I’m not expecting to see Crown when I crack my eyes open first thing in the morning. But there he is, naked except for a bit of sheet tossed over his cock. He’s got one arm tucked behind his head, and he’s staring at the wall straight ahead, lost in thought.

“This is a first for me,” I whisper, and he turns his head slightly to look at me. “Waking up next to a guy.”

That gives him pause, and he shakes his head like he’s disappointed. In himself? In me? In the other men? I’m not entirely sure. Maybe all of the above.

“That’s really sad, Gidge,” he offers up, his voice apologetic. “You deserved better.”

“Better than passing out drugs to my classmates?” I return, but he doesn’t react right away. I scoot closer to him, putting my face against his chest. This is … I mean this is weird for me. This has never been a part of my unspoken deal with these guys. Crown, though, I can see that he’s enjoying it. His arm goes around me, wrapping me up in ink and muscle.

“I don’t make it a habit to betray my president,” he offers up, and I get the idea that this lying for me thing is somewhat of a one-off. He isn’t planning to make a habit of it. That, and he’s never done it before. The only exception to his blind loyalty is me.

“Are you going to tell me why I had to do that?” I ask, wondering if the cops have been sniffing around the house and the high school looking for me. Cat has plenty of them in his pocket, but not all of them. Every man can be bought, but not every man can be bought by the same person. Some of the precinct likely works for the mafia. Some of them might work for local politicians. Some might be slave to the rich families on the north side of town, tucked behind their gates and security guards and floodlights.

Crown hesitates for a while. To him, there really is a black and white in the world. I’m not sure that he thinks either of those things stands for good or evil. If he did, then his morality would be pretty twisted. He just wants to belong somewhere, longs to have a set of rules he can follow without having to make hard choices. There are things he can do, and things that he cannot. Period.

“I still can’t believe you nailed that priest in the forehead like that,” I murmur eventually, thinking of that monumental moment. “You were aiming for Grey, weren’t you?”

There’s another long pause there, but it’s not without consequence. Crown strokes his warm hand along my spine in an absent sort of way. There is, however, nothing at all absentminded about the movement itself. He’s tense, hoping that I’ll allow it, wishing that it’ll become habit someday, somehow.

“What did you say to him?” he asks me, answering the question without saying anything at all in response to it. “When you leaned in and whispered?” I consider my words, but if I’m going to do this, live this life, use this armor, then I can’t question it. I’m all in.

“I told him to run,” I admit. “Grey Wolfe and I might not have been lovers the way you’re worried about, but we’re friends.”

He doesn’t like me saying that. I can feel it in every muscle, in the tensing of his fingertips against my back.

“I hate to be the one to tell you this, Gidget, but you can’t be friends with the heir to the Grey Wolfe throne. That isn’t how life works.” He sighs heavily and continues to stroke his fingers against my back. “It didn’t work out for Kian and Queenie either. Now we’re all paying the price for that love affair.” Crown’s voice lowers, and I stiffen up, sensing that darkness in him that he refuses to acknowledge. As I said before, Crown is twice as dangerous as Cat on a good day. My father would be nothing without his ex-cop righthand.

“Still, the priest …” I start, trying to lighten the mood.

“What can I say? I’m one hell of a shot.” He smirks, but his eyes are still focused on the wall, his mind faraway. We both pause at the sound of boots on the stairs, assuming it’s Beast. Sin maybe. Grainger.

“Open this fucking door.”

It’s Cat.

Crown is out of that bed so fast, you’d think he’d been bit. I don’t bother to rush after him, leisurely snatching a tank top and some shorts from the floor and sliding them on. Cat pounds on the door as Crown shoves his feet into his boots, checking around one last time to make sure there isn’t any evidence of our tryst.

As for my part, I lie back down and face the wall, feigning sleepiness.

I can’t see the door open, but I can hear it.

“You asleep in here?” Cat barks, but that’s all I hear. The rest of the words exchanged between the two men are mere mumbles. “Get your ass up.” The blanket is torn off of me, and I turn over to glance at my father, a chilly fear taking over me.

He knows, I think, swallowing hard.

I almost shoot my mouth off, ask him why in a dry, uninterested tone, just to make sure I’m not about to die today.

“You best get dressed,” Cat warns me, tightlipped and serious. “Do your hair. Put that fancy ring back on.” He nods his chin in Crown’s direction, and he slips the ring out of his pocket, tossing it in the air and then catching it with tight fingers.

“Do my hair?” I query, but Cat is already moving, storming out the door and down the steps.

“Grey Wolfe wants to talk to you,” Crown says, his voice crafted of shadows and promised pain. My words to Grey come tumbling back in a dangerous wave, one that threatens to drown me beneath its blue borders.

“Let’s make a pact, okay? No matter what happens, you have my back, and I have yours.”

