Chapter 2
Wrath
What the hell is wrong with me?
I turn back to face the room, and every pair of eyes is fixed on me with varying degrees of confusion and speculation. Tank's mouth is still hanging open like a goddamn fish.
"Show's over," I growl, my voice cutting through their stares. "Get back to whatever the fuck you were doing."
The room slowly comes back to life—conversations resume, pool balls start clacking again, beer bottles clink.
But I can feel their sideways glances, hear the undercurrent of whispers.
Can't blame them. In the twenty-one years I've been patched in to this club, I've never given a shit about a woman before.
No old lady. And I sure as shit have never threatened bodily harm to my club brothers over some random chick who wandered in from a storm.
Diesel appears at my elbow, water dripping from his leather jacket. "Car's fucked, brother. Engine's blown, transmission's shot to hell. Surprised it made it this far."
"Salvageable?"
He shakes his head. “We can give it a better assessment when the storm breaks, but I’m telling you it’d be cheaper to buy a new car. That thing's held together with duct tape and prayers."
“Uh,” Jigsaw shifts his weight from foot to foot. “It looks like the car might be her home. Like she’s been living in that rust bucket.”
I process this information while staring down the hallway where she disappeared. So she's stranded. Completely fucking stranded with nowhere to go and no way to get there. A savage satisfaction settles deep in my bones.
She needs protection. And I'm very fucking good at protecting what's mine.
The thought stops me cold. What's mine?
I don't know this girl. Don't know anything about her except she's running from something—that much was written all over her. The way she flinched when Tank reached for her, the defensive way she held herself, the exhaustion in those green eyes.
Someone hurt her. And possibly for a long fucking time.
My hands curl into fists as images from this week flash through my mind.
Just three days ago, I broke a man's fingers one by one for skimming from our gun running operation.
Yesterday, I put a bullet in the kneecap of a meth dealer who thought he could set up shop in our territory.
This morning, I watched a rival club member piss himself when I removed his ear with my pocketknife while explaining why his president needed to return our stolen merchandise.
Blood and violence. That's what I am, what I do, what I'm good at. I'm the beast the club unleashes when diplomacy fails, and I've never lost sleep over it. These hands have ended lives, broken bones, inflicted pain that made grown men beg for death.
And yet when that fragile, broken woman looked at me with those wide green eyes, every protective instinct in me clawed its way to the surface.
"Wrath." Blake "Steel" Collins, our club president, approaches from his table in the back corner where he'd been conducting business. At fifty-two, he carries himself with the kind of authority that comes from three decades in the life. “A word.”
I nod toward his office, knowing this conversation was inevitable. As we walk past the bar, Trix emerges from the hallway.
"She's in your room," she says, meeting my eyes with a look of sympathy. "Gave her some of my spare clothes. Poor thing's dead on her feet."
My room. The thought of her in my space, surrounded by my things, sleeping in my bed, sends heat coursing through me.
Steel's office is spartanly functional—a desk, two chairs, a filing cabinet, and a wall covered with photographs of fallen brothers. He closes the door and turns to face me with crossed arms.
"You want to tell me what that was about?"
“She needed help." I keep my voice level, but Steel's known me too long to buy the casual act.
"Since when do you give a shit about strays?"
Since about twenty minutes ago, apparently. The unfamiliarity of these feelings gnaws at me. I've never claimed anything in my life except my Harley and my place in this brotherhood. Never wanted to. But something about her calls to me.
"She's not a stray."
Steel's eyebrows climb toward his hairline. "Oh? What is she then?"
I don't have an answer for that. Or rather, I have an answer that makes no goddamn sense. From the moment I laid eyes on her, something inside me claimed her so completely, so irrevocably, that the thought of letting her leave makes me want to burn down the world.
"Car's totaled," I say instead. "She's got nowhere to go."
"So call her people. Get someone to pick her up."
"Don't think she has people." The way she said she just needed a tow truck, like that was her only option, tells me everything I need to know about her support system.
Steel studies me for a long moment. "You know we got club business coming up. Negotiations with the Iron Serpents next week. Can't afford distractions."
"Won't be a distraction."
"You threatening your brothers over some girl you just met suggests otherwise."
Heat flares in my chest. "Anyone disrespects what's under my protection—"
"Your protection?" Steel cuts me off. "Since when? You don't know shit about this girl, Wrath. Could be running drugs, could be running from the law, could be bait from a rival club."
The rational part of my brain knows he's right. But rationality doesn't explain why every cell in my body is screaming that she's innocent, that she's been hurt, that she needs me…that she’s mine.
"She's clean," I say with absolute certainty.
"How can you possibly know that?"
