Page 107 of Diary of a Biker Queen

I hesitated, eyes narrowing slightly. “For a minute?”

“You want to look a gift horse in the mouth? Stand up. Face the wall. Hands behind your back.”

My gut didn’t trust this man. It shouted he wasn’t what he seemed. But there was little choice but to do what he said. I stood and turned to face the wall.

Cold steel wrapped around my wrists.

The officer walked me out of my cell and through the quiet police station. I’d never been taken to the main prison, because I’d never had a hearing and therefore never been sentenced.

I’d just been living in no-man’s land.

“Can I get a phone call?” I asked him as he shoved me along.

“No.”

I sighed. “Can I get a lawyer then?”

“You don’t need one.”

He reached around me, pushing on a door marked exit, and hope lit up inside me. The door opened into a dark alleyway on the side of the police station. Graffiti covered the walls, and broken glass shimmered beneath my flimsy, disposable prison slippers. But it was paradise to a man who’d been kept in a windowless cell for so long he’d lost track of the days and nights. I sucked in deep breaths of air that didn’t smell like stale, unwashed feet the way my cell did.

“You’re letting me go?”

He snorted. “No.” He made a “come here” motion with his hand, at a black van parked a little way down the alley. Its headlights flickered on, and it did a three-point turn, driving back in our direction until it was parked in front of us.

It had no police markings on the sides. The tint was so dark I couldn’t see the driver.

Rivera reached for the handle and slid open the back door. “Get in.”

I dug my heels in. As much as I didn’t want to go back to that tiny cell where I could barely breathe, I didn’t want to get into an unmarked van in the middle of the night either. “What kind of shady shit is this? I’m not getting in there.”

“You can get in or I can make you get in. Your choice.”

The officer pulled out his taser and dangled it from two fingers, just reminding me he could basically cattle prod me into doing whatever the fuck he wanted.

I’d been tased once before, the night I’d been caught breaking and entering and had tried my best to run.

I didn’t exactly relish the idea of it happening again.

And hell, what did it fucking matter anyway? Whatever this was couldn’t be any worse than being sentenced to a lifetime behind bars for supposedly murdering the only man I’d ever had proper feelings for.

So I got in the van of my own free will. Rivera got in beside me, taser clutched in his fingers and pointed in my direction, like he was just waiting to use it if I so much as breathed in his direction. Whoever it was behind the wheel got the van out onto the roads of Saint View, and I stared out the window, figuring if the officer had a jumpy trigger finger, I didn’t need to see the electric shock coming.

The lights of Dax’s shop were still on, and I strained forward, peering through the window in the hopes I might get lucky enough to see him standing out front, talking to one of his brothers.

That was what I hoped for now. That Dax had heard about Luca, or about me, and had decided to come back to Saint View to be there for Nyah. Maybe it was how it was always meant to be. Just him and her.

I hoped they left Saint View. I hoped they would take the baby and move across the country, or hell, across the world, to somewhere far away from all of this shit. I imagined them getting married in a little church tucked away in the hills of a small town, walking their son to school every morning, knowing he was safe and loved and none of the stench of Saint View could touch them.

I loved her enough to want that for her. To want her to forgive Dax for leaving.

I only hoped she could one day forgive me and Luca too.

We might not have had a choice, but that wouldn’t matter to a woman who’d just been abandoned by all three men she cared about.

She would hate me for the things I’d done that led me here. And she’d hate Luca for the same reasons. Neither of us were innocent.

Maybe we both deserved what we got.