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Kyle

T he tires of my Vanquish S hummed against the asphalt as I neared the Knights MC clubhouse, the landscape around me an eerie reminder of a past I’d spent years trying to outrun. Every street sign, every familiar bend in the road, whispered memories I had no interest in revisiting. Some people took comfort in nostalgia, I found it suffocating.

Little girls dream about their weddings—the white dress, the flowers, the perfect love story unfolding like a fairytale. My best friend in second grade had been different. She’d imagined herself in a tux, standing beside the woman of her dreams. Last year, I’d watched her marry that woman, both of them glowing in matching white gowns, looking like princesses out of a Disney movie. It had been beautiful. Inspiring, even. But dreams like that? They’d never been in the cards for me. Mine had gone up in flames before I even had a chance to believe in them.

A bitter chuckle slipped out as my mind flickered to my childhood reel: a trainwreck of screaming matches, a mother drowning herself in alcohol, a father who barely acknowledged my existence. The highlight reel ended in a crescendo of bullshit —the day my mother took the easy way out, leaving me to clean up the mess.

If it hadn’t been for Duke, my uncle, stepping in when he did, I would’ve been another casualty of the chaos. Instead, he pulled me into his world—Indigo Security, a top-tier investigations and protection company. From day one, I was put through the wringer. Firearms, combat training, intelligence work, you name it, I did it. By twenty-one, I had my helicopter pilot’s license and was recruited for covert government ops. We were the Ghosts—phantoms in the field, slipping in and out unnoticed. It was everything I craved: adrenaline, purpose, and most importantly, distance from my past.

Yet here I was, twenty-four hours fresh from the Sand Pits—the hellscape of the Middle East—pulling into a place I swore I’d never step foot in again. Why? Because Duke asked me to. Because I owed him my life. Because he’d said the one word that shattered every promise I’d made to myself. Trafficking.

A low rumble of an engine behind me signaled Match pulling in. We’d been through hell together, but our jobs didn’t exactly allow for a carpool situation. At the edge of the lot, the trailer that transported our bikes sat waiting. The guys all had Harleys, but I craved speed—my Kawasaki Ninja was built for it, custom wheels, sleek paint job, and fast as sin. My car was no different. The Aston Martin had been a gift from a job in Monaco, and I loved it so much I struggled to part from when it when I was at home. A blacked-out Vanquish S, every inch of it luxury and muscle wrapped in a dream.

The weight of exhaustion settled into my bones as I idled for a moment, eyes tracing the building in front of me. The clubhouse had changed since I was a kid, it looked cleaner, more refined. But I knew better than to be fooled by fresh paint. The ghosts of the past didn’t fade so easily.

A loud grunt yanked me back to the present, and I laughed outright as Match struggled to unfold himself from his truck. We’d taken a beating this time, and while I had my share of bruises, Match had shielded me when a mud wall collapsed, so he was worse off. Watching him move was like witnessing an old man try to bend steel.

I could’ve sat there, stalling a little longer, but movement at the door caught my eye.

Duke stood there, solid as ever. Beside him? The last person I ever wanted to see. Nixon ‘Preacher’ Ripley—my sperm donor. He looked the same, sadly too much like me, and I hated him for it.

More figures emerged from the building. Data, one of the Ghosts, and another Knight I didn’t recognize, but my focus stayed on Duke as he approached. He pulled me into a bear hug, but the moment pressure hit my bruised ribs, I groaned. He let go immediately, frowning.

“Couple bumps and bruises, old man. Not a big deal.” I shrugged it off, unwilling to show how much they actually hurt.

Data shoved between us, wrapping me in a hug of his own. “Good to see you, babe.”

“Yo, what the fuck am I?” Match bellowed from across the lot.

“You don’t get a hug, ‘cos you don’t got tits!” Data shot back, grinning. Laughter rippled through the group, everyone except Preacher, who stood there staring at me with something unreadable in his eyes. Good, let him stew in it.

Match scowled as he grabbed his gear. That was his default setting, perpetual grimace. In all the years I’d known him, I could count on one hand the times I’d seen him smile. Thirteen, to be exact. And even then, it had been terrifying.

