Page 15 of The Biker and His Bride

ROGUE

T he night of the MC war, the air felt like iron—thick with tension, pulsing with something ancient and brutal that hummed in my veins.

Reaper’s Pride had crossed a line. Caleb might’ve pulled their strings, but they made their own damn choice when they blew up our warehouse and sent bullets screaming past my brothers’ heads. We’d warned them once. This time, we were riding out with one mission:

Crush them.

Diesel handed out extra mags, fingers steady, expression grim. Trigger said nothing as he prepped a silencer for his .45, his jaw tight. Maddox slipped brass knuckles over his fists. Pitbull checked the fuel on the molotovs twice, then grinned like the devil himself.

“We doing this or what, Prez?” Nash asked me, cocking his head toward the row of bikes lined up under moonlight.

“We’re not riding to scare,” I said. “We’re riding to end it.”

The boys nodded. That’s all we needed.

We thundered out into the North Carolina night, tires shredding gravel, engines howling across the valley like wolves.

The coordinates Diesel found led us to a busted-ass quarry out near County Line Road.

Reaper’s Pride had been holed up there for weeks, thinking no one’d find their little hidey-hole.

They were wrong.

We circled high ground, lights off. Heat vision spotted seven bikes, four trucks, and a hell of a lot of bad decisions. Two guards patrolled the ridge. Trigger took the left. Diesel took the right. No noise, no warning.

Crack. Thump.

Down they went.

Then it began.

Pitbull lit the first molotov and hurled it through the passenger side of their main truck.

Flames exploded up, lighting the night in orange and black chaos.

I dropped the clutch and shot down into the pit with Maddox at my six, both of us blasting warning shots into the air as the first screams started.

Men ran. Some grabbed weapons. Others dove for cover. But we were faster. Cleaner. Trained.

I aimed for their president, a big bastard called Ruckus. He had a shotgun half-raised when I tackled him from the side. We hit the gravel hard. I grabbed his vest and slammed him into a wheel hub twice before dragging him up, blood painting his cheek.

“You came into my house,” I growled. “Now I’m inside yours.”

He spit blood. “You’re dead, Thorne.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But you’re done.”

By the time the smoke cleared, five of them were zip-tied, three were unconscious, and two were stripped of their cuts and left barefoot by the fire. No deaths—we weren’t monsters—but they’d remember.

The final message came in the form of their clubhouse flag burning in the back of Pitbull’s truck. Pride was over.

I rolled home just before dawn.

Lights were still on at the clubhouse when I pulled in, gravel crunching under my tires. Riley was sitting on the porch steps, wrapped in one of my flannel shirts. Her bare legs were pulled up to her chest, and her eyes locked on mine the second I stepped off the bike.

She ran to me without a word.

I caught her, wrapped my arms around her waist, lifted her clean off the ground.

“I was so scared,” she whispered, pressing her face to my throat.

“I told you I’d come back.”

“You smell like smoke.”

“Because I lit the match.”

She kissed me like she couldn’t breathe without it, and I knew I was hers, and she was mine.

Two days later, the war behind us, we started planning Caleb’s fall.

Riley pulled out the hand-drawn map and laid it across the bar in the chapel. “There,” she said, pointing to a bend in the woods. “That’s where the hunting cabin is. He and his father used to go out there all the time. Meetings. Bribes. Dirty money. You name it.”

Trigger leaned in. “How sure are you?”

“Sure enough to bet my life.”

I looked at her. “You already have.”

We split into teams. Nash and Pitbull handled the wiretap gear. Diesel prepped the drone. Riley drew a layout from memory—cellar access, solar panels, a hidden generator, even an old canoe dock they could use as a back exit. It was brilliant.

“Tomorrow at dusk,” I said. “We ghost in, plant the bugs, ghost out.”

Simple.

Except nothing with Caleb was ever simple.

We moved under twilight. The forest was wet and dense, sounds muffled by moss and mist. Riley led us through like she’d walked the path yesterday. When we reached the cabin, we split.

The inside was worse than expected. Binders on shelves. Laptops. Cash. Labeled fake nonprofits like “Green Schools of Tomorrow” and “Veterans for Vision.” All fronts.

“We’ve got them,” I whispered.

Nash planted the mics. Diesel left a camera. We stayed twenty-three minutes.

And that’s when everything went to hell.

We reached the trucks, but Nash’s tail car was gone. The keys were still in the dirt.

Then Riley screamed.

I spun just in time to see her being dragged backward by a man in tactical gear. Another shoved a gun in her ribs. Trigger raised his Glock, but Riley screamed, “No! Don’t shoot!”

Three men. One van. Caleb’s men.

“Back off or she’s gone!” one barked.

I froze. My pulse pounded so hard I couldn’t hear.

“Logan!” she cried.

I took a step forward. They shoved her into the van.

“Midnight tomorrow,” the one in charge said. “Bring the files. Or she disappears.”

And just like that, they vanished.

Riley was gone.

And I’d burn down the world to bring her home.