Chapter 2 #3
A hospital might save her body and bury her future.
Edge would want her alive first.
But he would also want a chance to handle his daughter before Santa Fe fed her to the law, the papers, and every enemy the club had.
“I think,” I said slowly, “we need to call Edge before anyone else gets her name.”
Callum stared at me.
Nate stopped moving.
Destiny’s fingers tightened weakly in my shirt.
Callum’s voice went flat. “That is not what I asked.”
“No. I don’t know if she needs a hospital yet. But she needs a doctor fast. Club doctor, if Santa Fe has one close. She’s conscious. Pulse is strong. Head’s bleeding, hand’s burned, maybe ribs. She’s high on something and shocky.”
Callum stepped closer, eyes scanning her like he was doing the same math. “And the scene?”
“Bad.”
Nate snorted. “Cars are exploding and rich kids are scattering like it’s 2003 Iraq.”
Callum cut him a look.
Nate lifted both hands. “Accurate summary.”
I kept my voice steady. “Kids are all over the place. Cops are rolling in. Fire’s spreading. Edge’s bike went down off-trail. Nate moved it out of immediate sight, but it has to be recovered before someone connects her to it.”
Callum looked toward the ridge again.
“Anyone see you take her?”
“No.”
“Kids?”
“Too high, too scared, too busy filming their own downfall.”
Callum’s mouth tightened. “Phones?”
“Everywhere.”
That was the problem.
It was always the problem now.
Once, a bad night could be buried with shovels, silence, and men who knew how to keep their mouths shut. Now every idiot with a phone could turn a family’s worst moment into a thousand shares before sunrise.
Destiny stirred again.
“My dad’s gonna kill me,” she whispered.
Callum looked at her then, and something almost like pity crossed his face.
“No, little girl,” he said quietly. “Your father is going to kill everyone else first.”
I didn’t like the way relief moved through me at that.
Not because Callum was wrong.
Because he was right.
And because some part of me, some stupid outlaw part with no sense of self-preservation, approved.
I carried her to the truck.
The rear door opened upward with a mechanical hiss. Nate climbed in first and cleared space, shoving a gear bag aside. I eased Destiny into the back seat, but the second I tried to set her down, she made a broken sound and clutched at my cut.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
My entire body locked.
Nate looked away.
Callum saw everything.
Of course he did.
“Sit with her,” he said.
It sounded like an order.
Good.
Orders were easier than choices.
I climbed in and settled her half across my lap, half against my chest, keeping pressure away from her ribs as best I could. Her head tucked under my chin. Her hair smelled like smoke, desert, tequila, and something softer underneath that did not belong in a night like this.
I stared over her head at the opposite door.
Do not think about it.
Do not think about her skin under the dirt.
Do not think about the shape of her mouth split with blood.
Do not think about how she looked like sin and sorrow and seventeen years of men failing to protect her from the one thing they couldn’t shoot.
Shame.
Callum climbed into the front passenger seat. Nate got behind the wheel because he drove like he had made a personal enemy of roads.
“Where?” Nate asked.
Callum was already on his phone.
“Edge,” he said when the call connected.
I felt Destiny go rigid against me.
Even through the haze, she knew that name like home and judgment at once.
Callum didn’t waste words.
“We found her.”
Silence on the other end.
Then a voice loud enough I heard it from the back seat.
“Where?”
Callum’s eyes flicked to me in the mirror.
“Alive. Injured. Conscious some of the time. We have her.”
Another pause.
Then Edge Rourke’s voice came through so low it barely sounded human.
“Who has her?”
Callum looked at me again.
I tightened one arm around Destiny without meaning to.
“Dylan Degan found her.”
That silence was worse.
I remembered Edge from three years ago. Remembered the way the whole Santa Fe clubhouse went still when he stood. Remembered those cold eyes telling his daughter no while I bled on his floor.
I had respected him then.
I respected him now.
I also understood, with sudden clarity, that if he decided I had crossed a line by touching his daughter, respect would not save me.
Destiny shifted weakly.
“Tell him,” she whispered.
I looked down. “Tell him what?”
Her lashes trembled.
“I’m sorry.”
The words came out so small they didn’t sound like the girl who had supposedly set the desert on fire.
I swallowed hard.
Callum heard her.
So did Edge.
The sound that came through the phone was not anger.
It was worse.
It was a father breaking quietly where no one could see him.
Callum’s voice softened by half an inch. “We’re bringing her to you. Get Doc ready. And Edge?”
“What?”
