Riot's Rival (Serpents Wraith MC #3)

1. Anna

ANNA

The outer gate of the Serpents Wraith compound opened for two motorcycles, and I put my SUV behind the second one before the man in the gate booth could decide whether Crow’s sister counted as an invited guest.

He hit a control. Steel started sliding across the drive behind me while the inner barrier stayed shut ahead, trapping me in the thirty feet between.

Three armed men turned toward my vehicle.

One raised his hand and told me to reverse, which would’ve been difficult with half a ton of gate now blocking the road.

I killed the engine and got out.

“You can wait in the vehicle,” the guard said.

“I’ve waited weeks.” I shut the door hard enough to carry the point. “Get Riot.”

The converted freight depot stood beyond the second barrier, all reinforced brick, security lights and motorcycles parked in disciplined rows.

Men on the clubhouse steps watched me. Others came from the garage, their cuts black against the pale concrete yard.

Serpents Wraith didn’t need a sign telling strangers they were unwelcome.

They had rifles, cameras and a reputation that had crossed the county line long before I did.

The guard left the booth. “State your business.”

“My business is with Riot.”

“Then you can call him.”

“He stopped answering me eighteen months ago.”

That drew more attention than shouting would’ve. A brother beside the inner gate looked at my face again and recognized me, or at least recognized the family resemblance. Crow and I had the same dark hair and the same habit of staring back when a man expected us to lower our eyes.

“Anna Landry,” he said.

“There you go. Now get him.”

I’d asked for Riot because there was no one else in Serpents Wraith whose denial I could measure against the man I’d known.

Rook would give me a president’s answer, and Saint would close ranks behind him.

Riot once slept with his head on my stomach while I traced the faded scar across his shoulder, then woke and told me exactly which parts of his life would never belong to me.

He was secretive by code, not by habit. I used to know the difference between something he couldn’t say and a lie.

The clubhouse door opened before he could answer.

Riot came through it in a black T-shirt and his cut, ENFORCER stitched over his heart.

He’d always been big, but memory had blurred exactly how big.

Broad shoulders, heavy arms, close-cut brown hair and a face that could go from rough attraction to blank violence without anything obvious moving.

A pale scar crossed the point of his chin.

I’d once kissed it in the dark and felt him smile against my mouth. He wasn’t smiling now.

Riot walked to the inner barrier while the men in the yard made room. Nobody told the club enforcer how to handle the woman demanding him at the gate.

“Open it,” he said.

The guard touched the control. The barrier moved just far enough for Riot to step into the holding area, then closed behind him. He’d chosen to meet me between two locked gates. That seemed appropriate.

“Where is Crow?” I asked.

There was no confusion in his face. No need to ask what I meant or pretend he hadn’t heard the same story every club in the region had been carrying for weeks.

“We don’t have him.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“It’s the answer you came for.”

“Weeks without a call, a sighting or one order anybody can prove came from him. Stone says my brother went to a neutral meet and never came back. The last men known to be waiting for him were Wraiths.”

Crow was ten years older than me, enough to be protective without ever becoming a substitute father.

He’d taught me to ride on a dirt bike too tall for my legs, laughed when I put it through a fence and made me help repair both.

He’d missed birthdays for runs, arrived late to holidays with blood on his cut and never pretended his life was lawful.

I knew the limits of loving an outlaw. Silence this complete wasn’t one of Crow’s habits.

Even if he needed to disappear, he would’ve found a way to let me know the choice was his.

The absence had turned every ordinary detail into a question, from his last voicemail and the keys left on his kitchen counter to the jacket Stone said Crow had taken even though I remembered seeing it over a chair after that supposed departure.

I didn’t need the Wraiths to be innocent.

I needed one man in either club to give me a fact that didn’t shift when I touched it.

“Rook waited. Crow never showed.”

“And I’m supposed to take Rook’s word for it?”

Riot’s attention went cold. “Here we fucking go.”

“Tell me where my brother is.”

“Serpents Wraith didn’t take him.” He came closer, boots stopping a foot from mine. “We didn’t hold him, kill him or put him in the ground. I told you the truth. You can leave now.”

I’d been scared for so long the fear had hardened into anger. “You told me the truth before too, didn’t you?”

The men at the gate became very interested in the road and the fence.

Riot lowered his voice. “Don’t bring that shit here.”

“Why? You don’t like your brothers hearing how you got close enough to learn Crow’s movements, then his escort was ambushed?”

“You’re still telling Stone’s story.”

“I saw what he had.”

“You saw what he wanted you to see.” The control in Riot’s voice thinned. “They’re lying to you again, Anna.”

Again struck where he meant it to. “You don’t get to rewrite what you did because my brother isn’t here to answer.”

“I didn’t use you. Not then and not now.”