“Deal. For all my faults, I never lie. I will have your back, Gidget, no matter what.”

“You found him?” I whisper, feeling like I’m being suffocated.

“He’s calling us,” Crown corrects, taking note of my franticness, my fear. And he doesn’t like it. Even if he lied for me, even if he buried his cock in my pussy last night, he won’t allow for this. None of them will.

I throw the blankets off and yank my top over my head. This time, Crown watches unashamedly as I dress myself in the nicest dress that I have, this tight, clingy red thing that I never would’ve been given to wear back at the cathedral. Even with one of my grandmother’s diamond necklaces and some black heels, I wouldn’t exactly call myself elegant.

I look like a biker chick. Like Posey. Because these are her clothes.

With a huff, I head down the stairs as fast as I can, hooking an earring on as I go.

Beast meets us at the bottom of the steps, leading us down to the first floor and then along a hall toward the formal living room. Sin is already in there, watching me. Grainger, too. I ignore them both as I stride across the room and come face-to-face with Grey Wolfe.

My friend of three months, my only confidante, my almost-husband.

His beautiful silver eyes find mine, and my breath escapes in a rush.

“Hello Gidget,” he says, but he doesn’t sound quite like the Grey I know. This is his public persona, not the one I was privy to during my time at the cathedral.

“Grey,” I reply politely, cautiously, fully aware of my father and Gaz, of the four men I’ve started to think of as my own, of the old-timers in the back and the young assholes who worship at my brother’s feet. There are a lot of Daybreakers in here, more than usual.

It occurs to me then that one wrong word from Grey could destroy the entire illusion that the five of us have been working on. My good deed toward Grey isn’t yet a thorn that I can pull from my side. Instead, it oozes, a metaphorical infection that I can’t control.

“I’ve told them that I’ll only speak with you.” He smiles at me, but there isn’t a shred of warmth to any of it. Grey’s suit is tailored and sharp, highlighting that slim but muscular form that I never allowed myself to sample. I realize now what a smart choice that was. Sex makes things messy. Our relationship is all the better for forgoing it entirely. “You were supposed to be my wife, after all.”

“This son of a bitch,” Cat growls from beside me. I can somehow sense all four of his officers, like each one is a highlight in my brain, a flicker of lightning in a storm.

“What do you want, Grey?” I ask, almost breathless. Can anyone tell? Is Gaz watching me? I don’t dare look at him. Instead, I pause as Beast steps forward. A subtle warning. A claiming. I never break eye contact with Grey.

“Your loyalty never wavered, never faltered,” he says as I do my best to follow the unspoken things creeping around beneath his words. I’m telling the club you were loyal to them, but I’m reminding you that you were loyal to me instead. “That’s something I—we—admired about you.” He glances to one side as if for confirmation, and then turns back to me. “That’s how I knew you’d be the perfect person for this job.”

“Job?” I question as Gaz snarls something ignorant like I fucking knew it under his breath. What an asshole. Not the lovable kind like Grainger either. “What job, Grey? Were you absent in that church when the club mowed down your extended family?”

He keeps that disturbingly blank smile of his in place.

“Your club slaughtered forty-six people, not including hired help.” He snaps this last word off the tip of his tongue like a proper young crime lord, like a threat. What have I done? I think as I look at him, as I watch him shift into the specter of his father. Were all those months we spent together total bullshit? Who is this man anyway? “In return, we want forty-six of your people. Men, women, children, it doesn’t matter. You can pick. Drop them off at the designated location, issue a public apology for Kian’s murder, and let go of the casino. We’re willing to consider a tentative … well, I won’t say peace because submission would be in order, but we’ll let the majority of you live.”

I’m shaking now, my fingernails digging into the edge of the table. I can’t believe Cat made me put the ring back on. Grey sees it, his eyes shifting to the diamond on my finger with an impassiveness that scares me. What was the point of wearing it in the first place?

“You can tell him to go fuck himself,” Cat says with a gruff, angry sort of laugh. He clamps a huge hand over my shoulder, leashing me. “Ain’t none of that shit is ever going to happen, son.”

Here. Here is where it would be prudent for Grey to tell the truth, that I saved him and stole a bike, that I’m a snake in the grass.

Only … he doesn’t. And that tells me something about this whole situation.

“That’s unfortunate,” Grey says, and then he’s reaching down and grabbing a handful of something red. With a vicious yank, he drags a girl into view of the camera, and I realize that … that …

My mind empties, and my heart goes completely numb.

No.

Nopleasenodeargodnopleasepleaseplease.

Reba.

That’s Reba that Grey’s jerking around like a puppet, dragging her up to her knees as she gasps and chokes, blood running down the front of her face. She’s barely recognizable, as swollen and bruised as she is. Grey looks right at me as he holds out his hand and someone places a revolver in it.

He puts the barrel to Reba’s head.

