she wore, and her arms were muscular yet not masculine. However, it was her eyes that were sucking me in and making me wonder about her. There was more to her than her beauty. I fought not to let my unusual reaction show. I closed the folder and relaxed back as if I didn’t have a care in the world.

“Okay, so what do you want? My opinion, or should I just go and try to persuade her to stop digging into anything that might expose us or our friends? If she can’t be persuaded, then I warn her away. How far do you want me to go if she won’t be warned off?” My gut clenched at the thought of getting ugly with her, but I would if necessary. My friends came first.

“We don’t want to scare her to death, just get her to leave it to the professionals,” Sean stated.

“You try it, and she’ll dig in and be even more determined to do it herself. Plus, she’ll work to see what she can find out about us,” Undertaker warned them.

This got them to argue back and forth. I was about to break it up when the door opened, and their wives walked in. Cassidy, Sean’s wife, and Sloan, Undertaker’s wife, worked for Dark Patriots. Gabe’s wife, Gemma, was a stay-at-home mom, although she was considering working again. Before meeting him, she ran her family’s restaurant. The woman was a wizard at organization and such. There was talk she might work for us, but strictly in an office capacity. Sloan took assignments, and Cassidy did as well, but not like they did before they had kids. Cassidy and Sean’s second son, Nash, wasn’t quite six months old.

Hadley, Griffin’s wife, had no part in Dark Patriots because she ran a billion-dollar tech company that, among other things, built weapons for the US military. Gerard’s became solely hers after her father died. She was due any day to give birth to their first baby. She appeared tired and ready to pop. Griffin was on his feet, rushing to her as soon as he saw her. He guided her to a chair. The others took a seat.

“What’re you doing here?” Sean asked Cassidy.

“We came to talk to you. We know you were having a meeting with Beau to send him out to make that poor woman stop searching for her sister,” Cassidy chided him.

“What do you mean by you know?” Gabe asked. He was eyeing Gemma.

“Don’t act like you don’t know we talk,” Gemma told him.

“Yeah, we heard from Cassidy what you were up to. You can’t do that. You need to listen to Undertaker. This woman needs to be able to search for her sister,” Hadley added.

“Christ, you told Cassidy?” Gabe growled at Sean.

“Hell yeah. Why didn’t you tell Gemma?” Sean snapped back.

“I was waiting until after we settled it,” Gabe answered.

“You didn’t tell me because you knew I’d disagree with you, Gabriel,” Gemma said with a frown.

“The same reason you didn’t tell me,” Hadley told Griffin.

The three men appeared ready to pull their hair out. Sean narrowed his eyes on a silent Sloan. “Don’t you have anything to say?”

“Nope. My man said it all. I agree with him. But I wasn’t the one to tell the other ladies what he said. You told Cass, and she did the rest. I do think you should’ve clued us in so we could assist in this matter. We’re here to prevent you from fucking up,” she informed him.

Even though, technically, they were her bosses, being married to one of them made her position unique. When she met Undertaker, she’d been an operative for the company. They’d gone on assignment together and ended up a couple. The four women were seen as owners. Their words carried weight just as their husbands’ did.

“Christ, you act as if you think we’ll enjoy making her stop. We won’t. But if she keeps going after information, she may discover things we don’t want her to know. It won’t just affect us. The Pagans and all the other clubs we call friends will be at risk,” Sean told them.

“Do you have reason to believe that any of you left something behind to implicate you or them?” Cassidy asked.

“Well, no, we don’t, but you can never be too sure,” Sean replied.

“You don’t have the police breathing down your necks, so why would you believe this woman can do what they can’t? Wouldn’t you do the same as she is, no matter what anyone said, if it was your sister?” Gemma added.

Undertaker was the only one of the owners who had a sister, and that was Cassidy. We knew he’d do anything for her just as I would for Bryony. None of them had an answer for Gemma. It was in short order that all three of those opposing Undertaker’s idea threw their hands up in defeat.

“Alright, we’ll send Beau to talk to her. He’ll discover what she knows and how she got on the Pagans’ trail. Based on what he finds, we’ll see where it goes. If she’s a threat, then we’ll have to see what we’ll do,” Gabe stated. Griffin and Sean nodded their heads in agreement. Undertaker had a slight smirk twisting his lips.

“If she’s a threat, short of her being one who could physically injure us or them, she shouldn’t be harmed,” Hadley stated.

“Babe, we won’t hurt anyone needlessly. We only do that if they’re monsters and dangerous to others. You know that,” Griffin reminded her.

“I know that, but she won’t. If you pretend you may hurt her or do something terrible, even though you wouldn’t, she’ll believe it. She could go to the police or worse. Or be left thinking you’re terrible people. We don’t want that,” Hadley said.

“No need to worry. When I approach her, I won’t tell her that I work for the Patriots. I’ll tell her that I noticed through my sleuthing that she was doing a lot of digging into the others. I can play it off that way. I won’t reveal who I work for unless I have to,” I reassured them.

It was a few minutes before they all settled and agreed. Before I left, after being dismissed, I gave each of the women a hug. I considered them friends. The OG all shook my hand, wished me luck, and told me to call as soon as I knew something. I’d be taking a private plane to Montana versus a commercial flight. It was one of the perks of Hadley’s investing in the company. She insisted we share hers. If it was in use, there were helicopters we could take. It made Griffin crazy when she’d pilot herself. Since she got pregnant, he wouldn’t allow it.

On my drive home to get packed, I couldn’t shake the image of Keeley Mills or the reaction she caused in me from my mind. I didn’t know if it meant I was headed for trouble, but I knew one thing—I wouldn’t allow anyone else to take my place.