Page 2 of Knox (The Devil’s Luck MC #6)

CAROLINE

T he clubhouse—at least, that was what my father wanted everyone to call it—smelled like blood, shit, and men .

They were as disgusting as the floor of the abandoned warehouse the Wolverines now called home.

It was dingy, damp, and depressing, and I swore the seemingly ceaseless cigar smoke was making rats die in the walls.

My father wasn’t smoking tonight. I almost wished he was. The repelling habit was preferable to what he was doing now.

I wanted the estate back. I’d kill for it back. The first on that list? Anyone from the Devil’s Luck MC. Fuck those arrogant bastards. They were the reason Father had to bribe members of the police force into letting us use this cesspool as a home base.

The sound of fists striking flesh echoed off the naked metal walls. I crossed my arms and adjusted myself in the foldout chair, watching the beating. My white pantsuit was still pristine. No way would I get the custom outfit near innocent blood.

At least, the kid’s blood was more than likely innocent. But did that matter to Walter Bates? No.

I didn’t bother to know anything other than the bare minimum—Kyle, age seventeen—and that he was a prospect. To be a Wolverine, you had to fall to hell and drag yourself up from its pit. But if you failed, even a little?

Innocence was out of the question when it came to Walter Bates’s fists.

They were split and bleeding, drenched in shiny red liquid I knew was as good as currency in this fucked- up world of ours.

It dripped from Kyle’s lips, his nose, his temple.

His face was swollen blue and purple. Spit dribbled from the corner of his mouth.

He was beaten within an inch of his young life, and yet he tried to mumble, please .

My own lips quirked. Poor young fool. Do you really think Walter Bates is going to grant mercy because of that little plea ?

But my half smile didn’t last long.

Father lifted the scrawny kid by his collar with his left hand—the one with the cut-off pinky—right off the floor. With his right fist, he wailed on him, over and over and over, bones already broken, crunching further beyond repair.

I shifted my gaze before Father could drop Kyle to the floor.

The rest of the club lingered nearby on the makeshift furniture, smoking cigs or blunts, clouds billowing around them in a haze, playing a game of cards.

They were a bunch of cruel brutes, but I had known most of them my entire life.

Whether we liked each other or not over the years, they had my back, and I had theirs.

It was self-preservation, of course; there wasn’t a lick of personal attachment.

I had fucked a few of them from time to time, but that was always no strings attached.

Now, any of them would reel back with bleeding nail scratches across their stubbled faces if they got too close to me.

And yet here I was, sympathizing with them. They weren’t smoking because of habit. They weren’t grumbling over bad hands or accusing each other of cheating. They weren’t playing to win.

They were playing to drown out the sounds of their own prospect getting beat within an inch of his young life by their president.

More than half the Wolverines acted on testosterone and adrenaline kicks more than actual brains, but now, they were smart enough to see the cracks.

Their— our —club was falling apart at the seams. And they were beginning to realize it wasn’t Devil’s Luck or anyone else in Reno that was holding the scissors—but my father.

With one final punch, Father released Kyle. The recruit slumped to the cold concrete floor like a sack of potatoes. I caught a glimpse of movement—one of the guy’s shoulders jerked in a flinch. Silence filled the warehouse louder than any scream.

Kyle didn’t move. No one expected him to because everyone, whether they were facing the beating or not, knew he was already dead.

Another Wolverine down, and this time, it was at the hands of our own president, not their sworn enemies.

I didn’t expect the chill to shiver down my spine at the sight of Kyle’s slack face beaten unrecognizable.

I had no attachment to the kid, but the thought of him returning to his father—even if he was a deadbeat, according to the Wolverines’ best recruiter—dead on his doorstep stung somehow.

Twisted my heart in a way it had never twisted before.

I didn’t give a shit about other people’s lives.

I was raised to be heartless by my father, trained to hold a gun by the time I should have been learning long division, and taught to use my body and mind to get whatever I—whatever he —wanted.

Feelings had no place in this world of blood, metal, and money.

Kyle lived with his mother until she died from an overdose. That I could relate to. But in my eyes, he was more than a runaway who wanted to risk his life for the chance to be in a bike club.

He was another broken seam. Another crack in the Wolverines’ unshakeable might. And there had been a lot of cracks lately.

They were turning into cavernous trenches threatening to swallow us whole.

My father’s shoulders heaved with panting breaths as if he had run miles. His hands were fisted at his sides, dripping blood, both Kyle’s and his own, from split knuckles. The drops pattered on the floor.

No one dared take a breath. None of his men dared stop playing cards or smoking. I uncrossed one leg and crossed the other.

But the unease was suffocating.

Father finally straightened, inhaling deeply as if the stench of blood was as sweet as spring blooms. Unbidden, my spine stiffened. I did not fear my father.

He turned, running his hand over his head as if slicking hair back with fingers through its strands as if it were gel and not the blood of a dead child.

