Prologue
Aiden
In the thick of combat, there’s no time to think about right or wrong. There’s only the moment you’re in. You hear the barrage of gunfire and breathe in the scent of diesel and hot gravel as dust whips your face and shrapnel ricochets off the walls. You block it out and keep running—lungs burning, legs on fire—because it’s drilled into your head: You’re the best, the most elite. You’re a goddamn Navy SEAL.
I’ve looked death in the face countless times, and I’ve pictured mine in excruciating detail just as many. My life has always been a series of fuck or be fucked. There’s no room for hesitation and no room for mistakes. When faced with any threat, the solution is simple. Eliminate the threat and move on.
It doesn’t matter if that threat is equal parts fire and fight. Or a storm of a woman who managed to weave her way through every facet of your life with an intricate web of lies. You don’t dwell on the way she looks at you with those big begging eyes, half crazed, half filled with lust.
The deafening sound of her screams gives me time to think. She isn’t a threat now, bound to the chair in front of me like the feral little animal she is.
My men, my club, the name I’ve worked so fucking hard to rebuild over the last two yearscannotbe tarnished or ruined by a fucking cop or a spy or whatever the hell she is.
The small vial I hold in my hand promises the answers I seek.
“No… Please…” Her pretty, ocean-blue eyes widen in fear as she cries out, “Please don’t put that poison in my body!”
“Don’t waste your fuckin’ tears,” I mutter as I fill the syringe.
“I don’t want drugs, please!” she sobs, out of control now and yanking at her holds. She’s a fighter by nature, which was why I was drawn to her in the first place. I move closer, looking down on her like her own personal reaper. Black streaks of makeup run down her flushed cheeks. Her bright crimson lipstick is smeared across her heart-shaped face.
Even now, even after everything I know, I can’t help but imagine how she’d look at me if I tossed this needle aside. The pure desire that would flood those blue eyes as I gripped the long platinum hair at the nape of her neck while I lost my cock to the back of her throat.
Fuck.
I refocus, my jaw tensing.
“Time to help you out with that little lying problem you seem to have.” I flick the needle twice, watching the little air bubbles float to the top as she screams again at the top of her lungs.
Such a pretty sound.
I’ve already told her screaming is useless. No one will hear her. There’s no struggle with my choice, no guilt as she cries. Idon’t regret. She knew this about me the moment shechoseto seek my chaos.
Her fear grows as I move even closer, plunging the needle into her soft flesh and emptying it without hesitation, watching intently as her screams begin to fade and her fight begins to die.
Her truth and her fight are nowmine.
Time to get to fucking work.
Chapter 1
Mia
Looking back, everything was so simple when my sister and I were young. We were best friends then, still sheltered from our father’s world. We spent our days running around our large, tree-covered yard, chalking in our driveway or running through the sprinkler with the neighborhood kids, and eating Popsicles on the front porch on hot summer afternoons. On the gloomy, rainy days of winter, we’d hide inside and play house. Hours would pass as we’d set up our respective “apartments,” decorating our spaces with Mom’s decor. We’d pretend we were married to the most amazing men, we’d have babies, we’d choose their names, what they looked like, and how they’d grow up. But we weren’t only moms; we were working women too. I was usually the editor-in-chief of the world’s top fashion magazine, and Nic was always an interior designer.
Sometimes our older brother, Mason, would join in. Of course when he did, there would always be an edge of suspense to our games. Criminals hiding from the hero, soldiers in arms,princes fighting to save the princess. But we never minded playing what he wanted, because we all had each other.Alwaysonly each other. Me, Nic, and Mason. The three musketeers who never let anyone into our circle. Not really, anyway. Because wecouldn’t.
We knew very early on about the life our father led when he was discharged from the military. His second family was the Hounds of Hell MC. They often came first, and because of that, trust was fleeting. Even a friend at school could learn too much if we let them in. It was just easier not to.
Of all the memories from our childhood, it’s the good ones that haunt me most. I had no idea how beautiful they were when I lived them. But those days are long over, and neither Mason nor I could save our sister. And the end result is she’s dead at nineteen.Nineteen.Her whole life was ahead of her one minute, then gone the next.
I thought she was doing better. That’s what doesn’t make sense to me. Why couldn’t I see that she was still lost? That she was still deep in the trauma of being drugged and sexually assaulted when she was barely seventeen. Two of the men responsible, Gator Freeland and the Disciples of Sin’s former club president Marco Foxx, were killed by the Hounds two years ago. Mason wouldn’t tell me the details about their suffering. I’m his baby sister. I’m sure he doesn’t think that I can handle it. But violence doesn’t scare me, and I don’t shy away from it when it’s deserved. In fact, my only regret is that I wasn’t there. If I had it my way, my smiling face would’ve been the last thing they saw as the life drained from their eyes.
Chapter 2
Mia
“Thank you for coming,” I say for what feels like the hundredth time today. My older brother Mason shakes hands with some distant friends of our family. The number of people who have come out to say goodbye to our baby sister is staggering. My brother has followed in my father’s footsteps. He’s the Hounds of Hell’s Sergeant at Arms, so the entire club is here to show their respect. Mason’s president, Gabriel Wolfe, and his wife Brinley have been helping with everything they can, along with his vice president, Sean, and his wife Layla.
