Hands grabbed me. Too many hands, coming from everywhere at once. Wrenching my arms behind my back, forcing me down, holding me in place while someone else zip-tied my wrists. The plastic bit into my skin, cinching tight, cutting off circulation.
"TANK!"
I screamed his name, struggling against the hands that held me, knowing it was useless but unable to stop. I couldn't give up. Couldn't let them take me. If Cross got his hands on me again?—
I could see Tank through a gap in the smoke. Through the chaos, through the gunfire, through the wall of bodies that separated us. He was fighting through the wreckage, trying to reach me. Taking down man after man with brutal, desperate efficiency—fists and elbows and the rifle he wieldedlike a club due to his ammunition running dry. His face was twisted in something beyond rage, beyond fear. Something primal and terrible and utterly focused on one thing.
Getting to me.
Our eyes met across the distance. Everything stopped. I saw it all in his expression—the anguish, the desperation, the love he'd finally let himself feel. The promise we'd made in the darkness of his room, that we'd come back to each other, that nothing would keep us apart.
The promise I was about to break.
"TYLER!"
He screamed my name as hands dragged me backward. He was still fighting, still trying to reach me, but more guards poured in between us—an endless wave of bodies keeping him from what he wanted. I saw him take a hit to the shoulder, stagger, keep going. Saw blood running down his arm.
I tried to memorize his face. The sharp line of his jaw. The fury in his eyes. The way his mouth shaped my name like it was the only word he knew, the only thing that mattered in the entire burning world.
Just in case this was the last time I saw him. Then a hood went over my head, and Tank disappeared.
Movement. Voices. The smell of exhaust and sweat and something else—cologne, expensive and familiar, a scent that made my stomach turn.
I was in a vehicle—a van, from the sound of the engine, the way the floor vibrated beneath me. My wrists were bound behind my back, the zip ties cutting into my skin every time we hit a bump. The hood over my head was suffocating, hot and dark, and I forced myself to breathe slowly through the fabric rather than give in to the panic clawing at my throat.
Stay calm. Count the turns. Track the time.
FBI training. The things they taught you for exactly this situation—how to stay oriented, how to gather intelligence, how to survive until rescue came. Left turn, thirty seconds after that a right, then a long stretch of straight road. We were heading away from the warehouse, deeper into the desert.
But rescue wasn't coming. Not this time. Tank was back at the warehouse, fighting for his life. Blade was down—maybe dead. The club was scattered, wounded, outgunned. And I was here, in the back of a van, heading toward whatever Cross had planned for me.
You've survived him before. You can survive him again.The thought should have been comforting. It wasn't.
A hand caressed my face through the hood. I flinched backward, hitting the wall of the van hard enough to send pain shooting through my shoulders. The touch didn't stop—fingers tracing my cheekbone, my jaw, the curve of my throat. Gentle. Possessive. The way you'd touch something you owned. Something you'd missed.
"Hello, Tyler."
My blood turned to ice. The hood was pulled off in one smooth motion.
Light stabbed my eyes—afternoon light, filtering through tinted windows—and I squinted against it, blinking rapidly. When my vision cleared, I saw him.
Marcus Cross sat across from me in the van's interior, one leg crossed elegantly over the other, looking nothing like the FBI agent I knew, nor the wannabe biker he’d been pretending to be. He'd shed the leather and denim of the Wolves MC entirely—traded it for expensive clothes that spoke of the legitimate businessman he pretended to be. Dark slacks, a charcoal sweater that probably cost more than most people's rent, polished shoes that had never touched a motorcycle peg. The silver hair was immaculate, swept to the side from a face that could have belonged to a politician or a CEO or a movie star.
The Wolves' VP had become something else entirely. A shadow operator, running the corrupted pharmaceutical empire from behind the scenes while the club’s members acted as both enforcers and shields. His hands were folded in his lap—clean hands, soft hands, hands that had given up doing their own dirty work.
But his eyes. His eyes were the same as they'd always been. Cold. Calculating. Hungry. "I've missed you," his voice was warm, a sincere tone hiding the poison underneath, the voice of a man greeting a long-lost friend. The voice that had told me he loved me while he was breaking me down piece by piece.
I met his eyes and said nothing. Three years ago,that silence would have cost me. Cross didn't tolerate defiance—didn't tolerate anything that challenged his control. Three years ago, I would have apologized, would have scrambled to appease him, would have done whatever it took to avoid the punishment that silence inevitably brought.
But I wasn't that Tyler anymore. I held his gaze and let the silence stretch, let it become a statement of its own.
Something flickered in Cross's expression—surprise, maybe, or irritation. Then the mask was back, the warm smile firmly in place.
"You've changed." He leaned forward, studying me like a scientist examining an interesting specimen. "There's something different about you. A... hardness that wasn't there before." His smile widened. "I wonder who put it there. The motorcycle club? Or is it something more specific? Someone more specific?"
He knew. Of course he knew. He'd had a mole in Phoenix, had been watching us for months. He knew about Tank.
"I saw the way that man fought to reach you." Cross's voice was soft, almost pitying. "The big one, with the tattoos. He loves you. It's obvious, really—the desperation, the recklessness. He would have died trying to get to you."
