I'm not so sure.
The SUV waiting for us is black, armored, driven by a man who introduces himself as a prospect from the Raiders of Valhalla MC.
Hakon, he says, with an accent that sounds vaguely Scandinavian, but Americanized.
He's young—early twenties, maybe—with a nervous energy that tells me he's still proving himself.
"Miss Dalla." He opens the back door with more formality than I expected from a biker. "Your father sent me. He's waiting at the compound."
"Thanks, Hakon." She slides into the back seat, and I follow, positioning myself between her and the door out of habit.
She notices, but doesn't comment.
The drive is quiet.
Dalla stares out the window, watching the landscape shift from airport industrial to highway sprawl to something greener, wilder.
Spanish moss drapes from massive oak trees.
Swampland stretches toward the horizon.
Everything is so aggressivelyalive—lush and overgrown and pulsing with a kind of feral energy that Ireland doesn't have.
I prefer Ireland.
But I'm not here for the scenery.
I'm here for her.
My principal—the person I've been assigned to protect, the woman whose safety is now my only priority.
That's what Da drilled into me from the time I could hold a gun: the principal comes first.
Always.
Their life before yours.
Their comfort before yours.
Their survival before anything else.
The problem is, somewhere between Dublin and this swampy hellscape, Dalla stopped feeling like an assignment.
She feels like something I'd burn the world down to keep.
The Raiders of Valhalla compound sits on several acres outside Tallahassee, hidden from the main road by a thick wall of trees and a fence that probably cost more than most houses.
But they have a bloody bar attached to the damn place, blocked off by another set of fencing.
I clock the security as we approach.
Cameras—obvious ones and hidden ones.
Motion sensors in the tree line.
Armed men at the gate who verify it’s Hakon with us before they let us through.
These boys take protection seriously.
