Fire (Jagged Love)

Prologue

Luca

After class, I walk two of my yoga students out to their car, then fight the urge to smoke the cigarette stashed in my pocket the whole way back.

Stubbornness wins over my addiction—barely—and I hurry back into my studio before addiction comes back and kicks my ass in the rematch.

As soon as I flip the flimsy lock on the door, I know I’m not alone.

“Been a long time,” a deep voice sounds from the dark corner of the room.

Fuck. I knew I’d stayed way too long in Chicago. My guest lease on this studio is longer than most of the ones I signed. If I’d just stayed the two months like I usually do, I would have been back on the road where my past couldn’t have caught up with me.

“Not long enough.”

“We used to be friends.” Grave Merrik walks into my view.

He’s not wearing the sleeveless shirt and cut I was once used to seeing him wear as an enforcer for the Reivers MC.

Instead, he’s dressed in a soft blue Henley and jeans that cover his tattoos and cage in his bulging muscles.

His dark hair, which used to be long, is cut short, and his only facial hair is a short goatee and a rough five o'clock shadow from missing his morning shave.

This new, respectable look doesn’t fool me.

Grave Merrik was one of the most dangerous men I worked with in my former life as a member of the Reivers MC and the closest thing to a friend I had back then—or not.

I know him to be a stone-cold killer who never let sentiment get in the way of doing his job.

I take a deep, centering breath and remind myself that I’d always known my past would come for me someday.

I suddenly wish I’d smoked that damned cigarette. I meet Grave’s dark eyes. “You here to kill me?” I ask him point blank.

“Nah,” he says. “I don’t do that anymore.”

At the disbelieving arch of my eyebrow, he shrugs. “Well, only when I absolutely have to.”

Maybe I’ll believe him if I’m still breathing in five minutes, but until then, I’m doubtful. “Then, after six-plus years, why are you in my studio paying me this little visit?”

“I want to recruit you.”

A bitter laugh comes out of me. “I know you got busted, but you’re way out of the loop if you think the Reivers want me wearing the cut anymore.

” I pull up my shirt to expose the burn scars a fellow Reiver gave me using a blow torch.

“It nearly killed me, but I earned my right to have to never wear that fucking thing again.”

He nods in acknowledgment of my show-and-tell, his dark eyes moving cooly over my scars. “I heard about the culling.”

“Did you hear the part where I was the one who asked to be culled?”

“I did.”

“Then you should know that even if the Reivers wanted me back in their club, I’d prefer you shoot me where I stand before joining up with those bastards ever again.”

“You hate them,” he says matter of factly.

“Yep,” I agree. “And I hate myself for ever joining up with them. So unless you’re interested in the two-for-one yoga package I’m running, you can get the hell out of my studio.”

He seems to mull it over. “Dream might be. He loves all that bendy shit.”

“Dream?” The unusual name triggers an old memory of a diner waiter who went missing right before the feds caught up with Grave and hauled him off to serve time in Canada.

Dream is just one more name on the Reivers’ long list of victims. A list that haunts me every day of my life.

“Yeah. Dream is my boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend?” I scoff, not believing him for a second. The Reivers are the most homophobic pieces of shit out there. I know this. I was one of them once, and no way my old enforcer is casually mentioning having a boyfriend—not to mention one he'd terrorized and I’d always assumed he’d killed.

“It’s a long story,” he says, looking at his watch. “One I’d like to sit down and tell you about.”

I put up my hand. “Sorry, but I don’t want to hear it. Either kill me or walk back out of my life.”

He gives me a long look. “Would you still want me to walk away if I told you I’m not here to recruit you back into the Reivers?”

“Then why in the hell are you here?” I snap at him, irritated that my fucking curiosity is winning out over my common sense.

“I’m here to convince you to help me and a few other people from our past destroy them.”

Grave goes on to drop the bombshell, saying that his real name is Jack Navarro and Grave Merrik was a deep cover meant to infiltrate the Reivers and bring charges against them.

“Bullshit,” I keep repeating, trying to figure out the angle to whatever play he’s running on me.

“You’ll believe this,” he growls, frustrated at my disbelief. Then he drags me all the way to a restaurant on the east side. When we walk in, I immediately see the kid who I thought he’d killed, very much alive and waiting on a table in the bar.

The kid hasn’t changed much from what I remember of him—still sporting several piercings, tatted up, and with platinum blond hair, but now, instead of hot pink, the tips are rainbow-colored.

