Page 19

Torrent

I call her again.

Straight to voicemail.

For the fourth goddamn time.

“Tessa, pick up the phone,” I mutter, jaw tight. “You wanna ignore me? Fine. But at least have the fucking guts to say it to my face.”

I shove the phone into my pocket and whip my bike into the parking lot of the diner. I’m fuming. All that damn emotion I’ve been choking on all morning, and now she’s just ghosting me like the other night never happened?

Like we never happened?

I shove the door open hard enough that it rattles the bell above. Megan turns around behind the counter, wide-eyed.

“Oh! Torrent.” She glances at the clock. “Tessa didn’t come in.”

I stop in my tracks. “What?”

“She was supposed to open. It’s not like her. We’ve been calling since seven. No answer. It just rings.” Megan frowns, biting her lip. “Do you know if something’s wrong?”

That icy, crawling feeling under my skin starts to creep up my spine.

No. She’s just pissed at me. That’s all.

She’s being stubborn. Giving me the silent treatment. Trying to make a point.

Right?

But blowing off work? That’s not Tessa.

Not ever.

Without another word, I bolt out of the diner and race back to my bike.

I drive to her apartment, the time going too slow, even though I’m speeding.

I take the steps two at a time to her apartment.

“Tessa!” I yell and go to bang on the door. Fist clenched, heart pounding, but when I go to knock, the door creaks open at the lightest touch.

My stomach twists.

The fuck?

I step inside slowly. “Tess?”

Nothing.

“Tessa!” I shout louder, moving deeper inside. The place is still. Too still.

Then I see it, a letter.

My heart slams against my ribs.

No. Don’t fucking tell me she left.

I leave the letter untouched, refusing to believe she walked away without saying goodbye to my face. My boots thud against the floor as I tear through the apartment.

“Tessa! Goddammit, Tessa!”

I check the bathroom, the bedroom, the tiny closet.

Nothing.

Panic flares in my chest, hot and fast.

I storm back out and grab the letter, hands shaking now. The ink is smudged. My name at the top. Her handwriting, messy like she was crying while writing it.

I read the words and feel every one of them like a knife to the gut.

“I love you.”

She writes about our nights. The cooking. The way I taught her to shoot. About the parties, the bike rides, the kisses that meant everything.

She loved me.

She still does.

But it’s not finished.

My eyes snap to a packed bag just sitting there.

Her phone on the counter.

The door open.

A cup knocked over. A chair angled weirdly.

My blood runs cold.

She didn’t leave.

Maybe she was going to leave, but she didn’t.

Someone stopped her.

I clench the letter in my fist and grab her phone with the other hand, shoving both into my pocket.

My boots are heavy on the floor as I storm out. My legs are moving before I even know it. Rage and fear mixing in a deadly fucking storm under my skin.

I swing a leg over my bike and hit call.

“Drift. Now,” I bark the second he answers. “Get everyone around the table.”

“What’s going on?”

“Just do it.” My voice cracks, and I swallow the emotion threatening to choke me. “Tessa’s gone. And this wasn’t by choice.”

The clubhouse is silent for only a second after I call the meeting.

Then I drop the words that feel like they’re carving me in two.

“Tessa’s gone.”

Chaos erupts.

“What the fuck do you mean gone?” Riptide’s voice cracks as he slams his hand on the table.

Ganges pushes up from his chair, eyes wide. “Gone where? What happened? What’s the next move?”

“Did she leave you?” Finch’s voice is too high, too frantic. “She was at work yesterday. Emerson saw her. She seemed off, but she didn’t say anything!”

“Enough!” Drift barks, standing with both palms flat on the table. “Everybody shut the fuck up!”

But I barely hear them.

Their voices are faint, muffled, distant, like I’m underwater.

All I can focus on is her.

Her laugh. Soft and carefree.

Her smile when she handed me burnt pancakes and called it breakfast in bed.

The way she looked riding behind me, arms tight around my waist, chin resting on my shoulder like I was hers.

How she kissed me when I was angry. How she pulled my face into her hands and reminded me that love could be louder than rage.

I can still hear her whisper, "I love you," like it was the only truth in her whole broken world.

I let her slip through my fingers.

And now she’s gone.

Then something she said plays in my mind, sharp and clear.

When I asked her how she knew what club bunnies were.

“I know a lot.”

And that first time I brought her to the clubhouse?

“Your clubhouse.”

