Page 2 of Ruthless Raiders

But if I try and fail? He’ll make me wish I was dead. Marcus King doesn’t just bury traitors—he makes them suffer, that's what the Kings do, perpetuate suffering. And with every club in Texas under his thumb, there’d be nowhere to run.

And while I am from the United Kingdom. I can’t go back to Bristol. My father would string me up by the throat the minute he heard I was back on British land.

So yeah—maybe the only future I’ve got is far from here. A shitty little farm in the middle of Montana. A place with silence and sky and no fucking ghosts. Somewhere Kelly would’ve wanted to grow old. Somewhere I can try to remember what peace feels like.

I swallow roughly. “Is this why Marcus made you come out here with me?”

Isaiah isn’t an enemy but he sure as hell isn’t my friend, and he nods turning to look at me with his black eyes. “I always said you were too smart to be a grunt, Lan.”

I snort, a nod looking over his body, knowing that Isaiah’s favorite pistol is somewhere on him. “So what’s the plan Zay?”

He takes a step forward, his eyes glittering with his signature feral need. “Well,” he says, voice smooth, almost playful, “I take you back to the house, and we tell Marcus you want to leave.”

I blink. “That easy?”

He chuckles—low, humorless. “Of course not. You gotta make it past the beating.”

“The what?—”

His fist slams into the side of my jaw before I even register him moving. White-hot pain explodes through my head. The world tilts sideways.

I stagger back, tasting blood. “Are you serious?—”

Another hit. This one drops me. My knees slam the dirt, the field spinning around me.

“You don’t justquitthe Raiders,” Isaiah mutters, standing over me now. His voice sounds far away, distorted. “You get beat out. Or buried out.”

I try to push up, spit thick with iron. “You’re out of your goddamn?—”

Blackness cracks through my vision as his boot connects with my ribs.

“Welcome to the exit interview, brother.”

Then nothing.

1

JASMINE

Six MonthsLater

“Ma’am, it’s 9:58 p.m. We close in two minutes, and no—we are not selling breakfast,” I deadpan, barely glancing up as I punch the register with just enough force to keep myself awake. Two more minutes and I’m free. Free from the fluorescent lights, the smell of burnt fryer oil, and the fake smiles carved into my cheeks like permanent scars.

“But your website saysAll Day Breakfast, and I—” she starts, all high-pitched indignation and entitled breathlessness.

I watch the clock tick to 9:59 like it’s crawling through molasses. I lean back against the grease-stained wall and let my head thunk against it. Hard. Today was hell. This week was worse. And the last two goddamn years? A spiral straight into oblivion since Willow disappeared. I might as well just call it, the greatness of high school is long gone and adulthood has been a never ending shit show of disappointment.

I had an early acceptance to MIT, got waitlisted at Princeton, and Yale let me in with a whopping $800 scholarship—justenough to cover textbooks, maybe. NYU flat-out rejected me. And when the rest of the scholarship letters came pouring in, they all said the same thing:You are brilliant. Your story is sad, but no.Or worse—rejections from every loan company I could find. And the few that didn’t say no outright came back with a hollow maybe:With a cosigner, perhaps.I was up at 3 a.m. most nights, digging through sketchy loan sites and refreshing my inbox like it owed me money.

Eventually, the rejections stopped surprising me. They just started stacking—like proof I was never meant to get out. So I gave up on college. I gave up on the dream I’d built my whole life around. And I fell, fast, into the life I always feared: working dead-end shifts, watching the clock more than my future, stuck in the same town that never stops sucking the life out of me.

“Well, the service here is ridiculous!” The woman shrieks over the intercom and I jump up off the wall, realizing that I thankfully spaced out for most of her rant.

My eyes snap up to the clock, and I exhale like I’ve been holding my breath all day. “Ma’am, it is officially 10:02. We are now closed. Have a good night!” I chirp, already halfway checked out.

“I want to speak to your manager!” she shrieks, her voice so shrill and aggressive it rattles through my headset like feedback. I wince, rip the earpiece out of my ear, and toss the mic on the windowsill like it’s burning me. Rolling my eyes, I slide across the tile floor to where Derek is leaning against the back counter, sorting receipts.

“Yo, D-man. We got a screamer at the drive-thru,” I whistle, tugging off the polyester hat that’s been itching my scalp for the past seven hours straight. I run my fingers through my hair—shoulder-length blonde waves with streaks of red dye that’vefaded to a soft, stubborn pink. The left side of my head is shaved down to a buzz, cool against my fingertips, a contrast to the mess of waves that tumble down the right.