8. Eva
EVA
The room is quiet again.
It isn’t a peaceful kind of quiet. It’s more like the room is holding its breath, waiting for something to happen, just like the air before a storm.
I breathe out slowly and run my fingers through my damp hair, wincing when they snag on the tangles.
“Great,” I mutter. “That’s going to be a nightmare later.”
If I don’t find a brush soon, my hair’s going to be a mess.
I swing my legs up onto the bed and lie back, staring at the ceiling.
Same cracks.
Same faint discoloration in one corner.
Same nothing.
I’ve been around violent, horrible men my whole life.
My dad collects them for his club. They all have mommy or daddy issues.
Some are addicts.
Some are angry.
Some are just broken in ways nobody ever bothered fixing.
And the rest?
They were probably born wrong to begin with.
Jonas gives men like that a sense of purpose and belonging.
He calls it loyalty, brotherhood, freedom.
But really, he just lets them become the worst versions of themselves.
Violent.
Self-indulgent.
Cruel.
And they worship him for it.
He wears dark suits and expensive watches, talks in a calm voice, and makes big promises.
My father walks into a room and makes damaged men feel chosen.
I learned young how to survive around people like that.
How to smile when it helped me.
How to stay just far enough out of reach.
How to talk when it mattered, and shut the hell up when it mattered more.
Being Jonas Sorenson’s daughter made me untouchable.
At least inside the Saints.
Nobody crossed that line.
Not because I was precious.
Not because my father respected women.
But because he couldn’t stand the thought of his daughter being treated like every other woman around the club.
That’s the difference.
Not protection.
Possession.
I always understood what I really was, though.
Leverage.
A vulnerability that somebody would eventually try to exploit.
And when I was twelve, somebody finally did.
There was a coup attempt.
Brief and stupid.
Doomed from the start.
The guy behind it thought grabbing me would give him power over my father.
He snatched me one day when I got off the school bus.
He was solicitous. In the back of the car, he grabbed my face and kissed me while someone else took pictures.
Tongue shoved into my mouth as I froze, too shocked to fight back.
They sent the photos to my father, promising worse things to come if he didn't hand over the club.
The guy was an idiot.
Security cameras caught the license plate.
My father's people found me within hours.
I still remember standing in front of my father afterward, shaking so hard my teeth ached.
And he didn’t look furious.
Didn’t look relieved.
Just annoyed.
“You need to be more careful,” he said.
That was it.
No comfort.
No reassurance.
No, thank God you’re okay.
Just a warning.
Because next time he might not get me back so easily.
I needed to be smarter.
Harder to take.
Harder to use.
That was the lesson.
That’s always been the lesson.
A few years later, my father came up with a more permanent solution.
Baron.
I was supposed to marry him after college.
By then, I’d already spent years trying to build a life outside the Saints.
My father let me attend Northwestern early, mostly because getting me out of his house meant one less thing for him to manage.
I was sixteen when I moved into the dorms.
Sixteen and desperate for distance.
For the first time in my life, I existed somewhere not constantly saturated in violence.
I studied.
Worked.
Made friends.
Dated.
Learned I was attractive outside the context of being Jonas Sorenson’s daughter.
Learned I liked sex.
Learned I could be more than just someone’s leverage.
A few weeks before graduation, I pitched my father an idea for a company.
I already had potential clients lined up. I just needed startup money.
He agreed.
Probably because he assumed I’d fail.
Instead, I built something successful.
I cleaned up the Saints’ public image. Made them look legitimate, charitable, untouchable in a way guns and violence never could.
At first, I wasn’t trying to take power.
But success changes how people see you.
The more useful I became, the more obvious the question became, too:
Why not me?
That’s when Baron started to feel threatened.
So, naturally, marrying him became the master plan.
If something happened to my father, Baron would run the club while I stayed close enough to the throne to keep the Sorenson bloodline attached to power.
We could have a child, or two, hopefully boys who could carry on my father’s legacy.
Basically, a baby factory.
That was all I was ever meant to be.
And it tracks.
Baron’s been looking at me like he wants to fuck me for years, like it’s only a matter of time before I stop fighting and give in.
The thing is, men like Baron have never been my type.
Too volatile and loud.
Constantly performing danger like it’s part of the uniform.
Half the men in these organizations walk around performing masculinity like it’s a full-time job.
Something about that big guy, though. The fact that he was so controlled, so stoic. But then, there were glimmers of life under the mask.
A ghost of a smile when I made the joke about the razor.
The way his gaze lingered just a second too long when I wrapped myself in that stupidly small towel.
And then, I swallow.
That moment.
When I shoved him.
When he pinned me down.
His body caging mine against the mattress.
His hand wrapped around my throat.
Heat flashed through me so suddenly that it made my stomach drop.
He pulled away quickly after I felt him hard against me. He moved so fast it almost seemed angry.
In a house where threats have been made more than once, where men don’t hesitate to take what they want…
He stopped.
He could’ve done whatever the hell he wanted.
But he walked away instead.
Would I have liked it if he’d taken me like that?
A sharp heat runs through me, unsettling enough to make me pull my knees closer to my chest.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Eva?” I whisper.
This attraction feels wrong enough without me dissecting it to death.
But there’s something about him that gets under my skin anyway.
It’s a dangerous feeling. I felt it in the alley, before he killed two men and pinned me down. Before he threw me in a car trunk, locked me in this tiny room, and left me for Martin Cross.
This is a ridiculous path of thinking.
He kidnapped me.
That should be enough.
He’s no different than all of those other men in my father’s organization.
Trusted Saints.
Iron Eagles.
Different patches.
Same monsters.
