Jack knew he was in real trouble. He hit his club, stalked into his office and slammed his booted feet up on the huge oak desk. The thing was ancient and battle scarred. He’d found it at an antique place, but he liked that. None of that new, fancy shit for him. No, he preferred something that had a story to something that was totally soulless.

That woman. Her face swam through his mind, an endless sea of little pictures and snippets, like a projector on repeat or a video feed on endless playback. Luna James.

She wasn’t the typical kind of pretty. Maybe that’s why he thought she was. Long, pink hair that couldn’t possibly be all hers. It hung nearly to her waist, thick and lush despite its rather too vibrant colour. Huge green eyes, thick, full lips. High cheekbones. Her dainty nose was pierced and had a black hoop through the one nostril. When she had leaned over the counter just at the right angle, her hair fell away, revealing those strange round stretchers in her earlobes. They weren’t overkill but Jack still didn’t understand why anyone would do that. Hers were probably only an inch, not more. Somehow, they suited her.

It was her tattoos that held him captivated. He’d never seen so many on a woman before, at least in person. Both her arms were covered. He hadn’t wanted to stare so he couldn’t even recall what exactly they were. I damn well want to though. It was that thought that was most disturbing of all.

Because, in all of his thirty years on this planet, Jack had never wanted to find out about another person. At least not a woman. Not someone who wasn’t his enemy.

An unfamiliar prickle crawled up the back of his neck. He shivered at the same time his gut tightened. That beautiful face swam through his mind again.

Luna. He was damn sure that was not her real name. Just like his name was not Jack at all, but Alexander Fehr. He’d earned his name Jack when he was eleven and walking the streets. Bouncing from foster home to foster home didn’t leave a lot of room for finding love. He took it where he could, a place to belong. That’s what the gang was to him. They didn’t even have a name but he knew what those fucked up kids were. Brothers. They gave him the name Jack because he was so damn good at jacking things. Mostly cars.

He never imagined how stealing the only car that ever got him busted could change his life. That time spent in juvie turned out to be the biggest blessing. He’d met Alan there and because of Alan, he now had all this. This club. Money in the bank. A sense of security he’d never had growing up.

That prickle under Jack’s skin told him there was still something missing. Thankfully he didn’t have time to think about it because his head of security, Benny, a man who looked like the proverbial brick shithouse, opened Jack’s heavy office door and peeked around it like a kid caught stealing cookies or something.

“Come in, I suppose,” Jack said dryly. Benny didn’t understand that knocking existed so there was no point in telling him to rap on the door next time.

With a grunt, Benny stepped inside. His massive form, nearly seven feet tall and probably as broad, took up most of the office. The man also didn’t believe in mincing words. Hell, he didn’t believe in words period. He swiftly, deftly for a man so large, placed a single sheet of paper on Jack’s desk.

Jack stared hard at the face on the sheet. Lion. What a stupid name. Jack had never found out what the guy’s real name was. Lion had to be at around thirty-five by now. The guy was at least five years older than Jack when they were teens. The last time he’d seen him had been the night he was hit over the head and everything went black. He’d woken, hours? days? later. His head hadn’t hurt nearly as badly as his back did.

When he’d seen what his brothers had done to him, taking him somewhere to get that sick fucking tattoo with every single member represented there, he’d puked. And not because of the pain in his head.

“We saw him walking around the club shortly after eight. He did one lap and left.”

“He wasn’t intercepted?”

“No. He doesn’t know he was being watched.”

Jack nodded slowly. He didn’t touch the paper, as though the black and white mug shot could become real at any moment. I doubt very much that Lion didn’t know what he was doing. He knew he was under surveillance.

“That all boss? You just said to notify you and take no action.”

Jack slid his feet off the desk. He nodded again, slowly. Benny scooped that offending poster off the desk and it was only then that Jack felt his lungs decompress, like he could actually breathe again.

When Benny was gone and his door was shut tightly again, Jack took a breath. He folded his hands together and rested his head in them for a moment. His elbows bit into the desk’s hard wood surface.

Faces swam through his memory. More photos and video reel he could never quite banish. Lion. Reaper. Wolf. Jack. A big happy family of four, doing what they could to survive. Until he’d been busted and Alan had given him a lifeline and that was the end of his family. A family he’d sworn a blood oath to never leave. They never let him forget. They left him alone, until now.

Now, thirteen years later, Lion decided to pop his nasty mug up in Jack’s club. He had no doubt that Lion knew exactly what territory he was stepping into. The question was why? To do battle?

Jack wasn’t afraid. Those fucked up pictures on his back would only be there for another day. It might always be in his skin but he would be damned if he was going to have to look at it for another minute longer. Reaper, Lion, Wolf… they would always be a part of him because they were his past. Just like the scars living on the street had put on his body. The other half came compliments of his drunk foster ‘dad’. He was the kind of man who staggered home pissed drunk and real mean on a Friday night but still went to church on a Sunday morning.

Those kids they used to be, Reaper, Wolf, Lion, they were Jack’s past. They were not his future. That’s what Alan always told Jack. He wanted to believe that.

I always knew it wasn’t true. He’d waited. Expected it. All these years, he knew that they would surface, at least one of them. Of course it had to be Lion. Jack just wanted to know why. He knew that all he had to do was wait. He had a feeling he was going to find out. The trouble was, he owned few virtues and patience was not one of them.