Chapter 18
East
The ride back from the clubhouse is restless, the engines of our bikes a low growl that does nothing to quiet the thoughts storming in my head. The meeting was a necessary evil—plans laid, resources allocated—but every minute away from the house felt like a risk.
As we pull into my driveway, the crunch of our tires on the gravel is the only sound as I kill my engine. Nash kills his right beside me, and Kyle, our new shadow, pulls in behind us. A figure detaches from the shadows of the porch. Rider. The prospect gives a sharp, respectful nod.
“Anything?” I ask, swinging my leg off my bike.
“All quiet, man,” he says. “No cars, no lurkers. Nothing.”
“Good,” I say in a tight voice. “Stay sharp. We’re heading out again as soon as I grab something. You’re with us. Backup.”
“Copy that,” Rider says, giving a single nod before melting back toward the bikes, a loyal shadow waiting for orders.
I take the porch steps two at a time, Nash a heavy, silent presence at my back, Kyle’s nervous energy radiating behind him.
The lock turns with a quiet click, and I push the door open, my body tensed, ready for anything.
Nash follows me inside, while Kyle respectfully stays at the door, acting as lookout.
The house is quiet, just as I left it. But Darla’s not in the guest room.
She’s on the couch, curled into the corner with a blanket drawn around her shoulders, her knees pulled up to her chest, staring at the blank TV screen.
Her eyes are distant, lost in thoughts I can only imagine.
She looks impossibly small, but when her head turns toward me, there’s nothing small about the look on her face. It’s sharp. Waiting.
“Hey,” I say, my voice softer than I intended. “You should be resting.”
“I tried,” she says, her voice low but clear. “The quiet is too loud.” Her gaze is unwavering as she looks past me at Nash. “So, what happened at the meeting?”
My first instinct is to protect, to shield, to lie. “You don’t need to worry about that. We’re handling it,” I say, but the words sound hollow even to my ears.
“No,” she says, the single word sharp as a blade.
She pushes the blanket off and stands, a sharp wince of pain crossing her face as her bruised ribs protest the sudden movement.
Her bare feet are silent on the wood floor.
The oversized shirt hangs off her frame, but she stands tall, her chin lifted defiantly.
The bruise on her cheek is darker now, but her eyes burn with a fire that negates any sign of weakness.
“Don’t you dare shut me out, East. Not now,” she asserts, stepping closer. “That was my father. My life. My fight. You don’t get to hide the consequences from me.”
This isn't the broken girl from last night. This is someone else. Someone forged in fire.
“Darla, it’s not for you to carry—” I start, but she cuts me off.
“Not for me to carry?” Her laugh is a brittle, heartbreaking sound that makes her flinch again, her hand instinctively going to her side.
“I was the one at that... that human trafficking ring dressed up as a gala. He put his hands on me. I was the one who pulled the trigger.” She says it without flinching, her words a testament to the hell she walked through.
“I have carried it. I am still carrying it. What I won’t carry is being left in the dark while men make decisions about my life. I am done with that.”
Her words hit me with the force of a physical blow. She’s right. To shield her now isn't protection—it's just another cage. It's the same thing her father did, just with a different motive.
My shoulders slump, the fight draining out of me, replaced by a wave of profound respect. I cross the room toward the couch and turn, leaning my hips back against the arm of it so I'm facing her, bridging the gap between us.
“You’re right,” I say, the admission scraping raw from my throat. “You’ve earned the right to know everything.”
She watches me, waiting to see if I’ll follow through.
I take a breath. “It’s a two-part plan. The first part already happened. Retaliation.” A slow grin spreads across my face. “Frankie gave me the details. Apparently, the girls paid Trent a visit at the hospital last night.”
Her brow furrows, a flicker of curiosity in her eyes.
“According to Frankie, they named it ‘Mission: Immasculate’,” I say, watching her closely.
“Something about emasculating him being an impossible mission? Ruby’s logic.
” I see a twitch at the corner of her mouth.
“They put your glitter boots and a feather boa on him while he was drugged up. Sloane apparently relabeled his catheter ‘Princess Tinkles’.”
A sound escapes her. It’s not a laugh, not yet, but it’s close—a choked, watery gasp of disbelief that makes my chest ache with relief.
“Ruby drew a picture of him being wheeled into the underworld by glitter demons, and Sloane got the entire nursing staff to sign it,” I finish, my grin widening. “Sloane made it happen.”
She finally looks at me, and a real, watery smile breaks through. “Princess Tinkles?”
“Princess Tinkles,” I confirm, my heart giving a hard kick. That smile is the first real victory we’ve had.
The humor fades, and my expression turns serious again.
“The second part is intel,” I continue, my voice dropping.
“We need to find Chuck Giles. The bastard is hiding after what he did to Candace, but we know he has ties to Donovan Castiel. If Winston is working with Donovan now, Chuck is our best shot at proving it.”
The name hangs in the air between us, heavy and toxic.
I see her flinch—a barely perceptible tremor that runs through her entire body.
Her hand comes up to her mouth for a split second before she presses it flat against her stomach, her knuckles going white.
The fear that flashes in her eyes is something more personal than just hearing a boogeyman’s name.
It’s the sharp, immediate terror of someone who knows for a fact that the monster is real.
Her reaction only hardens my resolve. She knows the danger. And she’s still here.
Darla’s expression shifts, the terror hardening into a familiar, fierce defiance. “I’m coming with you,” she states, her voice steady and unyielding.
My gut twists. “No. It’s too dangerous, Darla.”
Her expression hardens. “I will not sit here, useless, while you hunt down the man who helped ruin Candace’s life. When you're done, I need to be at the clubhouse. I need to be there for her. I'm not hiding anymore, East. Not from the fight, and not from being a friend.”
