Chapter Nineteen
Burieduptomyelbows in cabinet guts at the complex, the absolute last thing I see coming is a call that my woman’s been assaulted.
In broad daylight.
In our city.
Wood glue clings to my fingers, gritty with drywall dust, as I crush the phone in my fist. Some idiot just signed his death warrant. No one touches what’s mine and lives to inhale another breath.
Is it connected to Damon? Was it Damon himself?
The questions are a swarm of hornets in my skull as I fly through the asphalt grid of Coral Cay, tearing toward the coordinates where Snow said she found her. The pipes of my bike roar a guttural scream, matching the raw, volatile poison bleeding through my veins and into my soul. Storefront windows rattle and blur as I blow past, pedestrians jerking their heads around to stare. In this town, they know the only reason a Saint’sOutlaw tears up the pavement like a bat out of hell is because blood has already hit the ground.
Please let her be okay. Just breathe, little shadow.
Fuck.
I never wanted to feel this kind of paralyzing, heavy shit. Feelings are a liability. They soften the edges. Vulnerability is a target on your back that gets you killed, or worse, getsthemkilled. Whichever weapon your enemies think will tear the deepest hole in your chest. And anyway, what the hell do I know about love? It’s a foreign language to a guy like me. I’m the good-time guy. The placeholder. The dangerous distraction women seek out when they want to misbehave for a weekend. Sure, they always try to dig for something deeper, but I’ve always been the hazard they know better than to stick around for.
With Marigold, the rules don’t apply. She’s the jagged piece of my soul I didn’t even realize had been ripped out. Hell, before she started trailing after me, I’d seriously begun to wonder if I even possessed one. Then she crashed into my orbit and proved it, showing me I was just an empty husk missing the one vital component required to keep the clock ticking.
She rewrote the entire game, and I’m left scrambling on the field, desperate to learn the rules before I ruin us both.
One truth is carved into my bones. I love her, and I’d slaughter for her. I’d bleed myself empty, set the world ablaze without a flicker of regret, all for her.
My chest tightens, heart twisting into a brutal knot at the certainty she’s suffering. Snow’s words were sparse, but the ragged panic in her voice screamed every detail she couldn’t say.
I fish-tail into the mouth of the alleyway, the iron scent of old garbage and sudden copper hitting my nose as my eyes lock straight onto the two figures crumpled near the brick wall at the far end. The thunder of my exhaust magnifies tenfold between the narrow concrete walls, the sound reverberating offthe masonry with a deafening crack that makes Snow snap her head toward me.
Marigold doesn’t move. Not a twitch.
My pulse explodes, pounding my ribs like a caged beast as I rip my phone from my kutte. I dial a number none of us have touched since he patched over from the Sadistic Sinners MC.
“Yeah?” The gruff, gravel-scraped voice answers on the second ring.
“Patch. We’re gonna need you, brother. Don’t know how bad my woman is yet, but she’s down, and she’s bleeding,” I growl, the words taste like ash as I swing my heavy boot over the seat, barely waiting for the kickstand to catch.
“Right. I’m moving. Meet you at the clubhouse.”
Patch is still an unwritten book to most of us, one of the newer transfers to our chapter. He put in years with the Florida chapter of the Sadistic Sinners before doing a solo patch-over. The transition was handled cleanly, with no blood spilled between clubs. I don’t know his personal metrics for choosing Coral Cay or why he wanted the Saint’s Outlaws colors on his back, but right now, I’m just profoundly fucking grateful he’s one of ours. He might be the new guy in the room, but he’s shown his loyalty where it counts, so I’m putting the highest stakes of my life in his hands.
My woman. My life. My little shadow.
I’d hate to spill the blood of a brother just because he failed to guard what’s mine.
That’s the brutal truth none of them understand. This club is my life, my anchor, but Marigold… she’s the goddamn air in my lungs. She’s my soul. The reason I even open my eyes in the mornings and force that first breath into my chest. Without her, I’m fucking nothing. Not a club brother. Not a lethal secretary. Not a damn thing. I cease to exist without the woman who makes me whole.
As soon as I cut the engine, the thunder of my brothers charging in behind me fills the alley. My chest clenches, fear and rage battling as I race to Snow, who’s kneeling over Marigold. Snow’s shirt is gone, her hands pressing the bundled fabric against Marigold’s thigh, her composure ironclad.
A flicker of worry about how Butcher will handle his girl exposed in an alley flashes through me, but Marigold snatches all my attention. Her eyelids flutter, sluggish and unfocused, as she struggles to follow the movement around her.
“How bad?” I ask Snow, my knees slamming hard onto the gritty concrete as I crouch beside them.
“I can’t tell,” Snow breathes, her face pale. “I didn’t think he got her at first, but once she slid down the wall, the blood started pooling. She’s lost a lot, but I don't think it's enough to kill her. Just enough to make her loopy. I’m not a doctor, though, Tomcat.”
Tires squeal violently at the mouth of the alley, a screech of rubber that snaps my reflexes into overdrive. I jump to my feet, my hand instinctively wrenching my pistol from the holster at my hip, the weight of the steel cold and comforting in my palm. Thankfully, the headlights are ours.
Devious leaps from the driver’s seat of the cage, leaving the door swinging as he rushes over to us. “Can she be carried out of here?” he demands, his voice tight.
