“I was trying to save you.” Jeff scraped a hand through his hair and whined. “Viper wants you dead. I figured at least you’d be gone and alive that way. I did it for you and I paid the price. He punished me for it. He beat me so bad, I was coughing up blood, and he cut off my supply. He cares about you more than he cares for me.”
Her lip curled. “He punished you because you tried to sell his property. That’s how he thinks of me. Property. And you’re pathetic. You’ve let the drugs and your need for his approval destroy your life. If you’d come with me that night you picked up the passports instead of going to the Sinner clubhouse, you’d be clean by now, and we’d be in Canada, living a better life.”
“I don’t deserve a better life.” He slid farther down the wall and moaned. “You don’t know what I did, Ari. I’ll never forgive myself, and the drugs are the only thing that takes away the pain. That and Viper’s approval.”
“Well, you’re going about it the wrong way.” The lock released with a soft click, and she stilled. If the cuffs slipped off her wrist, her efforts would be wasted.
The door opened and closed, and the air chilled. She didn’t need to look up to know Viper was in the building. His hulking presence sent a shiver down her spine, and she had to swallow back the bile that rose in her throat when he stalked across the warehouse toward them.
“Shut the fuck up.” Viper cuffed Jeff on the head. “Don’t get too cozy with your sister. She’s done. And you’re gonna be the one holding her down when I slice up that pretty face as a message to Jagger when I dump her body at his fucking gate.”
He grabbed Arianne’s hair and yanked her head back. “You disappointed me, girl. Thought you had balls, but it turns out you’re as weak as your brother. A man waves his dick in your direction, and you drop everything and run. Honor. Loyalty. Family. They mean nothing to you. Before you dishonored our club, if I had to choose between you and Jeff, I woulda chosen you ’cause I thought you had a spine of steel like your old man. But now I know you’re just like your whore of a mother, willing to throw everything away for a bit of cock.”
“Fuck you.” She braced herself for a blow, but Viper just laughed.
“Not me. But Bear’s earned a reward, and I gave him my word: You’re his after I’ve marked you until he doesn’t want you anymore.”
Her heartbeat thrashed in her ears, and her defiance trickled away. No one knew she was here. Wheels had betrayed the Sinners. Dawn and Banks would have thought she’d gone. Jeff was totally lost to her. And after last night, Jagger wouldn’t be looking for her.
She had never felt so alone.
*
He ran.
Up the stairs, through the house, and then he was outside. Arianne.
Heart thudding. Lungs burning. Thighs aching. Arianne.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had run—really run. Not the casual jog he took every morning, but a full-out sprint, his feet barely touching the grass as he raced toward his motorcycle.
Even as his mind screamed for him to go faster, and his heart pounded against his ribs, memories assailed him. A barren desert. A helicopter hovering just outside the range of enemy fire. The crack of weapons. Bullets pinging around him. But he wasn’t in Afghanistan now. And he wasn’t carrying an injured man on his shoulders. And the enemy fire … it came from within. But this time he drew strength from the past, from the pain. This time he would not fail.
Pounding his way over the grass, he heard shouts and yells behind him. And he knew. Knew. Every brother in the house would be behind him, streaming to their bikes as if they tasted his urgency, felt his despair, heard his heart thundering in his chest. His brothers. His friends. They would have his back the way he should have had hers.
Arianne.
Without slowing down, he threw himself on his bike, punched the ignition, and peeled out of the yard. For the first time in his life, he wished he had a foreign bike. Nothing matched them for speed—and speed was what he needed.
The roar of bikes starting up followed him down the long drive, but when he hit the highway, he kicked into gear and left the rumble behind. Too many speeding bikers would attract trouble. One would escape detection.
Arianne. Arianne. Arianne.
Her name was the beat of his weakened heart, the rev in his engine, the light in his soul. Nothing in his life had prepared him for the powerful emotions raging through his body. Not Christel, not the wars he’d fought, not the devastation he had felt upon being discharged and discovering he had nowhere to go and no skills beyond what he’d learned in the army.
No one to help.
No one at his back, until the Sinner’s Tribe took him in. Even now he could hear the thunder of their bikes, the rage in their souls.
Family. Freedom. Brotherhood. Loyalty. Honor. This was his world. Their world. Arianne was part of them—part of him. And he would move hell and earth to protect her.
He would not fail.
By the time he turned off the highway, he was running on pure adrenaline, liquid rage sliding through his veins. If they so much as touched her, he would rain down a fury like the world had never seen.
But first, he had to find her.
TWENTY-FOUR