Chapter 6
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— Dutch —
“Still nothing on her credit cards,” Glitch said, not looking up from his laptop. “She’s smart. Blocked all of us, isn’t answering unknown numbers. She’s ghosting you hard.”
I paced behind him in the clubhouse tech room, my hands clenched into fists. Ten days. She’d been gone for ten fucking days, and I had nothing to show for it except dead ends and a growing pit in my stomach that felt suspiciously like panic.
“Check again,” I ordered.
“Dutch, I’ve checked twelve times in the last hour. The cards haven’t been used since she bought gas in—”
“Just do it.”
Glitch’s fingers stilled on the keyboard, and he turned to look at me with tired eyes. “When’s the last time you slept? Or ate something that wasn’t liquid?”
“I’m fine.” I wasn’t fine. I hadn’t been fine since I’d seen that security footage of Indira driving away. Since I’d realized she’d left me. My pillow no longer smelled like her jasmine shampoo. Now it just smelled like me—whiskey and desperation.
“You’re not fine. You look like shit, you smell like a distillery, and you’ve been wearing the same clothes for two days.”
I looked down at my jeans and shirt. He was probably right, but I didn’t give a fuck about my appearance right now. “Just run the cards again.”
Glitch sighed but turned back to his computer.
“She’s good at staying hidden, I’ll give her that.
Hit multiple ATMs around town—looks like she cleaned out her checking and savings accounts, plus took cash advances on her credit cards.
Probably walked away with close to three grand in cash.
Used cash for everything after that gas station in Boise.
Hasn’t posted on social media. Haven’t seen her car on any traffic cameras since she left the interstate. ”
Boise. That had been our only lead—a single credit card transaction at a gas station on I-84 East. But that had been nine days ago, and the trail had gone cold after that.
I’d been so sure she was heading to California.
Her parents lived there, and her sister Priya was in San Diego.
It made sense—she’d run home to family. I’d even sent a couple of prospects down to watch both places, but there’d been no sign of her.
Her parents hadn’t seen her. Priya claimed she didn’t know where Indira was, though I wasn’t sure I believed that bitch.
She’d never liked me—thought I was too rough around the edges, not good enough for her precious little sister.
I’d heard her on calls with Indira, trying to convince her to leave me, telling her she could do better.
But maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised Indira hadn’t gone running home.
My woman didn’t like failure. She wasn’t the type to go crawling back to her family with her tail between her legs, admitting she’d been wrong about me.
She was too proud for that. Too fucking strong.
A queen who didn’t bow to anyone. My hands flexed at my sides, remembering the silk of her hair, the warmth of her skin.
“She could be anywhere by now,” Glitch continued. “Could’ve kept going east instead of turning south. Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia. Hell, she could be in fucking Florida for all we know.”
“She wouldn’t,” I said, but even as the words left my mouth, I wasn’t sure anymore. I’d thought I knew Indira, thought I understood how her mind worked. Turned out I didn’t know shit.
“Dutch.” Holden appeared in the doorway, his expression carefully neutral. “We need to talk.”
“I’m busy.”
“Now,” he said, in the tone that meant he wasn’t asking.
I did a double-take. What the fuck? In all the years Holden had been my road captain, he’d never used that tone with me.
Nobody talked to the prez like that, not even my most trusted brothers.
But there was something in his eyes—a kind of grim determination that told me this wasn’t a normal conversation.
I followed him out to the main room, where most of the brothers were gathered around the bar. They all looked up when I walked in, and I didn’t like what I saw in their faces. Concern mixed with something that looked like pity. What a bunch of pussies.
“What?” I snapped.
“Sit down,” Holden said.
“I don’t want to sit down. I want to find my woman.”
That’s what we need to talk about.” Colt leaned forward in his chair, and I could see the judgment in his eyes.
My VP. The patch had been his for two years now, ever since our previous VP took three bullets to the chest during a deal gone bad with the Wolves.
Colt’s ice-cold demeanor and ability to make hard calls without flinching made him perfect for the role—exactly what the club needed after we lost Axe.
Of all my brothers, he was the least likely to understand what I was going through.
