CHAPTER 2
GRIM
Iwas riding to clear my head.
The desert at night is the only place that's quiet enough. No voices, no demands, no brothers needing something handled. Just the road and the dark and the hum of the engine drowning out everything else. Out here, there's nothing but empty space and stars and the kind of silence that lets you forget, just for a little while, all the things you've done.
I do this sometimes. When the noise inside gets too loud. When I need to remember what silence feels like. When the walls of the clubhouse start pressing in and I can't breathe without tasting blood and gunpowder and regret.
Tonight was one of those nights.
Then I saw her.
A ghost in white, crouched at the edge of the road. Wedding dress torn to hell, the fabric so dirty it was barely recognizable as white anymore. She was hunched over, knees in the dirt, ruined silk pooling around her, shoulders shaking with sobs she was trying to muffle with her hands.
Every instinct said keep driving.
Not my problem. Not my business. I don't do rescue missions. I don't do damsels in distress. I'm the guy theysend when someone needs to bleed, not the guy who stops for strangers on desert roads. Fifteen years I've been building a reputation that keeps people away, keeps them from getting close, keeps me from having to give a shit about anyone outside the club.
Keep driving. That's what I should do.
I slowed the bike.
She heard the engine. Lifted her head as I approached, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
Then she lifted her head.
Dark eyes. Full mouth. A face that didn't belong out here in the dust and dark. Even wrecked—dress destroyed, makeup smeared with tears, hair falling out of whatever fancy style it had been pinned into—she was beautiful. Not the polished kind of beautiful you see on the Strip, all artifice and effort. Something deeper. Something real.
And she met my eyes without flinching.
I know what I look like. I know what people see when they look at me—six-four, two-forty, covered in ink and wrapped in leather, with a face that's never learned how to smile. I'm built like a nightmare. I move like a threat. Women like her cross the street when they see me coming.
She didn't cross the street.
She looked at me like I might be salvation instead of a threat. Like maybe, just maybe, I was the answer to whatever prayer she'd been sobbing into her hands.
Something hit me square in the chest. Something I didn't recognize. Something I didn't have a name for.
I should have kept driving.
I didn't.
"Who's chasing you?"
The question came out rougher than I intended. She flinched, and I saw her weigh her options—lie, run, scream. Watched her realize she didn't have any good ones.
Then she told me. Her fiancé. Something she overheard. The way she said it—broken, bitter, terrified—told me more than the words themselves.
She didn't elaborate. Didn't explain what she'd overheard or who her fiancé really was. But she didn't need to. I've been in this world long enough to read between the lines. A woman in a wedding dress, running through the desert, terrified of whoever's behind her—that's not a woman who discovered her groom was cheating. That's a woman who stumbled onto something dangerous.
I should have asked more questions. Should have gotten details, assessed the threat, figured out if helping her was going to bring heat down on the club.
Instead, I shrugged off my cut, pulled my hoodie over my head, and crossed to her in three strides. Draped it over her shoulders before she could protest. She was shivering—the desert gets cold after sundown, and that dress wasn't covering much.
My hands brushed her arms as I tugged the fabric into place, and something sparked between us. Electric. Immediate. Her breath caught. Our eyes met in the fading light.
I stepped back. Put distance between us. Pulled my cut back on over just my t-shirt, the night air biting at my arms.
