Chapter 7 Nic
SEVEN
NIC
I love this time of the night. It’s late. Everyone’s sleeping or left for the day, and the clubhouse is quiet. No noise or demands. Just me, a bottle, and peace.
And fuck knows I need that.
I should sleep too, but the couch in my office is breaking my spine and honestly, I haven’t had a proper night’s sleep since I became president.
This shit should be done. We should be rebuilding, not still digging through the rubble.
We’re still no closer to finding out who Blade was working with. For the last three days, Diesel’s tried every trick he knows to figure out who owns that fucking number. There’s no name on the account, not even a rogue message that hints at their identity. Every road is a dead end.
Which is fucking brilliant.
I can feel the irritation burning through me, even though I expected that outcome. Burners exist for a reason, but it still sits under my skin like a splinter. I don’t like mysteries, and I sure as fuck don’t like waiting for the next hit to come.
And that’s exactly how it feels. Like I’m just waiting to be punched.
The quiet presses in enough for my mind to drift down the hallway to where she’s sleeping. Keeley fills my thoughts without my permission more than she should and more than I should allow.
I roll the glass between my fingers, letting the motion calm the storm brewing inside me. She’s not her brother—that much is fucking obvious.
She’s funny, smart mouthed, interesting and she fights help even when she’s bleeding. But she looked like I’d handed her something fragile when I said she mattered.
That’s stayed with me since I said it.
I exhale slowly, as if the measured breath can help. It doesn’t. Keeley should never have been dragged out of her life, and I hate that I can’t let her go back to it either. Not when there’s someone out there weighing up her worth. When they could come for her at any moment.
I’m waiting for the call, the demand to hand her back. The radio silence is unsettling. Blade’s contact should know by now that he’s dead and that Keeley’s gone.
What’s this fucker waiting for?
I knock back the rest of the drink, placing the empty glass down as the door creaks open.
I straighten without thinking as Keeley steps into the room.
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
She pauses just inside as her eyes adjust to the low light and my pulse kicks hard. My gaze slides toward the door before coming back to her. It’s locked. I know it is because I checked it three times before I sat down.
She moves across the room like she’s trying not to wake the clubhouse, still limping on that bad hip, even with Spencer’s painkillers.
I track every step she takes, my jaw clenched so tight it makes my teeth hurt. Irritation that she’s walking on it, but also frustration that she didn’t listen to me.
Don’t you fucking dare. Not after every warning I gave you.
If she thinks she can outrun whatever’s coming without my help she’s deluded.
I’m ready to stop whatever escape attempt she’s making this time, when she slips behind the bar instead of drifting toward to the main door, like I expect.
I pause, halfway out of my chair, and watch as she opens the fridge and grabs a bottle of water.
What…?
She closes the fridge. Maybe she’ll go to the door now.
She doesn’t.
Instead, she crosses back toward her room, not the exit.
“Keeley.”
She yelps like I fired a gun. The bottle slips from her fingers and smacks against the floor, rolling under a table. I raise a brow as she spins to face me, palm flattened to her chest.
“Are you out of your mind?” Keeley hisses. “Why are you sitting in the dark like some kind of biker vampire?”
The lights are low, but it’s not that dark in here. My lips twitch despite the heaviness I’ve been wrestling with all night. “What the fuck is a biker vampire?”
She bends and picks up the bottle. “Do you know who sits in the dark at midnight with no lights on? Serial killers, Nic.”
I am a killer. Just not the kind she’s thinking of. I’ve ended more lives than I can count, but never without reason and never for the thrill of it.
“I was enjoyin’ the peace.”
Keeley scowls, but her fear and anger is morphing into something less sharp. “I’m going to get you a bell for around your neck,” she mutters, “so I can hear when you’re lurking.”
“Good idea. Maybe I should tag you. Save myself the cardio when you disappear.” I ignore her glare and kick the chair out opposite me. “Sit.”
“I’m not going to run,” she mutters.
“Great. Glad we cleared that up. Sit.” When she doesn’t move, I add, “You shouldn’t be walkin’ on that.” I nod toward her hip.
“It’s fine. I’m medicated.”
I stare at her. She stares back. Then she huffs out a breath and moves to the chair.
As she sits, I take in the bruises on her face and the tiredness in her eyes. Beneath it all is anger and frustration. Fear too, and something else. Something that catches my attention. She doesn’t look directly at me for too long, as if she’s scared to let her gaze linger.
That’s… curious.
“Is that why you’re sitting here in the dark guarding the exits?” Her question slips out quietly. “In case I try to run?”
“No, Keeley. I wasn’t stakin’ out the door. I was havin’ a drink.”
Her eyes drop to the glass in front of me, then to the bottle before sliding back to me, guilt dancing in her eyes. “Right. Well, just so you know, I’m not planning anything. You scared me enough to realise I can’t do this alone.”
