Grim (Sin City Reapers #3)

Chapter 1

FLEUR

The woman in the mirror looks like a bride.

Dream dress—ivory silk, obscenely expensive, with delicate beading that catches the light every time I breathe.

Strappy designer heels that Dominic insisted on, the kind that make my legs look endless and my bank account weep.

Hair pinned up in soft curls, a few strands left loose to frame my face.

Makeup done by a professional who told me I was glowing.

I look perfect.

So why won't my hands stop shaking?

I press my palms flat against the vanity, watching my reflection take a breath.

The bridal suite is gorgeous—all cream and gold, fresh flowers on every surface, champagne chilling in a silver bucket that no one's touched.

My bridesmaids left twenty minutes ago to take their places, hugging me and squealing about how lucky I am, how romantic this all is, how Dominic is such a catch.

He is. He's everything I ever wanted.

Eight months ago, he walked into my flower shop on a Tuesday afternoon, looking for an arrangement for his mother's birthday.

He was charming. Attentive. He asked my opinion and actually listened to the answer.

When he came back the next week—not for flowers, just to see me—I thought I'd imagined the connection between us.

I hadn't.

Whirlwind romance. That's what my mother calls it, half-disapproving, half-impressed.

Three months of dating before he proposed, another five of planning the wedding of my dreams. He swept me off my feet.

Made me feel seen in a way no one ever had before.

Called me his sunshine, said I was the brightest thing in his life.

So why is there a knot in my stomach that's been tightening for weeks?

Nerves, I tell myself firmly. Everyone gets nervous before their wedding. It doesn't mean anything.

But the knot doesn't loosen. If anything, it pulls tighter.

The last few weeks, something's been off.

Small things. The way Dominic looks right through me sometimes when he thinks I'm not paying attention.

The phone calls he takes in other rooms, his voice dropping to a murmur I can never quite catch.

The men who show up at odd hours—men with hard faces and harder eyes who look at me like I'm furniture.

He's a businessman, I remind myself. Investments, consulting. Important people have complicated lives.

But I've never actually seen his office. Never met his colleagues at a work function. Never been introduced to anyone from his life before me, except his mother—once, briefly, at a restaurant where she looked at me like I was something Dominic had tracked in on his shoe.

Stop it. You're being paranoid. You're about to marry the man you love.

I smooth my hands down the front of my dress. Take another breath. Check my reflection one more time.

I need to see him.

I know it's bad luck—the groom seeing the bride before the ceremony—but I don't care.

I need to look into Dominic's eyes and see the man who brought me flowers, who called me his sunshine, who made me believe in fairy tales.

I need him to smile at me and make this knot in my stomach finally, finally let go.

I slip out of the bridal suite before anyone can stop me.

The venue is beautiful—a restored estate outside the city, all manicured gardens and elegant architecture.

I move through the back hallways, away from the main rooms where guests are gathering, my heels clicking against marble floors.

The ceremony starts in fifteen minutes. I just need one moment.

One look. One reassurance that I'm not making the biggest mistake of my life.

I find him in a side room off the east wing. The door is cracked open, and I can hear his voice before I see him—low, clipped, nothing like the warm tone he uses with me.

I stop. Press myself against the wall. Listen.

"—doesn't matter what she thinks. She'll learn her place once the ring is on."

My heart stutters.

"She's naive. That's the whole point." A pause. His laugh, cold and unfamiliar. "She thinks I'm in consulting. Hasn't asked a single question in eight months. Hasn't figured out a damn thing. She's perfect—pretty, sweet, too trusting for her own good. Easy to manage."

The knot in my stomach turns to ice.

"The florist thing is actually useful. Good cover. Legitimate business, cash transactions, no one looks twice at a flower shop." Another pause. "Yeah, she'll sign whatever I put in front of her. She's so goddamn grateful someone like me even looked at her twice, she'd probably thank me for it."

I can't breathe.

This isn't Dominic. This isn't the man who brought me peonies and remembered my coffee order and held me when I cried about my father. This is someone else entirely—someone cold and calculating, someone who talks about me like I'm a tool, an asset, a thing to be used.

Easy to manage.

Learn her place.

Too trusting for her own good.

I press my hand over my mouth to keep from making a sound. My whole body is shaking now, tremors running through me that have nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with the dawning, horrifying realization that I almost married a stranger.

I don't know what Dominic really is. I don't know what "good cover" means or why cash transactions matter or what exactly I've been too naive to figure out.

But I know that voice. I know that cold, dismissive tone.

And I know—with a certainty that settles into my bones like ice water—that if I walk down that aisle, I will never escape.

I run.

The service entrance is at the back of the estate, past the kitchens, through a door that's propped open for the catering staff. No one stops me. No one even looks twice at the bride in the designer gown slipping out into the afternoon sun—they're too busy ferrying trays back and forth to notice.

The desert stretches ahead of me. Endless. Empty. Nothing but scrub brush and red earth and a horizon that shimmers with heat.

I should go back inside. Find my phone. Call someone—my mother, my best friend, the police.

But my phone is upstairs in the bridal suite, and half the guests out there are people I've never met—Dominic's friends, his business associates, people who looked at me like I was an outsider at my own engagement party.

I used to tell myself I was imagining it.

Now I'm not so sure whose side any of them are on.

My heels sink into the dirt with my first step. These shoes—strappy, delicate, made for walking down an aisle—are useless out here. But there's no time to take them off. No time to think.

I run.

