Saved by the Rogue: A riches to rags damaged hero MC romance (Dark Dogs MC Book 1)

Chapter One – Star

If I had just walked away from that door, none of this would have happened.

I had been making my way from my room down to the kitchen of the enormous mansion that my family called home – planning to sneak a few more chips before bed, even though I knew my mom would have warned me they’d make me fat. The camera added ten pounds, she always told me, and, with my father’s new campaign coming up, I didn’t want to look chubby in the pictures, right?

On the way down to the kitchen, I’d heard my name from my father’s office. It wasn’t as though he could have been talking about anyone else – who else was called Star? I paused as soon as I caught wind of the fact he was talking about me, shifting my weight so I didn’t creak the old floorboard beneath me, and pressed my ear to the door.

Too nosy for my own good, that was my problem. I could never just let things lie.

”You think she’d agree to it?” My mother asked. My father let out a sigh.

”It doesn’t matter whether she’d agree to it or not,” he replied. ”It’s not a matter of love. It’s a matter of politics. When we explain that to her, she’ll understand how important this is for my career.”

Love? I froze to the spot. What were they talking about love for? Let alone my love life – or lack thereof. My whole life, I had been kept away from getting involved with anything serious. There had been a few dalliances with boys in high school, but that was years ago now – and, ever since, my father had kept me locked up, hidden away from the rest of the world, making sure I wasn’t going to get caught up in anything he didn’t completely approve of.

I chewed my lip. I didn’t like the sound of this. I shifted a little closer and listened to what they were saying about me.

”Yes, but a man of that age?” my mother shot back. ”There’s no way she’ll go along with it. And no way she won’t put up a fight. Getting her down the aisle for a man like Viktor Lombardi...”

My heart all but stopped in my chest when I heard that name. Lombardi? It rang a bell at once. How could it not? I had met the Lombardi family a few times at the fundraisers my father held for his city councilor campaigns – they might have been on the darker side of this city, but they had money and influence, and my father was never one to turn his back on the chance to make a little more. He’d been in politics his whole life, and he knew you couldn’t get picky about who your friends were. Like the saying goes, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” That’s what he always told me, anyway, as a way to explain why he kept a man like Lombardi around.

Lombardi was not just a criminal, but one of the biggest names in this city. At nearly fifty, he was more than twice my age, but beyond that, he was a psycho. I had seen that look in his eyes when he glanced around the room at the people supporting my father’s campaign like he was silently figuring out exactly how he could take them all out if he needed to. My father might have trusted him, but I hated being around him.

And now...and now, I was finding out that they were going to...what, marry me off to him? There was no way I could have been hearing that right, no way in hell. I must have been misreading the situation in some way. I refused to believe that my dad would do something like that. He might have been power-hungry, but he would never use me, his only daughter, to consolidate that...

Would he?

Cold dread washed through my body. I didn’t want to believe it, of course I didn’t, but I knew my father too well to rule it out of the equation. He would have done anything to make sure he got what he wanted. Marrying me off to someone like Lombardi, though...

”Why do you think we’ve been keeping her here all this time?” he continued, clearly impatient with how my mother was reacting to this. ”We’ve been saving her. And now, Lombardi wants a wife. And a mother for his children.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. A mother to his children? No, I couldn’t have heard that right. I couldn’t. But, deep down, I knew there was no way out of it. Lombardi wasn’t going to settle for some chaste little wife he could show off at public events. He wanted...he would want more. I’d heard his reputation with women, whispers of it, how he treated them, and the thought of being on the other end of that was enough to make my stomach curdle in a sickly mess.

”There must be some other way to keep his support,” my mother suggested. I heard my father rise from his seat and begin to pace.

”If there was, I would have done it already,” he replied. ”We need his money to continue the campaign. This is a small price to pay to keep him on our side. The last thing I want is for him to flip on us and throw his support behind someone else – someone who’s able to get him what he wants.”

I pressed my hand against the wall next to me, trying to keep my legs from giving out beneath me. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I couldn’t take it in. It felt like a nightmare like I might blink, and snap awake in my bed, in that princess canopy that I’d had since I was six – the light filtering through the window as it had every morning for the last twenty-two years.

But it didn’t. I stood there, outside my father’s office, and listened to him talk about handing me off to this man, and I knew, deep down in my soul, that he wouldn’t back down.

”We at least need to talk to her about it,” my mother conceded. She knew as well as I did that there would be no way to change my father’s mind once it was made up. But did she think there was some way she could spin this to me that I would agree to it? Some way that I would just...just nod and go along with it? I’d done a lot to help my father’s campaign, don’t get me wrong – I was well aware that the comfortable life my brothers and I had lived was due to the power he had accrued over the course of his political career, and it was my job to help him maintain that – but this? This was too far.

But there was no way I could change his mind now. No way I would be able to get out of this.

I turned on my heel and raced back to my room, pulling the door shut behind me as my mind reeled with the new information I was trying to take in. What did I do? What the hell did I do? And more importantly, what in the hell am I going to do?

I paced back and forth in my room, my head spinning. My mother would come talk to me soon, and I knew just how she would try to spin this to me. She would tell me this was a good idea, that it was better for me to just go along with it and accept that this was the best thing for me – that my father would be eternally grateful, and didn’t I want to help the family? That Lombardi wasn’t all that bad, and when I got to know him, I would feel differently about this...

