I climbed the stairs to her second-floor unit and knocked on the door. No answer. Knocked again, harder this time. Still nothing.
“Indira?” I called through the door. “Open up. We need to talk.”
Silence.
I tried her doorknob, but it was locked. Of course it was. I pulled out my phone and called her number. It went straight to voicemail, her professional voice asking me to leave a message.
“It’s me,” I said after the beep. “I’m at your door. Stop being childish and let me in so we can sort this out.” I waited another ten minutes, growing more irritated by the second. This was ridiculous. She couldn’t avoid me forever.
I spotted a few of her neighbors peering through their blinds, but none of them came outside. I got it—I was a big guy in leather carrying flowers, probably looked like some kind of stalker. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
Finally, I gave up on being polite and called her landlord. It took some creative persuasion and a few carefully worded threats, but eventually he agreed to do a wellness check.
Ten minutes later, he showed up with his master key, looking nervous as hell. “I really shouldn’t be doing this,” he muttered, unlocking the door. “But if you’re worried about her safety...”
The apartment looked fine at first glance. But something felt off.
“See?” the landlord said, looking around from the doorway. “Nothing’s wrong. Maybe she’s just not answering because she’s not here.”
But I knew Indira. I knew how she lived, how meticulous she was about everything. The throw pillows on her couch were crooked. Her normally pristine coffee table had a water ring on it. Books were shoved haphazardly back onto the shelves instead of being arranged by height like they always were.
There was broken glass on the floor—what looked like a picture frame. A vase lay in pieces near the kitchen counter. Some clothes were scattered on the floor by the couch, including a red dress I recognized.
That dress. I’d bought it for her birthday party last year—silk, fitted, the kind of red that made every head turn when she walked into a room. I remembered peeling it off her that night, slowly unzipping it while she stood in front of my bedroom mirror, watching me in the reflection. The way the fabric had whispered down her body, pooling at her feet. How she’d stepped out of it wearing nothing but black lace and those fuck me heels that made her legs look miles long-the ones with the thin ankle straps that did something to me I couldn’t explain. I’d fucked her against that mirror, her palms pressed flat against the cold glass, her eyes locked on mine while I took her from behind. The jasmine scent of her shampoo mixed with sweat, the mirror rattling against the wall with every thrust. She’d been dripping for me, clenching around me like she’d die if I stopped, gasping my name until her voice went hoarse.
I walked into her bedroom while her landlord waited by the door. Her closet was still full, but there were gaps. Hangers bunched together where clothes used to hang. Her dresserdrawers were slightly open, like someone had rifled through them quickly.
The bathroom still smelled like her. Her shampoo and conditioner were still in the shower, but her toothbrush was gone. So was the little bag she kept her birth control pills in. I’d been thinking about throwing those pills away myself—not telling her, just making them disappear. Imagining her belly round with my kid, her body changing because of me. She’d be tied to me then, permanently. No more business trips, no more independence. Just mine, completely and utterly mine.
“This isn’t right,” I told the landlord when I came back to the living room. “She wouldn’t leave it like this. Indira doesn’t do messy.”
He shrugged. “Looks normal to me. Maybe she was just in a hurry this morning. Slept in. Alarm went off late.”
I called her phone again. Voicemail. I tried three more times, each call going straight to the fucking automated message.
“Indira, call me back,” I said on the fourth attempt, my voice sharper than I’d intended. “Whatever game you’re playing, it’s not funny. Call me.” But even as I said it, I knew she wasn’t playing games. The woman I’d seen yesterday—furious, heartbroken, throwing my cologne bottle against the wall—that hadn’t been an act. That had been real.
I drove back to the clubhouse in a daze, my mind racing. Where would she go? Her parents lived in California, but she wasn’t close to them. She didn’t have many friends in Millfield—most of her social life had revolved around me and the club events.
Unless...
Ice filled my veins as a terrible thought occurred to me. What if someone had taken her? What if some rival MC had grabbed her to get to me? It would explain why her apartment was messy, why her phone was going straight to voicemail.
By the time I reached the clubhouse, I’d worked myself into a full panic. I burst through the doors like a man possessed, startling Handful and Holden, who were sitting at the bar.
“I need Glitch,” I barked. “Now.”
“What’s wrong?” Holden asked, immediately alert.
“Someone took Indira.” The words came out in a rush. “Her apartment looks like it was ransacked. She’s not answering her phone. Someone fucking took her.”
Glitch looked up from his laptop, his eyebrows raised. “Took her? Dutch, what are you talking about?”
“She’s gone!” I slammed my hand on the bar, making the bottles rattle. “Someone went through her place, took her important stuff. And there was broken shit everywhere. That’s not like her. She wouldn’t just leave without telling me where she was going.”
“Actually,” Glitch said carefully, “it sounds exactly like what someone like Indira would do if they’d just caught their man fucking another woman.”
“No.” I shook my head violently. “You didn’t see her yesterday. She was angry, yeah, but she agreed to talk. She said she needed time to think. She didn’t say anything about leaving town.”
