37. Hayden
37
HAYDEN
I knew better than to drive my truck right up to the Slayers’ gates and demand they let me see Kara. That would only result in a point-blank bullet to the brain.
So I’d spent days parking my truck on the main road and walking in on foot, slowly finding tracks through the woods around the compound until I could get in and out easily in about a forty-minute trek.
A few days ago, I’d caught a couple of glimpses of her from my hiding spot, which had made every step and every blister worth it. Like an addict, it hadn’t been enough. I kept coming back because I needed more.
But the fences rose tall all around the Slayers’ property, cameras covering the full expanse. They’d forced me to stay deep in the woods, just watching, getting more and more frustrated that my days were spent living my fucking dream, while my nights were spent being tortured by memories.
The restaurant was coming along. Luca’s guys had installed a state-of-the-art kitchen in under a week, and the thing was straight out of every daydream I’d ever had about becoming a chef. The front dining area had small square tables with black tablecloths and red cloth napkins. The bar had red pendant lights suspended over it. The entire theme of the place was sin and lust, from the furniture to the menus I’d designed with Luca hanging over my shoulder, telling me it needed to scream sex from the minute they walked in the door.
Day by day, I’d come around to his ideas.
It was all class out front, dirty and dangerous in the back. It had taken me a minute, but I could see it now. His vision. This would be the place to be. The venue that set a tone from the very minute you came in the door in your fancy dress and high heels, to the minute you left via the back, rumpled, well fucked, and completely damn satisfied. Everything bored, rich housewives wanted. Everything conceited, wealthy businessmen desired.
This wasn’t Psychos. This was all class and would attract the rich clientele we needed.
We’d be opening soon.
When we did, all these visits to the Slayers’ compound would have to stop.
So I just needed a look long enough to satisfy me that she was okay with Hawk and the rest of the assholes who called that club home.
Until I could make her mine.
Fuck, I was an arrogant prick, thinking I could waltz on into her life after all this time and make her happier than whichever lucky prick she’d walked down the aisle with .
Arrogant or a completely obsessed stalker. I wasn’t sure which was worse, but neither stopped me.
I trampled through the woods, following the barely-there path that was now familiar, the Slayers’ absurdly long gravel driveway running parallel maybe one hundred yards away. The flashlight on my phone lit the way, highlighting the tree roots and fallen twigs and branches I needed to avoid, but I’d have to turn it off in a few more steps.
My weeks of watching the place had told me the gates were the main source of action. The clubhouse itself and the other buildings were mostly deep inside their property, harder to see from the edges where I lurked.
A few more steps and the gates would be in view.
I always turned my flashlight off before I got that far.
A roar of engines had me ducking down and slamming the phone into the dirt three steps before I normally would have. I cringed into the darkness, holding my breath, hoping the half a dozen bikers coming up the road hadn’t seen my light.
The six men stopped at the gate. Talked to whoever was manning it, and then slowly, the gates opened. Engines revved, bikers started their engines again, but second by second, the noise grew louder, and I swore beneath my breath as more headlights appeared along the driveway. It wasn’t just the six. There were more. So many fucking more my heart pounded. Dozens of them wound their way along the driveway, all in black, all with the Slayers logos on their backs, though these men had an additional patch, ones that marked the chapters they came from.
I couldn’t stay here. If I was noticed, I’d be dead in seconds, no questions asked. I’d been outnumbered just with the Saint View chapter of the Slayers, but with all their associated clubs here too? This was just suicide.
But the thought of Kara inside with all of them made me feel sick. The urge to storm the fence and hoist myself over it was there, but I wasn’t going to be any good to either of us if I was dead.
I’d walked out of the Slayers’ compound one time.
I wasn’t stupid enough to think they’d let me do it twice.
“She’s not your problem anymore,” I muttered. “She’s a grown fucking woman who you have no business with. She’s smart and sensible and…”
So fucking beautiful I’d never been able to wipe the image of her from my head.
“And she doesn’t need you reappearing and reminding her of the hell you put her through,” I finished my barely audible reminder.
That was what it came down to. That was really why I hadn’t jumped that fence.
I’d never given a fuck about my own life. Every year I’d been given felt like borrowed time, the reaper’s hands always reaching for me and just missing. I was dumb enough to walk back in there, even knowing they’d try to kill me.
For her, I’d do it.
But I wasn’t what she needed. I had my doubts that Hawk was either, but Hayley Jade had seemed very comfortable with him, and so what the fuck did I know? Who was I to come out of the woodwork and ruin whatever scrap of happiness they’d found? If she was married, or with Hawk, that wasn’t my business .
The bikes continued to stream along the road and into the compound.
While I used the cover of darkness and the roar of the engines to back out.
The evening was still young, and nobody expected me back at the restaurant until tomorrow morning. I should just fucking go home.
The thought of spending another night alone with my goddamn cats was too fucking depressing to bear when all I could think about was having her there beside me. Tucked up on the couch beneath my arm. Hayley Jade asleep in the spare room I would decorate in pinks or purples or whatever fucking color she liked.
“You’re a dumbass,” I whispered to myself, storming through the woods, leaving the Slayers and their party to themselves. “You’re so fucking stupid.” Who did this? Who kept a woman hostage then spent five years thinking about the damn connection between the two of you that you’d never been able to find again? Who thought about spending nights on the couch with her while her daughter slept in their spare room?
My head was so messed up. I needed therapy. Or bourbon. Or…
Her.
For fuck’s sake.
I drove my truck into town, cursing myself at every stoplight and fighting the urge to turn the vehicle around and use it to ram down the Slayers’ gates. I was delusional.
My phone rang, and I snatched it up, barking a “What!” down the line because whoever it was, I wasn’t in the mood. Unless it was Kara, which was impossible, I didn’t want to talk to anyone.