I made my way to my trunk, pulling out my civilian duffel, my military bag, and my rifle case. Data grabbed my duffels and took them inside. He knew better than to touch my rifle, everyone did. That was mine.

As I turned to follow, my father’s voice cut through the air like a rusted blade.

“Kai.”

I stopped, eyes locking onto his. Neutral expression, no weakness, no emotion.

“It’s good to see you,” he said, awkward and out of place.

I didn’t respond, just nodded and kept walking. Let him squirm.

Inside, my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. The clubhouse had cleaned up well. Gone were the sticky floors and seedy corners crawling with bacteria yet to be discovered by modern science. The men here seemed more disciplined, the space more structured. Still, it wasn’t my world.

Duke’s voice pulled me back. “We’re headed this way.” He nodded toward the hallway leading to the MC’s core, the armory, Church, offices.

“I’m not locking it up.” I gestured to my rifle.

Duke smirked. “We’re going straight to Church, Kai.”

As the people in the room shifted, heading in the same direction as us, I fell in line behind him and Preacher. The unfamiliar Knight from outside kept pace beside me, but I didn’t spare him a glance. I wasn’t here to make friends.

I was here to get the job done. And then? I was gone.

I heard the shift in the room behind me—boots scuffing against the floor, the low murmur of voices as the rest of the group moved in our direction. The air felt heavier, charged with a mix of curiosity and tension. Without hesitation, I fell in line behind Preacher and Duke, my steps steady, my mind already calculating the next few moves.

Beside me, the guy kept pace, his presence a silent but undeniable weight. I didn’t need to glance his way to know he was watching me, assessing, trying to figure out where I fit in the dynamic of this club.

Too bad for him, or maybe lucky for him, I wasn’t looking to fit in.

Names didn’t matter because all their faces blurred together. This wasn’t a reunion, and I wasn’t here to make friends. I was here for one reason only, and once the job was done, I’d be out of here as fast as I’d rolled in.

So, whoever he was, whatever silent questions he had circling in his head, I didn’t give a shit. He wasn’t my problem. None of them were.

“Jagger,” his deep voice suddenly murmured beside me, sounding rich and smooth like aged whiskey. The name rolled off his tongue with quiet confidence, and finally, I turned to take him in. The dim hallway lighting did him no favors, but even in the shadows, I could tell he was tall, broad-shouldered, and carried himself with an easy assurance that spoke of experience. Dark hair framed a strong face, and though I couldn’t make out much more, something about him held my attention for a beat longer than I intended.

I gave him a brief nod, acknowledging the introduction, before turning back and stepping into the room. The vast table in the center dominated the space, a battlefield for discussions far deadlier than most people could imagine. Sliding into a chair next to Data, I set my rifle case carefully on the floor, my ribs reminding me with a sharp throb that I wasn’t at one hundred percent.

When I looked up again, the lighting in the room gave me a proper view of Jagger, and my breath caught. A fresh wave of pain radiated from my ribs at the involuntary inhale, but it wasn’t just the physical discomfort that made my stomach twist. He was hot in a way that wasn’t just attractive, it was dangerous. The kind of good looks that made him impossible to ignore, and the kind that got him exactly what he wanted. Short beard, tousled dark hair, and hazel eyes that were strikingly clear now that I could see them properly.

“You’re drooling,” Data snorted quietly beside me, fingers flying over his laptop keyboard as he pulled up files.

I rolled my eyes but didn’t bother denying it. Instead, I adjusted my seat, stretching out in a way that made me look relaxed, even if my body protested the movement. The rest of the Club and the Indigo team filtered in, claiming their places while Duke and Preacher positioned themselves at the front of the room.

As soon as the door shut, Preacher got straight to the point. “You know why we’re here,” he said, his tone heavy with the weight of the situation. His gaze swept the room, and before he could make eye contact with me, I looked down at the table, my fingers idly tracing the wood grain. I wasn’t interested in meeting his eyes, wasn’t interested in whatever thoughts were running through his head about me.

