Breathless (The Las Vegas Defiance MC #3)

Chapter One

MILLIE

February cold hits differently out here in the Nevada desert. The second the sun disappears, the warmth goes with it, leaving behind a dry chill that slips beneath layers and settles deep enough to ache. The kind of cold that makes everything feel quieter than it should.

By nine at night, the mine seems like an entirely different place. The equipment turns into dark, skeletal silhouettes against the desert, shadows stretching long across the dirt, while the distant hum of the highway drifts faintly through the night, about a mile up the road.

Everything else feels still.

Too still.

Like the whole property is listening for something.

I know this place better than I know most people.

Like the way the floodlights cast long yellow rectangles across the gravel, or the way the office door sticks on its hinges in winter, and the way the entire site settles and creaks as though it’s breathing in its sleep.

I’ve been coming here since I was seven years old, trailing after my father with a hard hat three sizes too big and a thermos of hot chocolate.

McClane Mining Co. is as much mine as it is his.

Tonight it was supposed to be easy.

Five minutes, maybe ten.

Dad needs some documents from his office before he meets with the lawyer tomorrow morning, and I am the only person he trusts to collect them without asking questions about their contents.

I’ve told myself it doesn’t matter. I’ve told myself a lot of things lately that I’m not entirely sure I believe.

The office is locked up and dark behind me when I step out onto the gravel, the folder pressed under my arm, my keys already in my hand. I pull the door shut and reach for the deadbolt.

That’s when the perimeter floodlights snap on.

The east fence line floods white so suddenly that it turns the dark, sharp, and hostile.

I go completely still.

The motion sensors on the east perimeter are the sensitive ones.

They’ve been known to trip for foxes, for a tumbleweed moving through on a wind gust. Dad has been meaning to adjust the sensitivity for two years now and never has.

So I stand here for one full breath, my keys pressed hard enough into my palm to leave an impression, and I watch the fence line.

At first, my brain tries to do what it always does out here at night and come up with a normal explanation. Wind, wildlife, perhaps one of the loose fence panels is rattling around again.

The desert makes noise after dark. Things shift when the temperature drops and the ground starts bleeding off the heat it’s been holding onto all day.

But then something moves.

And my stomach knots instantly, a cold dread sinking hard and fast into my bones. Everything out here changes in a split second. The steady hum of the desert drops away, leaving behind the kind of stillness that makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise.

I lean forward before I even realize I’m doing it, my eyes narrowing toward the fence line while the shadows start pulling themselves into something more solid.

And that’s when I see them.

Two figures.

Not shadows.

Two figures move along the inside of the eastern fence, slow enough to make something ugly twist low in my stomach.

Not workers.

Mine workers stomp around with purpose. They carry tools, yell to each other across the property, and move fast because there’s always something that needs fixing, hauling, or checking.

These two don’t move that way. They drift along the fence line slowly, taking their time, their attention sweeping over the property piece by piece in a way that sends the fine hairs on the back of my neck straight up.

Watching.

Checking.

Sizing the place up.

Fucking documenting.

My pulse kicks hard against my ribs, loud enough I swear they might hear it across the yard.

No one should be back there. Not tonight.

Not when the night crew clocked out hours ago, and the mine is supposed to be locked tighter than Fort Knox.

And as I watch, one of them raises his arm, and the small bright rectangle of a phone screen glows in the dark.

They’re taking photographs.

A knot of dread twists low in my stomach.

Because people don’t photograph a gold mine in the middle of the night unless they’re planning something.

I kill the office light through the door I’ve barely re-cracked open, then ease it shut again and press myself back into the shadow of the doorframe.

Darkness swallows the room, and I stand there frozen, listening.

My heart slams so hard I feel it everywhere, in my throat, in my wrists, in the roof of my mouth.

Each pulse feels loud enough to echo off the concrete walls.

For half a second, my brain tries to tell me I’m overreacting. But my body doesn’t listen.

My lungs drag in a careful breath through my nose while something old and primal takes over inside me, instinct shoving its way to the front before panic can get there first.

Don’t move.

