4. STONE
When I saw him roll through the compound gates, that same fucking bright orange hog between his thighs, same old hair whipping all over the goddamn place from under his helmet, I wanted to kick him off the bike.
I wanted to do something, anything, to make him hurt as badly as he’d made me hurt.
He’d let me think he was ill.
Sure, Nyx had been behind that, the schmuck, but Steel could have texted me, let me know that he was okay.
Instead, I’d spent two hours racing to West Orange, trying to get here in time to…
What?
Say goodbye? When we should never have said that in the first place?
I gritted my teeth as I stacked my hands on my hips. At the sight, Rex muttered, “Sweet fuck.”
I knew why.
I was named after the Rolling Stones—yeah, my mom’s imagination was shit—but everyone knew I went stone-cold when I was pissed.
When I started showing emotion, they knew to run for the hills.
I’d been raised with these fuckers. I knew that if Steel had been injured, it would have been doing something the government considered illegal, and I knew that no matter how fast I raced to get to him, it wouldn’t be fast enough.
People bled out from gunshot and knife wounds fast.
Nyx had called at the end of a busy shift in the ER. I’d already been hyped up from losing a kid on my watch; a girl who’d come in after a simple car crash. So simple, she hadn’t presented anything except for a headache.
A fucking headache.
The department head wanted to send her home, give her some Children’s Tylenol but I’d had a bad vibe. My gut had told me something was wrong, but Hyde’s reach was too strong.
I’d forged his fucking signature to get her a CAT scan, but it had been too late.
She’d died.
She’d fucking died while I bullshitted around with the bureaucracy that was fundamental in a hospital.
I was amped up, ready for a fight, and the sight of Steel, someone I fucking loved, who I’d thought was dying, riding back without a care in the world had me wanting to kick him in the balls.
Badly.
I gritted my teeth when he pulled up, barely even noticing the cage that was braking to a halt alongside him.
“You’re not dead,” I told him stonily—that was my rep, after all.
He tugged off his helmet. “Disappointed?”
My top lip curled, then Nyx stepped into my line of sight looking, as per fucking usual, too handsome for the good of anyone with ovaries.
“You lied to me,” I snapped.
“No, you didn’t let me get a word in edgewise. You assumed because I had Steel’s phone that?—”
“A solid assumption,” I barked.
“If you’d let me fucking finish,” he growled. “Then, and now, I’d have explained.”
“Go on then. Explain why you let me think our brother was fucking dead.”
He gritted his teeth. “He ain’t your brother.”
Wasn’t that the goddamn truth.
“I grew up in this place too, Nyx. I don’t have to have a prick to be a part of this fucked up family.”
That had him tilting his chin down in anger. “Family don’t leave family behind.”
Stung, my eyes flared wide.
He’d hurt me. I was used to that.
But hurting me only pissed me off and I snarled, “Some of us want to do shit with our lives. Rex is paying for my fucking education. What would you have me do?
“Waste my fucking calling as I spread my legs for the MC? Or have me do something I’m good at and learn how to be the best I can be?”
“Nyx?”
The voice sounded soft, but there was steel behind it.
He turned to look at the woman who’d just rounded the fender of the vehicle I’d only just registered. “Giulia, not?—”
“Nyx, you take that back.”
I jerked in surprise at her tone then, when I studied her some more, I frowned. In my ear, Rex muttered, “She’s Lizzie Fontaine and Dog’s kid.”
My mouth rounded into an O as I processed that. She looked like Lizzie. Crazily so.
Apparently had her temper too.
“She’s Nyx’s Old Lady, babe.” Rex punctuated his quiet update with a grunt.
“She left us behind,” Nyx spouted stubbornly.
“What did she leave behind? She’s here now, isn’t she? You called her and she came. Immediately. Isn’t that what family does?”
Nyx’s mouth turned stubborn. “You don’t know every detail.”
“I’m sure I don’t, but if Stone’s good at what she does and wants to be more, then what’s wrong with that?”
“I like you,” I declared, uncaring that that had most of the guys snickering around me. “You don’t let him get away with any shit and he needs that. They all fucking do.”
She tipped her chin to the side. “I didn’t remember you until I got out of the car. You always were fixing shit.”
“Always plenty to fix around this place.” I studied her, then muttered, “What the hell are you doing riding in a cage with these three bozos?”