“There’s been a sharp increase in kidnappings—kids and women disappearing off the streets, some in broad daylight,” Preacher continued, his voice tight with frustration. “So far, two boats have been intercepted, but we were too late for most of the victims on board. And that’s not all, drug-related deaths have spiked. The FBI believes the Venezuelans are making another move to control distribution. Evidence points to them being behind bad batches circulating the streets. Just yesterday, a group of college students was found dead in a frat house. The drugs they bought were laced with rat poison—one of Veneno’s calling cards.”

The name made my head snap up. Veneno .

Duke’s first job for me had been to investigate a trafficking ring in Belize tied to them. They had been smuggling girls, some as young as fourteen, to a Boko Haram trafficking network. Sharkey and I had spent months following that lead, and what we uncovered had shattered whatever remaining innocence I’d had left. Since that day, fighting that war had become a personal mission. Anytime a trafficking operation needed handling, my name was the first on the list. I tracked the major players, but new ones were always surfacing. Still, the Veneno were different. I knew them like I knew my own scars.

Beside me, Data hit a key, and the projector in the center of the table whirred to life, casting a detailed map onto the wall beside Duke. Routes, names, connections—it was all there.

“Why the fuck would they do that if they’re trying to control distribution?” a biker across the room demanded, his brows furrowed.

It was a good question, and one I already had an idea about.

“Think about it,” Jagger spoke up, his voice steady and confident. “Spread the bad shit around, use your own guys to deal the good shit, and watch as the competition collapses. When other dealers start losing business because no one trusts their supply, you take over their territory. It’s a basic control method—eliminate the competition without firing a single shot.”

The biker across from him grunted, skepticism thick in his tone. “Sounds fucked up to me. If it were me, I’d flood the streets with the good shit. Get everyone hooked, make them crave it, and be known for selling the best.”

It was logical on the surface. But I already knew the flaw in that plan.

“But then you still have competition,” I cut in before Jagger could respond. “Say the bad batches are laced with poison and no one knows where they’re coming from, but you’ve got a reputation for pure product? Dealers will abandon the others and come to you. Less risk and guaranteed quality. It’s psychological warfare as much as it is business.”

Jagger nodded. “Exactly.”

Before anyone else could chime in, Duke’s voice carried across the room. “Jagger’s right. The Veneno don’t just want a piece of the market, they want the whole damn thing. And they’re willing to wipe out anyone who stands in their way.”

His gaze swept the room, pausing just long enough on each face to make sure everyone was paying attention. It was a tactic he’d mastered, holding a room in the palm of his hand without ever needing to raise his voice.

“Yesterday, the rest of Indigo had the chance to meet the Knights. Kyle and Match have just returned and are joining us now,” he continued, nodding in our direction.

I felt the weight of several pairs of eyes shifting onto me, some curious, some skeptical. No doubt a few of them were wondering what the hell I was doing in a room full of hardened bikers and operators. Duke must have noticed, because his grin widened slightly before he spoke again.

“I can see some of you wondering what Kyle’s doing here. Let me explain.”

Behind him, the projector flickered to life, and footage from our bodycams and the helo-cam began playing on the wall. Because of his status and reputation, Duke had clearance to review all mission recordings, and this wasn’t the first time he’d used them to showcase our skills to clients. The only difference now was that our audience consisted of bikers who probably assumed I was a secretary.

Data had been the one to compile the reel, and I smirked when I heard the opening chords of Linkin Park’s Iridescent play over the footage. Subtle, Data. Real subtle. The Indigo guys knew me well—when I was waiting or needed to focus on a target, I often hummed random songs under my breath. Everyone had their own method of centering themselves. One of the SAS guys I’d worked with hummed the British national anthem before he took a shot. Seriously, the British special forces were a riot.

The footage rolled, showing me sliding into the cockpit of the Raider helicopter. That machine was my baby. It hadn’t even been rolled out for military use yet, but Indigo had secured a lease to test it in live operations. Fast, agile, and built like a damn dream, it had been fully customized to suit our needs.

