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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

DAKOTA

Bright lights shine in my face, and pinching my eyes closed, I find myself disoriented but in a completely different way. One extreme to another, and I don’t like any part of it. Fingers curl around one of my biceps and squeeze hard before I’m being dragged from the bed, across the floor, and then released into a heap.

Slowly, I open my eyes, and I’m in another room. I know it’s another room because when I look around, there is no mattress, and I know they dragged me off one. Looking up from my place on the ground, I see the older guy who marched into my dad’s house.

The man with the evil eyes and scary smile. He’s staring at me with those eyes right now, almost into my damn soul. I don’t say a word, not a single one, as I wait for whatever the hell he’s going to throw at me.

And I know he’s going to throw something, especially since his beady little eyes dance with what I can only describe as delight. He clears his throat. I can sense a speech coming my way. I don’t want a speech. I don’t want to be here. I want to get the absolute hell out of here. Like, run far away and never, not ever, look back.

Unfortunately, I don’t know where I am except in a room. A big empty room with a concrete floor. And I have a feeling that I won’t be able to stand up and walk out of the only door in said room without being dragged back.

So I don’t try.

Even though I really want to.

“Welcome back to us, Dakota.”

I search my brain for his name, knowing that he gave it to me at some point. He puts me out of my misery and introduces himself again as Grudge. No wonder I didn’t remember that. What a dumb name. I don’t say that to his face, but I really want to.

Instead of asking him the question that is begging to be asked, which is what he wants to do with me, I press my lips together and wait for him to speak. I’ve already heard enough about my legs being spread, so I have no desire to fuel that fire.

“We have plans for you, buttercup.”

Ew.

Gross.

I refuse.

He can shove his plans up his ass, but I don’t say that mainly because I don’t want to give him any ideas about my own ass. Which is a virgin ass, and I would like to keep it that way. I press my lips together as I wait for him to just get on with whatever the hell he’s brought me here for.

“We got a preacher here, and I think that you look decent enough,” he announces, slapping his palms on his thighs before rubbing them a few times.

“Excuse me?” I whisper.

“We’re getting married, you and me,” he announces.

Speechless is the only way I can describe how I’m feeling at this moment. I am without speech. The words have been sucked from my body. Because, oh hell no. I am not going to marry this man, not willingly and definitely not under duress.

He stands from his chair, and I swear I hear his knees crackle and pop as he does. I have nowhere to go. I’m stuck here. I watch as he moves toward the door, looking over his shoulder at me, then his lips curl up in disgust.

“I’ll have a couple of the prospects take you to the bathroom. You at least need to wash your cunt.”

Oh.

My.

God.

I’m going to throw up. My stomach turns, flips, and flops. He leaves me alone, and I hear the door lock into place behind him, but then I realize that someone is going to come and get me. They’re going to take me somewhere, giving me another opportunity to run.

And run is exactly what I’m going to do.

As fast as my legs will carry me.

And if it means my death or something close to it, then so fucking be it.

BULLET

Ralph’s sister is a student at UNC Wilmington, on the beach in North Carolina. Luckily, we have a nomad about thirty minutes from there, and he’s already at her apartment, staking the place out. He already has eyes on her and promises to take care of keeping her, and I quote, “sexy little ass” safe.

Ralph gives me the address for the clubhouse. It’s two and a half hours away from here. Grabbing the keys to the truck that brought Ralph here, I wrap my fingers around his bicep and tug him behind me.

“I gave you what you wanted,” Ralph cries out.

“Yeah,” I grunt. “But you’re going to finish this shit with us,” I say as I wrench the truck door open and toss his ass inside before I slam it closed.

Walking around the front of the truck, I climb into the driver’s seat and watch as the others straddle their bikes. I would much rather be on my bike than driving in this cage, but I am going to bring my woman back, and I don’t think she’s going to want to ride on the back of my bike for three hours. Plus, I’m not sure what kind of condition I’m going to find her in.

Gripping the steering wheel, I hear it crack beneath my grasp at the thought of anything happening to her. The Bloodhounds better not have touched a fucking hair on her gorgeous head.

Not that they aren’t going to die anyway for simply taking her. Hell, I would kill them for just thinking about taking her, let alone actually doing it like they did. However, the way I find her determines just how painful that death is going to be.