Because when she looked at me, I saw straight through to her soul, and it's beautiful and broken and pure despite whatever hell she's survived.
Because she carries herself like someone who's been knocked down repeatedly but keeps getting back up.
Because she apologized for being trouble when all she'd done was ask for help.
"I just know."
Steel sighs, scrubbing a hand over his graying beard. "You're not thinking with your head, brother."
Maybe not. But for the first time in a long time, I'm thinking with something other than cold calculation. And it feels like waking up from a long sleep.
"I'm thinking just fine."
"Are you? Because from where I sit, it looks like our VP just claimed some rando in front of the entire club. You know what that means? What kind of target that puts on her back if word gets out?"
The truth of that hits me like a punch to the gut.
By marking her as under my protection, I've painted a target on her that could draw enemies I've made over two decades of club business.
The Broken Skulls would love to get their hands on someone I care about.
So would half a dozen other organizations I've fucked over in service to this club.
But the alternative—letting her walk away vulnerable and alone—is unacceptable.
"Then we keep word from getting out."
Steel stares at me for a long time. Finally, he shakes his head and we momentarily drop our President/Vice President roles and become Blake and Rhett, lifelong friends. "Twenty-one years I've known you, brother. Never seen you lose your head over a woman. You sure you want to go down this road?"
I think about her standing there soaked and shivering, apologizing for existing. I think about the way she flinched from Tank's touch and the exhaustion carved into her delicate features. I think about her car and how she's probably been scraping by on nothing for a long time.
"I'm sure."
He nods slowly. "All right. But this is your call, your responsibility. Anything goes sideways, it's on you."
"Understood."
I leave Steel's office and make my way through the clubhouse, past my brothers. The weight of what I've just committed to settles on my shoulders, but instead of feeling burdened, I feel like for the first time in years, I'm doing something that matters beyond club. Something for me.
When I reach my room, I ease the door open.
She's curled up in my bed like she belongs there, wearing an oversized t-shirt that swallows her small frame.
Her dark hair fans across my pillow, and in sleep, the stress lines around her eyes have smoothed away.
She looks impossibly young, impossibly fragile.
In my bed. In my fucking bed.
The possessive satisfaction that floods through me is so intense it's almost painful. This is what I want—her here, safe, with me.
I move quietly around the room, grabbing a change of clothes for tomorrow, trying not to wake her. But my eyes keep drifting back to her face, to the way her lips part slightly in sleep, to the dark circles under her eyes that speak of too many nights spent worrying instead of resting.
That's when I notice the sketchbook.
It's peeking out from her backpack, which she'd clutched so protectively earlier. My first instinct is to respect her privacy, but seeing as I’m responsible for her and I have to answer to the club for her presence here, I should at least know more about her. I ease it free and flip it open.
Jesus Christ.
The pages are filled with the most beautiful art I've ever seen.
Detailed pencil drawings that capture emotion and movement with startling realism.
A street musician lost in his song, every line of his weathered face speaking of years spent chasing dreams. An elderly woman feeding pigeons in a park, her gentle smile holding a lifetime of stories.
A child's laughter captured in perfect detail, all joy and innocence.
But it's the self-portraits scattered throughout that stop my heart.
She's drawn herself from different angles, at different ages, and in each one, there's a haunting quality to her eyes—like she’s hiding a painful secret.
The technical skill is incredible, but it's the raw emotion in every stroke that niggles its way into my heart.
This girl has talent. Real fucking talent. The kind that should be in galleries, not hidden in a worn sketchbook carried by someone living in their car.
I flip through more pages, seeing her soul laid bare in graphite and paper.
There are darker drawings too—shadowy figures looming over a small girl, hands reaching out in threat rather than comfort.
My jaw clenches as the implications hit me.
She's drawn her nightmares, attempted to exorcise her demons through art.
But even in those dark images, there's a defiant strength to the way she draws herself, a refusal to surrender completely.
Survivor. Fighter. Artist.
The combination is devastating. This beautiful, fragile young woman has been creating beauty despite living with ugliness.
I close the sketchbook carefully and tuck it back where I found it, my hands not quite steady. The urge to wake her up and demand to know every detail of what she's survived, who hurt her, who failed to protect her, is almost overwhelming. But she needs sleep more than she needs my questions.
Instead, I settle into the armchair in the corner of my room. I should go sleep on the couch in the common area, give her privacy. But the thought of leaving her alone, even here in my room doesn’t sit well.
So I stay. I watch her sleep and let myself imagine what it might be like to have someone so soft and gentle in my life. Someone who creates beauty instead of destroying it.
It's a dangerous fantasy for a man like me. But as I sit in the darkness listening to her quiet breathing, feeling the rightness of her presence in my space, I can't bring myself to let the fantasy go.