Desert Wind (RB MC #6)

Chapter 1

DESTINY

The first time someone at Desert Saints Prep called me a stripper name, I laughed.

Not because it was funny.

Because if I didn’t laugh, I was going to put her face through the mirror in the girls’ bathroom, and Regan had spent too much money on my tuition for me to get expelled before graduation.

“Destiny,” Brielle Carson said, dragging my name out like it had glitter stuck to it. “Really? That’s what your mother named you?”

She leaned against the marble sink with her arms folded over her crisp white blouse, her plaid skirt hemmed two inches shorter than dress code allowed because girls like Brielle didn’t get detention.

Girls like Brielle got warnings. Smiles.

College recommendation letters from administrators who played golf with their fathers.

I got watched.

There was a difference.

I dried my hands slowly under the fancy automatic dryer and looked at her through the mirror. “You already know my name.”

Her friends giggled behind her.

Three of them. Perfect hair. Perfect nails. Perfect little silver cross necklaces resting against perfect spray-tanned throats. They looked like the kind of girls who posted Bible verses under bikini pictures and cried if the wrong boy left them on opened.

Brielle smiled wider.

“Yeah, but I didn’t know your mother named you like she expected you to dance for dollar bills.”

Something hot and ugly flashed behind my ribs.

Not pain.

I was past pain.

Pain had been freshman year, when I’d walked into Desert Saints Prep in a navy uniform skirt and white knee socks, thinking maybe this place would be different.

Thinking maybe a school with adobe archways, iron gates, chapel every Wednesday, and girls who smelled like vanilla perfume instead of cigarette smoke might be safe.

Regan had wanted that for me.

A clean school.

A school where nobody wore cuts, nobody kept guns in locked desk drawers, nobody flinched when a bike rolled too slow past the gate. A school where the name Royal Bastards didn’t mean anything because the tuition cost enough to keep real life outside.

She had filled out the paperwork herself.

No club last names.

No mention of Edge.

No mention of Tarak.

No mention of Mandy.

I even had a clean cut driver deliver me to school in a Lincoln. A fake home address that was a stash house barricaded beyond iron gates and cactus… so no one doing a drive by could tell it was more warehouse than mansion.

I was enrolled under my Arizona name, the one tied to the family who’d raised me before Santa Fe decided it had a claim on my blood. For almost two years, it worked.

Harper Destiny Aquinnah

At first, I was interesting.

The quiet girl from Arizona.

The girl with long dark hair, sharp eyes, and no Instagram history for anyone to stalk.

The girl who didn’t know which families owned which galleries, ranches, restaurants, and dirty politicians.

The girl who didn’t care that Brielle’s father built half the luxury homes outside town or that Addison’s mother sat on every charity board in Santa Fe.

At first, they respected me because they couldn’t place me.

Then someone did.

I still didn’t know who started digging. Maybe it was one of the boys after I turned down a date. Maybe it was one of the girls because my face made them nervous. Maybe it was a bored rich kid with newspaper archives, too much free time, and a cruel streak dressed up as curiosity.

Whoever it was, they found everything.

Old engagement announcement.

The resemblance between Mandy, Tarak’s wife, Amber, and me… well we could’ve been triplets. If we had been born in the same decades.

The old photos cut me more than I’d ever admit. I hid my pain and shame that the past still had so much power to torment the ones who loved me in the present. I refused to tell Tarak, Edge, Amber and Regan. These people that were now mine deserved protection and peace.

But the anonymously posted pics were like looking through a glass through time:

Tarak and Mandy, smiling like tragedy hadn’t already bought a ticket and taken a front-row seat.

A grainy photo from some clubhouse charity ride before everything went wrong, Mandy laughing on the back of a bike, hair flying, one hand on Edge’s shoulder even though she was supposed to belong to another man.

The car crash article.

The funeral notice.

A blurred newspaper photo of men in leather standing at the cemetery, Edge half-turned from the camera, face carved out of stone.

Then came the comments.

The whispers.

The screenshots passed around between classes.

Isn’t that your mom?

Wasn’t she engaged to that Tarak guy?

Wait, but Edge Rourke was at her funeral too?

So who’s your real dad?

Did your mom even know?

By Christmas, I wasn’t the mysterious girl from Arizona anymore.

I was Mandy’s daughter.

The club whore’s kid.

And Destiny was my real first name not the middle one Regan had put down on the admissions paperwork. I shrugged and said the “helper” filled out the paperwork and was dyslexic. Destiny suited me just fine.

The dead woman’s mistake.