She didn’t ask, didn’t guess. She knew.

And when I asked why she never poked around the club stuff?

“Because I know better.”

She wasn’t just respecting my boundaries.

She knew the rules because she’d lived them.

And that day at my place, when she overheard about the Scorpions. Her whole demeanor shifted. Like something hit her hard and fast.

“So the Scorpions are here because of you?”

“No, they were here.”

“Since when? Have they always been, or is it recent? How long exactly?”

The questions weren’t casual.

She was terrified.

My eyes snap open wide, and I straighten in my chair, heart racing.

“Holy shit.”

Drift looks at me, eyes narrowing. “What?”

“She’s connected to the Scorpions.”

The room explodes again. Chairs screeching, voices raised.

“What do you mean? Connected how?” Riptide asks.

“Wait, like knows them or is one of them?” Finch shouts.

“She ain’t a damn Scorpion,” Drift growls.

I shake my head, trying to breathe through the roaring in my ears. “I don’t have answers. I don’t know. But she was scared, beyond scared, when the Scorpions were mentioned.”

“You think she dated one of them?” Cetus asks.

“I asked her that,” I say quietly. “She said no. But I think it’s more.”

“More how?” Finch says.

“Family maybe,” I whisper, voice low and cold.

Everything clicks into place. Not clean, not solid. But the pieces are jagged enough to draw blood.

“Would be the perfect revenge,” Riptide says grimly. “They’ve been trying to cock block us from the port. Been looking for leverage.”

“And they found it,” Ganges adds, eyes dark. “They found her.”

Drift looks at me, his voice quieter now. “You really think they took her?”

I nod slowly, the letter burning in my pocket like it’s branding into my skin.

“Yeah. I think they’ve had eyes on her. Maybe even from the beginning.”

“She knew it was coming,” I say hoarsely. “The way she kissed me last, she knew. She was saying goodbye.”

The silence this time is heavy. Deadly.

“Then we find her,” Drift says, calm and cold. “And we burn whoever took her to the fucking ground.”

I look around the table at my brothers, my family, and I nod once.

“She’s mine. And I will tear this city apart brick by brick to get her back.”

No sooner have the words left my mouth than Riptide stiffens, his eyes locked on the monitor by the wall.

“Motion on the outer cameras,” he says, already moving. “Something or someone just came onto Savage Steel’s property.”

All of us snap into action.

Chairs scrape back, boots thunder across the floor, hands instinctively reaching for weapons. Every second feels like it’s dragging razor wire across my chest.

Drift signals to sweep and secure the perimeter, the guys spread out like muscle memory.

I move fast but steady. I don’t panic. I never panic.

But this isn’t just another threat.

This is her.

My eyes land on something ahead. It’s small, still, lying in the gravel just inside the fence line.

I walk toward it, each step pounding in time with the scream in my head.

It’s a sweatshirt.

My sweatshirt.

The one she always stole.

The one she wore to bed at night.

It’s spread out like someone laid it there on purpose.

I crouch, chest tight, and pick it up with shaking hands.

There’s a note pinned to the fabric.

Black ink on white paper. Block letters.

"Missing something? Daughters of Scorpion Presidents don’t fuck Royal Bastards."

My blood goes cold.

I blink, but the words don’t change.

Daughter.

She’s a Scorpion’s daughter.

Holy fuck.

Rage detonates in my chest.

I see red.

It all makes a sick kind of sense now.

The fear in her eyes when the Scorpions were mentioned.

The guarded look she always wore when anyone asked about her past.

How she never wanted to talk about her parents.

The way she held me the other night, desperate, like she knew it was the last time.

My hands crush the sweatshirt against my chest.

Drift is behind me, his voice calm, but I can hear the tension in it.

“Look, it’s not good, but it’s not over. We’ll find her, and we’ll figure it all out.”

I stand slowly, the paper crumpling in my fist.

“I’ll kill every one of them,” I whisper, voice shaking with fury.

“No hesitation. No mercy.”

Drift doesn’t flinch. Just nods once, like he was expecting that answer.

“Call in backup,” I say, already turning toward my bike. “We go full lockdown. Nobody gets in or out of this fucking city without us knowing about it.”

He’s already reaching for his burner. “You got it.”

I don’t care who she’s related to.

I don’t care what lies in her bloodline.

She’s mine.

And nothing, not her past, not her name, not even a fucking club of venomous assholes, is going to keep me from bringing her home.