Her lips twitched. “Got three women who need your help.”
“Why?” I frowned, trying to peer into the windows of the van. “What’s gone down with them?”
She blew out a breath and it didn’t escape me that Rex didn’t step up to try to explain shit, nor did any of the other brothers gathered around me.
I knew them as well as I knew my own flesh and blood, but each of them granted Giulia a level of respect I didn’t understand.
Normally, that came with blood. The shedding thereof. Especially of an enemy.
That she was Dog’s daughter and Nyx’s woman told me she wasn’t as soft as she appeared, but murder?
I didn’t think so.
“I was attacked at Daytona.”
Because nothing surprised me where the club was concerned, I merely concentrated on something I didn’t comprehend.
“The racing place?” I questioned with a scowl.
“No. Our new bar,” Rex muttered, and when I turned to look at him, I saw he was leaning against the railing, arms folded across his chest as he glowered down at his boots.
“A customer tried to rape me but I—” She exhaled loudly, made fists with her hands, and punching the air at her sides, ground out, “Long story short, we found out this was a regular thing of his. At least, hurting women I mean.
“We learned he was holding some women captive and with him dead?—”
“You killed him?” I squawked, stunned despite myself.
Her cheeks flushed, and she shot Nyx a welcome glance as he approached and came to stand at her side.
The move was defensive, possessive, protective, and assertive. In fact, I wasn’t sure how Nyx managed to channel all four at once, but it was better than a burglar alarm.
It declared to one and all, especially one—me—to back the fuck off.
“Yeah. Anyway, we’ve been hunting the women ever since. He’s dead.” She shrugged. “If he couldn’t care for them, then who could?”
My jaw worked for a second as I bit out, “You found them?”
“There were four. One was dead.” Link whistled, drawing my attention his way, and because he was perennially cheerful, the somberness in his eyes blew my fucking mind. “Never seen anything like it. Ever.”
“There a reason you didn’t take them to the ER?”
“They’re illegals. One of them begged us not to take them to a hospital.”
At her explanation, I reached up and pinched the bridge of my nose, then I squeezed it harder when Link stated, “He bought them. Bought them. Like they were fucking animals or something.”
I knew the MC was into many things, but trafficking humans had never been our bag. I was glad for that because, if they had, I’d have reported them to the cops.
Family or not.
And if that made me a treacherous bitch, then so be it.
The ER was where I wanted to center my future, and it was, in its own way, a front line. I was used to the trauma because of this life right here.
A life where random fuckery happened every day, and you had to take it on the chin or be steamrolled over and flattened like a pancake.
“They were in cages,” Nyx said gruffly, his arm coming around to embrace Giulia, who bit her lip as she stared at me. “Living in their shit and piss. The dead girl…” He sucked in a breath. “She was in a cage, along with two of the others.”
If what he’d seen had the power to make Nyx turn green, I knew it was fucked up.
Fucked up enough that maybe even I wouldn’t be able to handle what was coming my way.
That steam roller I’d mentioned before?
Well, maybe it had turned into a freight train and I was already halfway under it.
Swallowing down my nerves, I knew I had to get a handle on things. Fast. “Let’s get them somewhere warm.”
“You’re going to help?”
I turned to Rex. “Was that ever in question?”
He’d believed in me, had funded my career from the very start. I owed him and the MC everything. But I wasn’t doing this for that.
Whether it was in an ER or in one of the bunkrooms on the compound, I was born for this. Born to heal.
I breathed in deeply and took a step toward the vehicle. As I moved, headed down to the driveway, Steel grabbed my arm.
He stared at me, forced me to look at him by not letting go of me, and when he knew he had my attention, insisted grimly, “It’s bad, Stone. There were rats.”
My jaw tensed. “We’re going to need gear. A lot of it.”
“Get me a list and I’ll get you what you need.”
That was from Rex.
“You got this?”
Steel’s question had me tipping my chin up in defiance.
I stared at him, at that beautiful goddamn face, that gorgeous hair, lips I longed to kiss, eyes I wanted to stare into until the day I died…
Instead of telling him I loved him, instead of telling him I missed him, I spat, “When haven’t I been good at cleaning up the MC’s messes?”
His mouth tightened but he let me go, and that was exactly what I did and didn’t want.
Fuck.