Chapter 1
W here the fuck are you, Kaleb?
The early morning sun glared angrily through the open top of the Bronco, heating my already boiling blood as I barreled down the Sunday streets of Santa Clarita.
I craned my neck to check oncoming traffic before blowing another red light and hanging a sharp right onto Grove St.
I swear to fuck, if your ass is at Minty’s…
My tires spat gravel onto the road as I pulled into our old dealer’s driveway, lifting myself out of the Bronco by her roll bars. The squat white house near the edge of Canyon Country stared out into the day with dark eyes. Quiet.
Not for long.
I took the steps three at a time, landing my fist on the front door once, twice, three times. Rattling the window panes.
“Christ!” Minty shouted somewhere inside and the sound of pills scattering over the floor met my ears.
I knocked again, twice, louder.
The dirty once-white blinds covering the window to the right of the door crinkled, beveling back and forth. “ Shit, ” Minty cursed, and I listened as no less than three locking mechanisms unlatched before the door swept open.
I shoved past Minty’s gaunt frame, into his kitchen, where something that smelled like acid simmered in a shallow blackened fry pan on the stove. Pills popped and crunched under my boots.
“Hardin, man, what the fuck?—”
I spun, leveling the full weight of my stare on him, a tremor of heat coiling up my spine, heating my cheekbones where they flared out.
Don’t fuck with me, Minty.
He reared back a step, hands raised. “No harm done.”
“ Kaleb ,” I growled, eyes tracking the airspace behind him, scanning the two caved-in sofas in the living room and the darkened doorway of the bedroom beyond it.
“Kaleb?” Minty repeated as I stormed past him through the living room and into the bedroom, flicking the light on.
“Minty, it’s too early…” a scratchy feminine voice mewled from beneath the covers, her pale foot retracting beneath their warmth with a shuddering sigh.
I slammed my palm against the wall, the release from the sting licking down the length of my body like salve applied to a wound. I tipped my head to the left, cracking my neck, shaking out my tight muscles as I made my way to the bathroom, Minty blathering something unintelligible in my wake.
Empty. I threw back the shower curtain to be sure, but he wasn’t here.
“ Hardin ,” Minty said, and I guessed it wasn’t for the first time by the exasperation in his tone.
I turned to him.
“Kaleb’s not here, man. I haven’t seen him in months.”
I felt my face twisting.
If he was fucking lying to me…
“I swear,” he added, normally hooded eyes wide and red with his promise. “If he shows his ass here, you’re my first call.”
My gaze narrowed on a black slip of fabric by Minty’s feet.
He saw it the same time I did, and paled.
“Hardin…” Minty said warily, already backing away.
I bent to retrieve the sweater, turning it over in my palm. The fabric fell to one side, revealing the shining silver Saint emblem on the right breast. Kaleb had been wearing it when he left around midnight.
I crumpled it in my fist, deciding to give Minty exactly three seconds to explain before?—
Nope.
I launched at him, the sweater abandoned in favor of the front of his t-shirt as I coiled my other arm back and swung, vision tinted red. Minty’s head knocked back, mouth slack, eyes wide and blinking as blood spurted from his shattered nose.
“When?”
He spluttered for a response, trying to pry my hand from his shirt as he came to.
“Minty?” the girl from the bedroom said groggily then screamed before I heard the door shut behind her. Smart bitch.
“When?” I repeated, hitting him again.
He gurgled, blood coating his tongue, mixing with the saliva to dribble down his stubbly chin. “Around three, man!” he managed after a good hard shake before lifting a trembling hand to his busted nose.
I released him and he doubled over, falling into the side of the sofa.
I stepped toward him, and he fell back on his ass. He knew what I wanted. He’d better start talking.
“He didn’t buy nothin’, okay?”
My chest vibrated with a growl.
“ He didn’t . It’s why I said he wasn’t here.
He came. Drunk as fuck. Hung out a while, talked some shit about getting high like old times.
I-I told him you’d have my head if I sold to him.
Bastard pulled his gun on me, but then he just laughed and said my shit wasn’t worth it. Took off on his bike.”
I swiped the sweater from the floor, deciding whether I believed this fucker after he just lied to me once.
“I will call you if he shows up again. You have my word, man.”
Because that shit’s worth so much?