“You need to make some calls. Fast. Because whatever happened out here, the cops are about to build a story, and your daughter’s name cannot be the first one in it.”
Edge said something to someone in the background. Orders. Sharp. Deadly. Then he came back on.
“Bring her home.”
Home.
Destiny’s fingers loosened in my cut.
Her body went slack enough to scare me.
“Destiny.” I touched her cheek with the backs of my knuckles before I could think better of it. “Stay with me.”
Her eyes opened a sliver.
For a second, she saw me.
Not the drugs.
Not Mandy.
Not fire.
Me.
“You,” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
“You bled first.”
A rough laugh scraped my throat before I could stop it. “Guess that makes us even.”
Her mouth almost curved.
Then her eyes closed again.
I looked up and met Callum’s gaze in the mirror.
His expression was unreadable, but his eyes were not.
He had seen it.
Whatever the hell that was.
Recognition.
Connection.
Trouble.
The truck shot forward, electric power throwing us back as Nate turned us away from the burning clearing and onto the darker trail. Behind us, the desert pulsed red. Sirens wailed. Kids screamed. Smoke swallowed the stars.
Destiny Rourke lay bleeding in my arms, forbidden as a loaded gun and twice as dangerous.
I held her like something precious anyway.
And I knew, with the kind of certainty that only came before disaster, that the explosion behind us was not the one that would ruin me.
It was the girl breathing against my chest.
The second we hit the Royal Bastards’ gate, I knew this was going to get ugly.
Not bad.
Bad was smoke on the horizon, a stolen bike in the brush, kids screaming about ghosts and curses while cars cooked off in the desert behind them.
This was worse than bad.
This was family.
And nothing on earth went more feral than outlaw family when one of their own came home bleeding.
The Santa Fe compound lit up before Nate even slowed the Cybertruck.
Floodlights snapped on across the yard, turning the clubhouse, garage, and line of parked bikes into a hard white glare of chrome, leather, and angry men.
The gates rolled open before we reached them.
Not slowly either. Fast, like whoever hit the button had been waiting with one finger already pressed against panic.
Men poured out of the clubhouse.
Not walked.
Poured.
Cuts, guns, boots hitting gravel, faces carved into murder. I recognized enough patches from the old stories and the one bloody night I’d spent here three years ago to know exactly how much trouble had rolled into my arms.
Santa Fe Royal Bastards did not look like men preparing to ask questions.
They looked like men deciding what could be fixed, what had to be buried, and who needed to bleed for making Edge Rourke’s daughter cry out in the dark.
Destiny was still curled against my chest in the back seat, shaking in little waves she couldn’t control. Her lashes fluttered, but she wasn’t all the way conscious. Every few breaths, her fingers tightened in my shirt like some part of her knew she was still being carried through the dark.
Her blood had dried sticky on my forearm.
Her hair was everywhere, thick and black, tangled over my cut and down my arm like spilled midnight.
Even half-dead, covered in dirt and smoke, she looked unreal.
Delicate face, fierce bones, warm caramel skin gone too pale under shock, mouth split at one corner, one cheek streaked with blood.
She looked like something the desert had tried to break and failed to understand.
A shooting star dragged through cactus and fire.
Forbidden enough to get a man killed for noticing.
I stopped noticing.
I had to.
The truck jerked to a halt.
Before Nate even put it in park, Edge Rourke was there.
I had seen dangerous men move fast before. I had seen cartel soldiers rush a door. I had seen San Diego brothers dive through gunfire like death was just weather. But I had never seen a father reach for his injured child.
Edge hit the side of the Cybertruck like a storm made flesh.
The rear door started lifting, and he grabbed it with both hands, yanking hard enough that metal groaned.
“Destiny!”
The sound of her name ripped out of him.
Not shouted.
Torn.
Regan was right behind him, barefoot on gravel, red hair wild, face white with terror. She looked nothing like the sharp-mouthed queen I remembered from Santa Fe’s clubhouse. She looked like a mother who had been gutted and was still running on instinct.
“My baby,” she choked. “Where is she? Where’s my baby?”
Edge’s eyes found me.
Then found Destiny in my arms.
For one second, the whole yard went silent.
Not quiet.
Silent.
Like every man there understood that a father’s world had narrowed down to the girl bleeding against my chest.
His face didn’t change much. Men like him didn’t need much. But his eyes cracked open in a way that made my throat tighten.
“Give her to me,” Edge said.
His voice was low.
Rough.
Barely holding.
I shifted carefully, trying to keep Destiny’s head supported. “Easy.”