He’d patched over from the Death’s Head MC in Texas several years ago after some bitch had fucked him over—cheated on him, cleaned out their bank account, and disappeared while he was on a club run.
There’d been bad blood after that. Colt couldn’t shake the feeling that his brothers back in Texas knew more about what had happened with his wife than they were letting on.
He’d never been able to settle after that, never trusted them the same way.
That’s why he’d left Death’s Head and come to us—needed a fresh start where nobody knew his story, where he didn’t have to wonder which of his brothers had been fucking his old lady behind his back.
Ever since his divorce, he’d sworn off anything resembling a relationship. Sure, he used the club girls when he needed to get off, but he never looked at a woman seriously. Never let one get close enough to hurt him again.
“Brother, you’ve been at this for ten days. Maybe it’s time to consider that she doesn’t want to be found.”
Colt’s words hit me like a punch to the gut. My hands curled into fists at my sides, jaw clenching so hard my teeth ached. “She’s upset,” I said, hearing the edge in my own voice. “She needs time to cool off.”
“Ten days isn’t cooling off,” Handful said quietly. “Ten days is making a statement.”
“What the fuck would you know about it?” I turned on him, my temper flaring. “You’ve never kept a woman longer than a weekend. Grab a handful of tit, get your dick wet, then you’re out.”
Handful’s face flushed, but he didn’t back down. “I know enough to recognize when someone’s done with your shit.”
“She’s not done. She’s just—”
“She’s gone, Dutch.” This from Glitch, who’d followed us out of the tech room.
“I’ve been tracking everything I can legally track, and some things I can’t.
The packing, the cash—maybe that was gut reaction.
But she’s not on emergency leave anymore—she’s approved for full remote work now. That’s planned.”
The room spun. I gripped the edge of the bar, knuckles white, chest so tight I couldn’t breathe. “What?”
I’d gone to her office immediately after watching the security footage.
Her boss had told me she’d taken emergency leave for a family crisis, didn’t know when she’d be back.
I’d stood there in that corporate bullshit lobby, wanted to tear the place apart, but I’d kept my cool.
Barely. Her coworkers had looked at me like I was some kind of animal—probably because I was wearing my cut.
“When did that change?” I demanded.
“According to her company’s HR system, she submitted the remote work request two days after she caught you with Crystal,” Glitch said carefully.
“Called in sick Thursday morning, then filed for emergency leave citing a family crisis. They approved temporary remote work within hours. Then a few days later, she converted it to permanent remote status. This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision, Dutch.
She was planning her exit from the moment she walked in on you. ”
“That’s...” I tried to make sense of it. “She was just buying time to think.”
“Or she was buying time to disappear,” Holden said gently. “Dutch, she didn’t just pack a bag and storm off. She extracted herself from her life here.”
She hadn’t planned to catch me with Crystal, but the moment she did, she’d started planning her exit strategy. While I was trying to figure out how to smooth things over, she was already gone.
“Even if she was upset,” I said, “she still wouldn’t just disappear. She’d want to talk it out first.”
“She did confront you,” Colt said, his voice hard. “And you rightly told her it wasn’t her business.”
Holden nodded, rapping his knuckles on the bar. “Hear, hear.”
Handful joined in. “Club business is club business.”
I felt vindicated for half a second before Glitch’s quiet voice cut through from his laptop. “Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe she needed it to be her business.”
I felt my face getting hot. “She knew what she was signing up for when she got involved with me. I never lied about who I was.”
“Actually,” Glitch continued, not looking up, “you kind of did.”
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“You added her to the approved visitors list. Started talking about taking trips together, maybe having her move in. You were acting like a man ready to make her his old lady, but you were still fucking around like a single man.”
“I never said I was making her my old lady.”
Guilt twisted in my gut as I thought about the cut sitting in my office safe.
I’d been planning to give it to her at the next club party.
The silver and black leather with “Property of Dutch” embroidered across the back.
Proof that I had been thinking about claiming her, even while I was balls-deep in Crystal.
Had been thinking about it since the day I first laid eyes on my woman.
Holden shot me a knowing look—he’d been with me when I’d picked it up from the leather shop.
