Chapter One
Edge
“You’re a fucking dead man.”
I’ve heard those words before, ground out, guttural and harsh, filled with an animal rage that could do more than paralyze a man with fear. I heard those words nearly a decade and a half ago when I was little more than a punk kid fresh out of prison, doing the only thing he was good at—stealing. I’d tried to jack the wrong bike that day, but instead of tearing me apart with brutal hands that no doubt could, the man I’d accidentally fucked with bought me lunch. It set us on the path to brotherhood, gave me a family for the first time in my life.
I swore vows. Vows saying I would die for that family. That I’d never do a thing to hurt them.
My heart stops in my chest, because I’ve broken every one of those vows.
I haven’t just hurt them, I’ve betrayed them.
Steel stands on the other side of the trees at the back of The Canteen in the sitting area that we thought was discreet. His old lady, Leah, looks just as shocked, but far less angry. She’s struggling to process what the hell she’s seeing, but not like Steel.
Ever since the day he bought me that damn burger, we’ve been closer than brothers. The family that neither one of us grew up with, because his parents were too drugged up anddrunk to give a shit about him, and my mother never wanted me in the first place. I was just the product of one of her many nights with men she couldn’t remember in the morning. She didn’t know who my father was, so I never bothered asking about him. The parade of men to the house didn’t stop after I was born. She did the basics, kept me alive by some miracle, and when I turned fourteen, she made it clear she was done.
“Dad…” the scared voice beside me slams me back into myself.
I angle myself slowly, without even realizing that I’m doing it, shielding Harley from her father’s wrath. I instinctively cut off her sight lines. Harley is deaf, but she’s a pro lip reader. I don’t want her to have to see the things her father is going to say. This isn’t her fault. None of this is her fault. She fell in love with the wrong bastard and I’m a sick fuck because I couldn’t tell her no. She always wanted to tell her father. I was the one who convinced her to wait until she graduated. For a lot of things. To make this legit.
She’s twenty-one, and more than old enough to make her own decisions, but to her father she’s still his little girl. The father who’s currently staring me down like he wants to tear me limb from limb and feed my balls to the gators.
“It was just a kiss…” Harley insists, peeking out from behind me.
She’s the spitting image of her father, raven black hair that trails nearly to her waist, bronzed skin, those high cheekbones and sharp jawline, and the same otherworldly gray. She’s not built like her father though. Her mother left right after she was born, stuck around for the birth and that was it, but Harley has her to thank for her tall, willowy figure.
She bares her teeth like she’s ready to do battle. Dressed in a floor length black dress, her jet back hair piled on top of her head, wearing a full face of makeup, diamond studs in her ears and a single diamond pendant at her neck. She graduated from college last week. The graduation ceremony was in Miami, but Steel threw a party for her at The Canteen so all the club could attend.
“He didn’t doanything,” Harley spits. Her temper is an equal match to her father’s, and while she doesn’t often display it, when she does, it’s like a storm rolling through the area, lashing winds and torrential rain, thunder and lightning splitting the sky.
Steel takes a shuddering breath, his massive chest heaving with the effort. His huge hands curl into meaty fists at his sides and since I’m arguably a relatively smart man, I know I’m gonna taste those fists before the night is out.
“Leah, take Harley inside, me and Edge need to talk,” he says, turning to his old lady. His Adam’s apple bobs savagely as he turns towards his daughter. “You weren’t inside. Came out looking for you.”
“Don’t do this,” Harley pleads, completely ignoring her father’s request, which pisses him off more. I can tell she’s emotional, she signs at the same time she speaks and while her voice might not be raised, her hands are punctuating the words angrily..
Steel’s eyes narrow dangerously. “I said, let Leah take you inside. This is going down, and it’s going down between men.”
Harley plants her hands on her hips. “No fucking way! I know what’s going to happen out here. I know that you’regoing to rage all over Edge, and that this isn’t his fault. I’m equally to blame, so if you’re going to do something stupid, then do it to me too. Punish me too, because I’m as guilty as he is.”
She was born tough, but she was raised that way too. Being deaf in a world of hearing isn’t easy. Kids made fun of her growing up. They were unmerciful and she had to learn to shrug that shit off. I can’t count how many times she’d come home from school bawling.
I was like an uncle to her when she was a kid, which I guess makes this all the worse. Though it wasn’t like I saw her as anything other than my friend’s daughter. She went off to college three years ago, we rarely saw one another as she was caught up in her own life and it’s not as though we hung out. All that changed last year when she came home for summer break. She helped out at the club auto repair shop, trying to sort out a system for us. Gone was the skinny teen I remembered, she returned as a woman with curves in all the right places. I was an asshole for perving over my friend’s daughter, but somewhere over the summer she made it clear that she saw me differently too.
Steel shakes his head, his eyes burning up with liquid fire. “You wanna stay and witness this, that’s your fucking choice, but this fucker isn’t going anywhere close to you again. You’re my daughter. You’re fucking off limits. Now and forever, to any man in this fucking town.”
Harley rolls her eyes in the face of all that rage. It billows off Steel like a thick, poisonous cloud, but she seems completely unaffected. I stand beside her, astounded at her courage and her strength, my gut tied in painful knots because there’s no fucking way I’m going to lose her.Ever. But at themoment, I don’t know how to keep her with me without bringing the entire fucking world down around us.
“You’re not going to touch him. I’m a grown woman. You can’t say who I can and can’t date.”
“You bet your ass I can. Grown or not, you’ll always be my little girl and it’s my fucking job to protect you from shit like this. Men who want to take advantage of a woman’s innocence, because she doesn’t know better.”
“He wasn’t the one who came after me.” Harley lets that hang in the air for a minute. “I made the first move. Me. it was my decision.”
Steel turns away and mutters something, which pisses Harley off.
“Don’t do that,” she protests. “You know I can’t hear you.” Her voice betrays her hurt, the one small crack in her armor.
