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Chapter One

Who the fuck did I marry? That’s the question I’ve been asking myself since my husband came home spouting crazy shit about how he’s going to take down Big Daddy and the Kings of Anarchy MC.

“I’ll make that bastard watch as I fuck his bitch. Then I’ll put a bullet between his eyes.”

He’s talking about Gwynee, his ex-girlfriend and my somewhat friend. She dated Thad before I got together with him. And now she’s with a man named Big Daddy who happens to be president of the local motorcycle club who owns everything and nearly everyone in our town of Anarchy, California.

Everyone knows nobody fucks with the Kings, and you damn sure don’t touch their property. He’s lost the plot.

Is Thad doing this because he wants Gwynee back or is there something deeper going on? I’ve never seen this side of him before. Sure, he’s made some snarky comments here and there about the club and my friendship with Gwynee, but never on this level.

“That stupid fuck thinks he calls all the shots, but things are going to change. I’ll be on top. Gwynee will see that she chose wrong. That she fucked up by crawling into that biker trash’s bed. If she’s stayed with me, I’d made her see that I was the better choice.”

My blood runs cold. He wants Gwynee back. He doesn’t love me. It hits me square in the gut like a deadly punch from his fist. My husband is still hung up on his ex. Why did he marry me if he was still pinning for her?

He takes another drink from his bottle of liquor and my heart is lodged in my throat, along with my voice. I can’t be mad at Gwynee. It’s not her fault that this man I thought loved me is a literal piece of shit. I can’t believe I’ve been so blind. This whole time. Was it any of it real?

Was I so desperate to be loved that I accepted attention from the first man to tell me those three words I’d longed for? I shake my head at him. At myself.

This was never love.

Our marriage is a lie.

I fell so in love with the idea of being in love that I was blind to who he truly is. Blind to his true feelings.

“You’ll see. Hector promised the drug trade would return to my family. The Kings stole our territory. Stole my legacy. Anarchy will be ours and the Kings will be forgotten.”

I reach for my phone while Thad mutters to himself about how great he is and how he’s going to make Big Daddy pay for stealing Gwynee out from under him, too. I need to warn Gwynee. I at least owe her that much. She’s been nothing but kind to me.

“You stupid fucking cunt.” Thad’s fist connects with the apple of my cheek.

The force rattles my teeth and shoots a sharp pain racing up the side of my face that radiates into my eyeball as I drop to my knees, tears blurring my vision as I brace my palms on the floor.

My phone lands on the other end of the room, out of my reach.

“Who do you think you are? Going behind my back to rat me out to that biker whore. I told you to stay away from Gwynee.”

“I’m sorry.” I dare to glance up at the drunken, hateful bastard as he towers over me with his penetrative gaze boiling with a rage that could kill.

The charming, good looks he once held are as cold and dead to me as a corpse.

All I see as I meet his deadly expression is someone I fear and hate. Someone I desperately wish to escape.

“Not yet. But you will be.” He undoes his pants, whipping his dick out. He gets off on my pain. My fear. It’s sick and twisted. How can he claim to love me while treating me this way?

I think he’s going to rape my mouth, but he’s trying to piss on me like a dog marking his territory. I skitter backwards in an awkward crab walk, barely escaping his golden shower.

This is it. My husband, the man who vowed to cherish and protect me, is going to kill me.

He stumbles toward me, tripping over the coffee table.

This may be my only chance. I seize the opportunity and make a run for it.

I throw open the front door and run like my life depends on it because it does.

My bare feet hit the pavement, and I don’t look back as Thad shouts my name and calls me a cunt.

“Get back here, Jessika. I’m not through with you, stupid cunt.”

Loose pebbles dig into the bottoms of my feet, breaking the skin, but it’s pain I’ll have to bear. My lungs burn and my calves ache, but I don’t stop until I’m sure Thad isn’t coming after me. The streets and houses blur together as I run further and further and further away.

I push my body to the limits, having no idea where I am or where I’m going.

