Collect the Pieces (Lost Kings MC #25)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Margot

My emotions have never followed a straight path. They twist, turn, coil, and knot into pieces I can’t always identify—some smooth, some jagged. Sometimes they devour me. Other times they disappear.

So many experiences have carved into me, reshaping me into something sharper, softer, or in between. Growing up in my family’s funeral home taught me lessons in silence and death. Whispers behind closed doors and endless tears.

But the cruelest lesson came too early. Touched too close. The world showed me the rot that can live inside people who look friendly on the outside. Long before I was old enough to understand what true suffering looked like, I stumbled upon it and accidentally saw the kind of cruelty some people are capable of inflicting on those weaker and more trusting than them.

No one warns you about the aftermath of that discovery—the lingering sense of hopelessness that will drive you crazy when you realize no amount of justice will ever be enough. Nothing will ever replace a life that’s been stolen or trust that’s been broken.

And now, with Jigsaw standing here, his broad, naked frame crowding the back of my closet where I keep my special trinkets , horror carved into his face as he stares at me like he just discovered he’s been sleeping with a monster, that same familiar sense of hopelessness slams into me. Like an old unwelcome ghost, it spooks every bit of confidence I’ve gained over the last few months.

Now he’s seen every piece of me. The woman he taught how to enjoy kissing also has a dark side.

He hasn’t said a word, but the silence feels like shattered glass at our feet, the pieces too scattered to ever put back together. I should say something, right? Explain myself. Or maybe lie to him.

But resentment, or maybe stubbornness, keeps my mouth shut.

I wasn’t ready to share this part of myself with him yet.

He knows my secret; well, not all of it. Not the how or the why . Or even the who or the when.

If he learns those details, he’d have the power to rip my life apart.

But I don’t think he’d betray me. One thing I’ve learned is that his loyalty runs deep.

Losing him, though? That would devastate me more than any prison cell ever could.

After years of self-doubt, I thought I’d found the person who saw me—all of me. And didn’t flinch.

Until now.