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I looked up while my heart pounded in my chest. “Do I have any say in this?” I knew I was asking for trouble by questioning him, but how could I not? This was insane. Literally fucking insane.

“No.” That was it, just no.

“You weren’t going to ask me?”

“I just told you what’s happenin’,” he shot back in a tone that told me his patience was wearing thin. “It’s done.”

“What do you mean it’s done? I don’t even know this guy.” I was panicking now. The idea that this marriage could be my chance to get out seemed ridiculous. Now it was looming and real, I realized that I might be giving up one brutal and abusive man for another. I knew before the words were out of my mouth, that I’d pushed too far. I spoke anyway, because there are moments when a girl has to speak up for herself, consequences be damned.

His face twisted in rage as he brought his hand up high and sliced it down across my cheek, pushing me back a step. It was his patented backhand, the one that stopped all conversation. All pushback.

Other than that one step, I didn’t move because I learned a long time ago that moving made it worse. Stillness was a kind of armor. Making myself small and motionless seemed to take all the fight out of him, and the moment passed faster.

My face stung like crazy, and I knew it would be hot for an hour, and tender for two days. I knew the timeline by now.

He straightened his jacket as if nothing had happened, because in his book nothing had happened. “Be ready Sunday,” he said. “I’ll have someone take your things. Don’t make this harder on yourself.” It was a warning, as clear as day.

Rex stared at me for a long time before he turned and left the shop. When the bell above the door rang, the shop fell quiet and my legs buckled underneath me. I gripped the counter to keep myself upright and then rushed to the back office until I was sure he was gone.

Then I moved into action, picking up my camera bag and slung it over my shoulder, walking through the shop and flipping the sign to CLOSED before I stepped outside and locked the door behind me. The Colorado sun shone brightly despite the nip in the air, but the cold didn’t bother me. I walked six blocks before the cold caught up to me.

Once I hit the park entrance, I checked to make sure my hands were steady—they were—and pulled out my camera, aiming it at anything and everything that captured my attention. I moved, almost on autopilot, capturing images of runners, tourists, and kids searching for ducks near the pond.

I snapped everything, not for anything specific, just to get lost in the act of taking photos while my mind came to grips with what my life had become in a matter of minutes. Twenty-six years old in the twenty-first century and my father had arranged a marriage for me.

To a man I’d never met.

I couldn’t pick Knox Coleman out of a lineup with a gun to my head, and he was going to be my husband.

I’m going to be an old lady.

Despite growing up in the Warlords motorcycle club, I never aspired to belong to a biker. Never even been tempted by the men who joined the MC, or the men who did business with the MC. Not even the men who ended up on the wrong side of the MC.

And now I would belong to a biker anyway. All because it—somehow—benefited Rex.

I turned my camera lens to the snowcapped mountains in the distance, playing with the setting just to see what I could do with those majestic peaks. The peace that came to me in that moment shocked me. How could I feel peace when my life was about to be turned upside down and my future was completely uncertain?

For all I knew, I’d end up just like my mother. Dead too soon.

The brown jacket with the fringe was the only thing I had left of my mother, and other than my camera it was the only material thing I cared about. Doubly so because it was the one thing Rex never touched. Never looked at. He never even acknowledged it because doing so would’ve meant answering questions that he found uncomfortable.

He said she had died and that was it, no details. No gravesite and no headstone. Nothing but the word of a man who lied as easy as he breathed. I had no proof otherwise, so I accepted it in that way that people accept the existence of a god. They believed, but not really.

I pulled my face away from the camera and placed my cold fingertips against the spot on my face that was swollen and, no doubt, already bruised. After a brief wince, I sat on the ground and crossed my legs while I stared at the mountains that surrounded Redstone Creek, the town where I was born and raised. It was so beautiful and so grand, such a stark difference to my life, ugly and small.

Bleak.

Life as the daughter of the Warlords MC’s prez hadn’t been anybody’s version of ideal. He was a cruel man with a violent streak a mile wide. When I was young, I thought it was normal, the yelling and the blood and the beatings. When I realized it wasn’t normal, I started a list. At first, it was just the order of things, talking back earns a backhand. Burning dinner could result in a punch to the stomach. And then I started organizing by severity. Split lip. Sprained wrist. Broken rib. Concussion.

Eventually I stopped cataloging it at all because I wasn’t brave enough to end my life, so there was no point torturing myself twice.

This time, this marriage, it was different. It already felt different.

I stayed with Rex because I had no place else to go. The few times I did anything more than think about leaving, Rex had made sure all the doors closed in my face. He’d trapped me effectively and I had allowed it because I’d been inside the box so long that I stopped seeing the walls, only the prison bars. I tried to think of the positives in the situation. When I first heard my father talking about marrying me off, I’d seen it as my chance to escape him. Maybe even escape town.

This marriage, however it ended up, was a way out.

Whatever else Knox Coleman was, I knew he wasn’t a fan of my father’s, which meant he could be useful. We might be useful to each other, beyond this arranged marriage.