On the screen, Match and I were mid-mission, scanning the terrain for signs of a hostile encampment. As I banked left, the missile warning system suddenly blared, flashing bright red on the console, but the Raider had maneuverability unlike anything else. One quick shift, and the missile veered off course, missing us completely.

“Oh goody, they want to play rough!” my own voice rang out over the footage, cutting through the instrumentals of Iridescent .

The scene shifted to us confirming a hit over the radio. “Confirmed,” the clipped voice said—the coded term we used when a target had been neutralized. These days, we had to be careful with our language. Even if the men we took down were monsters, they were still lives that had been ended.

I glanced around the room, watching the expressions of the bikers as they absorbed the footage. Some looked impressed, others unreadable. But one thing was certain—none of them were underestimating me anymore.

The beat shifted, and suddenly, Jay-Z and Linkin Park’s Numb/Encore filled the room, pulsing through the speakers like a heartbeat. The footage playing on the screen had to be from one of the tail-end guys in our unit because I was further up ahead, sweeping the area on foot for recent signs of movement.

Dressed in a fitted gray t-shirt, camouflaged Kevlar vest, and matching combat pants, I moved with precision, my assault rifle gripped in front of me while my sidearm was holstered against my thigh. My pack, modified to carry my sniper rifle without it knocking against my legs, sat snugly against my back just in case. Typically, we’d be decked out in full camouflage, but sometimes, conditions forced us to strip down to essentials. This had been one of those moments.

As I focused on the footage, the chorus of the song hit, and the entire room erupted in laughter. At the exact moment the lyrics rang out— What the hell are you waiting for? —I turned to the screen and shouted the words along with it. It was perfect timing, a brilliant catch by Data, who was always a pain in the ass but had a knack for pulling these kinds of gems from our footage.

Then, the next clip rolled in—the one that had made my name legendary.

Two years ago, we had been deployed to retrieve two soldiers captured by Islamic State fighters. As we’d fast-roped from the helicopter, the mission went sideways. Hostile fire rained down, forcing us to scramble for cover behind a mud embankment. I barely had a second to set up my rifle before I caught movement through my scope—a militant aiming an RPG directly at our helo, which was still dropping guys into the kill zone.

It was instinct. A split-second decision. The wind was right, the angle perfect, so I squeezed the trigger.

The bullet met its mark at the exact moment he fired, detonating the RPG in mid-air and taking out the cluster of fighters near him.

Apparently, a shot like that was one in a billion.

Since then, I had pulled off better. I wasn’t the type to brag, but I’d tested out a Canadian military-issued McMillan TAC-50 and taken out a hostile at just under three thousand meters. That record was eventually shattered by a sniper in the Canadian Special Forces, and I had nothing but respect for the guy. That was pure fucking skill.

The room buzzed with conversation, the low murmur of voices blending together. I tuned it all out, my attention locked on the faces around the table. Some were familiar, old comrades from past missions, men who had fought beside me, bled beside me. A few smirked at me, others offered small nods or winks, silent acknowledgments of our shared history from the footage.

But no matter how much I tried to focus on the room as a whole, my gaze kept drifting back to one person. Jagger.

He sat across from me, posture relaxed but his presence was anything but. He hadn’t shown much emotion since I first saw him outside with Preacher earlier, but now, sitting at the table, his expression was unreadable, his eyes sharp and unwavering. There was something about him, something quiet but charged, like a storm on the horizon.

I let my gaze drop, taking him in. His cut was worn but well-kept, a clear testament to time spent in the club. And there it was, the VP patch stitched across his chest, a silent declaration of his rank and his authority. That alone should have told me enough, but I wanted to know more.

Slowly, I lifted my eyes back to his face and our gazes locked. For a moment, the noise of the room disappeared entirely, fading into nothing but the space between us. It was a silent challenge, an unspoken question neither of us was willing to put into words. I didn’t back down, and neither did he. The air between us felt charged, thick with something unnamable.

Then someone at the table shattered the silence, and the spell broke. But even as the noise of the room rushed back in, I knew one thing for certain, this wasn’t over.

“Fuck me! You’re Kai Ghost.”

