Chapter 1
Grace
“Makeitconvincing,”Malicegrunts, dragging a hand through his gray beard. “Those Damned Saints seem to like piggy girls, so you’re perfect for this job. We’re going to make them pay. They ruined a good deal of ours. Put holes in my men. Now we collect.”
The words land in my gut and stay there, heavy and sour.
Piggy girls.
My gaze drops automatically, like my eyes have their own instincts now. Down to my hips, my thighs, the curve of my stomach under my sweater. Curvy. Soft. Too much in all the places Malice likes to sneer at when he’s in the mood to remind me what I am to him.
A tool. A debt.A joke.
He says I’m perfect for this job. Like seduction is just another skill I should have by now. But why would he think I could seduce anyone? I’ve never even—
I shut the thought down before it finishes. It doesn’t matter.
Malice is my so-called father, president of the Wolves MC, based in Black Pines. His voice lingers like the taste of old whiskey, something that burns and never warms you.
He wants me to seduce a member of the Damned Saints Motorcycle Club and bring back whatever information he needs for revenge.
He says it like he’s ordering parts. Like it’s nothing.
For him, it is nothing. Just another task to throw at a daughter who isn’t his blood.
For me, it is a cage.
My stomach twists so hard I think I might actually be sick. I keep my eyes on the floorboards, hoping he’ll get bored of looking at me.
He doesn’t.
He likes this. He likes how my discomfort makes me squirm, how my skin goes hot, how my pulse tries to crawl out of my throat.
Beside him, my brother John, the one the Wolves call Meatgrinder, presses his fingers into my shoulder hard enough to bruise. A warning delivered with skin and bone.
I flinch but don’t pull away. If I pull away, he’ll call it defiance. If I give him defiance, he’ll give me pain.
John leans down until I can smell beer and something meaner on his breath. “Don’t screw this up,” he whispers. “You know what happens when you mess up.”
My mouth is too dry to answer. I nod because nodding doesn’t get me hit as fast.
But my mind flashes, sharp and involuntary, to white hospital sheets and the ache of cracked ribs every time I tried to breathetoo deep. To bruised kidneys that made even the bathroom feel like knives. To Malice’s laugh, like he’d paid for front row seats. To John doing the work while our so-called father watched like it was a show.
When I woke up, John had leaned over the bed with a grin that did not belong in a hospital.
“Be more grateful,” he’d said.
“For what?” My voice had come out like sandpaper.
John’s smile had widened. “For what you got.”
“You put me here.”
“The Wolves take care of their own,” he’d said, like it was a blessing.
I’d stared at him, nausea rolling through me. “I’m not your own.”
John had laughed softly. “Not really.”
