Chapter Seven
Carmen
I told myself I wasn’t going to look up what a “one-percent” biker meant. The last thing in the world I needed was something else to be freaked out about.
What can I say, though? My whole life the past year or so had been about research. It was hard to just shut that off.
So there I was with my coffee at the crack of dawn, carefully propping my phone against my thigh in case my sister came down, and typing into the search bar.
“Great,” I grumbled to myself as the results came up.
Apparently, ninety-nine percent of bikers were just guys who liked to ride bikes and sometimes hang out with other bikers.
One percent of them were actual criminals: drug dealers, enforcers, pimps.
I mean, I guess it wasn’t exactly shocking. Normal, upstanding citizens didn’t do things like Rune had done.
They also didn’t try to shoot people, a little voice reminded me—no matter how much they have it coming.
After a little more digging, I found that Navesink Bank had two biker clubs: the Vultures and the Henchmen. Rune, it seemed, belonged to the latter.
I was almost late for work as I tried desperately to figure out what kind of line of work they were into.
Apparently, not everything could be found online. These guys were either super careful or greased the right palms, because there were no arrest records for the members of the club that I could find that might point me in the right direction.
For reasons I chose not to analyze, my stomach lurched at the idea of Rune being a pimp. I mean, not that I had anything against sex work. I just knew that pimps were historically predatory and violent with their girls.
It was absurd to care what the man I almost shot did for a living.
So I pushed those thoughts away as I slipped into the booties my client insisted I wear, then moved into his already meticulously clean home.
The kind of clean where it was clear he spent hours a week maintaining it, only to pay me to clean it some more.
Once everything was dusted and the walls were wiped down, I grabbed my scrub brush and went to town on the baseboards. It was my most hated house cleaning task, which was probably why I was putting way more elbow grease into the already clean baseboards than necessary.
“You’re gonna scrub the paint off.”
The squeal that escaped me was a sound I didn’t even know I was capable of making as my heart lurched and my head whipped over my shoulder.
Sure enough, there he was. Leaning casually against the counter, arms crossed, watching me clean.
“What are you doing here?” I hissed, pushing up to my feet.
How long had he been watching me without me knowing?
“Followed you.”
“No, really?” I said with an eye roll. “This is my client’s house.”
“I figured.”
“He’s going to see you on the cameras and fire me.”
“There are no cameras.”
Damn him. He was right. This client once went on a twenty-minute rant about doorbell cameras and surveillance technology when I asked about a security system at his house. When I arrived the first time, I noticed every device that had a camera had tape covering it.
The funny thing? The owner worked in tech.
“Of course a one-percenter biker would have noticed that.”
“Looked that one up, did you?”
He’d changed from the day before. I guess I found that comforting.
He hadn’t just been… lurking around my house and life all night.
He’d gone home, likely showered, and changed into black jeans and a crisp white tee.
The kind of white tee that was out of my budget because it was thick and had some sort of magic infused so that it didn’t wrinkle when you sat.
He’d even tossed on a gold chain. And for some reason, my mind led me to believe that meant that he wasn’t going to kill me.
I mean, who wore white and put on jewelry to create a crime scene?
“I figured you must have been in the dark to waltz in there like you did.”
“What are you doing here?”
“We didn’t finish our talk yesterday.”
“I told you all I plan on telling you. Now leave so I can clean this place.”
“This already clean place?”
“What can I say? The guy has issues.”
“Why are you using a manual brush?”
“What?”
“For the baseboards. They make little handheld rechargeable brushes that do the work in half the time and twice as well.”
“Are you giving me cleaning tips?”
“Seems like you need ‘em.”
“I own a cleaning business.”
“Which means you should be up on the latest innovations.”
I thought I was. I did use a much larger rotating scrubber brush for the showers, especially in new clients’ homes because the soap scum was usually out of control. But I’d missed the mini handheld brush revolution, it seemed.
“It’ll save you the arthritis cleaning like that all day is gonna cause.”
“Am I going to live long enough to get arthritis?” I shot back.
“What made you get into house cleaning?”
“It was good money as a side gig. Then it became the whole gig. Why do you care?”
“Is it a one-person operation?”
“No.”
“You a boss?”
“Yes.”
He nodded at that as he picked up the bottle sitting on the counter, then winced at the strong bleach smell. “This is gonna eat through the marble.”
“The client doesn’t care. It has to be bleach.”
“Expensive little obsession he’s got.”
“How do you know so much about cleaning?”
“I like to do it.”
“You like to clean?”
“Yeah, don’t you?”
“No, not really. I mean, it’s good when you’re anxious or overthinking things. But I don’t actually like doing it.”
“Then why do you do it?”
“Because I don’t live in a fantasy land where I can just go outside and pluck money off a tree.”
He ignored that. “Is that why you’re expanding? That way someone else can do the cleaning, and you can… handle paperwork?”
“Yeah, I guess. If I live long enough, I guess. Did you follow me from my house?”
