Chapter 27
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— Dutch —
The stairs leading down to the basement were narrow and unlit. I’d walked them before for men who’d crossed lines that couldn’t be uncrossed. Never for a woman.
The concrete walls pressed in as I descended, the air growing colder with each step. Damp. The kind of cold that seeped into your bones and stayed there. At the bottom, a single bare bulb cast a harsh circle of light onto the floor, leaving the corners in shadow.
Crystal sat in the center of that light, bound to a metal chair. Duct tape across her mouth. Her eyes found mine the moment I stepped off the last step, and I saw the fear in them.
Colt and Glitch flanked the doorway behind me. Neither spoke.
I stopped a few feet from her and let the silence stretch. Upstairs, my brothers were drinking, playing pool, pretending this wasn’t happening. Down here, in the dark, we handled the ugliness that kept the club running.
We don’t hurt women. It’s one of the first things you learn when you prospect for Venom Riders. Women are protected, cherished, off-limits. You lay a hand on someone’s old lady, or any woman for that matter, you answer to the whole club. That’s the code.
But there are exceptions. Rare ones. Women who cross lines so far that the code can’t protect them anymore.
Crystal had crossed every line there was.
I thought about what Glitch had told us when the Iron Skulls sent their warning. Crystal Horner: born in Phoenix, changed her name to Martinez at eighteen. Twelve years working the MC circuit, targeting patched members with money or status. She’d gotten pregnant by some trucker and tried to pass the baby off as Ice’s, the Iron Skulls VP. Scared off his old lady in the process. Their tech guy, Whisper, had dug into her past and found the pattern.
The Rotten Devils in California. Same scam. Claimed she was pregnant by their VP, demanded he leave his old lady. When that fell apart, she moved on. Phoenix. Reno. Always the same play.
The Iron Skulls had sent her packing and put the word out to every MC they knew.Watch out for this one.
She’d landed here in Oregon after that. Showed up at the clubhouse with nothing but a duffel bag and that cheap perfume that clung to everything she touched. We’d heard the warnings. We knew what she was. But we thought we were smarter than the clubs that came before us.
We thought we could control her.
Rumour has it she’d abandoned her baby girl, the one she’d tried to pass off as Ice’s, at a fire station somewhere along the way. Just left her there like she was nothing. And still, we let her hang around. A warm body. A convenience. Furniture.
Our mistake.
When she’d called the Wolves. When she’d handed them Indira on a silver platter just because I’d rejected her, she’d signed her own death warrant. I just hadn’t been ready to execute it until now. Not until I knew Indira was safe.
I nodded at Colt.
He stepped forward and ripped the tape off Crystal’s mouth in one swift motion. She gasped, worked her jaw, and then that familiar spite crept back into her expression.
“You don’t know what you’ve done.” Her voice was hoarse but steady. “Vance is coming for me. The Wolves don’t leave their people behind.”
“Vance is dead.” I kept my voice flat. “New leadership as of tonight.”
Something flickered across her face. Confusion, panic, rage. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
She pulled against the restraints, the metal chair scraping against concrete. “You can’t do this. I’m a woman. You men have rules—”
“You stopped being protected by those rules when you endangered my woman.” I took a step closer. “When you called the Wolves and told them Indira mattered to me. You put a target on her back because your pride was hurt.”
“She’s nothing,” Crystal spat. “Some stuck-up bitch who thinks she’s better than everyone. Vance had plans for her, you know. He was going to make sure you knew exactly who was responsible before he—”
“Before he what?”
Her smile turned vicious. “Before he passed her around to his boys. Before he sold her off to the highest bidder. And he was going to send you a video of it after.”