I’m the only person in that room that cares, and I think that’s part of the point.

“We’ve already gotten started for you,” he tells me, holding his finger over the trigger. “We’ll count this as one. Forty-five more people. For every day that you delay, we destroy something. Every day, we add another person to the tally.” He pauses again, and an explosion sounds, echoing across the compound like a bomb going off. “Don’t make us polish off all those pretty families of yours.”

And then the video call cuts out, and men are scrambling for the door as Cat shouts orders.

“Come with me,” a voice whispers in my ear, and then Sin is dragging me from the room and heading for a side door that used to lead to a gazebo. I mean, it still leads to a gazebo, but this isn’t the same one that was here before. The Daybreakers dismantled the old, rotting one, buried some men who did ‘em wrong, and poured a new patio. Then, they built the new gazebo, the one that stands here now.

Sin drags me underneath it, vines tickling my face, the scent of jasmine so overpowering that I almost choke.

He takes me around the back of the house, to where the basement entrance is, and we crawl in together. Hunkered down. Protected. But what about Reba? Reba is not protected. It occurs to me that she might already be dead, that Grey might’ve shot her in the head after ending the video call.

No, no, Gidge, think! Think hard.

I’ve always been good at reading people, ever since I was a kid. Comes with the territory, I think. My sisters and I were always surrounded by monsters, but ones flying our banner, our colors. We had to look carefully, through the leather and the beards and the tattoos, to the hearts underneath.

Grey … there’s a heart there. I’ve seen it. He wouldn’t have declared his love for me after our capture if he didn’t have one. There were a million and one easier, much simpler ways for him to get out of being labelled a rat. Pretending to be head over heels for the daughter of a motorcycle club president who slaughtered his own brother for the very same reason … not the easiest. But, since it was the only way to save me, he did it.

There’s a similar thread here.

“They drove a van of explosives into the front gate,” Sin tells me after checking his phone. His silver eyes—so similar in color yet so different in composition when compared to Grey’s—zero in on me. “Never in my life have I wished so hard for you to be gone,” he adds, surprising me.

The abrupt change in subject makes me blink back at him in shock. All the while, my mind is spinning, desperately searching for ways to save my best friend’s life from … my other best friend? Ugh. Goddamn you, Grey. But if he picked Reba, then he did it for a reason. Likely, the Don had his people look into me. It wouldn’t take much digging to see that I have few friends, that Reba is one of the only constants in my crazy life.

“What?” I blurt, stepping back and hitting my knees against the edge of an old bench. I end up sitting down hard on its dusty surface. The basement, as such an obvious space to begin a search of any kind, is clean. And by clean, I simply mean that there aren’t any bodies in it, just a shit ton of my grandmother’s crap. Antique mirrors that reflect Sin and me back a million times over, bouncing our image from the back corner to the cracked glass near the stairs to the huge dressing mirror against the far wall.

“Fucking hell, Gidget,” he groans, putting his head in his hand. “This isn’t the life that I wanted for you.”

He’s the first one to say it. Nellie wants me here. Cat does. Even Beast and Crown and Grainger, they want me here, might even think this is the best place for me. But not Sin. Never Sin.

“Take me to Reba’s house,” I blurt back, but he just laughs at me, this twisted, awful sort of sound.

“Not on my life,” he growls right back, and I can see that he’s going to get stubborn with me. Sometimes, I forget that even though Sin is the youngest of these assholes, that he’s just as dangerous. You do not get to be an officer—even if it’s ‘just’ a road captain—in your early twenties unless you know how to play the right games, make the right allies, please the right old-timers.

When I said ‘Road Captain’ was like travel agent, I was being cheeky. Road captain is more like being a fixer, someone who watches political lines and is very, very careful not to cross them. Sin’s job is to scout routes for the club to travel on, ways to get to rallies, ways to meet with potential clients or negotiations with enemies. He picks what roads they ride on, what hotels they sleep in, even what bars they drink in.

In our world, if you visit the wrong bar or you fly colors on the wrong street, it can be akin to a declaration of war. It can get people killed. It can destroy allegiances. Don’t park in front of the wrong clubhouse, don’t travel on the wrong road after dark, don’t piss anybody off. That’s his job. It requires an attention to detail that’s staggering.

“Please,” I beg, because I know that if Grey left me a message, it’ll be there. Only I’ll understand it. Only I should see it. Besides, Fem … I can’t stop thinking about my damn dog. It makes me realize yet again how terribly weakening love can be. It’s this soft spot in your shell, this gentle place that answers the question what is the point of life? but also leaves you vulnerable in a way that aches.

That’s me, to these men. So if I have to kick them in the soft spot to get them to move, I’ll do it.

“You don’t understand—” I begin as I rise to my feet, but apparently, that was the absolute wrong thing to say. The sweet, gentle Sin that hugged me from behind the other day, he’s gone. He’s absolutely furious with me.

