Chapter 22
Becki
The vent tastes like rust.
I shove my elbow through first, teeth clenched as jagged metal slices a kiss across my skin. A shiver rides up my spine, part cold, part adrenaline, part the memory of Royal’s hands pinning me earlier, his breath shaking like a man who’d seen a ghost and then come home to punish mine.
He left the door unlocked tonight.
A mistake.
A challenge.
A dare.
Whatever. Stupid Krystal came in wanting all the gossip. I gave it to her, so she’d let me loose. Sophie sent her. Thinks since we fought, we ain’t close like sisters.
Told Krystal where to find the master key to this chain. Behind the bar. Not much I don’t know about the Kings of Anarchy MC.
Montgomery might be the princess of Paradise Falls, Legend’s Horse Princess, but I’m the Princess of Hell. Or I was until Legend put me out to pasture.
The crawlspace above Royal’s room smells like dust, mildew, and secrets, old ones, buried ones, the kind my daddy collects, and the Kings pretend not to know they’re standing on.
I slide forward on my stomach. The metal groans under me. The master key is warm where it’s tucked inside my shorts. A second heartbeat.
People claim prison makes you patient. They’re wrong. It makes you sharper, hungrier. Counting steps, picking screws loose with a hairpin, remembering sounds coming down the hall.
Tonight, I need out. Need silence. Need something that doesn’t sound like Royal breathing my name into the wall when he thinks I’m asleep.
The night hits my face when I slip out of the vent behind the old jailhouse. The Kentucky dark is thick, a velvet curtain stretching over Hell. Somewhere to my left, a dog howls like it’s warning someone too stubborn to listen.
I head toward the only place that ever felt like hiding, not my trailer. Heard from Krystal Janie is staying there, holding it for me. Making sure the club won’t take it from me. My girls know I’ll come out of this mess, alive and well.
I head to the cemetery behind Pearly Gates.
The gates screech open like they’re tattling on me. The gravestones lean drunkenly, half-eaten by the earth, whispering old sins into the wind. I used to sit here as a girl, whispering secrets to the dead because they were the only ones who didn’t tattle to Daddy.
Tonight, though, the dead feel awake.
I pick my way between cracked markers, barefoot. Every step hurts. Gravel digs into fresh cuts. But pain is grounding. It keeps me here, keeps me moving, keeps me from thinking about the way Royal looked at me earlier, like he wanted to destroy me just so no one else could.
Then I see it.
A scrap of black denim caught on a broken angel statue, stiff with dried blood. A skull-and-crossbones pattern on the seam. My throat closes.
I’ve seen that jacket before.
I’ve seen her wear it.
A woman who went missing almost a year ago, laughed too loud, trusted too easy, followed the wrong man out of this cemetery after choir practice.
I crouch. My fingers shake as I pick it up.
A snap echoes behind me.
Not an animal. Too slow. Too heavy. Too intentional.
“Who’s there?” I whisper.
Silence answers like it’s hiding something.
Fear prickles under my skin. Something watches me from the dark, something with breath or hunger or memory. I don’t wait to figure out which one.
I run.
Branches whip my legs, rocks slice my feet, breath burns my chest, but I don’t stop until I’m back behind the clubhouse, shoving myself through the vent like a girl climbing back into her cage.
Halfway inside, I feel it.
A presence.
Royal stands in the corner of his room, arms folded over his chest, one boot braced against the wall. The dim lamp behind him catches the sharp edge of his knife holster. I’m reminded of the night he taped my mouth and stripped me of every illusion I had left.
His chest is bare beneath his cut.
His tattoos appear darker tonight.
His black lined eyes darker still.
“Lose something?” he asks, holding the chain.
I freeze halfway out of the vent. Dust clings to my hair, my cheeks, my thighs. I look feral. Guilty. Caught.
But I refuse to shrink.
“You left the door unlocked,” I say. “I took that as a yes.”
He pushes off the wall with slow, controlled steps. Not a man approaching a prisoner. A man approaching a problem he intends to savor.
“Gonna lie to me, Becki?”
“Would it matter?”
“Depends on the lie.”
He stops inches from me. His heat hits my bare skin, and my pulse stumbles in my throat.
“You smell like dirt,” he murmurs. “And fear.”
“You smell like bourbon," I fire back. "And someone’s cherry lip gloss. Your girlfriend?”
His jaw tics.
He likes that. My jealousy.
He hates that he likes that.
His hand lifts, and I prepare for the grip, the punishment, the anger. But instead, he brushes a curl from my cheek. Soft. Sinful. Terrifying.
“You run again,” he murmurs, voice so deep it vibrates through my ribs. “And I’ll chain you to my bed in the basement.”
My heart flips, traitorous.
“Try it,” I whisper.
His pupils darken. “Don’t tempt me.”
He steps past me, crouches by the vent, and pulls the bloody denim scrap from where I tried to stash it.
His expression changes.
Breaks.
“What’s this?”
“Came from the cemetery. I think it’s Valerie’s jacket. You know her. Hairdresser who went missing from Blow Me.”
“You went to the cemetery.”
“Yeah, and I saw someone,” I say quietly. “Or something. I don’t know.”
He studies me like he can peel the truth off my bones.
“You feel it too, don’t you?” he says. “Ain’t right. Something’s moving in the dark.”
I swallow. “And my daddy’s hiding something.”
He nods slowly. “Then tell me everything. Start remembering. Start thinking. Because next time you run, I might not be the one who catches you.”
My skin chills. The memory of heavy footsteps behind me in the cemetery returns like a bruise. “I’ve showed you all I know.”
Royal straightens. Walks to the door. Doesn’t lock it. Doesn’t chain me back up, either. A warning. A test. A promise.
He glances back once.
“Put some damn shoes on next time.”
Then he leaves. I sit alone on the bed, the denim scrap bleeding old terror into my palm. I don’t know what stalked me tonight.
A man.
A shadow.
A monster.
But I know two things. The girls who disappeared didn’t run away. And I won’t be next. Not because I’m safe. But because something far more dangerous than a Demon Leaper has already claimed me.
Royal.