FIVE
Cain
Tensed like a predator ready to strike, Cain’s head snapped up at the sound of the front door slamming shut. He waited, coiled with restrained energy, as Damon made his way to the once downstairs library—Cain’s temporary office.
He cleverly stayed off the grid, utilizing the mansion during his California commutes and avoiding hotels to prevent detection, before selling it.
“Well?” he asked before Damon came fully through the door.
“She’s back in her princess bed. Alone . I left Kidd on watch down the street.”
Little did Harper know he’d had eyes on her for months, longer still.
He’d wanted to be the one watching her tonight; his blood roared to be the one, but he had other things he had to see to.
He was so close now.
The ironclad intel he had on the Renegade Souls MC would bury them all.
Pacing like a caged tiger, he watched Damon pour himself a half glass of bourbon, downing it in one before throwing himself on the couch. “Babysitting duties are boring as fuck, man.”
“Are you complaining?”
“Yes, I am. I thought following you to Colorado would be a lot more action than standing around in the snow, and manhandling preppy fucks out of the way, so they don’t sniff around the MC princess bitch.”
The need to put his fist in Damon’s whining mouth came swiftly. If not for his meticulous self-control, Cain would have knocked his teeth out.
“Then fuck off back to Cali, Damon. I don’t need to hear you whining for the duration.”
“She’s got to you, hasn’t she? What did she do, flutter her lashes? Rub her tits in your face?”
The fury bubbled up inside Cain, directing a piercing gaze at Damon so intense that most people would have cowered, but not this stubborn fool who stood his ground with his chin raised tauntingly.
“No one has gotten to me. Everything is going according to my plan.”
“Sure, right. Show me the plan where it said to sit in a cafe and shoot the breeze with the blondie princess bitch for hours.”
More pacing. Cain cracked his knuckles and ran a hand over his hair while waiting for a call.
“We are animals in expensive skin, asshole. We adapt to the changing winds. At least, I do. I used an opportunity that presented itself to me.”
He spoke like it was the truth, with an unwavering tone, but Cain wasn’t so sure. Never had his strategies changed so swiftly as they had when he’d spotted Harper Marinos.
When his phone rang, he slipped it out of his pocket and spoke to his IT contractor in California.
“He couldn’t get in. Every time he tried, their firewalls shut him out,” he told Damon minutes later. Cain’s lips curled into a grin—it was exactly what he’d paid to find out. To test how quickly the RSMC’s digital defenses would react. Pretty damn fast. Almost impressive.
In the hour leading up to 4 a.m., he answered multiple calls about his legitimate business before having to leave town to track down a high-profile bail-jumper.
Of course, he’d head back to Colorado as soon as the job was completed. Cain always got his man.
And in this case, he’d get the whole fucking lot of them.
And a delicately sweet MC princess along with them.
He’d topple them from the top, starting with Rider and Hawk.
Before Cain was aware of his biological father’s existence, the two frontmen for the Renegade Souls had already killed him.
He might not have known the man, but his blood roared through Cain’s veins, and everything in Cain told him that Hades, the once leader of the debunked Raging Rebels MC, would approve of his payback methods.
* * *
It wasn’t the first time Cain had been this close to Marinos.
Seated at his discreet table, he observed the couple on their date, they had no idea they were sitting on an earthquake. Cain had the means to blow their world apart.
And he was determined nothing would get in his way.
He didn’t have good or forgiveness in him.
During his childhood, whenever Cain was in trouble, his mother would emphasize his resemblance to his father. He always assumed she was referring to Zach. The man who’d raised him. But now he knew differently. Zach was a good man, husband, and father. Cain, however, was completely different.
Cain’s heart was pitch black and full of hate.
That heart was leeching anger as he watched Rider Marinos laugh at something his pretty wife shared.
He was both bored and enraptured by the scene seven tables over. The irritation was palpable in his every breath when it appeared the MC president had a good life built on someone else’s trauma.
Not for long.
Cain made a promise to himself after figuring things out.
He lingered for thirty minutes after Marinos and his wife exited the restaurant. Despite it being unnecessary, he investigated the men who impacted Cain’s pre-birth life to confirm his purpose.
Damon thought he was crazy. He hadn’t wanted to come to Colorado at all.
His bounty hunting business made them a fortune, more than enough to live comfortably.
It wasn’t about money.
This was personal.
Cain vowed to exact revenge on the Renegade Souls MC for as long as he breathed. He had nothing else except to rectify the error and set things right.
He could go a step further and make it a life for a life, but at least he was leaving them with breath in their bodies. Call him a fucking humanitarian.
Outside, as he swung a leg over the bike, he answered a call from Damon. He knew what it must be about, and the breath in his torso braced for it.
“She did a bunch of boring shit all night. The only good thing was she stopped for pizza, so I grabbed a slice.”
“Were you spotted?”
“No. But if I get arrested for stalking, I’m taking you down with me,” he grumbled. “Or if I get a girl I want stalking, you better step the fuck up. No questions asked, Cain.”
Cain chuckled and hung up without another word.
He didn’t want to be fascinated by anything Harper Marinos was doing. She was a means to a nasty end, one he’d relished planning for so fucking long.
But the fascination was there, anyway.
Pulsing in his chest and chewing through the marrow of his bones.
What’s a more effective way to ruin a man than stealing what he loves most?