He storms across the room in a sea of dust and snatches my chin in his hand, making me grit my teeth in frustration.

“We’re at war now, Gidget. You thought we were before, but this is something entirely different. This isn’t sniping in the dark; this is guns and blood and bodies.” He squeezes my chin even harder, but I let him. He’s pissed, and I need his help. Desperately. “Why did you have to do it? Look at that kid now. Look at him, Gidget. Was it worth it?”

“It was,” I tell him, and this time, it’s Sin’s turn to grit his teeth at me. “Grey has my back, Sin. He’s trying to send me a message, but I need to figure out what it is.” He’s already shaking his head at me. He releases me abruptly, turning away and raking his fingers over that blue faux hawk that I like so much. His earrings catch a bit of stray sunlight from outside, dust motes swirling like dark spirits, watching over this interaction with interest. “If he wanted to tell Cat the truth, he could have. He could’ve ended the five of us right then and there. He’s different. Just like Kian was different.”

That does it.

The name of Queenie’s lover shakes Sin to his core, and he turns to look at me with an expression of pure and absolute rage.

“What do you really know about Queenie and Kian?” he snaps at me, breathless but bristling. Sin turns suddenly and comes stomping toward me, pausing so close that I have to crane my head back to look up at him. He’s shaking now, his silver eyes going cold with memories. “She came to me, you know. She told me what was happening between the two of them. I … encouraged her to tell Cat.”

That gives me pause. Here’s a part of the story that I never expected to see.

It’s not that I didn’t know Sin and Queenie were sort of friends; we were all sort of friends with Sin. She was his age, not much of a gap there. But she confided in him, too? How have I never known this?

He reaches up and rubs his thumbs along my cheekbones, staring down at me with this faraway look on his face. Sin knew that Kian never raped Queenie; Beast knew; what about Crown and Grainger?

“A bomb’s just gone off outside, and the mafia is threatening us, and here I am, talking about people long dead and buried.” He curses and exhales, but I remain where I am. I need him to talk. Then I need to use whatever he says against him to get to Reba’s house as soon as I possibly can. “Did you know that a few weeks before they died, Cat gave me a choice? Be head of his family’s security team or become road captain.”

This … I did not know.

The information knocks the air out of me, and I find myself lifting my hands to cover Sin’s. Our fingers somehow end up tangled together in the process.

“I chose road captain because the thought of being near you all the time, that just about killed me.”

He pauses again at the sound of gunfire, lifting his head up to listen. Sin removes one of his hands to check the phone in his pocket. Even with chaos unfolding around us, he has complete faith in the club. This is a hiccup, nothing more. We’re not in anymore danger right this moment than we are on a regular day. He puts the phone back and looks at me.

“Blame for Queenie’s and Posey’s deaths is on my shoulders.” He says this with such conviction, I can tell that he actually believes it. “And I will not allow you to end up in the same position.”

Sin’s words are like a strike; I can feel the force of them. As bright as the flames that I imagine are licking at the sky near the front gate. He isn’t going to let me go to Reba’s, I realize with a shock of wild fear. If he doesn’t let me go, I won’t understand what Grey’s trying to tell me, and everything will fall apart.

My hands go for Sin’s shoulders, but he pushes them away from him, turning his head to one side. His eyes are closed tight, like he’s fighting an instinct that he knows he shouldn’t have.

“No, Gidget,” he tells me, emphasizing the T at the end of my name in a way that’s infuriating. “You can’t fuck your way out of this one.”

That does it. I feel so triggered I could scream.

“Is that what you think it was all about, you idiot?” I yell back at him, frustrated to the point of hitting him. I almost do it, too, balling my hands into fists at my sides. Sin doesn’t seem concerned by my outburst, watching me from eyes the color of gravestones. Right now, they seem just as cold and dead which we both know is a lie. He’s trying too hard to hate me, and it isn’t working. “All four of you are so … so self-righteous. ” I choke the word out like a curse. “You’re too young, Gidge. We shouldn’t do this or that. I’m staying away from you. We took advantage of you that night. ” My eyes flash with violence. I know because I can see them, reflected back all around me, a repeating imagery that goes on for eternity, from one mirror to another to another. Never stopping. Just an endless stream of my rage. “Well, guess what? That’s taking my agency away, acting like I wasn’t a part of everything. I made those choices, too, Sin.” I stare him down as his pulse races; I can see it throbbing in the side of his neck, a metronome to my own racing heart. “I’m not some naïve suburban brat with a mommy and daddy who dote on her and guard her from the world.”

He opens his mouth to reply, but I’m not done. I’ve needed to say this for a while. Not just to him either. To all of them. Everyone. The world.