I run a hand through my hair, my mind racing. There’s no winning this. “Fine.” I sigh. “But Darla, your ribs are cracked. You can barely stand up without wincing. Hopping on the back of my bike is a bad idea. We’re taking the truck. It’s safer.”
Her eyes flash. “No. I want to ride with you on the bike.”
I furrow my brow. “Why? You’ve never wanted to ride with me before.”
A flicker of something painful passes across her features.
“That’s not true,” she admits, her voice so quiet I almost miss it.
“I’ve always wanted to. I was just... afraid.
” She meets my gaze, and the raw vulnerability there hits me harder than her defiance.
“I’m not afraid anymore. Not of this. I will not sit on the sidelines of my life anymore. ”
It’s a bold statement, a declaration that she trusts me. My heart hammers with a mix of bone-deep fear for her safety and a rush of admiration so fierce it leaves me breathless. I nod, my voice tight. “Okay. But you listen to me. Every word.”
I turn and grab my leather jacket from the hook by the door. I close the small space between us, my movements slow and deliberate. She goes still as I hold the heavy jacket open for her.
My voice is rougher than I intend when I say, “Arms.”
She slides her arms into the sleeves, and I see a faint wince of pain cross her face as the movement pulls at her bruised ribs. I gently settle the jacket over her shoulders, my hands lingering there for a beat too long.
“Sloane left a rib wrap in the bag,” I say, forcing my hands down. “It’ll hurt either way, but this keeps you steady.”
“Show me,” she says.
I bind her carefully—snug, not cruel—checking her face while I smooth the last edge down.
“Breathe shallow on bumps,” I murmur. “You want out at any point, you tap twice.”
“Not tapping,” she whispers, chin high.
The heavy leather swallows her small frame, and she looks impossibly fragile and fiercely strong all at once.
I’m standing so close behind her I can smell the clean, sharp scent of citrus from the soap Sloane gave her, see the vulnerable line of her neck where her still-damp hair has parted.
Every instinct in me screams to pull her back against my chest, to wrap her up and keep her here, safe in this house where the world can’t touch her.
The desire to protect her is so tangled up with the desire to simply touch her that it’s a goddamn knot in my gut.
Her breath hitches, a tiny, almost inaudible sound, and I know she feels it too—this sudden, suffocating intimacy.
A low throat clear cuts through the tension from the doorway.
“East.”
Nash’s voice is a bucket of ice water. I pull my hands back like I’ve been burned and take a step away. The moment is shattered. I turn and see him standing there, his expression unreadable, just a silent, steady reminder that we have a job to do. This isn't the time.
“Right,” I say in a tight voice. I turn back to Darla, who is looking down, rolling up the sleeves of the jacket that are comically long on her. The spell is broken, but the air between us is still humming with an unspoken current.
She swings on behind me and sucks a breath through her teeth as the leather pulls across her ribs. I reach back, palm wide and steady along her side until the spasm passes.
“Easy,” I say, angling my body so she can settle without torque. “Hands here.” I guide her grip to my hips. “Two taps if you need me to stop.”
With Darla on my bike, there’s no turning back now.
She presses against my back, and the heat radiating from her body seeps through my shirt like a live wire.
My instincts scream for control, for safety, but the thrill of her closeness is a white-hot distraction.
As we roll out, with Nash, Rider, and Kyle falling into formation around us, I’m acutely aware of her hands resting lightly on my hips.
We ride through town, and I can feel the shift as we approach the shipyards. The air thickens, laden with the scent of rust and oil. I cut the engine a short distance from the entrance, the sudden silence enveloping us in eerie stillness.
Nash’s voice is a low command in my ear through the comms. “I’m on point. Rider, get up high. Overwatch. Kyle, you’re with me. Eyes on everything.”
I let him take the lead, slipping into the familiar rhythm of an operation. His job is the mission. My job is her. I turn to Darla, my voice firm.
“You own this spot,” I say, low and firm. “If anything breathes wrong, two taps on the comms and I’m back.”
She gives a sharp nod, her eyes wide but determined. The agreement is quick, but I still sense that spark of rebellion in her, a gut feeling that tells me she won’t sit idly by if things go south.
I fall in behind Nash and Kyle, my eyes scanning the rooftops and shadowed windows, my focus split between the mission ahead and the bikes behind us.
Nash signals, and we move, creeping toward the dilapidated office.
My eyes lock onto Chuck Giles inside, his hands twitching with anxiety.
He makes a break for the back door in a desperate, clumsy scramble.
The chase is short. He shoves a stack of crates over in a pathetic attempt to slow us down before Nash cuts him off at the end of a narrow corridor between two towering stacks of shipping containers.
It’s over in an instant. Nash is a blur of motion, swift and merciless, neutralizing Chuck before a real scream can even leave his throat.
In moments, we’ve got him bound and gagged, dragging him out of the office like a trophy, but the victory feels hollow. A surge of anger churns within me, mixing with sadness for the brother Chuck used to be.
Nash hefts Chuck’s dead weight over his shoulder and looks at me, his gaze clear and direct. “I’ve got him. You and Kyle get her out of here,” he commands in a low voice. “Meet you back at the clubhouse. No stops.”
Without needing further instruction, he and Rider secure Chuck to a bike and rev their engines, disappearing into the night.
Kyle falls into step with me as we head back to Darla.
I turn back to her. She’s standing by my bike, her expression a mixture of fear and awe.
No more words are needed. We both know where we’re going next.
I swing my leg over the bike, and she settles behind me, her presence a familiar, electric heat.
The weight of our shared experience wraps around us.
This is just the beginning, and with Darla beside me, a flicker of hope ignites amidst the chaos.
This finally feels less like a promise I have to keep and more like a partnership.
Together, we’re ready to face whatever comes next.