Chapter 17
Army
After being awake for far too many hours, my body finally collapsed onto my bed for some much-needed sleep when I returned from Leeva’s hotel. Now I’m awake and freshly showered. Today I’m dressed as Army, sergeant-at-arms and road captain of the Havoc Guardians, not Leeva’s masked man.
When I pull up the feed from the bugs I planted in her hotel suite, I watch her with a towel wrapped around her stunning body and another one around her hair.
I curse my stupidity for not planting a bug in the ensuite.
I want to see her, always and in every state.
I’m already invading her privacy, so what’s one more step across the boundary?
I sit in my room, watching her. Heat rises within me as her towel hits the floor, revealing her beautiful, curvy body over the screen.
She slips into a light-gray wool dress that falls to mid-calf, with long, fitted sleeves and a high neckline, and pairs it with low heels.
She dries her hair, then braids it into an intricate design and applies clear lip gloss. She’s the image of an elegant woman.
Her decadent curves aren’t hidden by the dress which wraps around her like perfection. She isn’t trying to seduce, though, not like she did in that black silk dress at Hedon, but she isn’t trying to hide her body, either.
This is a confident woman, so different from the too-thin young girl I once knew, the one who fought every change her body tried to make.
Clearly, a great deal has changed with Leeva in the years we’ve been apart, including her wealth.
I don’t give a shit about her money, though. I’m a wealthy man myself, even though I don’t display it like most. Leeva could be penniless, and my plans would still be the same.
To claim her as mine.
Finally.
She may look like an elegant, refined woman, all pure and innocent, but I now know the siren she keeps hidden from the world—and I’ll gladly take her hand to guide her deeper into the world of kinky pleasure she’s seeking.
In fact, I’ll kill any other man who tries to mar her innocence and purity. That is only for me to do.
Leeva walks out of her bedroom and into the main room of her suite, and I shift to those cameras to watch her. She moves like a dancer, lithe and graceful, her curvy hips and fucking delectable ass swaying.
I rise and go to my bedroom door as Leeva goes to hers to exit her suite.
Usually, whenever I have someone under surveillance, I have Digits to help.
He’d hack into the security systems to monitor them and follow them on the CCTV system.
But since neither Digits nor any of my other closest friends know what I’m doing, I can’t involve him.
I really should’ve been at the Empress Hotel, waiting for this exact scenario where Leeva leaves her hotel, but sleep had been a necessity.
I might not be able to track where she goes once she leaves, and I don’t like that she’ll be out of my sight, but I know where she’s staying and where she’ll return.
But if you know she’s back—and Len does, too, my mind reminds me, then Guerilla could also know she’s back.
“Shit.” My movements quicken as I grab my keys. My need for watching Leeva shifting from solely being stalker-obsessive to protective. There’s no way my bastard brother is getting his hands on Leeva again.
But I stumble to a stop when I open my door. Digits and Pix are in the hallway; he has her caged against her bedroom door with his palms on either side of her head.
Pix is like a sister to Ash, Bane, Digits, and me. However, all of us—except Pix—know that Digits harbors a secret love for her that goes far deeper than sisterly love.
She had a horrendous upbringing for the first eleven years of her life at the hands of her mother.
When Zeus found out that Pix’s dad, who was a member of the MC, had known about this but hadn’t intervened, he killed both her parents and adopted her.
After that, Pix was raised alongside Ash, Bane, Digits, and me.
She has never shown Digits any affection beyond the sister-brother bond that had formed among all of us, and he never pushed it.
Obviously, something had changed.
They become aware of me, and Digits looks over his shoulder at me with a frown. She uses that distraction to open her bedroom door and slip inside. We hear the lock engage, and Digits’ head snaps back to the door, and he curses.
Gripping the back of his cut, I pull him across the hallway and into my room, closing the door behind us. I still feel an urgent need to get to Leeva; however, I’ll take the time to check in with my brother and friend.
“What’s going on?” I ask, concerned.
Pix isn’t one to tuck tail and run; she lives for addressing everything head-on—usually with one of her knives, mainly her favorite ice-pick one. Her name, Pix, is both for the pixie likeness she has and her love of that particular knife.
Digits threads his fingers through his curly hair, mussing it up even more. Then he looks at me, and I can see his tortured brown eyes behind his glasses.
Suddenly, it clicks, and I feel like a piece of shit. I’ve been so wrapped up in my own world that I haven’t given any thought to anyone else.
“Is Pix okay?”
Recently, Bane’s old lady, Slade, had come under threat, and Pix had been directly involved in exposing and eliminating it. To do that, she’d had to put herself in the hands of a psychopath.
It was all part of a larger plot to expose the villain in a very public way and take him down, along with the other heinous motherfuckers involved. Pix hadn’t hesitated, though; she’d said yes immediately, determined to protect Slade and bring down the bad guys. But that didn’t make her infallible.
Digits heaves out a breath. “She’s fine in that regard. I’ve been watching her closely.”
He avoids my eyes as he openly admits he’s been watching her over the security feeds.
So, I’m not the only one spying on the woman I love. Dually noted.
“She’s fine and not triggered,” he adds.
“But?”
His eyes swing to me with anger. “It’s fucking Raffaello Romani,” he grits through clenched teeth.
Ah, yes. Things are coming into focus now.
Raffaello Romani—or Raf—is Vito Santoro’s right-hand man. And he’s expressed interest in Pix. Which, understandably, has pushed Digits into the jealous, possessive territory that I can understand and appreciate.