“I’ve been through things that people three or four times my age have never seen, that they wouldn’t understand. I’m not saying it makes any of this right, but what in this world is? We all can’t measure up to the same rubric. Every person has a different threshold.” I shake my head, squeezing my hands so hard that my knuckles begin to ache. “I grew up a long, long time ago. Maybe when my sisters died. Maybe before that. Whatever. Call what you did wrong if that assuages your conscious, but that’s not how I see it.”

Sin is quiet for a long while, checking his phone again, putting it back, staring at me.

“You’re not leaving this building,” he tells me, and that just does it. I throw a punch at his face, and it connects. He curses at me as I stumble back, turning and heading for the stairs. I’m about halfway up them when he grabs me from behind, yanking me away from the door as I yowl like the very animal my father is named for, the one that purrs and mewls when it wants something, and kills for the fun of it. “Gidge,” he snarls at me, his mouth pressed right up against my ear. “No.”

“If you don’t let me go, Reba dies,” I scream back at him, struggling hard, clawing at his hands and making him bleed. Hot, sticky liquid drips onto my shoulder, slithering between my breasts. The cleavage in this dress is off the charts, but the pale skin of my chest is marred by Sin’s blood. I stop struggling just long enough to glance over my shoulder.

I’ve really hurt him.

He throws me onto the old couch that’s shoved up against the wall, and then he pins me there. Hands on my wrists, muscular thighs straddling me. He’s panting hard, bleeding everywhere.

“You’re lucky you’re a woman,” he chokes out, turning his head to the side and spitting blood. “Or I would’ve hit you back.”

“Oh, don’t hold back just because I have a pussy,” I warn him, thrusting my pelvis up enough that my hips graze his body. He makes a face at me, a sneer that’s all the more terrifying for the blood running down his chin. “That’s right, I said it: pussy. ”

Sin laughs at me then. But he doesn’t let me go. That’s the important part of this equation.

“You tricked me once, Gidge. It isn’t happening today.” He leans down and puts his mouth dangerously close to the side of my neck. I don’t expect him to lick me, but it happens anyway, and I shudder. “You’re not getting the keys to the kingdom this time.”

I’m breathing hard, my muscles quivering with the need to run, to go find Reba. To save her. Because if she dies, then this whole scenario is all for naught. I didn’t rescue Grey to see another person that I love die. No, I … I’m not sure that I’d survive that, and I’m a scrappy bitch.

“You said you wish that I’d chosen you,” I say softly, so much so that I’m not sure he’s heard me at first. Not over the panting and the frantic heartbeats and the creak of the old sofa springs. “Why say that if you really wanted me gone?”

“If you were mine, I would send you away,” he tells me, pulling back just enough to look at me. “Like Cruce’s wife.” As it usually does, it takes me a minute to match the name to the man behind it. Cruce, one of the old-timers with a wife half his age. Cue my eyeroll. Not that I can’t admit that I have a bit of a fetish for older men, but I still scoff at everyone else. Because the world is gross; even the slice I’ve taken for myself is wicked pretty. Also, if I didn’t scoff and sneer at everything, I wouldn’t be Gidget Kesselring anymore.

“Cruce’s wife is going to school in southern California,” I say absently, thinking about the possibility of that, of actually having a life while still being married to the club. It excites me in the strangest of ways. At this point, I’m still on the mafia’s hitlist, but this war can really only have two possible conclusions.

We win, and I’m as safe as I’ll ever be.

Or we lose, and I die.

My hips come up to brush against Sin’s, and he shoves my wrists down hard against the back of the couch.

“Stop doing that.” He licks his lips, trying to clear the blood away. It works. Sort of. But he’s still bleeding. “If you were going to marry into the club, yeah, I wanted it to be me.” He laughs again, a sound too bitter for someone so young. We’re both dressed in it now, that sin that he wears as a nametag. “But really, I just wanted you to go. I wanted you free from all of this crap. Why do you think I took you home all those nights, why I stayed and watched over you? More than anything, I wanted you to run.”

We both stop talking, but still, he keeps me pinned. He keeps me, for the moment, as his. It’s what he really wants, even if he won’t quite admit it to himself.

“There were no guards that day because you said no?” I ask, not with the intention of being angry, but for the understanding I’ll finally, finally, finally fucking get. After all these years, all this wondering, these twisted daydreams that read more like nightmares.

“I said no to being the head of security for your family,” Sin clarifies, adjusting himself. It’s impossible to ignore the bulge in the front of his tight jeans. They’re tailored just perfectly for his body, sculpted over his ass, his strong thighs, his muscular calves, before diving into his riding boots. “There were guards posted that day—even if you don’t remember them.”

“Were there?” I snap back, straining against his hold on me. But it’s impossible. Much as I hate, hate, hate to admit it, there are distinct biological differences between men and women. Sin is undeniably stronger than I am right now. Particularly because I’m not too acquainted with the concept of working out. “I don’t remember them. Don’t you think that I would? That maybe I would’ve heard or seen something before the mafia shot my pregnant sister in the head?”