Santa Fe had finally found a box to shove me in, and once it did, nobody cared if I suffocated.

Brielle stepped closer now, her smile all glossy poison. “What do bikers tip, anyway? Ones? Fives? Or do they pay in meth and bad tattoos?”

Her friend Addison snorted. “Stop. She’s going to cry.”

I looked at them.

Really looked.

Brielle, with her perfect blond waves and eyes so empty they echoed.

Addison, who repeated whatever cruelty sounded most expensive.

Mia, who always laughed half a second late because she was afraid not to.

Paige, who watched me like she wanted to apologize but liked being popular more than being decent.

I could’ve told them things.

I could’ve told them my father had killed men scarier than their fathers’ lawyers.

I could’ve told them Regan could reduce their mothers to ash with one look and a sentence sharpened on truth.

I could’ve told them Tarak’s name still carried enough weight in certain rooms to make grown men reconsider breathing too loudly.

I could’ve told them if the Royal Bastards found out what they’d been saying, Desert Saints Prep would have motorcycles parked outside by sunrise, and every smug little prince in this building would suddenly remember manners.

But that was exactly why I didn’t.

Because I was tired of men showing up to rescue me and making the cage smaller every time.

I was tired of Edge’s eyes following me across rooms.

Tired of prospects pretending to fix cars across the street from school because my father thought I didn’t know they were on watch.

Tired of Regan asking too gently if everything was okay.

Tired of Tarak looking at me like I was a wound he wanted to heal without touching.

Tired of being protected like I was fragile when the only thing I had ever been allowed to inherit was steel.

So I smiled.

Slowly.

Brielle’s smirk flickered.

Good.

“Careful,” I said.

Her brows lifted. “Is that a threat?”

“No.” I stepped closer, close enough to watch her perfume-sweet confidence shrink by an inch. “It’s advice.”

The bathroom door opened before she could answer, and Sister Margaret walked in with a stack of folded programs for graduation mass clutched to her chest.

All four girls instantly rearranged their faces into innocence.

I didn’t bother.

Sister Margaret looked from them to me, then to the tension hanging in the air like smoke. Her mouth tightened.

“Ladies,” she said. “Class begins in three minutes.”

“Yes, Sister,” Brielle said sweetly.

She brushed past me on her way out, shoulder-checking me hard enough to make my hip hit the sink.

I didn’t move.

I didn’t blink.

I watched her reflection until the door swung shut behind them.

Sister Margaret sighed softly.

“Destiny.”

I hated when adults said my name like it was already an apology.

“I’m fine.”

“I did not ask if you were fine.”

“Then we’re saving time.”

Her expression softened, which was worse. Pity always was.

“You know you may speak with me.”

I turned back to the mirror and fixed the collar of my blouse. White. Stiff. Buttoned all the way up like modesty could cover bloodlines.

“I know.”

“Or with Mrs. Rourke.”

Regan.

Not my mother. Never that. But something sharper and safer in some ways. A woman who hadn’t birthed me, hadn’t owed me anything, and still stood between me and the world with one hand on a knife.

My throat tightened.

“I’m fine,” I repeated.

Sister Margaret studied me for a long moment. “Pride can be armor, child. But it can also be a locked room.”

I looked at her in the mirror. “Good thing I like privacy.”

She didn’t smile.

Neither did I.

By lunch, the story had changed again.

That was how it worked at Desert Saints. Cruelty here didn’t stay still. It evolved. It put on lip gloss, collected receipts, and came back with better lighting.

I was sitting alone beneath the covered walkway outside the cafeteria, picking at a turkey sandwich I didn’t want, when a folded piece of paper landed on my tray.

I didn’t touch it.

Across the courtyard, three junior boys watched me from near the fountain. One of them lifted his phone like he was recording.

Of course.

Everything was content now.

Humiliation didn’t count unless it could be replayed.

I unfolded the paper with two fingers.

Someone had printed a blurry old photo of Mandy from the newspaper archives. Her hair was wild around her shoulders, her smile bright and reckless, one boot planted on a motorcycle peg like the whole world was something she planned to take for a joyride.

Across the bottom, someone had written in pink marker:

WHO’S MANDY’S BABY DADDY?

Under that, in smaller letters:

ASK DESTINY. SHE PROBABLY HAS OPTIONS.

For a second, I couldn’t hear anything.

The fountain went silent.

The cafeteria noise thinned.

The desert sun pressed hot against the back of my neck, and all I could see was Mandy’s face.

My mother.

The ghost everyone knew better than me.