I shook my head, staring at Minty as I walked past him right out the still-open front door, slamming it behind me so hard that the window to the right of the door shattered. The gratifying sound ringing in my ears all the way back to the Bronco.
As soon as I had the engine started, I lifted my phone, jamming Kaleb’s name on the recent calls list and putting it to my ear, pulling back out onto the street.
I needed to head back to the house, check and see if he was back.
The call rang eight times before hitting voicemail.
The robotic voice finished her spiel, and I let the voicemail record nothing but the sound of the wind as I sped back through Santa Clarita toward home.
Damien would lose it if he knew Kaleb was out alone, piss drunk in the night. There was a new player in town and our father had been grim as he’d explained how we were to keep a low profile, stick together, and never leave the house unarmed.
The Saints owned the city of LA with my father at the helm. My brother and I took care of Santa Clarita as part of that territory as soon as we turned eighteen. We’d ruled both without incident, side by side, for going on five years.
And I’d never seen him as on edge as he was right now.
Whispers in the matrix of smaller gangs my father allowed to operate in his territory said the new player was an Irishman. His gang known only as the Sons of O’Sullivan. The twist of the knife? Apparently this foreign implant had strong ties to the new senator.
If those ties were stronger than the ones we had, it could mean a whole goddamn shitstorm was headed our way and there was absolutely no fucking warning when it would make landfall.
The fact that the Sons of O’Sullivan hadn’t come to my father was a threat in and of itself. You didn’t move in on the king’s territory without first bending the knee, offering to pay tribute. Play by the rules.
My phone buzzed in the cup holder and I snatched it up, the wind eating up the sound of the voice on the other end of the call. I hit the brakes, forcing all traffic behind me to come to a grinding halt.
Tires screeched and a couple horns blared. Idiots who didn’t recognize my vehicle.
“Hardin?”
Sam’s voice came through more clearly, but it was still hard to hear over the damn horns blaring behind me. I lifted from my seat, drawing my gun from the back of my waistband to lift it overhead. I fired once and fell back into my seat, laying the Taurus 1911 across my lap. The horns silenced.
“Speak.”
“Hey man, so, uh , Kaleb’s here at the bar. I told him I was shutting down at five but he wasn’t ready to leave.”
I was already turning around, heading east toward campus and the Copper Crown.
I didn’t consider the bar hidden above the bookshop on the Row mostly because like Sam said, he closed it down around three usually.
Maybe four in the morning if it was a Saturday.
But for a King of Kilborn he’d keep it open as long as needed.
Damn.
Of course that was where he took his drunk ass to.
I sighed.
At least the bastard was all right, at least until I got my hands on him.
“Don’t worry. Already nicked his keys so he isn’t going anywhere, at least not on his bike. Want me to try to?—”
I hung up, pushing the Bronco faster as I weaved through the lazy traffic, carving an almost straight line to the Copper Crown.
The nondescript black metal door was already unlocked for me when I pulled up, leaving the Bronco to idle on the street. The narrow stairwell was cleaner than I’d ever seen it and I knew Sam had to find ways to busy himself while my brother drowned himself in whatever was Sam’s best scotch.
My phone went off again in my pocket and I jerked it out, finding two messages waiting for me there. One from my father with an order to meet him at the shop later today.
The other in a group chat from Rook, one of our cousins from the Thorn Valley chapter of the Saints.
Rook: Have you seen her yet? Ghost says she’s staying at some motel nearby. Mind checking it out? Make sure it isn’t a shithole?
My hand tightened around the device.
Why the fuck we’d agree to keep an eye out for their girlfriend’s best friend here in SoCal was beyond my ability to comprehend right now. We had enough shit to deal with.
I started a reply message, stopping halfway through to take a steadying breath, erase what I’d written and start fresh.
Hardin: Have some shit to deal with today. Might have time later.
His reply was immediate.
Rook: Thanks, bro. I can tell Ghost’s worried about her.
I sighed at that. Both the fierce and virtually unkillable Ava Jade—aka, Rook’s Ghost —and her best friend had been through some fucking shit over the past year.
They had matching scars over their hearts to prove it.
Against the odds they’d somehow both survived the gang war and the sadistic fuck who’d wanted to make Ava Jade his own personal perfect doll.
Unlike her best friend though, Becca didn’t know all the ways to kill a man. She was a mostly innocent bystander that got mixed up in the fight. No doubt she had some mental scars to match the one over her heart after that shit.