“You wouldn’t prove it.”

“I wouldn’t hand Wraith business to Crow’s little sister because she demanded it between telling me she loved me and calling me a traitor.”

The words carried. A man near the booth shifted, and Riot looked at him once. The brother found urgent work inside.

I stepped closer because retreating would’ve admitted the line hurt. “If your club didn’t take Crow, tell me who did.”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you know?”

“That he’s missing. That Stone had his ass in Crow’s chair before anyone outside Gravewater saw proof Crow gave it up. That you drove into enemy territory and accused a club president in front of his own gate.”

“I accused you.”

“Same fucking thing.” Riot always saw loyalty in absolutes. I’d once loved that certainty because it made every promise from him feel immovable. Then I learned what happened when his promise to the club stood against me.

The inner barrier opened again. Rook stepped through with Saint beside him. Rook was older than Riot and carried authority without needing the president patch visible on his cut, though it was. Saint, his vice president, stopped just behind him and watched both my hands.

Rook faced me. “You came to my gate asking whether I took Crow. I didn’t. This club isn’t holding him, and I didn’t order anyone to touch him.”

“Then help me find him.”

“You’re Gravewater.”

“I’m his sister.”

“You’re both, whether you wear the colors or not.

” Rook’s voice held no apology. “I won’t give you club intelligence and hope it stays out of Stone’s church.

If you find something that proves one of mine is involved, bring it.

Until then, don’t come through my gate throwing accusations around and expect a welcome. ”

“Do you think he’s dead?” I asked.

Rook gave me nothing. Riot didn’t. Pain crossed his face before he turned it into anger.

“We don’t know,” Riot said.

“But you’ve discussed it.”

“A rival president disappears, we discuss every possibility.” He kept his voice hard, yet he didn’t use the answer to hurt me. “Nobody has a body. Nobody has proof Crow is dead. I’m not giving you fear and calling it intelligence.”

That restraint bothered me more than cruelty would’ve. Riot knew exactly which possibility I’d been trying not to name, and he still refused to turn fear into fact.

Riot stood close enough that the leather edge of his cut almost touched my arm. “You heard him.”

I looked at Rook. “If Crow turns up dead, I’ll remember this conversation.”

“So will I.”

For the first time, something shifted behind Rook’s flat expression. Not guilt. Concern, maybe, but bigger than my missing brother. Whatever the Wraiths suspected, neither man was going to hand it to a rival president’s sister.

I turned toward my SUV.

Riot caught the top of the door before I could open it. “Where are you going?”

“You just told me to leave.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

“And you stopped having the right to ask me questions when you let me walk away.”

His fingers stayed on the door. For one tight second we stood with eighteen months between us and the old knowledge of how little distance it took for anger to turn into something else.

Riot released the metal. “Get out of Wraith territory.”

“Gladly.”

The outer gate rolled back. I got in, reversed onto the road and drove without looking in the mirror until the compound disappeared behind the industrial buildings.

Riot and I met during the last year of the old truce, when rival clubs could share neutral ground without putting men on rooftops first. We were never stupid enough to pretend the cuts didn’t matter.

That was part of the attraction in the beginning, a boundary we crossed knowingly and kept private.

Then the secret nights picked up ordinary pieces.

Riot changing a tire in the rain because I refused to wait for Crow.

Me keeping a bottle of the hot sauce he liked even though it ruined everything it touched.

Him learning which supplier calls made me swear and me learning that silence meant he was furious, not indifferent.

By the time we admitted it was love, ending it was already more dangerous than carrying on. I still ended it in one night.

Seeing him at the gate should’ve proved I’d survived the choice. Instead, he looked almost as hurt by it as I still felt.

My phone held no missed calls from Crow. It never did. Stone called twice that morning, both times to tell me to let Gravewater handle its own business. Every answer from him gave me another version of the same accusation and none brought my brother home.

I headed east instead of south. A roadhouse near the territorial line drew men from both clubs when they wanted a drink without clubhouse ears nearby.

One of Crow’s old mechanics said a rider there might have seen him during the week Stone claimed he vanished.

It was almost nothing, but almost nothing was more than I had now.

Five miles from the compound, a motorcycle entered the lane behind me.

I knew the black Low Rider. I knew the rider’s shoulders and the small scrape on the left side of his tank, earned on a mountain road when I’d been riding behind him and laughing too hard to warn him about loose gravel.

Riot stayed three vehicle lengths back, following the woman he’d just told to leave.

I could’ve pulled onto the shoulder and demanded another argument. Instead, I kept driving and watched Riot hold the same distance through every turn. He never crowded me or signaled me to stop. He simply stayed there.

The restraint made his presence feel less like pursuit than a guard I hadn’t accepted. I resented it. I also checked the mirror after every bend until his headlight returned.