All I know is I can’t let Thad catch up to me. If he does, he may kill me.

I don’t know how long I’ve been running, but exhaustion slams into me like a brick wall. Planting my hands on the tops of my thighs, I lean forward, struggling to catch my breath. I’m on the verge of dropping where I stand.

A car slows as it approaches me, and I fear it’s Thad coming for me. I don’t know if I’ll have the energy to fight him if he attacks. “Jess? Girl, what are you doing running down the road in the dark?” I’ve never been more grateful to see Cecilia, my hair girl, in all my life.

She gets a better look at me under the interior lights as I collapse in her passenger seat. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Thad.”

“I’m taking you to the hospital.”

I shake my head. “No hospital. No police.” I pause to catch my breath.

“Shit. Okay. I know where to go.”

“Should have killed that fucker when I had the chance,” Big Daddy grumbles. Him and Gwynee argue amongst themselves about whether or not it was Thad who hurt me.

Big Daddy is a huge man with thick biceps and Gwynee is a dainty chick with dark hair who is like twenty years younger than him. They shouldn’t make sense, but the burly, bad ass biker treats her like a queen. Despite their size difference, they look good together.

I know Big Daddy will kill him once I tell him about Thad’s plans, but what if he doesn’t believe me?

What if he thinks I came here as part of Thad’s plan to come after him and his club?

He’s not a man to be fucked with. He didn’t get to where he is by baking cookies and giving assholes a pass to step to him again.

When Cecilia pulled up at the gates of the Kings of Anarchy MC to bring me to Big Daddy’s mansion, I didn’t know if I was relieved or scared. Right now, I’m somewhere in the middle.

The man has a temper and right now, the expression he wears is murderous. Brows pinching tight, lips pulled in an even harder line. Eyes so dark they appear inky and evil.

I don’t know whether to fear him or be happy that I’m under his roof where Thad can’t reach me. Not without going through the hundreds of bikers here for the annual KOAMC rally.

“We’ll worry about the who later. Right now, why don’t we get you cleaned up in my room? Just you, me, and Cecilia,” Gwynee says softly, squeezing my hand.

I married the man who cheated on her and she’s treating me with such care.

“I’ve got Doc Stevens coming to take a look at that lip and to see if she needs treated for rape,” Big Daddy announces and I lose it, bursting into tears.

This is too much. “No one raped me.” My voice comes out, choked on my sobs. “Thad was drunk. I made him angry, and he hit me. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“I don’t care how mad he was. There’s never a good reason for putting hands on your woman, or any woman,” Cecilia says, and she’s not wrong. I don’t know why I’m trying to defend Thad.

He’s an asshole and I never should have married him.

I fell for him so easily.

I’m such a fool.

I thought he loved me.

I need to warn them of his plans. “There’s more.” Big Daddy and his club should know the crazy shit he was saying about them.

“It’s alright.” Gwynee brushes my hair from my face, pressing an ice pack to the knot forming from the brutal punch I took to the face.

“I-…” my voice cracks. “I need to tell you what Thad is planning.” I swipe my fingers under my eyes, drying my tears.

“He was talking about the club and how he hates all of you. Said the town would be better off if he got rid of you. I told him he was talking nonsense, but he said he made a deal with some guy. Hector something. He was saying all sorts of things about funneling drugs through the furniture business. Said the Kings stole his legacy.”

“Fucking hell,” Big Daddy mutters. “Don’t let her out of your sight,” he tells another biker by the name of Woods.

The tough-looking biker folds his arms across his chest, and I’m worried they don’t believe me.

“Thank you for telling us,” Gwynee says, and a teeny bit of the tension leaves me as I relax my shoulders.

I continue pressing the ice pack to my face, hoping I don’t have any actual damage other than my broken heart.

I can’t bear the way Gwynee keeps looking at me. Like she feels sorry for me. This is my fault.

“You’ve been nothing but good to me. I don’t understand why he’d want to hurt any of you.

When I attempted to text you a warning about what he was saying, he attacked me.