Grave’s eyes go soft as he spots the young waiter, who, seeing us enter, walks away from the table, jumps straight into Grave’s arms, and kisses him. Grave immediately pulls Dream closer and returns the kiss with an unmistakable, fiery passion.

My head spins at the sight.

The Grave I knew before wasn’t capable of looking at anyone with such pure adoration. He viewed the world, and everyone in it, with cold, dead eyes that ran a chill up your spine if he looked at you. That man is nowhere in this room right now.

Grave was right. Seeing him with Dream kills any suspicions that he’s been lying to me.

“Get a room,” a bartender teases from the service well, her face set in an amused smile.

If anything, the comment seems to fuel the fire as the kiss between the lovers ramps up. Just when I’m wondering if clothes will start coming off, Dream pulls back despite Grave’s growl of protest.

Dream looks behind Grave to see that most of the customers and staff of the busy restaurant are an audience to his PDA.

A triumphant smile crosses his face. “That was just a little show for the new waitress who keeps flirting with you.” He gives a tug to Grave’s goatee.

“I wanted to let her know you’re taken.”

“What waitress?” Grave asks cluelessly.

“Good answer.” Dream drops a light kiss on Grave’s puzzled brow and then steps back from him.

“She better have paid attention. Cause if not, next time I see her pretending to bump into you so she can rub her tits all over you, I’ll remind her by dumping a bowl of clam chowder over that expensive new haircut she keeps bragging about. ”

I chuckle at Dream’s clearly pointless jealousy, and he turns his attention to me.

“Luca, right? I remember you from the diner.” He holds his hand out to shake. “You were one of the few Reivers who didn’t suck.”

I shake his hand. “The bar was set pretty low.”

“Sure as hell was.” Dream huffs but then smiles at me. “But you never called me any ugly names and always left me really generous tips.”

At the time, I’d been hoping he’d use them for a bus ticket out of Adeline, Kentucky. I’d known how close to danger a guy like him with his pink-tipped hair and rainbow-colored barbed wire tattoo was in that town.

“I’m just glad you made it out of there alive,” I tell him, knowing there were too many others who weren’t as fortunate as Dream.

Grave’s muscular arms wrap around Dream protectively. “He came way too close to not making it out of there.”

“But I did.” Dream pats Grave on the chest. “We both did.”

Grave lets out a long breath and turns to me.

“Almost losing him was what finally made me see that I was never going to take down the Reivers through a law enforcement agency, even a covert one. There were too many higher-ups making sure that didn’t happen, no matter how much evidence of their criminal activities I collected. ”

“The Reivers are too powerful to be brought down.” The words burn in my gut no matter how many hundreds of hours I’ve tried meditating, trying to make peace with it.

“Not anymore,” Grave insists.

“What’s changed?” I demand. “What’s different now than when you were undercover? They’re still in bed with a lot of nasty, powerful people who make them untouchable.”

“Cash Mcree.”

“Digger’s son? I heard he’s the Reivers’ lead enforcer now.”

Grave nods. “But he’s been working from the inside for the last five years to take the Reivers down, and now he’s teamed up with Johnny Devon.”

Interesting. The son of Hawk Devon, Digger’s co-founder in starting the Reivers, is also looking to destroy his father’s legacy.

I whistle. “That’s a pretty big project for two angry sons who want to piss off their fathers.”

“It’s not just them. They’ve got a group of talented friends helping out, and my old boss, who now runs a private black ops company, and I are joining the fight.”

“Why get involved in this?” I look at him, holding his boyfriend in his arms. “You got out. Why risk everything you have now to settle old scores?”

“Jack’s—” Dream says, referring to his boyfriend’s real name, which I haven’t gotten the hang of using quite yet. “—time with the Reivers haunts him. He deserves the chance to finally get closure so we can move on with our lives together.”

Haunted. I know that feeling. But is there ever any moving on with your life after the things we witnessed? The things we did?

Grave and Dream share a long look between them, and then he returns his attention to me. “I want to see them burn, and I want you to help me light the fucking fire.”

I take a step back and put my hands up. “I’m not your guy for this.”

“But your history with the Rei—”

“My history with them is exactly why you don’t want me anywhere near this.”

“Explain,” Grave demands. “You were an indispensable part of my crew. I always wanted you at my back.”

I shake my head. “I swore to myself if I lived through the culling, I was done with hurting anyone ever again. I don’t have the fight left in me anymore.”