Page 1 of Jagger’s Remorse (Iron Veins MC #1)

Scarlett

Five Years Ago…

The vanilla candle on Papa's desk flickers when I push open his office door, and I know something's wrong before I even see his face.

He's never home on Thursdays.

Thursday means Fresno, checking on the grow houses, making sure the transportation routes run smooth.

Thursday means I have the house to myself, can blast my music while I study without Mama telling me it'll damage my hearing.

Except Mama's been dead for three years, and Papa still keeps her vanilla candles burning like she's going to walk through the door any minute.

But here he is at 11 PM, feeding papers into the shredder like his life depends on it. Maybe it does.

"Papa?"

He spins around, and I've never seen Miguel Delgado afraid.

Not when the Nortenos tried to muscle in on our territory.

Not when the DEA raided our legitimate businesses.

Not even when Mama was dying and the doctors said there was nothing more they could do.

But right now, his face is the color of old bones, and his hands shake as he reaches for me.

" Mija , what are you doing here? You're supposed to be at Berkeley."

"My professor canceled Friday's lecture." I set my backpack down, my Criminal Justice textbooks thudding against the hardwood.

Ironic that I was just studying RICO predicates, learning how the feds build cases against men like my father. "Thought I'd surprise you."

The irony isn't lost on me—Miguel Delgado's daughter studying pre-law at UC Berkeley.

Papa always said the best criminals understand the system from the inside. "Know your enemy better than your friend, mija. That's how you survive in this life."

"You need to leave." He grabs my shoulders, his gold ring cutting into my skin.

The one with the double-headed eagle, marking him as Sinaloa royalty.

Not just any soldier—nephew to Eduardo Vasquez himself, plaza boss for all of Northern California. "Now, Scarlett. Take my car and?—"

The shredder jams.

Smoke rises from the machine, and half-destroyed bank statements scatter across his desk.

Swiss accounts.

Cayman Islands.

Numbers that don't match the books he keeps for his primo in Culiacán.

My stomach drops. "Papa, what did you do?"

He looks at me, and for the first time in my nineteen years, my father looks old.

The silver at his temples seems more pronounced, the lines around his eyes deeper. "I took what I thought they'd never miss. Small amounts, over time. For you, mija . For your future."

"How much?"

"Fifteen million."

The number sits between us like a loaded gun.

You don't steal from the Sinaloa Cartel.

You especially don't steal from family.

I've grown up in this world, seen what happens to thieves.

The barrel acid. The videos sent to families. The way they make examples that echo through generations.

"Tío Eduardo knows?"

"Not yet. But they're checking the books. Someone talked." He cups my face, thumbs brushing my cheekbones the way he did when I was little and scared of monsters under my bed.

Turns out the real monsters wear suits and call you primo. "I have passports. New identities. We can run. Argentina, maybe. You always wanted to see Buenos Aires."

"Papa—"

"I know what you're thinking." His voice cracks.

"That I'm a fool. That I broke the most sacred rule.

But you're almost done with school, almost free of this life.

I wanted to give you choices I never had.

Start a firm, help our people the legal way.

Maybe find a nice boy who doesn't know what his father-in-law really does. "

I'm already thinking about the logistics—which routes to avoid, which borders we can cross, how long before they freeze our accounts—when I hear them.

Motorcycle engines, distant but getting closer.

Not the rice rockets the young soldiers ride, but the deep, throaty rumble of Harleys.

Papa hears them too.

His face goes from pale to gray.

"The safe," he whispers, spinning toward the wall where Mama's portrait hangs. "There are drives. Everything about the operation. Routes, contacts, stash houses. Take them. Run. They're your insurance?—"

The door explodes inward.

The man who enters doesn't look like death.

Death would be a mercy compared to the void in his eyes.

He's tall, lean muscle wrapped in a leather cut, the Iron Veins MC patches proclaiming him their Vice President.

The one-percenter diamond, the Redding bottom rocker, the tattoo of the crow on his neck—I catalog it all in the space of a heartbeat.

Brown hair falls into eyes so dark they're almost black, and there's a scar through his left eyebrow that makes him look like a fallen angel.

Beautiful. That's my first thought, and I hate myself for it.

Papa pushes me behind him, but I can see around his shoulder.

Can see the Glock in the biker's hand, steady as stone.

Can see the rosary beads wrapped around his wrist—wooden ones, worn smooth.

Just like the ones my abuela gave me before she died.

"Please," Papa says in English, then switches to Spanish. " Por favor , I can pay. I have money. Information. I know where Eduardo keeps?—"

"Miguel Delgado." The biker's voice is whiskey and gravel, and something low in my belly responds to it despite the terror flooding my veins. "You've been stealing from your employers."

"It's not what you think?—"

"Fifteen million, three hundred forty-two thousand." He recites the number like he's reading a grocery list. "Skimmed over six years. Very clever, using the agricultural shipments to hide the discrepancies. Eduardo might never have noticed if you hadn't gotten greedy with that last transfer."

"I have a daughter." Papa's voice cracks. "She's innocent. She doesn't know anything about the business?—"

"I know you have a daughter." Those dead eyes find mine, and I forget how to breathe. "Scarlett Maria Delgado. Nineteen. Pre-law at Berkeley. Dean's list. Volunteers at the legal aid clinic on weekends. Drives a white Honda Civic, license plate 7G394?—"

"Stop." The word tears from my throat.