I did not expect my throat to tighten when his eyes met mine from across the warehouse—one blue, just like mine, and one milky and blind from the knife fight he had smiled through when I was only three years old—I sat straight as an army soldier, lifting my chin, wiping my expression neutral, holding his unblinking stare until his deep frown wobbled into a crooked grin.

“Someone get me a goddamn cigar,” he growled.

One of the younger men scrambled to grab and light a cigar, placing it between my father’s teeth that were splattered with Kyle’s blood—his entire face was splattered with blood, including the smooth dome of his head.

As the acrid tang of cigar smoke wreathed around Father, he waved a dismissive hand. “Clean that shit up.”

The burlier men of the Wolverines bolted up and lumbered over to remove the body. They would return it to Kyle’s father, but in what state? Would they honor the boy by cleaning up the gore, or would they simply drop him off like a battered package?

The Wolverines were honorable. They were a family built from the dirt up by Walter Bates with a vision of freedom—a world that he could rule, and nobody could tell him or his boys what he could or couldn’t do. The club was a misfit family of troubled souls brought together for a larger purpose.

I was proud of that. I believed in my father’s mission. Freedom was all we had, and it felt good . Power felt good. Freedom had no lines to cross.

I dared break my father’s stare to drop to Kyle’s body, being lifted into the arms of one of his enforcers, Church.

Just a kid. There wasn’t much a kid could do to actually piss off Walter Bates. The only reason he was dead was because Father needed an outlet that wouldn’t—couldn’t—fight back.

A kid.

I knew my father was a murderer. It was simply a fact I had known since I was a child, in the same way a normal child knew their father was a salesman—and never batted an eye at. He’d killed dozens of men over his lifetime. It was just an occupational hazard.

There was no honor, family, or freedom in murdering a seventeen-year-old boy.

Father flicked ashes off the tip of the cigar, the accursed thing glowing like dying embers, and watched his men. Apparently, they were acting far too slow.

“Move your asses!” he roared. “Put down those damn cards and act like a fucking Wolverine! Have you all gone soft? He was just some punk. He didn’t have the balls to join our family. You have other shit to do for the club, so go before I bust all your faces in. Move !”

His men scrambled like ants—brutish, stinking, thoughtless ants—to obey their boss’s orders.

And then Father turned back to me. I rose to my feet, and my spine seemed to creak with the pressure to remain ramrod straight.

He walked over, limping slightly, and it was like getting lost in the shadow of a behemoth. Mumbling around the cigar, he grumbled, “Losing your edge, Caroline?”

“Never, sir,” I answered stiffly, irritated at the insinuation.

“Good,” he growled, narrowing his eyes. “Thought I saw something.”

“Saw what, Father?”

He leaned in, blowing smoke in my face. I didn’t flinch, but I held my breath, not to avoid breathing in fumes and blood, but to steel myself. The world seemed to hold its breath as Walter Bates leered at his daughter.

“Thought I saw fear , Caroline.”

I narrowed my eyes in return. “Fear is for cowards, Father, as you have taught me. I am no coward.”

“Good,” he said again, tossing the cigar over his shoulder despite it being barely smoked, for someone to pick up for him. “Don’t need you to weaken into some spineless fucking idiot.”

“Never,” I repeated, but he forged on as if I hadn’t spoken.

“I raised these boys ”—he said it with dripping scorn when he glanced at his “family” behind him—“from gutter trash to something worth keeping alive. But if they don’t respect me and the blood I spill?

” He raised his hands toward me to show off the blood on them as if I hadn’t witnessed the casual murder.

“Then let today be a lesson. Respect me or die. That kid won’t be the first.”

And with those words, I felt the weight of the truth settle around me like dust after a shootout.

Walter Bates had finally snapped.

He was killing his own family.

And I was a witness.

I took my father’s hands in my own, the difference stark. His were large and meaty, his left pinky long gone from his time in prison. Mine were slender, tipped with nails that could maim. But both were made for war.

“I stand behind you, Father,” I said. “Always.”

He gave my hands a squeeze, but it was anything but the reassuring gesture a father should have given his daughter. Then he released me to drop one hand on my shoulder. It was too heavy to be comforting. But I still didn’t flinch, even as the boy’s blood stained my expensive white suit jacket.

“Good girl,” Father rumbled. “You’re the only one in this shithole town I can trust anymore.”

“Thank you, Father.”

His hand slid off my shoulder as he moved past me toward his office—the thing furthest from a sink. “Don’t fail me, Caroline.”

My heart stuttered in my chest. That was a threat . My father had never threatened me before.

The warehouse side door slammed shut behind Church. I finally allowed my body to react with a flinch. I would never see that bloodied seventeen-year-old again.

A couple of the other men loitered around, none interested in picking up cards again.

How many of our own will fall to my father’s whims ? I wondered.