And the worst part was, I knew I would start to believe her. I would start to trust that she knew what she was talking about. And I knew I couldn’t let that happen, I couldn’t risk that, not in a million years. I couldn’t let go of this feeling, this certainty in my chest –the sureness that I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t marry that man. I couldn’t let my first time, the first time I really gave myself to someone, be with someone like Lombardi...

I sprang to my feet. I had a few minutes before my mom came to talk to me. I had to be gone by then.

I had to get out.

I moved on autopilot around my room, digging out my old school backpack and cramming it with a handful of clothes and toiletries – I didn’t have much in the way of money, but maybe I could sell some of my stuff to make ends’ meet. I didn’t know what I was going to do, I hadn’t come up with a plan yet, but I knew I needed to get out. I needed to put as much distance between myself and this place as possible, before...

Before my parents sold me off to some psycho just so my father’s campaign didn’t fall apart.

I could feel tears pricking my eyes as I packed, and I swiped them away quickly. Was this all I was worth to them? Was that what they had been keeping me here for, just like my father had said? Keeping me around, pretending to take care of me, because they knew I would make a pretty bride for some ally they wanted to consolidate their relationship with? I was nothing but a pawn on a chessboard for him, and now, it was my turn to be taken.

Not if I could help it. I hooked my bag over my shoulder and changed into a pair of sneakers, catching sight of myself in the huge mirror in my ensuite bathroom. I looked different than before, eyes dark with fear, jaw set tight as I tried to muster the courage to do this.

I had barely set foot outside the family mansion without a bodyguard since I was a kid – the fancy boarding school I had attended as a child had been full of other girls like me, pampered and protected, cut off from the rest of the world. Had they been groomed to be married off to a husband of their parents’ choosing, too? I hadn’t stayed in touch with any of the girls I’d gone to school with – they”d headed off to their prestigious universities abroad, while my parents had kept me close. I had looked at their pictures, envious, on social media, knowing I had to keep living this life, unable to pursue the same dreams they got to fulfill.

I headed for the stairs as quietly as possible. I had no idea how I was going to sneak past the guards at the door, but I couldn’t wait around to find out. It was late, nearly eleven in the evening, and chances were they’d be down to a skeleton staff – tired, not paying attention, not watching out for me, of all people...

I reached the kitchen, and held my breath, glancing around to see if anyone had seen me. The place was empty and still; I grabbed a few snacks from the cupboard and crammed them into my bag, figuring I would probably need the sustenance for the road.

The road? Exactly where was I planning to go, exactly? I had no idea. No clue. I didn’t know this city outside of this house, and the few event spaces where my father held fundraisers and got me to show face. Atwood was a pretty safe place, at least from my experience, but I knew there was a dark underbelly to it – an underbelly that, by the sounds of it, was right on my tail, since my father had given my hand away to one of its scariest members.

The back door was propped open, and I could smell a waft of cigarette smoke drifting through the door – Jacobi, the guard on watch tonight, was a smoker, and he was likely getting his evening puff in before anyone noticed. I peered outside, and, sure enough, he was facing away from the door, trying to disguise his smoking, the glow of the cig in his hand the only thing giving him away right now.

I had seconds. He would turn around, see me there, and send me back in, and I would have no choice but to go through with what my father demanded of me. If I didn’t flee now, I would be trapped here.

I inhaled deeply, and, before Jacobi could turn around again, I ran with every bit of strength I had, rushing past him towards the gate at the far side of the garden that led out on to the street beyond. I could feel the perfectly-clipped grass beneath my feet, the breath tearing in my lungs, the cold air burning in my system, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop. Not now. Not when I knew what was waiting for me if I turned around, what would happen to me if I stopped in my tracks.

I kept my eyes pinned on the gate in front of me, the bag bouncing against my back – it was a little too small for me now, and it was already digging into my shoulders, but I knew I couldn’t let that slow me down. The tears were coursing down my cheeks as I ran from my family home, the only place I had ever known– the place I had always thought I would feel safe.

I reached the gate and unlatched it, spinning around for a moment to look back at the house. My last chance to change my mind and go back, my last chance to forget I had even tried this, my last chance to accept the fate they had already chosen for me.

I steeled my nerves and pushed the gate open. No. I wouldn’t let them marry me off to someone like Lombardi. I wouldn’t let them marry me off, period. Even if they thought I was just some asset they could do with as they chose, I knew I was so much more than that, and I had to prove it to myself as much as I had to prove it to them.

I reached the sidewalk outside, cars streaking by in either direction. I could have flagged one down and tried to get a lift out of here, but where would I go? And what if someone recognized me, and just took me right back to my father? No, I couldn’t risk it – I was on my own, and I needed to keep it that way. No matter how tempting it might have been to let myself ask for help, I needed to put as much space between myself and this place as I could.

I needed to run as fast as my legs would carry me, and never look back. Because if I did...if I did, I was looking down the aisle of a marriage to a man who would do God knows what to me when he got me alone.

I glanced in either direction. Which way should I go? I supposed it didn’t matter, as long as I started walking. Gripping onto the straps of my backpack, I took a deep breath of Atwood City air and began to move.