And right now, I’m thinking the worst, which means I’m thinking of all the worst ways a man can be murdered. The bikes begin to pull out, Viking being in the lead as the road captain. He’s already mapped out the best, fastest, and safest route to get to the clubhouse undetected—or rather, as undetected as possible.

Ralph doesn’t say anything from the back seat for a while, then all of a sudden, he sits up, and the move causes me to jerk the wheel slightly, not because he scares me in any way, but honest to fuck, I forgot his ass was back there.

“What?” I demand.

He clears his throat, and when he speaks, I’m a bit surprised by his question. “If I wanted my sister to have complete and total protection, what would that look like?”

“Are you asking me what would have to be done in order for her to have the whole club at her back?”

He hums but doesn’t say anything else.

“She’d have to be an old lady. Essentially claimed and married to one of the men. For her, that would be the only way. Why?” I ask.

Ralph shrugs a shoulder. “I think she’s mixed up with the wrong people in college. I was wondering how to get her out of that situation.”

“What kind of wrong people?”

I’m wondering what the fuck else this asshole hasn’t told me. He clears his throat, and I’m tempted to pull over and beat the answer out of him, but I decide against it. And the only reason I do is because I don’t want anything to keep me from getting to Dakota as quickly as fucking possible.

“More of these assholes?” I ask.

He doesn’t say anything immediately, then he clears his throat again, taking his fucking sweet time. I grip my steering wheel again, wondering how in the hell I’ve ended up with this guy who doesn’t just spit it the fuck out.

But when he finally does, my spine straightens, and every single nerve ending in my body goes on high alert. This is not good. Not good at all. In fact, this is really fucking bad. Not just for his sister but for us, too.

Being connected to this is not something I anticipated, and if Shade knew anything about it, as his vice president, he should have told me, but like other parts of his life, it seems as though he kept this a secret.

“What do you mean you’re washing money for the goddamn cartel?”

The silence in the cab is deafening. “I lied. It’s not that I’m worried about friends in college. It’s about me. It’s about the cartel. I don’t know how it started. They came to me for supplies, and then it turned into that, but my contact has mentioned my sister a few times. He saw her once when she was on break and came into my warehouse. I’m worried he’s going to do something radical.”

“So, you aren’t concerned about the Bloodhounds. You’re worried about the cartel instead?” I ask, needing clarification. Because I now have a feeling that the Bloodhounds don’t even know this girl exists.

“If I told you it was about them, you wouldn’t have sent anyone to protect her.”

Fuck . If I could scream the word right now, I would, but that would show far too much emotion, and I’m not showing an ounce of weakness to this fuck. As far as I’m concerned, he can go down with the Bloodhounds today for lying to me.

The last thing we need is a war at all, let alone one with both the cartel and the Bloodhounds. I want to beat the absolute shit out of this man. He’s lucky as fuck that my desire to get to Dakota outweighs my desire to pummel the absolute hell out of him right now.

I should call off her protection right now and force him to listen to it. I don’t, partially because it’s not her fault and partially because I still need his fucking ass until I have a new supplier for my own shit.

Lifting my eyes to the sky, I let out a heavy exhale and wonder what in the absolute fuck Shade was thinking with any of this shit. I thought we were a well-oiled machine, and now everything is falling apart in my lap, and I’m not equipped to fix it.

But I don’t have a choice.

Right now, it’s everything that is falling apart and everything that I need to finish disassembling and then putting back together again. Or rather, what the club needs to disassemble and put back together again because this is something we’re going to do together—as a family.

No more secrets, no more hidden truths, no more blindsides.

We’re a chosen family for a reason, and without trust, we don’t have shit. Shade not trusting us with this shit has made it to where we’re walking into half of this shit blind. It also made it to where I personally didn’t believe Dakota was deserving of shit.

I’m not saying that all those feelings I had about her when she arrived could have been avoided, but it would have made everything at least a bit more tolerable. The pill would have gone down easier had I known of her existence beforehand.

Instead of giving Ralph a free pass for his omissions, I decide to play this as simply and calmly as I can. Which is to say that I hold back every fucking ounce of my real feelings and instead put on a calm front while inside, I’m raging.

“She has our protection until we get done with the Bloodhounds. Then we are going to have a conversation on the cartel and what the future looks like.”

“Understandable,” he mutters, but I have a feeling that this man understands nothing. He’s been playing too many fucking sides to understand anything. He’s going to comprehend, though—soon.