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Chapter 1
Mila
Getting up before dawn to catch a private jet to the East Coast was not how I expected to start the summer before my first year of college, but I had to admit, it held some perks. A girl could get used to the royal treatment, that was for sure.
Taking a limo to the biggest mansion I’d ever set eyes on, yet another plus. And it was all thanks to Tavia. She was one of many honorary cousins I had, and thanks to some bratva bastard who tried to kill her three years before, she was now family.
Monroe and I both liked her, considered her just as much one of us as we did Lexa. And there was no way in hell I was going to miss her wedding.
Or the bachelorette party her soon-to-be sister-in-law was demanding we all attend.
By all of us, she included everyone under the age of twenty-five, which meant the parentals were off the invite list. Which was just fine with me. I needed a break from my dad’s watchful eye and Mom’s occasional nagging. Plus, maybe I could get Monroe to tell me why she suddenly seemed like she might slit her wrists at any moment.
My baby sister didn’t get depressed, ever. She was too sweet, too full of life. So, this sudden change in her was rubbing off on me, and I couldn’t stand to feel down. She was going to spill her guts about what was putting that forlorn look in her normally sparkling eyes and that tremble to her chin, or I was going to start pouring shots down her throat until she was so trashed, she had no choice but to tell me everything.
But first, I had to stand there and listen to Dad lecture us about watching each other’s backs, not being reckless, and blah-blah-blah. The usual rant he spewed whenever we were leaving his watchful eye for longer than two minutes. I loved my father more than life itself, but fuck, he was too overprotective.
And yes, there was definitely such a thing as too overprotective. Look it up online. I’m sure you would see the picture beside the definition was none other than James “Spider” Masterson, with his Angel’s Halo MC cut and the Enforcer patch front and center.
That was why he was so over-the-top protective of Monroe and me. He’d seen shit. Done shit. So, he knew the evil there was in the world. And of course, he automatically assumed it was out to get his baby girls.
He stood in front of me, his dark eyes boring into my gray ones that were just like Mom’s. I was the one he was all growly at, not Monroe. She was the good one. The sweet and precious one. I almost smirked at the thought of me ever being sweet or precious. We might be identical in every physical way when I didn’t dye my hair, but we were totally different people on the inside.
Dad knew that. He didn’t trust it—and he didn’t trust me not to get into trouble. Because, yeah, I was the troublemaker. The wild child. The one who was always stirring up something.
And the thing was, if he didn’t get all growly beforehand, he also knew I would twist and bend him around my finger. I would bat my eyes and smile up at him like he hung the moon—because he did—and get my way. Which was why he tried to be a hard-ass before I could do any of that, so he could get his point across and relax. Just a little. For a minute.
Because come tomorrow, when I was talking my way out of trouble as I always did, he wouldn’t be all growly. He wouldn’t be the deadly MC enforcer with a list of men he’d killed to keep those he loved safe. He wouldn’t be the man who co-owned the only strip club in Trinity County, California. He wouldn’t even be Willa Masterson’s husband.
He’d be Mila’s daddy and the only man who could do no wrong in my eyes.
Dangerous and deadly he might be, but he was nothing more than a teddy bear with a sick-ass spider inked on his neck when I needed him to be.
“You go nowhere alone,” Dad said, pointing his finger at me. “Not even to the bathroom. You hear me, Mila?”
“Yes, Dad,” I told him with a bored sigh. “I heard you the last five times you said it, too.”
“Don’t get smart with me, young lady.”
