Property of Torch (Kings of Anarchy MC: Rhode Island #2)

Prologue

Torch

Maneuvering my bike along the country road, I head to the one place I usually find solace. Only, it’ll be hard for me now because my girl is in another boy’s arms, living her life without knowing I care for her.

I’ve known Ruby since she was a toddler and have been in love with her for a long time, but I can’t have her.

She’s the daughter of my MC’s president, which means off-limits.

Not to mention, she’s also almost ten years younger than me and destined for a better life than I can provide.

The MC might have raised her, but she’s going to college to make a better life for herself away from the club.

Probably in a large city far from Jupiter.

She deserves to marry a man with a real job who doesn’t have dirt and blood on his hands.

Start a family with him, have a little girl with her golden eyes and beautiful multi-toned hair.

I can’t offer her anything near that. Not only am I a member of the Kings of Anarchy MC and have been since I was eighteen, but I started prospecting for them at sixteen, something most clubs wouldn’t allow; our president, Lars “Swede” Knight, made an exception for me, along with his son, Judge.

It probably had something to do with committing my first murder at that age and having no family to turn to.

Prez helped me take care of the body that day after killing my stepdad for beating my mom.

She wasn’t the best woman in the world, but she gave birth to me and didn’t deserve for an asshole to lay hands on her, so I took the bat he used and bashed his head in until it popped like a watermelon.

He and his son, who is now my best friend, made sure I received no blowback.

As far as the authorities knew, he disappeared after attacking my mother.

She didn’t fully recover from the injuries and ended up dying less than a week later.

I still remember Ruby in her black dress—she rarely wore dresses back then—standing there with me at my mother’s gravesite, holding my hand while I looked down at where my family lies.

Even though my parents had been divorced since I was five, I buried my mother next to my father.

Then I only had Ruby, her family, and the club.

My father, Axe, had been the former VP before someone with the Albanians murdered him.

It’s another reason prospecting so early didn’t draw protest. Granted, I didn’t become a member until I was eighteen, so I couldn’t vote at church until I was twenty-one, but I was there earning my patch and their respect.

Someday, I want to be VP like my father before me; therefore, I can’t lose all I’m working toward because I can’t control my feelings for one girl.

Tonight was so hard to watch her in her sexy prom dress, holding an idiot’s hand who doesn’t realize he has my whole world right in his arms. It took everything in me not to yank his limbs from their sockets as he held her close.

Her mom was excited and kept asking for more pictures of the happy young couple.

Judge is out of town, working with a chapter down in Mississippi, promoting our club’s special talents to them—the discreet disposal of bodies.

With Judge gone, Swede asked me to come help intimidate Ruby’s prom date, Nelson.

Who freaking names their kid fucking Nelson?

The little prick, with his Justin Bieber hairstyle and cocky attitude.

Ruby was in a champagne dress, as she called it, and I hated it as soon as I saw it.

The sequined top was a crop top barely covering her stomach, and her belly button ring glinted in the light.

The skirt was puffy, with layers of netting down to the floor.

She was breathtaking, and it took everything in me not to give away my true feelings about her going to prom with this tool of a boy with as weird a last name as his first. The fucking prick couldn’t look Swede or me in the eyes.

If he thinks he’s getting lucky tonight, I’ll kill him.

Taking another corner wide, my lights bounce off the side of the road, and everything in my body locks up. I depress my brakes so hard I almost dump my bike, skidding and fishtailing before recovering and turning to aim the lights toward the tree line where I saw her.

There, my Ruby is revealed, bloody, beaten, and staggering out of the woods. In one hand, she carries one of her strappy sequined shoes, blood dripping from it, while the other applies pressure to a wound on her neck, which bleeds profusely.

I rip my helmet off my head and throw it to the side as I run for my girl. She sees me and starts crying, calling my name as she limps on her torn-up leg. Her skirt has been shredded and wrapped around other wounds on her body.

“Ben.” She’s called me by my real name since we were younger. Now, she only does it when we are alone instead of using my road name. “He’s dead. Nelson is dead. They killed him,” she cries. “It was a trap. Those men killed him.”

She collapses against me, and I hold onto her as I dial her father’s cell number, praying he answers and can send help quick enough. I’m not sure how much longer she has. She’s losing blood so fast that she’s already pale.

“Hello,” Swede says. My eyes trace along my girl’s body, cataloging all her injuries. “Torch, are you there?” he asks again, and I realize I didn’t respond.

“It’s Ru-Ruby; she’s been at-attacked.” The words stick in my throat as tears fall from my eyes. She’s dying in my arms.

“Where are you?” he demands.

I give him directions, then hang up.

“Who did this to you, baby?” I ask, pressing a kiss to the top of her head; the one place she isn’t cut or beaten.

“I don’t want to die, Ben. I want to live. Help me live, but it was so awful. They laughed as they beat me. And…” I pull off my jacket and wrap it around her body.

She doesn’t complete her thought, but I can imagine from looking at her what she went through.

Her top is torn, exposing one of her young breasts.

The flesh is slashed, and the belly button ring I noticed earlier is missing, having been torn from the skin, and blood drips down her taut stomach.

Slash marks cross it as well. Someone took a knife to my girl.

They’ll bleed for every mark they’ve left behind.

We fall to the ground, and I hold her against me, helping her keep pressure on her neck where it looks like someone tried to cut her throat.

“Did they rape you?” I ask as I look down at the muddy, ripped skirt.

Her upper arms have what appears to be barbed wire wrapped around them, and blood seeps from the wounds.

The same wire is also wrapped around her lower calves.

“I stabbed one in the eye with my shoe.” She trembles against me as she holds up the shoe as if it’s a prize.

Her other bare foot is sliced up from walking through the woods, and her skirt blows in the wind, revealing more blood on her legs.

Her right leg seems to be held together with the material from her skirt as more crimson fluid seeps from it.

“I’ll kill them all, baby. I swear it. No one will survive what they did to you.”

“Don’t let me die yet, even though I want to…don’t let me, please,” she begs while losing consciousness.

Clutching Ruby to my chest, I holler my anguish through the quiet of the night. “Please don’t take her from me. She’s all I have left.”

Not one of these bastards will be left standing when I’m done with them.

I hold her motionless body, waiting for help to arrive as her blood seeps into my jeans and the ground below us.