“Your phone manners leave a tad to be desired,” Luca said dryly. “Having a bad night?”
He didn’t know the half of it. “Something like that.”
“You’re about to be the head chef and part owner of the hottest new restaurant in Providence. What’s to be mad at?”
I sighed, not wanting to confide in Luca but so freaking worked up I also wanted to explode. All I could do was breathe out a ragged breath.
“Ah,” Luca said knowingly, like that one release of air told the man everything I wasn’t saying. “It’s a woman problem. That sweet little thing the Slayers have stashed away?”
My fingers gripped the steering wheel so hard it was surprising it didn’t crack. “How do you know about that?”
Luca laughed down the line. “You and Hawk had a screaming match about it on my security cameras.”
I frowned, irritated by the fact that moment had been watched by someone else when I hadn’t even been aware of it. I still remembered the prickle of heat that had passed over me at being so close to Hawk while we’d argued. “So you’ve just been watching me when you’re not there?” I accused. “What the fuck for?”
“I make it my business to know everything about the people I get into business with, Hayden.”
The words sounded eerily familiar. “You sound like Caleb.” The prick who’d blackmailed me into keeping Kara hostage in the first place.
Luca scoffed. “Don’t be insulting, comparing me to that piece of shit. ”
Anger flushed through me. “If the shoe fits.”
“Don’t you do your research on who you work with?” Luca asked. “You didn’t have your brother look into me and my business practices before you signed that contract?”
I ground my teeth, because of course I had.
Luca took my silence as confirmation. “Exactly. Don’t act like it’s a bad thing.”
“It is if you’re blackmailing someone with the information you found.”
“Am I blackmailing you? Have I threatened your family? Your life? Your three fucking cats? Honestly, why do you have so many cats anyway? You can say you like pussy without turning your house into a cat sanctuary, you know.”
It was truly disturbing how much he knew. But he was also right. Unlike Caleb, Luca hadn’t forced me to do anything.
Yet.
Luca sighed. “I only called to ask if you could come in an hour early tomorrow for a delivery. But I don’t like seeing you all tangled up like this either. It’s been going on for weeks. You’re distracted. I need your head in the game.”
“My head’s in the game,” I argued.
“Your head is full of daydreams of big brown eyes, tits, and hips.”
I clenched the steering wheel harder. “Don’t talk about her like that.”
“Am I wrong?”
He wasn’t. The thing between me and Kara was so much more than just physical. Hell, I’d met her when she was days away from giving birth, dirty, and helpless, Caleb’s prisoner.
But it hadn’t mattered.
Something had clicked between us that couldn’t be undone.
“No,” I answered Luca, hating he was right. “She’s in that fucking compound, and there’s Slayers’ chapters pouring in by the minute.”
It was one thing for her to be staying with the Saint View guys. Her sister was one of them, and maybe that afforded Kara some level of protection.
But with a hundred extra men in there tonight, all drunk and high and handsy, no clue who was a club woman, free for use, and who was off-limits, no woman would be safe.
Especially not one as tempting as Kara.
The thought of those men circling her, outnumbering her thirty to one, came on so strong it obliterated any earlier sense I’d talked into myself. What the fuck was Hawk doing, keeping her in there?
What the fuck was I doing, driving away?
Luca sighed, and I would have bet anything he was shaking his head at poor, stupid Chaos, twisted up in knots over a woman. “She means a lot to you, huh?”
“Yes,” I admitted. What was the point in denying it? He’d already seen me running down the street after Hawk, begging him for information about her. That wasn’t the behavior of a man who didn’t care.
“And I want your full concentration for opening week, and I’m clearly not going to get that if you’re worrying about her. You want your girl? Meet me at midnight. Somewhere near the Slayers’ compound. On the bluff road.”
I didn’t want hope to light me up inside. I didn’t want to trust Luca, because I knew that no matter what he said, how smooth his words and promises were, he couldn’t be trusted.
But that clubhouse was overrun with bikers.
And I didn’t trust Hawk even more than I didn’t trust Luca.
I couldn’t stand the thought of Kara in that clubhouse, men surrounding her, taking her body while she screamed.
And Hayley Jade…if she was in there too…I couldn’t stand the thought of her having to see her mom like that.
I couldn’t get them out alone. I had no fucking friends since I’d left the Sinners.
But Luca had people. Contacts. Money. He could get her out.
I swallowed hard, resigning myself to making a deal with the devil for the good of the angel behind the gates. “There’s a fire trail turn-off about three miles from the Slayers’ compound.”
Luca made a noise of approval. “Good. We’ll meet you there. And Hayden?”
“Yeah?”
“We have one shot at this. One shot to get in and get your girl, without anyone getting hurt. If that’s what you want, don’t be late.”
I didn’t hesitate. “I won’t be.”
I ended the call, but there were still hours until midnight.
I needed a movie. They had always been my go-to thought eraser, starting from as far back as when Liam had been chosen to live a bigger, better life, and I’d been left behind without my brother.
Losing myself in somebody else’s story made it easier to forget that I was always ruining my own. Right now, it would stop me thinking about what could be happening to her at a Slayers’ party. Stop me thinking about other men putting their hands on her. Thinking about how she might not like it.
Or worse.
That she would.
The Saint View theater ran movie marathons on weekends. Back-to-back screenings on Friday and Saturday nights from early evening through to dawn.
At least I couldn’t drown myself in the fucking cat’s water if I was around other people.
I parked my truck and got out, wandering inside and pulling out my wallet as I looked up at the movie board.
The marathon was all four Twilight movies. And the foyer was filled with women.
I was sorely out of place.
But what-the-fuck-ever.
Better to watch someone else’s unrequited, hopelessly doomed love story, rather than think about my own.