I can’t speak. I’ve been rendered mute.
Gage releases me and turns toward the door before I gather enough brain cells to reply. I watch him leave, stunned, lifting my fingers to touch the pads to my lips. They feather across the soft skin, mesmerized by the ghost of his touch left behind.
Gage Blade kissed me in front of everyone, including our parents, at their wedding reception. That’s horrifying and insane and unexpected. I’ve just been mind-fucked.
His words echo in my head in the silence that follows his departure.I’ll be claiming you. One day, you’ll fall in love with me.
I want to call him a liar. Shout to the entire room that he doesn’t have any claim on me and never will. Swear that my new stepbrother is playing more games, and he doesn’t mean a word of it.
But I can’t do any of those things.
My head insists I can never feel anything but loathing and anger for Gage Blade.
My heart promises never to forget, already conceding that he owns me body and soul.
Chapter 1 Gage
AGE NINETEEN—
I flick ash from the end of my smoke, inhaling the nicotine as it flows into my lungs, giving me the rush I crave as I stand in the shadows, facing my father’s house. It’s notmyhome, not since the day my mother left it. Every bit of joy and warmth inside died with her.
I can still close my eyes and see the fucking black body bag as they zipped it up, blaming the murder on a home invasion gone wrong. There were no witnesses, no DNA left behind—just a quick bullet to her brain as she stood in the kitchen, preparing dinner. A jewelry box had been tossed, and my parents’ safe had been broken into, but nothing of value was taken.
The police told me the thieves broke in, got caught, panicked, shot my mother, and fled. I didn’t buy it then, and I don’t now. My mother’s death is a direct result of her marriage to Mifflin Blade, the CEO of Blendcore Enterprises and co-founder of a popular health food supplement company. He has enemies, powerful ones.
I’m convinced her death was a warning to my father. He’s never admitted it, and I doubt he ever will. I won’t hold my breath waiting for any declaration. Mifflin is too smart to fuck that up.
My father thinks he’s untouchable. Whatever people he pissed off, my mother’s death ended the feud between them. According to the police, the violence began and ended with my mother’s life being taken. No other violence has occurred since. Well, none that’s been connected to Mifflin.
Almost a year later, my father remarried. That was when I gained two stepbrothers. At the time, I didn’t know that the woman who became my stepmother had been his mistress theentire length of his marriage to my mom. The two boys? My half-brothers.
I was a year older than Liam, and Theo was two years younger. We hit it off from the beginning. Three wild, reckless boys who had too much money, time, and absentee parents. Their mother, Beverly, treated me kindly, but she died five years later from uterine cancer.
That night, I learned the truth about Beverly. Both Liam and Theo had grown up knowing about the affair, but I never had a clue. My hatred for my father grew, nearly consuming me as I thought about burying my mother. Did she know that he cheated on her?
I’ve only cried twice in my life. Both were attending the funeral of a woman I cared about.
“Fuck,” I whisper, tossing down the butt and stomping the cinders with my boot.
This train of thought needs to derail before I fucking do something stupid. Like ride my Harley fast enough to crash or jump up to the second floor, enter Letty’s room, and fuck her like I’ve been wanting to do for the last year. Better yet, I can slowly strangle my father, watching him struggle for his last breaths before I slice his throat with my knife.
“You look wound up,” Bullseye observes, joining me in the shadows.
They’ve become my home since I patched into the Summit Hill Vipers. In the darkness, I lurk, watching, waiting until the time I can finally serve justice. Until blood is spilled and my mother can rest in peace.
But I’m on a fucking leash until that day.
For now, I focus on my father’s window. It’s on the back end of the property and faces a glittering lake with a breathtaking view that few people ever get the chance to enjoy for longer than a vacation. His study is in the room on the left, and he’s theremost of the time he’s home, taking conference calls, drinking expensive scotch, and ruining lives.
“I’m here. It’s enough to drive me fucking insane,” I admit to my cousin.
Bullseye, or Drew as I grew up calling him, is one of my closest brothers in the club. Zoo, Torque, Cash, Heathen, and Bullseye are my boys. My club is my fucking family. They’re the reason I’m still alive and not rotting in a jail cell, waiting for the hangman’s noose.
I want vengeance for my mother and the past stolen from me.
But. . . I want Letty Jacobs even more.
I’m so fucked.