“Yep. You’re completely fucking oblivious when you’ve got a tail, you know. I was on my bike and everything.”
I’d been lost in my own thoughts. And several guys in the neighborhood rode bikes too.
“Well, that worked out for you in the end, didn’t it? What do you want from me? I’m trying to work.”
“We gotta finish talking.”
“No, we really don’t.”
“Says the person who held a gun up at me.”
“To the man who held me captive on my own couch.”
“Baby, we both know you could have made a fuss about that if you wanted to. Had your sister call the cops. But then you’d have to fess up to baby sis about what you’ve been up to.”
“Please leave Sofia out of this.”
“How did you expect her to stay out of this when you live with her? Did you think no one would come looking for you with questions?”
“I thought someone would come with a gun.”
“I did,” he said, reaching behind him and placing one on the counter. Not just any gun, though. My gun. “Where’d you get this?”
“The store,” I answered without thinking.
“The store.” The words were flat, like they weren’t computing. Then, with pinched brows and an incredulous edge to his voice, “You used a legal gun registered in your name to come and shoot me with?”
“Gee, sorry. I’m not an outlaw biker who knows how to get black market weapons to do my crimes with.”
I wasn’t prepared for the impact of this man’s smile, the way it stretched wide to reveal not only annoyingly perfect white teeth, but two deep dimples.
“Yeah, baby, then maybe you shouldn’t be trying to do crimes if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Objectively, he was being kind of playful. Which was gracious when he’d had a gun pointed at him by me not long ago. The smart move would have been to lean into that, to try to keep things light.
That wasn’t what I did.
“Yeah, well, you would know a thing or two about getting away with your crimes, wouldn’t you?”
“What do you know about what I’ve done?”
“Oh, I know a lot.”
“Like what? Maybe I can clear up some shit so we can move past this.”
“I don’t want to move past this. I want you rotting in a shallow grave somewhere.”
A few days ago, that would have come out a lot more convincingly.
“No, I don’t think you do. See, the funny thing about killing is, it’s a lot easier in your head. Before you actually see someone as a person. It’s not easy when you’re face to face with someone and really see the weight of what you are about to do.”
“You would know,” I said, turning away.
“I would know,” he agreed, tone low, serious.
“So, you’re admitting it?” I asked, whipping back around.
“I don’t think I’m admitting to what you think I’m admitting to, no. But I’ve done some shit. I wouldn’t say I’m proud of it. But this isn’t a normal lifestyle. It comes with risks. And sometimes you need to defend yourself.”
“Please,” I scoffed. “It’s not self-defense. It’s cold-blooded murder. At least I have the balls to admit that was what I was going to do.”
“Look, I don’t know what we’re dancing around here. But it’s making me dizzy. So why don’t you just spit it out?”
“No,” I said, my jaw starting to tremble enough that I had to clench my teeth together to stop it.
I wasn’t sure I could have this conversation, could listen to him lie to my face and deny what he’d done.
Or make excuses for it. Not without my darting toward the knife block and stabbing him sixty times in the chest. And then what a nightmare of a mess I’d have to deal with afterward. If he didn’t end up killing me first.
“No?”
“No. Now get out so I can finish this stupid job.”
Rune paused, glancing out the back window for a second before looking back at me. The impact of his gaze nearly sent me back a step.
“What is it about me that makes you think this is something I am going to let drop?”
“I guess the part where I’m not chained up in a basement being tortured.”
“Is that what you want?” he asked, moving closer. I knew his movements were almost predatory, but there was something about the way he was stalking me that fired up some urge not just to run, but to be chased, caught.
“To be tortured? No, not really. I don’t handle pain well.”
“I think it is what you want,” he said, close enough for our toes to touch.
He was towering over me, his head ducked down, his eye contact so intense that I felt helpless but to look down, to stare at the chain on his neck instead.
“I think you want me to grab you, handcuff you, take you back with me, and shove you in the basement and put my hands on you. Because then it would confirm all the ideas you have up in your head about what kind of man I am.”
Logically, I knew what he was implying.
Hormonally, the handcuffs were voluntary and his hands weren’t on me to do harm.
The wave of want that rolled through me was disgusting, wrong, yet completely unstoppable.
Even as my brain tried to remind me what this man had done, how he had ruined so many good things, all my body could do was react to his nearness.
My heartbeat thrummed, my breath quickened, my nerves fired, a heavy pressure gathered in my lower stomach, and an ache started between my thighs.
I was suddenly all too aware of him: his nearness, his body heat, his breath, the spicy, warm scent of his cologne.
“I’m sorry to break it to you, Carmen, but I’m not the bad guy you’ve convinced yourself I am. You’re right, I do want answers. But I wouldn’t hurt you to get them.”
Before I could even wrap my head around the conflicting thoughts and body sensations, he was gone, stalking out through the house and slamming the front door.
But it wasn’t done.
I knew it in my bones.
This wasn’t the last time I would be seeing Rune.