Page 1 of Iron

Prologue

Iron

The clubhouse bar was packed and the music was blaring. I didn’t want to sound old as fuck, but it was on the verge of hurting my ears. Guess I kind of was the old man around here. Hell, half of these guys called me Daddy Iron behind my back. Yeah, I knew about that shit. Couldn’t say that it wasn’t completely off course. I saw this club as my family and as Prez, they were all my responsibility. Not just them, that extended to their old ladies and families, too.

Shit got hard for a minute there, but we were still celebrating, in a way. That fucker Keften had taken his last breath nearly a year ago but we were still stomping on his proverbial grave. I say that because the fucker didn’t really have one. That was because we burnt his body to a crisp and scattered what was left in the river.

I looked around and everything was normal. Even Sketch fingering some busty blonde on the couch while some other chick sucked on his neck.

It should have set me at ease and made me smile. And while I was happy, there was a little part of me that felt unsettled.

I knew why, but it wasn’t something that I let myself think about often.

Shewasn’t something I let myself think about often.

Ten fucking months since I showed up at her place and she pretty much told me to fuck off with that icy stare.

She blamed the club— as well as me— for getting pulled into the Keften shit. And the fact that one of her girls died because of it, I didn’t think she’d ever talk to me again.

Was I brokenhearted?

No.

I hadn’t known the woman long enough to get my heart involved. Hell, I’d barely had a taste of her before I lost her.

But that taste…

As I thought about it, my tongue snaked out to glide over my bottom lip like her cream was still lingering there.

Petra Novak was a hard woman to read. She was a block of black ice. Expressionless, unless she was coming for me. And even then, there wasn’t much of a change.

She was badass, to say the least. And a little bit scary.

But one thing I couldn’t forget was how she bent me over her desk and spanked the hell out of my ass. Damn, even as I thought about it I could feel her slick tongue licking over the burning flesh when she was done.

My hand slipped off the bar and fell to my lap so I could adjust my hard as hell cock.

See, this was why I tried to avoid all thoughts of Petra. I clearly couldn’t control my body when I replayed what she’d done to me that night. Not that I could forget the things she made me do too.

She’d said it was about trust but I figured it was the only way she’d ever let herself admit that I affected her. That she wanted me. Yeah, I wasn’t blind to that shit even if she hid it well.

But it was clear that when I showed up later after all the bad shit happened, that she had no intentions of seeing me again. Another thing I liked about her, she was straight to the point and didn’t play games.

“You’ve destroyed the thing I care about the most. I want nothing more to do with you. I ask that you respect that.”

Those were the words that she’d said to me before she nodded to her bodyguards to get me the hell out of her office.

I knew she wasn’t talking about her business. The Gilded Rose was just the house. The girls that worked there were what she cared about the most. Which told me that she wasn’t completely heartless. Petra did care, she just had a hard time showing it. She had a hard time with trust and letting people in. And a woman in her position couldn’t show weakness because it could cost her everything.

She might not have come right out and said it was my fault that night, but I knew it was. I didn’t see it coming and it seemed like going back to see her had put her on Keften’s radar. I was to blame for Esme’s death. I might not have known her, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t carry some kind of weight from her death.

I saw how the whole thing unraveled Petra. I’d been stunned when she let me hold her right after we got everyone to safety while the buildings around her business burned. For just a brief second, I saw the woman hidden within. Though she didn’t know me that well, she still let me in. I think that was the part that killed me the most, having that part of her and losing it because I couldn’t protect her and her people.

Sometimes being the Prez comes with a world of weight to carry.

But I wouldn’t give it up for anything.

I looked around again and this time, a smile tipped up the left side of my mouth. Yeah, this was my home and they were my family.