Page 124 of Blood Vows

“Fuck,” one of the bikers muttered.

The woman backed away from the windows so fast she nearly tripped over a chair. “No,” she breathed shakily. “No, no, no.” Wade’s eyes narrowed. The fear on her face wasn’t fake. It wasn’t drama or attention-seeking bullshit. This was pure survival instinct—the kind that usually came after someone had already been hurt.

Car doors opened outside, and men in dark suits climbed out into the rain. They weren’t cops. Wade knew the difference. These men were the kind of men who smiled while ruining lives. One of them started toward the entrance, and the woman looked like she was about to stop breathing altogether.

“If they find me,” she whispered, her voice cracking, “they’ll kill me.” Silence settled over the bar as the Savage Bastards all looked toward Wade, automatically waiting for him to make the call. Because this was his place and his call to make.

A hard knock echoed against the door, but Wade never took his eyes off the terrified woman standing in the middle of his bar. “What’s your name?” he asked quietly.

She hesitated as if answering might somehow get her killed. “Harlow.” Another violent pound shook the door, and Wade’s jaw tightened. Something ugly twisted low in his chest as he looked at the bruises around her wrist again. He’d seen enough fear in women to recognize it, and he’d buried enough men to know exactly what kind deserved it.

Without looking away from her, Wade spoke calmly. “Lock the door.” One of the prospects moved immediately, sliding the deadbolt into place just as the man outside grabbed the handle. Wade reached beneath the counter and wrapped his hand around the grip of his gun because whoever those bastards were outside, they had just made the mistake of bringing their problems to Wade’s Watering Hole and the Savage bastards.

Harlow

Harlow couldn’t breathe. The pounding on the door sounded like a death sentence echoing through the bar, each hit making her pulse jump harder beneath her skin. Rainwater dripped from her hair onto the hardwood floor while panic clawed its way up her throat so violently that she thought she might choke on it.

They found her. God, how had they found her already? She had driven for hours, switched roads twice, and even left her phone in a gas station’s bathroom trashcan almost an hour back. She thought she had finally gotten far enough away. She was stupid to believe that. So fucking stupid.

The men outside weren’t the kind you escaped from. Another hard bang rattled the door, causing Harlow to flinch so hard her shoulder slammed into a nearby table. “Easy,” the bartender said.

She was sure that he was more than just a bartender. If she had to guess, she’d bet that he was the owner—which probably made him Wade, since the sign out front said, “Wade’s Watering Hole.” He stood behind the bar with one hand beneath the counter while the other rested casually against the wood like there weren’t armed men outside hunting her. Unlike everyone else in the room, he didn’t look nervous or uncertain. If anything, he looked irritated, which honestly terrified her almost as much as the men outside.

One of the bikers near the back cracked his knuckles. “You want us to handle this?” he asked.

Wade didn’t answer immediately. His dark eyes stayed locked on Harlow instead, studying her in a way that made her feel stripped bare. Like he could see every secret she’d tried to hide beneath the soaked hoodie and ruined wedding dress.

“What did you do?” another biker asked her bluntly.

Harlow swallowed hard. “Nothing,” she breathed, but nobody looked convinced.

The pounding on the door stopped suddenly, and that made her stomach sink. Silence settled over the bar so heavily that Harlow could hear the storm outside and the frantic beating of her own heart.

Then a deep male voice shouted through the door. “Harlow!” She physically recoiled, and several of the bikers immediately looked at her. “Open the fucking door,” the man barked. “This doesn’t concern you, people.”

Wade’s expression didn’t change. Harlow wished that made her feel better, but the calmness coming off him felt lethal. “She’s my fiancée,” the man continued. “We’ve had a misunderstanding.” Fiancée—that word made nausea twist violently in Harlow’s stomach. They had more than just a misunderstanding, but that was what Frank called it when he backhanded her hard enough to split her lip open two weeks ago. A misunderstanding was what her father called it when she begged him not to force her into the marriage. Hell, that was what everyone called it every single time she tried to tell them she was afraid of her future husband.

Her fingers tightened around the sleeves of the hoodie, and Wade seemed to notice. Men like him probably noticed everything. “She doesn’t look misunderstood,” one of the bikers muttered.

A few low chuckles followed. Outside, Frank’s voice turned colder and sounded even more dangerous. “Harlow,” he called. “You are embarrassing yourself.” Fear slid down her spine so hard her knees weakened, because she knew that tone. It was the same voice he used right before he hurt someone.

“Come out here willingly,” Frank said, “or I’ll come in there and drag you out myself.” The room went still, and then one of the bikers laughed—actually laughed. He didn’t sound amused, either, just mean.

Harlow looked toward Wade just in time to see him finally pull his hand from beneath the bar with a gun resting loosely in his grip. Her breath caught, not because of the weapon, but because Wade looked completely unbothered holding it—like it belonged there and violence was as natural to him as breathing.

He looked toward one of the men sitting near the pool table. “Lock the back entrance too.”

“Already done, Wade,” the man said.

Wade nodded at the guy before his gaze returned to Harlow. “You bring this kind of trouble with you everywhere you go?”

Despite everything, heat rose in her cheeks. “I didn’t exactly plan this.” One corner of his mouth twitched slightly. It wasn’t quite a smile, but somehow worse.

Outside, Frank pounded on the door again, harder this time. “Harlow!” She jumped, and Wade noticed that too. The look that crossed his face then was subtle enough that most people probably wouldn’t have caught it, but Harlow did, because for one brief second, he looked angry. Not at her, but for her, and somehow, that scared her most of all.

Harlow had spent most of her life around dangerous men—politicians, lawyers, and even businessmen like her father. They were all men who smiled for cameras while destroying people behind closed doors. But the men inside Wade’s Watering Hole seemed different. They didn’t pretend to be good, and that should’ve terrified her more than it did. Instead, for the first time all night, she felt something dangerously close to safe.

Another bang rattled the front door, and she could tell that Frank was losing his patience. That never ended well. “You got about ten seconds before I kick this fucking door in,” Frank shouted.