I’d never seen him so angry. I mean, he’s pushed me around here and there, but nothing like this. I thought he was going to kill me.”

“He won’t get the chance,” Woods says, sounding lethal and looking like he means business. Covered in tattoos with thick arms, he could do some damage with his fists.

His dark gaze meets mine. Intense. Scary. Dangerous. Sexy. He looks like the kind of man who will ruin a girl’s lipstick in a good way. Unlike my asshole of a husband.

Gwynee gives me another supportive squeeze on the wrist. “I should have tried harder to tell you how shitty of a person he is.”

“It’s my fault. Not yours. If it wasn’t me, it would have been someone else.” I’m the one who fell for his fake charm. I’m the one who believed he meant it when he said he loved me. I’m the one who stayed after he put his hands on me for the first time.

I was an idiot and blamed myself. If I hadn’t made him mad, he wouldn’t have reacted the way he did. This time is different. I see him all too clearly.

Gwynee frowns, chewing over my words.

Woods keeps staring at me and I can’t tell if he thinks I’m part of Thad’s plan or if he’s concerned for me. I bite my lip and cry out in pain at the tenderness of the injured, split skin.

“I’ll get you something for the pain,” Gwynee says, leaving me with Cecilia.

“Do you have any other injuries?” Wood questions, going down on his knee, cradling my left foot in his hands.

I hiss when he brushes the pad of his thumb over one of the cuts.

“We need to clean these cuts,” he tells Cecilia, and she leaves to go off after Gwynee.

“Brave thing coming here, being married to the enemy and all.”

“Gwynee’s a friend. Thad is…not who I believed him to be.”

“That’s going to leave a nasty bruise,” he comments, nodding toward my face. “He slap you around often?”

“Not at first. I’d rather not talk about him.”

“All right. What do you want to talk about then?”

“I don’t know. Distract me.”

He rubs his lips together. His deep brown eyes meet mine, reminding me of the center of a gooey brownie. “If you could go anywhere in the world right now. Money doesn’t matter. Where would you go?”

My mind blanks. “I don’t know.” I’m still concentrating on his eyes.

“Come on.” His lips tip into an amused smirk. “Everyone has a dream destination. What’s yours?”

“I can’t think of anywhere.”

“Close your eyes.” I must look skeptical because he says, “Just trust me.”

I purse my lips but do as he says, laying my head back on the cushion. I drop the ice pack onto the end table and close my eyes, wishing I could go back in time to turn Thad down when he first asked me out.

“Good. Relax your shoulders.” His thumb brushes along the heel of my foot. Moving in light strokes up toward my ankle, then my calve. “You’re in a wide-open space. What do you see?”

I exhale loudly. “This is silly.”

“You’re not trying.”

“I can’t focus. Tell me your idea of perfect.”

“Devil’s Creek. Where I’m from. My family’s land. We own a private lake. Back in the olden days of cowboys and Indians, the caves were used by outlaws as their hideout. Legend is behind the waterfall is a special cavern. That once was full of diamonds back then.”

“Diamonds,” I murmur, trying to envision the picture he’s painting.

“Diamonds,” he repeats. “The best part, though, is the water is crystal clear and perfect. It’s always seventy-two degrees. Perfect for swimming.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It is.”

I open my eyes, blinking a few times to adjust to the light in this room. “So where is this diamond filled cave?”

“Why? You thinking about trying to mine it?” He chuckles. “It’s just a story.”

“Maybe that’s what you tell people to keep them away.” I smile.

“Nah. We tell them that there’s a special species of bats in the cave, so no one can enter because of their shit.”

“Bat shit. How romantic.”

“You ever find yourself in Arkansas. I’ll take you there.”

“It’s a date.”

“Doc’s here,” Gwynee announces, bringing an older white-haired man into the room.

“See you around, butterfly,” Woods says, leaving the room.

“Butterfly,” I murmur to myself, wondering if that’s a term of endearment he calls all women.

“Let’s have a look at that lip,” the man tells me, snapping on a pair of latex gloves.