Chapter 5
Becki
Sleep won’t come.
It slinks around the edges of my mind, prowling but never landing, like everything else in this godforsaken clubhouse.
The bed beneath me digs into my spine, the thin mattress doing nothing to soften the ache in my hips. The chain at my wrist rattles every time I move. A small sound. Barely anything. But in the thick quiet, it screams.
The air feels too hot. Too heavy. Like it’s trying to smother me into obedience.
Royal hasn’t come back since earlier in the day. I have no idea what time it is anymore.
You’d think that would be a relief.
It ain’t.
His absence presses harder than his presence ever did. When he's here, I know where the danger is. I can see it. Breathe it. Fight it. When he’s gone, I have nothing but my own heartbeat and every terrible truth echoing in the dark.
The chain is long enough so I can pace the room and reach the stainless steel toilet in the corner.
The small sink. There’s no mirror so I’m not even sure what I look like.
I roll onto my back and stare at the water stain above me.
It’s shaped like a rabbit, or a skull, or maybe an angel on fire.
It depends how much madness I’m willing to let drip into my bloodstream.
Outside the door, voices murmur. Low. Grim.
I sit up fast, bare feet hitting the cold cement. Slinking to the floor, I crawl over and press my ear to the door, breath held.
“She ain’t talking,” a biker says. Oaks. I’d recognize that almost-laugh anywhere.
“She doesn’t know,” Royal answers, calm as a blade laid flat. “Or she’s good at pretending.”
Another voice joins in. Rougher. Derby. “Either way, another girl’s gone. That makes six. All once members of Pearly Gates.”
My blood turns to ice.
Boots shift. Someone exhales sharply. Then Oaks again. “They say she went willingly. Like she knew the driver. Cross hanging from the mirror.”
A symbol of innocence. A lure.
Or a warning.
“You think the Reverend’s involved?” Oaks asks.
Silence.
Royal’s silence is never empty. It’s a sentence. A truth he ain’t ready to say aloud.
The moment I hear the quiet grit of his teeth, something breaks in me. I step back from the door, letting the chain drag against metal. Loud enough for them to know I hear everything.
The lock turns.
I’m already pacing when he enters.
Royal fills the doorway like a shadow carved into a man. Hoodie low. Hands in pockets. Eyes unreadable and yet burning.
“Back to interrogate the prisoner?” I snap.
He shuts the door behind him. Slowly. Purposefully. His silence wraps around me like fog.
“You think I’m the problem,” I say, tugging the chain taut. “But I’m the only one asking real questions.”
His jaw ticks, the smallest tell he has.
“You want answers?” I step closer. “Start asking the right questions.”
“What do you know, Becki?” he asks, voice deep, low, almost tender but not in a safe way.
Tender like the moment before the knife slides in.
Sitting on the bed, I let my voice soften. “I knew those girls. Josie. Marlena. Cammy. I sang with them. Laughed with them. Snuck wine from the Reverend’s cabinet with them.”
He stays still.
“Some of them came to club parties,” I whisper. “Y’all don’t card. They liked the noise. The dirt. The danger. Derby used to sneak them barbecue from the pit and tell them stories about the races. Whiskey taught them how to play liar’s dice. They weren’t bad girls. Just… curious.”
His eyes flicker at the mention of his brothers. Connections forming. Or breaking.
“Then they disappeared,” I say. The word fractures in my throat.
Royal steps forward, slow and heavy, like the earth itself is shifting with him. He stops inches away, his heat rolling over me.
“I ain’t the Reverend,” he says.
“No,” I bite out. “You’re worse. He at least pretends to love the people he hurts. You just watch.”
Something in him snaps. Quietly. Like a thread pulled too tight.
“You want me to stop you, Becki?” he murmurs, voice curling around me like smoke. “Because I’ve been doing everything, I can not to touch you.”
My pulse stutters.
“Why not?” I whisper.
His eyes are drawn to the chain around my wrist.
To my bare thighs.
To the tank top sticking to my skin with sweat.
He swallows.
He actually swallows.
Royal doesn’t react. He doesn’t breathe loud. He doesn’t break.
But right now, he’s breaking.
The moment stretches thin as wire.
Dangerous.
Fragile.
Then he turns abruptly, like if he stays, he’ll do something we both can’t come back from.
“You’re staying,” he says at the door. “Until we figure this out.”
“I ain’t your prisoner.”
“You are,” he says softly. “Legend wants answers. And you’re a question I don’t know how to answer.”
He leaves.
Somehow, the stillness after he left is like fingers closing around my throat.
I drop back onto the cot, adrenaline buzzing under my skin. My hand slides beneath my tank top, fingers brushing the hidden key. Cold metal. My one weapon.
The Reverend’s basement key.
I stole it weeks ago when I still believed I could outmaneuver my daddy.
When I still believed I had to help him get Paradise Falls.
Back after I lost my job at the Hollar Dollar, my only real income aside from Legend’s scraps.
But now? This key might save more than just me.
Because Pearly Gates ain’t a church. It’s a trap.