Don’t make a sound.

Don’t let them know where you are.

I know this feeling.

The sharp, electric awareness is crawling up my spine. The way the air suddenly feels too thin, like the world has tilted half an inch and everything dangerous is sliding toward you.

I have felt this before.

I remember being watched by people who were never supposed to find me.

I remember the exact moment a stranger’s attention turns you from a person into something valuable to take. You become leverage, a payout, something with a dollar value attached to it. The memory crashes into me so hard my stomach clenches.

Sixteen years old and walking back to my father’s truck after school with dust on my boots and homework in my bag, thinking about nothing more dangerous than whether Dad would let me skip mine paperwork that weekend.

Then hands grab me. One over my mouth. One around my waist.

The world lurching sideways so fast that I didn’t even have time to scream before they dragged me into the back of a van.

I remember the smell first… gasoline, sweat, and cigarettes soaked into old upholstery.

Kicking hard enough to bruise my own ankles against metal while somebody laughed and called me a ‘wild little bitch’ like my terror was entertaining to them. Then the zip ties cut into my wrists so tight my fingers went numb.

The panic.

God, the panic.

That horrible, animal kind that makes your chest hurt because your body knows before your brain does that something terrible is happening.

I remember begging at first.

Then screaming.

Then learning that screaming couldn’t help me.

They kept me in a concrete room with one bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and a mattress on the floor that smelled of mildew and stale piss. Every time the door opened, my whole body would lock up because I never knew which version of them I’d get.

The ones who wanted money.

Or the ones who enjoyed watching me be afraid.

One of them hit me every time I mouthed off. Open-handed at first, then fists when I didn’t stop. Bruises spread dark across my ribs and jaw, yellow blooming into purple while they argued over how much my father would pay to get me back.

I remember hearing them talk about me as if I wasn’t even there.

‘Pretty enough to sell.’

‘Young enough to make good money.’

‘If Jonas doesn’t pay, we’ll move her south.’

I didn’t understand what that meant at first.

Not fully.

Until one of them grabbed my chin hard enough to leave fingerprints and calmly explained what happens to girls nobody comes for. How men pay extra for frightened ones. How easy it is to make young virgin girls disappear.

I remember throwing up after he left the room, then sitting on that mattress afterward with my wrists bleeding from fighting the restraints and realizing, with this horrible sinking clarity, that they weren’t bluffing.

That this wasn’t just ransom.

I was merchandise to them.

And the fear that settled into me after that was different—the kind that crawls into your bones and stays there.

But then Vegas Defiance came through the doors like violence given shape.

Sin at the front.

Gunfire exploding through the warehouse.

Men shouting.

Somebody grabbed me while I flinched because by then I was afraid of everybody.

Blood coated the hands that were cutting my restraints apart, none of it mine.

Then Sin was in front of me, calm and solid, while I shook hard enough to rattle my own teeth.

‘You’re safe now.’

Three words.

That was all it took for me to start crying.

Dad never stopped paying the club back after that.

Every month, unreported gold quietly left the mine and found its way into club hands.

Protection traded for loyalty at first, until somewhere along the line the arrangement stopped feeling like a business transaction and started feeling like family.

And family protects their own.

Movement to my left startles me back into the present, and my stomach twists violently, adrenaline spiking so fast my fingers go cold.

No!

Not here.

Not tonight.

Not on my own damn property.

I press harder into the shadow of the doorframe, forcing my breathing slow and silent, every sense stretched tight as wire.

I understand exactly what it means to be found by people who want to hurt you.

The moment survival instinct kicks in, your body realizes the danger before your brain can catch up.

And I am not letting that happen here.

Not again!

I move low across the office floor in the dark, using the familiarity of the room like a compass, skirting the edge of my father’s desk until I’m crouched behind it with my back against the heavy wood.

From here, through the narrow gap in the window blinds, I have a thin sightline to the east fence.

I can still see them, their shapes moving in and out of the floodlight’s reach, stopping at the equipment bays, pausing at the locked storage units.

One of them crouches near the fence post and photographs the padlock.