“You were fifteen, ” Sin growls right back at me. His pupils are dilated. With all the blood on his face, he looks like a monster. “I was twenty-three; I remember. You are not the only person that lost someone that day.” He releases one of my hands, as if to see what I might do with it. “There were six Daybreakers outside of that house. And only then because Crown demanded it. Your father didn’t think we needed anyone at all. The mafia had left town. We’d destroyed one of their warehouses outside the city limits. We were testing every limit they had, Gidge. They should’ve had better things to do that day.”

I reach up and rub my thumb across his mouth, swiping away the majority of the remaining blood. He shudders in a way that’s impossible to fake. He wants me, always has. It makes me wonder if, that first day that I noticed him as more than another random Daybreaker, if that’s when he noticed me as well. It freaked him out. It’s still freaking him out.

“Those men were somebody’s husbands, their fathers, their sons, my brothers.” Sin keeps watching me to gauge my reaction to the news. I’m shook. For years, I bitched and railed at anyone who would listen. I cried and I screamed and I demanded answers. They all let me do it, and they said nothing. Because I was too young to understand. Because I was Cat’s daughter, a doll to be kept on a shelf. “More of them are going to die today. This week. For months to come, probably.”

“Not if we go to Reba’s house,” I insist, wondering what, exactly, might’ve happened to good ol’ preacher Wesley and his closet-alcoholic wife. Nothing good, I imagine. “You don’t understand what happened between me and Grey—”

Sin releases my other wrist, but only so he can clamp a hand over my mouth.

“Don’t,” he breathes out, and now he’s shaking, too. “Don’t say it. I don’t want to hear it.”

He thinks … that I’m in love with Grey? That’s what they all thought. It makes sense. They just don’t … they don’t understand. Our siblings loved one another so deeply that it’s left a ripple in the world, this little tear inside of me that matches up to Grey. Kian and Queenie gave up their one and only chance at this life for the slimmest possibility of being together. We owe them the gift of a life fully lived.

So I need to do this.

I need to save Reba.

I need to punish the mafia.

I need to punish Cat.

You son of a bitch, I think, hating him at the same time that I love him. It’s always been there for me and my father, a kind of love-hate that you don’t often read about. He cares about me like a father. I love him like a daughter. And yet, he’s a bad man who does horrible things, and I’m an untamable hellion that he can’t stand to be around. This is your fault. Why did you kill Kian? Why couldn’t you have just let Queenie have one, nice thing that didn’t also match up with your wants and needs?

Sin’s bloody fingers slide down my lips, leaving the copper taste of him on my mouth.

“Grey and I have the same shape hole inside of us.” I point at my chest as Sin watches. “He lost his brother; I lost my sister. His family let him be born ruined. Mine did the same. We grew up in blood and pain and politicking. We’re the same person, Sin. But all that time I was there, I never felt about him the way I feel about you.”

Sin doesn’t move from where he is, straddling my thighs. I put both of my palms on his hips. I want more than anything to unzip his fly and let his heavy cock fall into my palm. Put my lips to the tip. Flick my tongue and watch him squirm.

We just don’t have the time or leisure for any of that right now.

“I always wanted to pretend I was a princess with an honor guard.” I slide my palms along the front of his jeans and he groans, letting his head fall back as I graze my hands across the hard bulge of his cock. “You’ve given that to me. You chose me over the club. All my life, I’ve wished for someone to give that gift to me.” Here’s where I pause, because this isn’t ‘just’ about getting out of here to help Reba. This is everything. The final nail in Cat’s coffin. I’m taking his best men for myself. “If you’re still worried about covenants or whatever, just know that Beast and I have an understanding—at least for now.”

Sin lifts his head up to look at me. He’s wary, as he should be, but we both hold the keys to one another’s destruction. That breeds a certain sense of trust.

“I know all about that understanding,” he tells me carefully, eyes flicking toward the door. It remains closed and locked. Carefully, he extracts his phone from his pocket, looking for updates. Whatever he sees must satisfy him because he tosses it onto the opposite end of the couch. “But I can’t do it. Let myself have you, and then watch you build a life with someone else. That doesn’t work for me.”

“Whoever said I was planning on building that life without you?” I query back as he studies me. I may have actually broken his nose, considering the amount of blood. He watches me so warily, like he doesn’t trust my motives. As he shouldn’t. I’m going to get to Reba’s regardless of his opinion on the matter.

He moves as if to stand up from the couch when I reach for his belt buckle. My fingers have just barely brushed it when he’s shoving me back into the dusty cushions, stirring more motes, more evil spirits to watch over us.

Sin strips his belt systematically and then, with hot angry movements, he turns me over and puts my ass in the air. My breath escapes in a rush. We don’t have a lot of time here, but a quick fuck won’t change anything. At the very least, it’ll calm his ass down. But, much to my shock and horror, he wraps the belt around my wrists and pulls tight.

