Chapter 32
Swag
The second I walk through the clubhouse doors, I know something’s off. The air’s heavy, thick enough to choke on, like everyone’s holding their breath, waiting for me to blow. Boots scrape, voices hush, and the silence has teeth.
Hulk’s leaning against the bar, arms crossed tight over his chest, his expression carved from stone.
Wrench is pacing by the pool table, his cut half unzipped, jaw flexing like he’s chewing glass.
A couple of the other guys sit scattered around the room, silent and restless, like they don’t even want to breathe wrong around me.
I stop dead center and let my gaze sweep the room. “What is it?”
Hulk clears his throat, slow, steady, but I see the tension rolling through his shoulders.
“She’s not here,” he says finally, voice low like he’s braced for the hit. “But we’ve got a theory.”
Ice locks down my spine. “And that is?”
Hulk’s jaw works as his eyes flicker toward Wrench, then back to me. “One of the prospects said Pretty Boy was talkin’. Made it sound like he and your old lady went way back.”
The words barely land before a fuse lights deep in my chest, white-hot and violent.
I don’t say a fucking word. I just move. My boots pound down the hallway, Hulk calling my name behind me, but I’m already at Pretty Boy’s door. Locked. One hard kick and it splinters, the door flying open as I step inside.
It smells like stale smoke and cologne, faint but familiar.
His cut’s gone. Boots too. The bed’s stripped bare except for one thing.
A single envelope, sitting dead center on the mattress like it’s been waiting for me.
My chest goes tight, a sick, crawling weight sinking low in my gut as I stalk forward and tear it open. It’s not a letter. Not even words.
Just a photo printed on paper folded in half.
I open it and the bottom drops out of me. Jo-Leigh. In bed. Her hair messy, lips swollen, skin marked up, but the hand tangled in her hair isn’t mine.
Something inside me snaps clean in half.
I see red.
The photo crumples in my fist as my breath comes ragged and sharp, my pulse pounding so hard it shakes through my teeth. My vision tunnels until there’s nothing but the rage, pure and blinding.
“That son of a bitch,” I snarl, the words scraping out like broken glass.
Boots scuff behind me, and Talon leans against the doorway, arms crossed tight over his chest. His voice is low, careful, like he’s approaching a wild animal.
“Swag we don’t know if this is?—”
“Don’t.” I spin on him, my voice a raw, vicious rasp. “Don’t tell me what we don’t know when that fucker’s gone, she’s gone, and this—” I slam the crumpled photo into his chest “—was sitting in his goddamn room like a fucking gift.”
Hulk appears behind him, face set in grim lines.
“We’ve been looking since they left,” he says. “Ran every backroad, checked every camera from here to Denham Springs. Nothing. It’s like they vanished.”
I drag both hands down my face, lungs burning, skull buzzing with too much noise, too much fury to think straight.
He took her.
He fucking took her.
My voice is low when it comes out, vibrating with barely restrained violence.
“Get every man we’ve got. I want Pretty Boy’s history, his routes, every contact he’s ever touched.
Dig into his burner numbers, his old safehouses, his records.
I don’t care if you have to rip the state line up brick by brick.
” I slam my fist against the doorframe, wood splintering under my knuckles. “Find. Her.”
Hulk hesitates, just for a second. “Swag?—”
I turn on him slow, deliberate, and the weight in my voice lands like a promise carved in stone.
“If she chose him,” I grind out, every word a threat and a prayer, “I’ll burn every fucking thing down until I understand why.”
The silence in the hall is suffocating, thick with unspoken things, but under it all, something sharp gnaws at me like a splinter under skin. Something that doesn’t fit.
Jo-Leigh wouldn’t leave me.
Not without a fight.
Not without a word.
Which means this photo… this neat little trail he left me?
It’s a setup.
And Pretty Boy’s already dead.
“I’m coming for you, little bee.”
Coming Soon:
Devil’s Deceit
Rule #1 of living on the run:
Never go back to the Motorcycle Club that wants you dead
Hurt…
I’m the girl with a broken heart. I betrayed the man I love and ran, but now he’s coming to find me. He thinks I’m working with the enemy and says I have to pay. But I have a secret. One that will change everything.
Lonely…
Every night, I hear his voice in my head. Every time I close my eyes, I see the way he looked at me before I disappeared. And now he’s coming for me. Not to save me. To punish me.
Redemption…
No one is happy to see me. No one trusts me. But what Swag doesn’t know is that we’re stronger together. Even if I haven’t told him the entire truth. Now that I’m back, I’m never leaving the Devil’s Regents MC again. But we’ll both have to decide if love is enough to survive the war coming for us.