“You didn’t have to say it,” Glitch said, still not looking up from his laptop. “Actions speak louder than words, Prez. And your actions were saying one thing while your dick was saying another.”
The rage that had been building all week finally exploded. I stalked over to Glitch and slammed my hand down on the bar next to his laptop, making him flinch. “Watch your fucking mouth.”
Glitch’s fingers stilled on the keyboard, but he didn’t look up. His voice was quiet, almost too quiet. “Maybe she wouldn’t have left if you’d treated her right.”
I leaned in closer, my voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “What did you say?”
Glitch’s jaw tightened, but he still didn’t look up. “Nothing, Prez.”
“Dutch.” Holden’s voice cut through my fury. “Step back. He’s not wrong.”
I straightened up, my chest heaving. “You’re all supposed to have my back.”
“We do have your back,” Colt said. “That’s why we’re telling you this. Because watching you destroy yourself over a woman who’s clearly done with you isn’t doing anyone any good.”
“She’s not done with me.”
“Then where is she?” Glitch asked. “If she’s just cooling off, why won’t she answer your calls? Why did she turn off her phone?”
I didn’t have answers for any of those questions, and that annoyed me more than I wanted to admit.
“Maybe,” Holden said quietly, “you should ask yourself what you’re really fighting for here. Are you trying to get Indira back because you love her, or because you can’t stand that she walked away from you?”
I’d been telling myself this was about not giving up on what we had.
But if I was honest—really honest—a big part of my obsession was about the fact that no one had ever left me before.
Women didn’t walk away from Dutch Van Der Berg, President of the Venom Riders MC.
They threw themselves at me. I was the one who decided when relationships ended.
But underneath all that wounded pride was something I didn’t want to name—the ache of missing her laugh, the way she’d steal my coffee every morning, the heat of her curled against me at night.
“I need a drink,” I muttered.
“You need food and sleep,” Holden said. “And maybe a shower.”
“I need a fucking drink.”
My hands were shaking. Not from the booze. From something worse.
I grabbed a bottle of Jack from behind the bar and headed for the door. Behind me, I could hear the low murmur of my brothers discussing what to do about their train wreck of a prez. Let them talk. I had more important things to worry about.
Like figuring out how to find a woman who didn’t want to be found.
The Rusty Nail was exactly what I needed—sticky floors, blown-out speakers, neon beer signs casting everything in sick red light. I found a corner booth with cracked vinyl seats and settled in with my bottle, determined to drink until the constant ache in my chest went away.
Three hours later, I was well on my way to accomplishing that goal when some asshole in a Metallica t-shirt decided to make my night worse.
“Hey, aren’t you that biker guy whose old lady ran off?” he called out from across the bar. “Heard she got tired of sharing you with half the county.”
The entire bar went quiet. Every eye turned to me, waiting to see what the dangerous biker president would do.
What I should have done was walk away. What I should have done was remember that I was representing the club, that starting fights in public would bring heat we didn’t need. Instead, I put down my bottle and walked over to where Metallica t-shirt was sitting with his buddies.
“What’d you say?” I asked quietly.
“Nothing, man. Just heard through the grapevine that your woman got tired of—”
I didn’t let him finish. My fist connected with his jaw with a satisfying crack, and he went down like a sack of rocks. His friends jumped up, ready for a fight, and for a moment I was ready to give them one.
Then strong hands grabbed my arms, and I found myself being hauled toward the door by Colt and Holden.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I demanded as they shoved me into the passenger seat of Holden’s truck.
“Glitch tracked your phone,” Colt said grimly. “Good thing, too, because you were about to start a war in there.”
“Asshole had it coming.”
“Maybe. But you’re the club prez, Dutch. You can’t go around beating up every drunk idiot who runs his mouth about your personal life.”
As we drove back to the clubhouse, I stared out the window at the passing streetlights and tried to figure out when everything had gone so wrong. Two weeks ago, I’d had it all—the respect of my brothers, a thriving club, and a woman who looked at me like I hung the fucking moon.
Now I had a missing woman who’d vanished without a trace, a bunch of brothers who thought it was okay to tell their prez what to do, and civilians who thought they could take the piss out of me in public. Everything was falling apart, and I was the common denominator.
Fuck my life.