Trixie #2
"Maria, you need to be careful—" Her father didn’t like women who talked back. She had learned that the hard way—usually with a backhand to her jaw.
"You don’t have to worry about me, Trix.
I'm leaving town tonight. My cousin in Portland says I can crash there for a while.
" There was rustling on the other end, like Maria was packing while they talked.
"Trix, there's something else. Word is your father's putting out a bounty on you. He’s offering half a million for whoever brings you back alive.
" Half a million. Christ, that meant that every lowlife in three states would be looking for her now.
"There's more," Maria continued. "He's specified alive and unharmed.
That's weird, right? Since when does Vinnie Lee care about collateral damage?
" Since he needed what was in her head. The passwords to those servers and the location of the physical backup drives she'd hidden.
Without those, the evidence would surface automatically in thirty days—she'd made sure of it.
A dead man's switch he couldn't afford to trigger.
"Trix? You still there?" Maria asked.
"Yeah." She watched a bike pull into the lot below. Not Cyclops—she recognized his bike now, the custom paint job and chrome that caught the light just so. "Maria, after you get to Portland, lose my number—all of them."
"Trix—" Maria started.
"I mean it, Maria. You need to forget you know me. It's the only way you'll be safe,” Trixie insisted.
"That's not how friendship works, you stubborn bitch," Maria breathed.
Despite everything, Trixie smiled. "I love you too. Now go. Get out of there before my father’s men come back." She hung up before Maria could argue, then removed that SIM card from that phone too. She had one more phone left, but she'd save it for a real emergency.
Her father was offering half a million dollars for her safe return.
The Road Reapers might be willing to protect her from random threats, but would they turn down that kind of money?
Would Cyclops? A sound in the hallway made her freeze.
Voices were low and urgent. She was sure that it was Venom and someone else—multiple someone elses.
She grabbed her backpack, shoving her feet into her boots, not bothering to lace them.
The knife from her pocket was in her hand before she'd consciously decided to arm herself. If they were coming for her, she’d be ready.
The training that her father had her endure kicked in, and for a split second, she was thankful for it.
The knock was soft but urgent. "It's me," Cyclops's voice came muffled through the door. It was tight with something that might have been concern, but she didn’t know him well enough to be sure of that. "Open up,” he demanded.
She kept the knife in her hand in case she needed it, but opened the door. He stood there in just jeans and a wife-beater shirt, his patch nowhere in sight. His hair was messed up like he'd been running his hands through it, and there was a tension in his shoulders that hadn't been there before.
"We've got a problem," he said, his eye tracking to the knife in her hand.
"You gonna stick me with that, or can I come in?
" She stepped back, letting him enter. He closed the door behind him, and suddenly the room felt much smaller.
He took up a lot of space with all his contained violence and barely leashed energy.
"Your father put a bounty on you," he said without preamble. "Half a million. My phone's been ringing off the hook with people wanting to know if we've seen you."
So word was already spreading. "And what are you telling them?" she almost whispered.
"Nothing yet." He moved closer, and she caught his scent—leather and bike exhaust and something uniquely him. "But that's not going to work for long. Too many people saw you at the bar tonight, and they saw you with me."
"I'll go." The words hurt coming out, but she forced them anyway. "Now, before this gets worse. You don't need this kind of heat on your club."
"You're not going anywhere." His voice was flat and final. "You try to run now, and you won't make it three blocks. Every crew in the state is mobilizing to find you."
"That's not your problem,” she insisted. He moved fast, faster than a man his size should be able to. One second, he was by the door, and the next, he had her pressed against the wall, his hands on either side of her head. He wasn’t threatening her in any way.
Hell, he wasn’t even touching her. But the way that he caged her in had her heart racing and made her hot in all the right places.
The knife was still in her hand, pressed against his ribs, but he didn't seem to care.
"Listen to me," he said, his voice low and rough. "I made the call to put you under Road Reaper’s protection. That means something in this world, whether you understand it or not. We don't turn over women for money, we don't break our word, and we sure as fuck don't bow down to threats."
"It's half a million dollars," she whispered, hating how her voice shook.
"I don't give a fuck if it's half a billion." His eye searched hers, intense and unblinking. "You're not for sale."