“What are you doing?!” I choke out, fear spiking through me. “Sin, you can’t keep me here. You don’t understand. You’re not listening. ” I’m kicking at him, but it’s too late. I let my guard down at the idea of sex just like he did that day outside of the cabin. “Colton!”

He yanks on my arms just hard enough that I cry out, trapped beneath his knee with my wrists behind my back. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“You are not leaving this basement. Period. End of discussion. We can talk about the other shit later.” He adjusts himself, but the crux of the situation remains: he’s on top of me using his bodyweight to pin me down, and my wrists are bound behind my back. Getting out of this is going to prove tricky.

“Reba is the last sister I have left,” I whisper, furious tears filling my eyes. “She’s one of the only people left in this world who loves me for me. Despite my bullshit. Despite my smart mouth. Despite the club.” I squeeze my eyes shut, refusing to believe that Sin, the youngest, prettiest, and seemingly kindest one of them all, will be the final lynchpin that I can’t get past.

He relaxes his hold on my wrists just enough that my shoulders can relax, and I let out a small sound of relief.

“And Grey?” he clarifies, because he’s just not getting it. I can understand, empathize even. If he were fighting me tooth and nail to defend a mafia girl whose family had killed his sister, well then, I wouldn’t be any different.

“We have an understanding,” I reiterate. “He’ll have left a message for me at Reba’s house. Whatever it is, it could save her. It could save the entire club, Sin.” That has to be enough, right? The club matters to him.

Just not as much as I do.

“Those three months were the worst of my entire life,” he says softly. If I could look back at him, I would, just to see what sort of expression goes along with a tone crafted of melancholy and nostalgia. He laughs then, and it’s an ugly, bitter sort of sound. “And trust me: I’ve been through some shit.”

“Don’t tell me you missed little ol’ me?” I joke, but the sound is broken slightly by the tension. There are bombs being detonated. Grey had a gun to Reba’s head. Everything in my life rests on the thin precipice of a lie.

“If you’d left of your own volition, gone off to some stupid art school in Europe or something, I could’ve lived with that. But knowing that you’d chosen their side? That I had no idea what you were going to be like when we found you? If we found you. There were worse possibilities. You being dead. Being sold. Being …” He trails off here, and I test my bindings, but they haven’t relented even a fraction.

“I’m not trying to leave, Sin. Take me to Reba’s. Nobody will suspect us of heading there. No one has to know.”

He stays silent for some time after that, but I can hear the sound of his keyboard as he taps out a message on his phone. More waiting. The couch springs groan in protest as he adjusts himself again, sitting up enough that some of the pressure on my body lessens.

“If I take you there …” he starts, and then he’s cursing himself all over again. “Goddamn it, Gidget.”

Then his hot fingers are on my hips, gripping my pelvis in a punishing hold. His body is on me again, but in a different sort of way. He isn’t just sitting on me now. There’s a different sort of intent to his movements. With my cheek pressed into the cushions of the sofa, I let out a sharp exhale and close my eyes.

“If I take you there, you submit to my authority in the club,” he tells me, and I bristle. Submit? Is he serious? He’s like a younger version of Crown right now.

“It isn’t in my blood,” I start, and Sin tugs on the belt again as a warning.

“This isn’t a man-woman thing, Gidget. This is about your safety. I care too much to let you destroy yourself.”

Breathe in, breathe out.

I feel like a cat again, its hair on end, claws out.

“Okay.” See, I can be reasonable, can’t I? “Okay, fine.”

“Beast will meet us at the back gate in ten minutes.” Sin pauses here, his hand snaking lower on my pelvis, stroking over my clit. My breath releases in a rush. Ten minutes. Ten minutes is enough … Then he’s shoving my red dress up my hips and tearing my panties down before discarding them entirely.

The cool basement air teases my bare ass as Sin undoes his jeans. I can hear the sound of the zipper as he pulls it down, and then he’s positioning himself against my already wet cunt. His thighs are on either side of my legs, trapping them together. It’s going to be a tight fit.

“I know you were with Crown last night,” he breathes, putting his mouth near my ear, further trapping my wrists against my back. “I watched him go upstairs, and he never came back down. I hated that. Knowing Mr. Black and White was bending the rules while I held tight to them. I kept asking myself why.”

Sin pushes the tip of his cock against me, making me groan. My fingers twitch, but I still can’t move my arms. Because he has my legs trapped the way he does, there’s so much resistance. It seems at first like he might not even be able to fit.

“Did you …” I start, but then he pushes just a little deeper. A little deeper. Deeper. “… ever find …” Sin thrusts the rest of the way in, his hips slamming against my ass. I can feel him so deep, like he’s stirring up pleasure in my lower belly. I’m forced to relax, even in a compromising position such as this.

