The last thing I heard was Lucie scream, “Dagger!” before everything went black, and I tumbled into unconsciousness.
❖
Lucie
Seeing the cuts should have filled me with confidence, only it didn’t.
It could have been the cartel, could have been one of Carlos Rodriguez’s men who was looking to take me down because my father had sold me down the line a long time ago.
But it wasn’t.
It was an MC.
Just not my MC.
Well, the Rebels weren’t exactly mine. Not yet, at any rate. Not until I’d proven myself, until I’d shown them I wasn’t the traitor my father had told them I was.
Still, they were bikers. Bikers who’d appeared in a cage of all fucking things, because if they’d been riding hogs, we’d have heard the sneaky bastards. As it was, they got the drop on us too well.
I didn’t go quietly. I kicked and I hit and I spat at them, but there was a gun to my forehead now with the safety off. If I moved, I’d already been told the bastard would shoot me, and if he didn’t, there were the guys in the cage with me now, then the four bikers who were riding at our sides who’d appeared out of nowhere once we traveled a good twenty or so miles.
When they’d hit Dagger, they’d quickly tried to gather me. At first, I thought they were going to rape me, but they didn’t. Instead, one of them hauled me over his shoulder even as I was trying to drag my fucking panties up over my knees, and began running with me down the side of the road.
For endless seconds, I’d been speechless, totally at a loss, then I’d realized they’d knocked Dagger out and I’d screamed his name. That had been my wake-up call. I’d started clawing at him like the angel of hell I was named for. It hadn’t worked. My nails couldn’t do any damage to fucking denim, and when the bastard dropped me on the ground, I took the chance to reach for the knife I had tucked in my boot.
Even as I grabbed the hilt, a gun was in my face, and only that had shut me up. I had continued to remain quiet as I was bustled into this cage, and transported only the fuck knew where.
We drove down back roads and side roads that were more rock and pebble than anything else, heading farther away from humanity.
I hadn’t even seen their cuts because the bikers were riding just behind us, so I could see their faces but not their patches.
All I knew was that they’d taken Dagger down—was he dead? Fuck, was he? Dear God, I couldn’t survive if I lost another of my men. I couldn’t. And Amaryllis? Oh hell, what would she do once she knew I’d been taken? If Dagger was dead, that meant she’d lost two daddies in a year—
I clenched my eyes closed as tears cascaded from them. I wanted to stop their fall, didn’t want to reveal such a weakness, but I just couldn’t help myself.
Where she was concerned, I was weak. I was helpless.
The motion of the cage changed, the texture of the road altered, shifting from hard and rocky to smooth asphalt.
Opening my eyes, I saw the gates ahead, which were open to let us through.
We pulled up outside a kind of warehouse. It was corrugated iron that had been painted a weird hunter green. With a curved roof, it was over twenty feet high, and looked like some kind of shitty bomb shelter.
The gun jammed into my temple, and I cried out as the metal connected with bone.
If it had been one-on-one, I’d have beaten the shit out of the bastard. Made earrings out of his balls. But he had a gun, while I was now unarmed.
There was no excuse for how slow I’d been to react. Orgasms didn’t make you stupid. Hell, we should never have stopped in the first place, and the fact that Dagger had, told me how messed up he was in the head over what was going to go down the second we made it back to the clubhouse… His desire to procrastinate and my desire for him had led to this moment.
I was fucked.
And Dagger might be dead.
Rage over that, and rage at myself for not telling him to get back on the road hit me, made me stagger once my feet hit the graveled drive.
The biker who’d kept the gun pressed to my temple lowered the weapon the second I was out of the cage though, and the team of eight moved around me in a circle now that the bikers had cut their engines.
With them around me, I saw that the door to the warehouse had opened and a man walked out. It was a surreal moment because from his patches, I knew he was Prez, and now I’d finally gotten a chance to see the back of the riders’ cuts, I knew who had taken me—Satan’s Knights.
Was I scared?
Not much scared me, not much except for the Grim Reaper, and it figured that it was my turn for a visit from him because the Knights would only have brought me here to kill me.
After they tortured me.
And after they tormented my men with my torture.
The knowledge that I was going to be used against them filled me with rage, but it was useless. Futile. My feelings didn’t matter here. At the moment, I was a commodity. I’d always been that. Something to trade, to use. As much as it infuriated me, I knew I was about to be stashed away in some shitty little cage where the MC kept their prisoners.
Fuck, the Rebels had one in the basement. It was just off the meeting room where they held church, so they could literally go from torturing a goddamn enemy and straight into business mode.
My world was fucked up, but what was more fucked up was that, as the Knights’ Prez walked toward me, I didn’t show a lick of fear. I tipped my chin back and stared him down.
He was in his fifties and, I had to admit, quite handsome for a silver fox. He wore the usual MC uniform of jeans, boots, wifebeater, and cut. In this weather, there was nothing else to wear, and bikers didn’t exactly give a shit about sunburns—not until it hit them and then they whined like motherfuckers.
Truly, I’d seen kids with more stamina when it came to sunburns.
His hair was dark silver, his eyes a light green, and though he had crinkles at the side of his eyes above his strong brows, there was something about him I recognized.
From the mirror.
Fuck.
I had to be wrong.
Reaching up, I rubbed at my temple. “Tell me this is a fucking joke, please?”
The man smirked. “I see you’ve noticed the similarities.”
“There are plenty of—”
“Let’s cut the BS. You know I’m your father.” He stared at me before he clicked his fingers. At his silent command, the bikers spread out, moving away but staying close enough to be able to hustle forward if I did anything stupid like try to run away.
Because, yeah, I’d also had ‘moron’ tattooed on my forehead when I’d had my men’s claims inked into my skin.
I was on their territory, away from everyone I knew, without a weapon or a cellphone thanks to the fact my purse was tucked into Dagger’s saddlebags. Fuck, it was like since I’d come back to Rutherford, I’d left my goddamn brains back in Lubbock.
There was no excuse, no excuse whatsoever.
“You think you’re my dad?” I rasped, even though I had to admit, we did look alike.
“Know it.” His lips twitched. “Maria was my girlfriend before she was Bomber’s old lady.” When he uttered Bomber’s name, he spat, and though it was disgusting, I felt the same way about the bastard who’d reared me.