The sun beats down on my bare shoulders. The dress catches on everything—rocks, brush, my own desperate feet. Within minutes, I've torn the hem. Within an hour, I've destroyed it completely, ivory silk streaked with dirt and dust, beading scattered somewhere behind me like breadcrumbs.

I don't look back.

The afternoon bleeds into evening. The heat starts to fade, replaced by the first hints of desert cold.

My feet are screaming—blisters burst and bleeding through my ruined shoes, every step a fresh agony.

But I keep moving. I don't know where I'm going.

I don't know if anyone's following. I just know that stopping means getting caught, and getting caught means—

I don't let myself think about what getting caught means.

The sun sets in streaks of orange and red, painting the desert like a wound. I stumble more than walk now, my body running on nothing but adrenaline and terror. The road appears like a mirage—a dark ribbon cutting through the emptiness, impossibly distant and impossibly real.

I make it to the edge of the road and stop.

The asphalt stretches in both directions, empty. No cars. No headlights. Nothing but the dark ribbon of road cutting through miles of nothing, and the last glow of sunset bleeding out along the horizon.

I'm alone.

The reality of it hits me all at once—the weight of everything I've been outrunning finally catching up. My feet are destroyed. I have no phone, no money, no plan. I'm standing in a ruined wedding dress in the middle of the desert, and I have no idea what to do next.

I crouch down at the roadside, my legs giving out, the torn silk pooling around me in the dirt.

The first sob catches me off guard—a raw, ugly sound that tears out of my throat before I can stop it.

Then another. Then I'm crying for real, my whole body shaking with it, tears streaming down my face and dripping onto the expensive fabric I'll never wear again.

I bury my head in my hands.

What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?

I don't know how long I stay like that. Long enough for the last light to start fading from the sky. Long enough for the cold to seep into my bones. Long enough to feel completely, utterly hopeless.

Then I hear it.

An engine. Distant at first, then growing louder, cutting through the silence like a growl.

I lift my head, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand, and see it—a single headlight. A motorcycle, coming from the east, moving fast.

For one horrible moment, I'm sure it's someone from the wedding. Sure I've been found. Sure this is where it ends—

The bike slows.

Stops.

A man gets off, and my breath catches in my throat.

He's massive. That's the first thing I notice—the sheer size of him, broad shoulders and thick arms and the kind of height that makes everything around him look small.

Tattoos snake up his neck, disappear into his collar, curl around his knuckles in patterns I can't make out in the fading light.

Leather cut over a dark hoodie, patches I don't recognize, and his face—

His face looks like it's never smiled. Hard jaw, grey eyes, a mouth set in a flat line. Handsome in a way that's almost brutal—all sharp edges and shadows, the kind of face that warns you away and pulls you in at the same time.

He takes in the wedding dress. The wrecked shoes. The terror I can't hide.

I should be scared. He's huge, rough-looking, radiating danger from every pore. The kind of man mothers warn their daughters about. The kind of man who belongs in a nightmare, not standing on a desert road in front of a runaway bride.

But something about the way he holds himself—controlled, steady, utterly still—makes me feel the opposite of scared. Like the chaos inside me has finally found something solid to crash against.

"Who's chasing you?"

His voice is low. Rough. It does something to me that I don't have time to think about—a shiver down my spine that has nothing to do with the cold.

I should lie. Make up a story. Protect myself the way I've been trying to protect myself for the last three hours.

But I'm exhausted. Scared. Running on fumes and fury and the last shreds of hope. And something about the way he's looking at me—not with hunger or amusement, just steady assessment—makes the truth spill out before I can stop it.

"My fiancé." The word tastes like ash. "He's not who I thought he was. I overheard something I shouldn't have. I have nowhere to go."

Silence.

He studies me for a long moment. I can't read his expression—can't tell if he believes me, if he cares, if he's deciding whether I'm worth the trouble. The desert wind picks up, and I shiver, suddenly aware of how cold I am, how exposed, how completely at the mercy of this stranger.

Then he moves.

He shrugs off his cut, strips off the hoodie underneath in one smooth motion, and crosses to me in three long strides.

Before I can react, he's draping it over my shoulders, the weight of it settling around me like armor.

It's warm from his body. It smells like smoke and something else, something underneath that makes my head spin.

He pulls his cut back on over his t-shirt, and his hands brush my arms as he tugs the hoodie into place around me. Even through my panic, even through the exhaustion and the fear, I feel it. A spark. Electric and immediate, racing across my skin like a promise.

Our eyes meet.

Something flickers in his expression—there and gone before I can read it. Then his jaw tightens, and he steps back, putting distance between us.

"Get on the bike."

Not a question. Not a request. A command, delivered in that low, rough voice that seems to bypass my brain entirely and speak directly to something deeper.

I should ask where we're going. Should demand to know who he is, what he wants, why he's helping me. Should do anything other than blindly follow a stranger into the desert night.

I climb onto the bike.

He swings on in front of me, and suddenly I have to touch him—have to wrap my arms around his waist just to stay on.

The solid wall of muscle beneath his t-shirt makes my breath catch.

He's warm despite the cooling air, radiating heat like a furnace, and when the engine roars to life beneath us, I feel it vibrate through my whole body.

I hold on tighter.

His hand covers mine for just a second—brief, steadying—and then we're moving. The wind whips my ruined dress behind us, tears the pins from my hair, steals the last traces of the woman I was supposed to be tonight.

I press myself against his back and close my eyes.

A stranger's body has never felt this safe.

I don't even know his name.