That pulls a grimace out of me. I wanted her to listen, not fold.
“Didn’t mean for that.”
I offer her the bottle, and she hesitates for a second before taking it.
“You didn’t say anything I didn’t need to hear.
” She sighs, her eyes flicking to mine. “I feel like I’ve been holding my breath since that cage, just waiting for something to happen.
I wish I could speak to my brother and try to understand why he did this. ”
My good mood. Poof. Gone.
I go still before I cover it. It would be a good time to tell her Blade’s dead, but I don’t.
Because she’s not drowning right now and I don’t want to be the one to shove her under the water again.
And because once I tell her, she’ll want to know details and I don’t want her to look at me like I’m the villain, even if I am.
“You hungry?” I don’t know what makes me ask it.
It throws her off balance as much as it does me. Her eyes flare for a second in surprise before she recovers. “I—yeah. Sure. I could eat. Are you planning on cooking? Because I can barely manage pasta.”
I snort. If she’d seen me in the kitchen, she wouldn’t ask that. “No, I’m not makin’ somethin’. I burn water.”
“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” she says, picking at the label on the bottle. “You look like someone who lives on a diet of protein shakes and steroids.”
This time, she catches me off guard. She throws humour at things that should have broken her. It pulls an unexpected low laugh out of me before I can catch it, and it feels good. She’s easy to talk to when she’s not looking at me like I’m the enemy.
“I prefer Chinese food,” I say.
“How normal of you.” She smiles and fuck, that does something to me it shouldn’t. It starts to thaws out some of those places inside me I thought were cold.
“What about you?”
She shrugs. “I’ll eat anything except crustaceans or cephalopods. It’s a rule I have.”
There it is again, that funny ease she has. Yeah, I like it more than I should. “You don’t like ‘em or you choose not to eat them?”
Keeley gives me that look—the one that says this should be obvious. “I eat with my eyes, Nic.” She sighs dramatically, adding a hand wave for flourish. “Anything with body parts, legs still attached, or visible suction cups is a hard no.”
“Got you,” I say, stifling a smile. “No food that looks like it did when it was alive. Tell me what you want, and I’ll order.”
“Nice idea, but I didn’t stop to pick up my purse while I was being kidnapped.”
She says it flippantly, but it doesn’t land that way for me. For a second, I just stare at her.
Does she really think I’m the kind of man who’d hand her a bill after dragging her out of hell?
It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. That’s not who I am. “You don’t pay for shit while under my roof.”
That breaks the bubble. I see the moment she retreats behind the walls I was just scaling over the top of.
Brilliant fucking job, Nic.
She goes quiet. I don’t like that I can’t read what she’s thinking.
“I appreciate everything you’ve done and are still doing for me, but I’m not stupid, Nic.
The room. The doctor. The food. It comes at a price.
These things always do.” She pulls the hoodie further down her hands, like she can vanish into the fabric.
“The voice in my head, the one trained by years of dealing with men like my brother, knows nothing is free. Kindness always costs something.”
I stare at her for a beat too long. The fact she thinks this is how this works unsettles me. “You think I’m keepin’ a runnin’ tab?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know you well enough to trust this doesn’t have strings attached.” She stares at the water bottle, sweating on the table in front of her. “I don’t know what the rules are here.”
What the fuck did Blade do to her to make her think care comes with an invoice?
“It’s just dinner, Keeley,” I say quietly.
“Right.” She whispers as if it pains her. “Just dinner now, but seriously, Nic, what’s that cost me later? I’d rather know upfront if you’re expecting certain… things in return.”
I suck in a breath as the unspoken meaning hits. My fingers grip her chin, gentle, but forcing her gaze to mine. Fuck, this was a mistake. The moment my skin touches hers, my control tries to splinter.
Her breath stutters, as if she senses something, or maybe she’s just reacting to my touch, but the air feels too tight.
Let her go, Nic.
I shouldn’t touch her, not like this, not with whatever heat is buzzing under my skin, not with something softer curling in my belly.
But I need her to see how serious I am when I say this. I need to touch her when I do. “None of this will cost you now or later,” I say, evenly. “Not money. Not assets. Not you. Takin’ care of you ain’t a debt you repay, Keeley. Understand?”
She swallows, her eyes wide.
I don’t let her go until she nods, but her fingers trail over where I touched her, like she’s memorising it.
Then she exhales slowly, like it costs her more than she has to give. “What I get depends on which takeaway you’re ordering from. They’re not all created equal.”
“Yeah? You got rules about that?”
“Obviously.”
The friction eases and I let myself relax. “How about you pick?”
Her shoulders loosen too and she gives me a tentative smile before she says, “Deal.”