The reaction was nothing new. People never expectedme to be that Kai Ghost. With my blonde hair and curves that didn’t exactly scream “elite sniper,” I didn’t fit the stereotype. Most assumed I was some bimbo tagging along, a girl playing dress-up. It was always amusing to watch their assumptions shatter.

JAGGER

Kai Ghost.

The name rattled something in my memory, a fragment of recognition I couldn’t quite pin down. But looking at her blank expression, I couldn’t tell if she even knew the weight her own name carried for Gauge who’d said it.

“You didn’t realize that?” The guy who had arrived with her leaned back with an easy grin, draping his arm over the back of her chair. His hand curled around her neck, giving it a casual shake—an action that, for reasons I couldn’t explain, irritated the hell out of me.

“I mean, you just watched her in action,” he continued. “That’s barely scratching the surface. You even saw the rifle she walked in with, and the name still didn’t click?”

“I thought it was a man,” Gauge admitted, still sounding floored. A chorus of agreement rippled through the table, but my mind was racing, piecing it together.

Then it hit me.

“Back the fuck up—you’re the one who took out Ramirez and his entire crew.”

The realization landed like a punch. The woman sitting here, watching us with cool detachment, wasn’t just another operator. She was a ghost in the truest sense—feared by the enemy, revered by those lucky enough to fight alongside her.

And I had expected someone… bigger. Some bruiser built like a tank, the kind of sniper you imagined being able to endure days in position, body hardened for the brutal patience required of the job. But from where I was sitting, the only extra weight she carried was in her chest?—

Jesus, focus!

Across the table, Preacher dropped heavily into his seat, the look on his face telling me he hadn’t known either. This was going to be interesting.

“You never told me,” He croaked at Duke.

Preacher kept me in the loop about everything—club business, rival movements, and, most importantly, his daughter, Kyle. Every week, he reached out to Duke for updates on her, piecing together fragments of her life from afar. But somehow, this particular detail had slipped through the cracks of their conversations.

Duke shot Kyle a glance, his expression unreadable, but she was the one who answered.

“I told him not to.”

“Why?”

“Because it was none of your fucking business.”

Her voice was calm, steady, but her eyes turned cold, like a steel gate slamming shut. There was no emotion on her face, just that impenetrable wall she’d built around herself.

We all knew the history between Kyle and Preacher, or at least, we knew the version she believed. What she didn’t know, what Preacher had failed to tell her, was the truth. And judging by the way she reacted to seeing him, first outside and now again in this room, it was clear she hadn’t forgiven him. In fact, it was clear she wouldn’t forgive him, not unless he finally stepped up and addressed the past.

I couldn’t look away from her as Preacher pushed himself to his feet. He and Duke launched into the details of the traffickers, laying out everything we had on them. I already knew the intel inside and out, so I focused on the Ghosts instead, watching their reactions. None of them looked surprised. If anything, their occasional side glances when certain names were mentioned told me they’d dealt with these bastards before. But through it all, Kyle sat there, unmoving, absorbing every word with a quiet intensity.

She wasn’t like the MC Princesses I’d met over the years. I’d transferred here from my old man’s chapter, and I’d seen my fair share of entitled, spoiled daughters who thought their last name made them royalty. Kyle wasn’t one of them. She wasn’t loud or demanding, didn’t expect special treatment. Hell, she carried herself like she didn’t give a damn about the Club at all. And maybe she didn’t.

She also wasn’t the type of woman I usually went for. I’d always had a preference, and Kyle didn’t fit it, but I’d be damned if I could look away from her.

And the more I watched, the more I started to think that the tough, detached exterior was exactly that—a front. A shield. I wasn’t a shrink, but I’d seen enough in this life to know you don’t go through what she did as a kid and come out of it unscathed, you just learned to hide the cracks.

For me, women had always been temporary. Distractions at best. Being part of an MC meant relationships were nearly impossible, and I’d never met a woman who made me think twice about that. It had been a long time since I’d focused on anything outside of the war we were waging against the traffickers.

Kyle, though? She was different. I didn’t know how, but I was damn sure going to find out.