A machine that eats girls whole. Just like it ate my soul. I slide the key under the mattress and lie perfectly still, waiting for the night to thicken. Hours drip by. Near midnight, the lock clicks.
I go limp.
Slow my breathing. Pretend sleep. Royal enters. I don’t move. But every nerve in my body rises toward him like a tide.
His boots pause beside the cot. He’s close enough I can sniff cedar, smoke, and the faint metallic tang of his blade oil. The chain tugs lightly when I shift in fake-sleep. My shirt rides up, baring a strip of skin.
I hear his breath catch. A single, sharp inhale.
Then nothing.
But the air hums. Crackles. Like storm clouds rubbing together.
He watches me.
Long enough for my heartbeat to sync with the silence. Long enough for me to feel him come undone by inches. I hear a zipper. He’s touching himself. Then he backs away. Leaves without touching me.
The door clicks shut.
My eyes fly open, and I grin. Because Royal thinks he’s in control. He thinks he’s the jailer. But I’ve got the key.
Literally.
And figuratively.
And Royal?
Royal is already losing this fight. I know for sure as the door clicks again.
So soon.
Not soft this time.
Not careful.
A sharp, decisive sound, like metal sliding into a sheath.
I sit up on the cot, the chain rattling as I move. Royal steps inside, hood down, face set, shoulders rigid beneath leather and tension. But this time… there’s something else.
The gleam of steel at his belt.
His knife.
Not one of the cheap folding ones some bikers carry. Royal’s favorite, the fixed-blade, black-handled one he sharpens every night like ritual.
The one he trusts more than people.
“You’re awake,” he says, voice like smoke and death.
“I wonder why?” I murmur, letting my eyes drop deliberately to the blade at his hip. “You stomp around like you’re hunting something.”
His gaze follows mine. Just for a second.
But it’s enough.
Royal’s hand settles near the knife, not touching it… but close. Too close. He always does that when he’s fighting the urge to act. The other bikers tease him about being a knife freak, using blades instead of guns, calling them “quiet sins.”
But Royal prefers knives for one reason nobody jokes about. Guns kill from far away. Knives make you get close. Knives make you mean it.
I stand slowly, letting the chain drag as I rise. My shorts ride up. My shirt clings. Royal’s nostrils flare like he’s breathing something forbidden.
“What are you doing here?” I ask. “Checking the lock? Or checking me?”
“Don’t start,” he growls.
I smile. “I ain’t starting. You are.”
His breath shortens. His hand twitches closer to the knife.
“You came here wanting something,” I whisper. “You just don’t want to admit what. But news flash. This pussy comes with a price called freedom. And I haven’t showered in goodness knows how long.”
His teeth clench. “Back up.”
“No,” I breathe, stepping closer. “Make me.”
He moves.
Fast.
One hand slams into the wall beside my head. His other hand grabs the chain at my wrist and yanks, dragging me into his chest. My breath catches. Not because of the force, but because I feel the knife press lightly against my hip where it hangs at his belt.
A suggestion.
A promise.
A threat.
“You want to play dangerous?” he snarls. “With me?”
“I want to see what you do,” I whisper, eyes dropping to the blade between us. “When you stop pretending, you don’t want to fuck me.”
His grip on my wrist tightens. Hard. Metal bites into my skin.
Then… he does something worse.
He slides his knife free.
Quiet.
Slow.
Sinful.
The sound of steel leaving its sheath shivers up the back of my neck. He holds it low, angled away, not threatening, but not safe either. The blade gleams between us, catching the light like it knows the precise type of moment this is.
Royal doesn’t raise it. He doesn’t cut me. He just lets me see it. A line of cold silver between want and warning.
“This is why I don’t touch you,” he growls. “Because when I want something, Becki, I don’t take it gently.”
I swallow hard, pulse pounding so loud he must hear it.
“Then don’t be gentle,” I whisper.
His eyes go black.
He presses the flat of the blade, cold, unyielding steel, to the wall beside my head. An inch from my throat.
Not touching me. But close enough I feel the cold hum.
“You don’t know what the hell you’re provoking,” he says, voice trembling with restraint. But grinning like a jackal.
“I know exactly,” I breathe. “You use knives because they’re untraceable. Quiet. Intimate. You want to feel the pulse before you make your cut.”
He shudders. That tiny, involuntary tremor he thought he’d buried.
“You think I’m scared of your knife?” I ask.
His hand tightens around the handle. His breath hits my cheek.
“No,” he growls. “You’re scared of how much you want me to make you bleed.”
Before I can answer, before either of us crosses the point of no return, he jerks the blade away, slams it back into its sheath, and steps back like he’s been scorched.
“This can’t happen,” he forces out.
“It already is,” I whisper.
His fists clench. His jaw works. His control fractures in real time. Then he storms out, slamming the door so hard the cot rattles. The silence he leaves behind vibrates with everything that almost happened, the knife between us, the breath on my lips, the hunger he couldn’t hide.
I slide down the wall, shaking.
Royal thinks he walked away for my safety.
But we both know the truth. He didn’t put that knife between us to scare me. He put it there to stop himself from using it. And that means he’s closer to breaking than ever. And I’m close to breaking out.