Something broke inside her chest. She could feel the walls she'd built to keep everyone at a distance, starting to crumble. "You don't even know me," she breathed.
"I know enough, honey." His gaze dropped to her lips, and she felt heat coil in her belly despite everything else going on around them.
"I know you're brave enough to run from a man that most people would die before crossing.
I know you're smart enough to have leverage that's keeping you alive. And I know you're tired of running."
"How could you possibly know that?" she asked.
He leaned in closer, his breath warm against her ear.
"Because you stopped here tonight. You could have kept going, found another car, and hit the highway.
But you stopped running and let me bring you here.
" His voice dropped even lower. "You let me help you," he almost whispered. She should have stabbed him or kneed him in the balls and run. She should have done anything except what she did, which was let the knife fall from her fingers as she leaned into Cyclops’s big body.
"I don't know how to stop running," she admitted, the words barely a whisper.
"Then don't stop running." He pulled back enough to meet her eyes again. "Run with us instead of from us. The club's got a compound about three hours north. It’s more secure than this place. We can protect you there while we figure out our next move."
"Our next move?" She laughed, but it came out cracked. "There is no 'us,' remember? This is my fight."
"Not anymore." He stepped back, giving her space to breathe, but his expression didn't soften. "Your father threatened my town, my club, and my people when he sent his dogs here. That makes it our fight now."
"You can't win against him. He has judges, cops, and politicians in his pocket. He won’t hesitate to use his resources to get to me and tear down the Road Reapers while doing it."
"And I have a motorcycle club full of violent assholes who don't give a shit about any of that." His grin was as sharp as the blade that she had just dropped to the floor. "Besides, I've been bored lately. This'll be fun."
Trixie barked out her laugh, "Fun?" She stared at him as though he had lost his mind. "You think going to war with Vincent Lee will be fun?"
"It will be more fun than just sitting around here playing babysitter to Mace's bar." He moved toward the door, walked out into the hallway, and paused. "Get dressed. We're leaving in twenty."
"I didn't agree to go to your compound," she reminded.
He looked back at her, and something in his expression made her breath catch.
"You’ll agree because, despite all that independence and attitude you like to give me, you're smart enough to know you can't do this alone.
Well, that and because somewhere under all that fear and anger, you trust me.
I can see it in your eyes. You trust me, just a little bit, but a little bit is enough.
" He was gone before she could deny any of what he had just said.
The door closed with a soft click, and Trixie stood there for a long moment, staring at it with her heart racing.
He was right, damn him. She did trust him, at least more than she trusted anyone else right now.
And that terrified her more than her father's threats because trusting people could get her killed in her father’s world.
But not trusting them might get her killed even faster.
She grabbed her backpack and started repacking, adding the clothes Cyclops had left for her.
Twenty minutes—she had twenty minutes before her life changed again, and before she threw her lot in with a motorcycle club and a one-eyed biker who made her feel things she couldn't afford to feel.
Her father had taught her that feelings made you weak and vulnerable.
But as she laced up her boots and prepared to follow Cyclops into whatever came next, she wondered if maybe her father had been wrong about that, too.
Maybe feelings didn't make you weak. Maybe they gave you something worth fighting for.
The knock on her door came exactly twenty minutes later.
Cyclops didn’t wait for her to open it, letting himself in.
"You ready?" Cyclops asked, standing in the doorframe.
He was fully dressed now—leather cut, boots, and carrying enough weapons to start a small war.
She shouldered her backpack, taking one last look at the room that had been her sanctuary for all of three hours.
"No," she said honestly, "but let's go anyway."
He smiled then, a real smile that transformed his scarred face into something almost beautiful. "That's my girl," he said, and before she could object to the possession in his words, he took her hand into his and was leading her down the hallway.
His girl. She wasn't anybody's girl and hadn't been since she'd stopped being her father's princess.
But as she followed Cyclops down the stairs, surrounded by leather-clad bikers who'd decided she was worth protecting, she thought maybe—just maybe—being somebody's girl didn't have to mean being owned. Maybe it could mean being chosen, and for the first time in her life, that thought didn’t scare the hell out of her.