He's been watching me.

This stranger, this killer, knows my class schedule.

Knows I volunteer on Thursday nights, which is why I'm usually not home.

Knows I grab coffee at the same shop every morning before I head to campus.

"Just let her go," Papa begs, and I've never heard him beg for anything.

Not even when Mama was dying and he was praying to every saint he could name. "She's only nineteen. She's going to be a lawyer, help our people the right way. Please, I'll do anything?—"

"No." I step out from behind Papa, my chin raised.

If I'm going to die, I won't do it hiding. "If you're going to kill us, look me in the eyes while you do it."

Something flickers in those dark depths.

Interest? Respect?

He studies me like I'm a puzzle he can't quite solve.

His left hand twitches—not toward a weapon, but toward his chest.

Touching something under his shirt.

"Brave little princess," he murmurs, and I hate how my body responds to his voice. "Just like your father said you'd be."

"You talked to him about me?"

"He talks about nothing else. Every meeting, every drop. Scarlett's grades. Scarlett's future. Scarlett's going to change the world." His lips twist in something that might be a smile if it reached his eyes. "Scarlett's too good for this life."

" Mija , no?—"

"It's okay, Papa." I take his hand, the one with the eagle ring. "I'm here."

The biker raises his gun, and I see his jaw clench.

There's a moment—half a heartbeat—where his finger hesitates on the trigger.

His other hand goes to his chest, touching something under his shirt.

A cross? Dog tags?

Whatever it is, he grips it like an anchor.

" Tu último deseo ?" He asks my father for his last wish, and the formality of it, the respect, makes this worse somehow.

Papa straightens, and for a moment, he's not a scared man who stole from the cartel.

He's Miguel Delgado, who built an empire from nothing.

Who married the most beautiful woman in Culiacán and brought her to California to raise their daughter away from the violence.

"Protect her," Papa says. "Whatever happens after, protect my little dragon."

Little dragon.

His pet name for me since I was five and bit a boy for pulling my braids.

The biker's eyes flick to mine again, and I see him register the nickname.

"I can't promise that."

"Then I'll see you in hell, cabrón ."

The gun fires.

The sound is impossibly loud in the small office.

Papa's hand goes slack in mine as he falls, blood spreading across his white shirt like spilled wine.

I catch him, my knees hitting the ground hard, his head in my lap.

"Papa, please. Papa, look at me."

But he's already gone.

Miguel Delgado, who once made federales disappear and had judges on speed dial, dies in his daughter's arms wearing a Berkeley Dad sweatshirt I bought him for his birthday.

I look up at his killer through the tears, memorizing every detail.

The way he holds the gun.

The slight tremor in his left hand.

The St. Michael pendant peeking out from his collar—so he's Catholic.

Good. That means he believes in hell.

"Do it," I whisper.

He lowers the gun.

"What?" The word rips from my throat. "You killed him. Now finish it."

"Your father stole from the cartel. His debt's paid." He backs toward the door, those dark eyes never leaving mine. "You don't have a debt."

"I do now."

He pauses at the threshold, and for one moment, the mask slips.

I see something human underneath—guilt, maybe.

Or recognition of what he's just created.

His hand goes to his chest again, gripping his St. Michael pendant.

"What's your name?" I ask.

He shouldn't answer. There's no reason to give me anything I could use against him. But he does.

"Jagger."

"Just Jagger?"

"Just Jagger."

I look down at Papa's face, peaceful now, and back up at his killer. "I'm going to find out everything about you. Your real name. Where you come from. What you love. And then I'm going to take it all away, piece by piece, until you're begging me to put a bullet in your head."

Something passes over his face—approval? Anticipation? "I'll be waiting, little dragon."

Then he's gone, leaving me alone with my father's body and the bitter taste of his name on my tongue.

I close Papa's eyes and slip the eagle ring from his finger.

A chain that used to belong to my mother sits there, and has for years.

I unclasp my necklace and slide the ring down the chain.

It's still warm as I hang it around my neck, the gold heavy against my chest.

The safe behind Mama's portrait hangs open—when did he open it?—and I can see the drives Papa mentioned.

Insurance, he called them.

I pocket them without looking, my hands steady despite the sob building in my throat.

" Lo juro , Papa," I whisper against his forehead, tasting copper where his blood has splattered across my face. "I swear on your blood. On Santa Muerte herself. On Mama's grave. I'll make him pay."

I stay there until the police come, holding my father while his blood soaks through my Cal Berkeley sweatshirt.

The vanilla candle burns down to nothing, the last thing my mother touched finally dying with my father.

I tell the cops I saw nothing, remember nothing.

Trauma, they say. Shock.

But I remember everything .

Jagger. Iron Veins MC.

The hesitation before he pulled the trigger.

The St. Michael pendant that makes him a hypocrite—patron saint of warriors, protector of the innocent.

The way his eyes held mine like he was waiting for something.

The way he called me little dragon, using my father's name for me, like he had the right.

He should have killed me.

That's his first mistake.

It won't be his last.