“And you—”
“I’m not talking about this,” he cuts me off with a snarl.
“Digits… It’s me.”
He shakes his head, narrowing his eyes. “I wanted to talk to you, anyway. About some of my missing tech. Particularly the Aurix Nodes.”
The bugs I “borrowed” from his stash of top-tier tech that allow for audio and visual surveillance.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie nonchalantly, making him snort.
“Bullshit. Leeva returns out of the blue, my tech goes missing, and you think I wouldn’t put two and two together.”
“You mean Kathryn Wentzell, who looks like Leeva—”
“Where is she?” He’s not buying my diversion bullshit.
My hackles raise. “Why?”
He shoves his hand through his hair again, looking frustrated but concerned. “Because, brother, I’m trying to save your ass. To stop you from getting yourself killed.”
“She doesn’t have Guerilla’s tattoo,” I admit. “It’s not hidden or covered. It’s completely gone.” I still can’t understand how, but it’s the truth.
His brow furrows deeply. “Then Kathryn Wentzell isn’t Leeva, Army.”
“You ran the facial analysis.” I know he would’ve, to confirm, just like Len had her tech expert do. “You know it’s Leeva, Digits.”
Concern and denial still cover his face.
“Even if she doesn’t have the tattoo, if there’s scarring, that’s enough of a case for Guerilla to make against you that his mark and claim on her still exists.
And if any of the MC members feel the same way—like the asshole old guard, who is going to be looking for anything to hit at you right now—then the case would build against you.
Razor would gladly make you face the same punishment Grinder did… the punishment you delivered, Army.”
“There’s nothing,” I stress. “No discoloration, no scarring, not even a change in the skin texture.”
“That’s…rare if a tattoo has been removed.”
“But not impossible.”
He shakes his head. “The facial recognition program was wrong, then. Faulty. It can’t be Leeva.”
“She whispered my name in her sleep.”
He goes still, his eyes widening as he stares at me. “You slept with her?”
“Not last night when she whispered my name.”
My weak attempt at deflecting doesn’t work to diminish his concern for me. “Jesus. How the hell did this happen? Does Ash know?”
I ignore his first question, not wanting anyone to know about Leeva attending Hedon. Not that I’m ashamed, but because that’s our secret. “No one knows, except for you.”
“So she’s forgiven you?”
I can’t tell Digits that Leeva has no idea it was me she slept with at Hedon, and that I have no idea if she’s forgiven me. Or that, if she finds out that I’m the masked man, she might not forgive me for that, either.
But I’m determined to make her fall so fucking hard for the way her masked man makes her feel that she won’t care it’s her best friend giving her this level of unholy pleasure and ecstasy.
“It’s complicated,” I say instead of admitting anything more damning than I already have. “I need your help, though.”
He holds up his hands. “I’m not helping you dig your own grave.”
“She’s. Not. Guerilla’s,” I growl with malice. “She’s mine.”
“It’s a fucking technicality.”
“Our laws clearly state: tattoo, old lady. No tattoo, no claim of ownership. Leeva doesn’t have Guerilla’s tattoo, not anymore. She’s not his; ergo, she can be mine.”
“Ergo?” His eyebrows fly up, and he smirks. But the seriousness of our discussion pushes back in. “You’re walking a very thin, very dangerous fine line, Army.”
Don’t I know it. Not only for the MC’s law, but when it comes to Leeva and the masked man who fucked her filthy.
“And I need your help to keep this between you and me. For now,” I add quickly, knowing neither of us wants to withhold secrets from Ash, Bane, and Pix. “Let me figure out how Leeva got Guerilla’s tattoo removed like it never existed.”
It never should have fucking existed.
“And help me keep an eye on her. I have her hotel suite covered.” I basically admit to taking the Aurix Nodes to bug her hotel suite. “But I need help when she leaves her suite or the hotel itself.”
He hisses air through his teeth. “Not to mention figuring out why she returned, or why she flew on a private jet under a different name and is seemingly the widow of a billionaire.”
“Leave that to me. But I need you to track down Guerilla and monitor him.”
Unease fills Digits’ expression, and he pushes up his glasses. “You think he’ll have his own resources that flagged her return.”
“It’s entirely possible. I know he hunted for her after she ran. Do we know where my bastard brother is?”
A frown pulls Digits’ mouth tight. “I lost him around the time you came back from the Marines. Last known whereabouts before that had him hanging out with the Buzzards MC in Oklahoma.”
“If he patched-in with them, giving up his ties to the Havoc Guardians to do that, then this is all a moot point. Our MC law only applies to our members.”
Digits nods. “That would be ideal.”
No, what would be ideal is if my bastard brother hadn’t moved in on my territory, trying to take Leeva from me in the first place.
I push out the toxic air inside me. I hate Guerilla’s fucking guts so much I want to put a hole in his chest with a twelve-gauge shotgun.
“We good?” I ask Digits cautiously.
He stares hard at me, but finally nods. “We can’t keep this from Ash and the others for long. I’ll give you a week; then you need to come clean with them. For your sake, brother.”
I dip my head, acknowledging and accepting the limitations that come with his assistance.
“We’ll always have your back, Army. Even if it’s to save you from yourself.”
But I don’t need them to save me from anything. Because now that Leeva is back, I feel alive again in a way I haven’t for years. And I vow that I’ll bring her back home where she belongs.
With me.