Vicious pieces of shit who want to fuck me, hurt me, or both.
Still, I think about that scarred man. About the golden color of his hair. About the blue eyes and the width of his shoulders. The intensity of his gaze. The perfect bow of his mouth. The rumble of his voice goes straight to my core.
Suddenly, I feel uncomfortable, my stomach heavy with arousal as I remember the pressure of him against me, even through our clothes.
“Ugh,” I groan, turning to my side, pulling my body into a tight ball.
Nope.
Absolutely not.
I am not touching myself in this room over a man who literally kidnapped me.
I refuse to allow myself to feel anything other than hate for a man who literally told me he plans to kill me.
How fucked up would that be?
I drag a pillow over my face with another frustrated sound right as the door opens.
I freeze.
The older woman steps in with a tray, then stops short when she sees me twisted up on the bed like I’m fighting demons.
Her eyes narrow slightly.
“You okay, girl?” she asks.
“I’m fine,” I say, teeth gritted against the heavy feeling between my legs. “Just feeling violated.”
She raises an eyebrow.
“Good news is I got to shower and wear clean clothes,” I continue. “Bad news is I had to do it while Frankenstein stared at me like a creep.”
To my surprise, the woman actually snorts a laugh.
“Frankenstein,” she mutters, shaking her head slightly. “He’s not the one you should worry about.”
I blink at her.
“Oh yeah?” I ask. “Because he’s threatened to kill me, like, seven separate times.”
She tilts her head thoughtfully while setting the tray onto the table.
“Well,” she says after a second, “he might.”
My stomach sinks a little.
“But if he does,” she continues, glancing back at me, “It’ll probably be because the other one tells him to.”
Martin.
Somehow that’s not comforting either.
“So we’re speaking now?” I ask carefully. “What do I call you?”
“Greta.”
“Greta,” I say immediately, “I would genuinely trade part of my soul for a hairbrush right now.”
She gives me a long look.
Then nods once.
“I’ll be back.”
I eat while she’s gone, then nearly snatch the brush from her hand when she returns with it.
“You’re a saint,” I mutter.
“You can’t keep it,” she says immediately.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I might try to impale someone with the handle. I got it.”
Greta lifts one shoulder, as if to say, ‘you never know’.
I start working through the tangled mess of damp curls, wincing as the brush catches another knot.
“You know,” I say slowly, “I think I’ve finally figured this place out.”
Greta doesn’t respond.
“Martin Cross,” I continue. “That’s the big boss, right? This is Iron Eagles territory.”
Silence.
I glance at her, then keep brushing.
“I didn’t catch it at first, but saw the patch on one of the guards outside my room.”
Another painful tug through my hair.
“From there, it wasn’t exactly hard to connect the dots.”
Greta watches me, completely unimpressed.
“Still working on Frankenstein, though,” I add casually. “Big. Scarred. Social skills of a prison wall.”
Her mouth tightens slightly.
There it is.
Interesting.
“He grabbed me in the alley,” I continue. “Took down two men in about ten seconds, then dragged me out like a sack of potatoes.”
I lean back against the wall a little, studying her now instead of the brush.
“That’s not random hired muscle. He’s trained.”
Greta stays quiet.
“And he’s definitely not low-level,” I say. “Too controlled. Too disciplined.”
Still nothing.
“Plus, he kind of looks like Martin.”
That gets the tiniest flicker in her expression.
“Same build. Same eyes. Same terrifying serial-killer energy.”
I point the brush at her slightly.
“So I’m thinking…son?”
Greta’s face goes completely blank again.
“Confirm?” I ask hopefully. “Deny? Tiny hint? Morse code blink?”
Nothing.
I keep staring at her anyway.
Eventually, she makes a face like I’m deeply exhausting.
“Girl,” she says, “do you think I was born yesterday?”
“Definitely not,” I say.
Her eyes narrow.
I pause.
“Okay, wow,” I mutter. “That sounded worse out loud.”
Greta sniffs.
“I’m not giving you information,” she says firmly. “Even if I wanted to.”
I shrug lightly and go back to brushing my hair.
“Worth a try.”
“I suppose.”
She nods toward the empty tray. “You done eating?”
“Yeah.”
My stomach’s too twisted up for much food this morning anyway.
Greta gathers the dishes and crumples the napkin onto the tray.
She’s almost to the door when the question slips out of me.
“How do you live with yourself?”
She pauses.
“You’re helping to hold an innocent person hostage,” I say. “I didn’t do anything to anyone.”
Greta sighs and turns back to look at me again.
She realizes she’s left the hairbrush with me and holds out a hand. I give it to her because I can tell she wants to say something to me. It’s not what I expected.
She says, “I know who you are and where you come from. And worse, I know what your people can do. The Saints killed my husband. No one is innocent in our world. No one.”
My stomach lurches.
I force my expression flat.
“I’m bored, Greta. What are these guys’ plans for me? Can they just get on with it? If not, can I have a book to read or something? Or, better yet, put me to work. I’m a really good cook. I could help in the kitchen. I won’t even try to stab anyone with the knives.”
That almost gets a reaction.
Greta seems actually to think about this. “I’d get in a great deal of trouble if I allowed that.” Then, muttering to herself, she adds, “Though I could use more help in the kitchen.”
There it is.
“No one has to know,” I say lightly with a small smile. “Those meatheads aren’t here all the time, right? You come get me when they’re gone. Easy.”
Her mouth tightens.
She shakes her head, already backing toward the door.
“No,” she says.
But it’s not firm.
She leaves without another word, the door shutting behind her with a heavy click.
I lean back against the wall, watching it for a second.
Then I smile.
Yeah.
Greta might be the first crack in this place.