“An answer?” he asks, his voice dark and male in a way I’ve never heard it before. “I did.” He pulls almost all of the way out of me and then rocks forward, stroking me in places deep. It’s exquisite torture. “You’re destined to ruin me, Gidge.”

Colton Young gives up any pretense of being nice. Instead, he fucks me hard and furious into the couch. With little outlet for the overwhelming pleasure, I bite down on the couch cushion hard. I’m so tight like this, he has to work himself in with each new thrust, push past the silken walls of my muscles to find my core. And that he does, moving hard and fast and letting me stifle my screams in the dusty sofa.

The similarities between this moment and the one outside the cabin are not lost on me, even as my body stretches to accommodate Sin’s, even as he drives into me with as much anger and fury as Grainger did the other day. Back then, I screwed Sin to escape. Now, he’s doing the same to me.

Only, his escape isn’t physical. It’s metaphorical. For as long as he’s known me, he’s wanted me to take a different path, grabbed my hand and desperately dragged me down it. For almost as many years, I thought I wanted that same path.

I hated the club.

I wanted to leave, to be anywhere but here.

If Sin could, I think he’d boot my ass out—whether I liked it or not. Because love isn’t about simply giving the other person what they want. Sometimes, it’s about denying them their sip of poison.

Sin, he cared enough to let me go; he tried to save me from him, them, this.

All of that, it’s the fantasy he needs to escape from.

He needs to land right back here in reality with me, in this dirty, gritty, dusty basement with my legs pressed together and his thick cock burrowing into me, soaking us both with my own juices. The rocking movement of his body makes my pelvis grind into the couch, taking care of my clit while his hot mouth traces kisses along the side of my neck.

Sin is sucking on my flesh, biting it in such a way that he’ll leave marks. The next person to see me will know that I’ve been fucked good and hard. The next one of the men to see me will know that it wasn’t him that did it.

“I’m still sore from last night,” I breathe, knowing those words are very like to enrage him, to stir up more of that crackling, red-hot passion. They have the intended effect; Sin pauses briefly, and I hear him exhale. He sits up slightly, cracking his hand across my ass.

“Fuck Crown,” is all that he says, and then he’s holding my hips and pounding me so hard that the sound of our bodies coming together fills the shadows of the basement. If I turn my head just slightly to the right, I can see our reflection in the dressing mirror.

His bloodied face. His dark eyes. The way my pale flesh indents beneath his harsh fingers.

His natural scent mixes with the ever-present smell of leather, this spicy musk that makes me writhe. Cinnamon and blood mandarin, touched with a hint of tobacco and cloves.

I stare at the pair of us, my wrists trapped by his belt, my legs trapped by his thighs. My heart … in chains. Shit. It hurts as good as it sounds, just like the crack of his hand on my ass again.

Pleasure creeps up on me quickly and mercilessly, attacking me with each voracious pump of Sin’s hips. The orgasm is almost painful; I actually try to fight it off, thrashing beneath him, hating and loving him all at the same time.

When it finally breaks, like a wave against the shore, I let out a sharp sob of relief. Colton’s response is to press his lips against the side of my neck and bite just hard enough that I thrash back against him.

Ruination.

We were both built for it.

Guess we get to ruin each other.

He works himself to his own crescendo before pulling out suddenly. I can feel the hot heat of his seed on my ass, dripping down my cheeks. Then finally, blessedly, he releases the belt on my wrists.

“You fucker ,” I growl at him, turning a look over my shoulder that could kill. Sin meets it with one of his own, tit for tat. We need each other, me and these assholes. We all need to be tempered.

He stays where he is, straddling me, pinning me down with his weight.

“If you disobey me even once outside these walls, Gidge, I swear to god. Once upon a time, I promised I would never give anyone else a second chance. You just got it. Use it wisely.” He climbs off of me, fixing his pants as I sit up and look around for something to clean up with. Sin ends up tossing me an old t-shirt from inside a box.

It takes me a second to recognize it as one of Queenie’s.

“I can’t use this,” I breathe, and Sin very quickly takes it back, staring at the fabric like it’s as much a ghost as my sister is. He quickly finds another bit of fabric to give me and then waits while I wipe him off of me. “Let’s go,” I snap, yanking my dress back down. Sin picks up the panties from the floor and pockets them. Asshole. “Unless you think it’s too early? That clearly didn’t take a full ten minutes.”

He gives me this cocksure smirk that makes me want to slap him.

“Actually, it took eleven. We’re late.”

Sin moves past me, unlocking the basement doors and pushing them open to reveal the stark gray glare of the outside world.

Here goes nothing.

It’s time to see if my trust in these men is well-founded.

That one time, that night two years ago, it wasn’t.

Sin isn’t the only one giving out second chances that he shouldn’t.