“So… You own this place, huh?” Nash glanced back at Eliza’s question, then gave a nod when she raised her eyebrows curiously. “Kind of an obvious name.”

 

“I didn’t choose it,” he insisted, ushering her into the front door. “I just didn’t argue it when the time came to vote on it. We all own Phoenix Rises collectively.”

 

“Well, I guess there are worse names out there,” she said once she was inside. Nash shut the door hastily behind him. He wasn’t surprised to find that Phillip’s handlers weren’t still waiting for him across the street, but he couldn’t be sure there weren’t other eyes watching him from seemingly vacant windows, inside seemingly empty cars, inside seemingly harmless shops. He probably should have left her at the hospital, behind the closed door with police officers stationed out front, but he knew the club bar was the one place he could be totally sure she was safe. Micky had already agreed to watch over her—and if there was anyone in the world Nash felt he could trust right now, it was Micky.

 

Besides, the bar was a fortified safe house for all the members of the Steel Phoenix Motorcycle Club. While their boys might have been getting killed on runs, not even Phillip had tried an assault on the premises. It looked hapless and a little rundown from the outside, but everyone inside was carrying heavy weaponry at any given moment. The windows were bulletproof glass—illegally installed, of course—and most nights the place was heavily packed with die-hard bikers, who’d give their lives for the well-being of their brotherhood.

 

Eliza would be safe here, and Nash would find precisely what he needed to take down Phillip Crest once and for all.

 

He wasn’t the least bit surprised to find the place more packed than he’d left it. Micky must have called in the cavalry, because everywhere he looked, Nash saw tried and true members of the Steel Phoenix MC—not a townie or drunk from outside the club in sight. The conversations settled somewhat as he walked in, Eliza trailing behind him. When they’d first met, if she had been in a place like this she would have followed like a meek lamb. Tonight, she moved with grace and confidence. Nash knew she was nervous, but she had learned to hide it well.

 

His chest swelled with pride, and he tried his best not to smile like an idiot when he looked back at her.

 

“Gang’s all here,” Micky announced, as Nash worked his way through the crowd toward him. Nash gave him a nod and reached back for Eliza, who readily slipped her small hand in his.

 

“I don’t have a lot of time,” he told his old pal, nodding to the doorway that opened to the basement stairwell. “I just need to get some supplies, then I’m off.”

 

“Can I help?” Micky asked. Those gray-blue eyes flitted back to Eliza briefly before fixing on Nash, who nodded.

 

“Please.”

 

There wasn’t time to stop and fill all the other higher ranking guys in on what was happening, so he planned to leave that to Micky—and Eliza, if she felt like talking. He knew Phillip would be waiting, and even though Eliza was finally safe, her father was still at risk. Sure, there were armed guards standing at his door, but what would happen if Phillip fucking Crest strolled up and insisted he was there to visit his friend and superior?

 

Eliza cringed whenever he alluded to the outcome. They hadn’t shared Phillip’s true nature with anyone, mostly because Nash wanted to tear him apart first—then the Steel Phoenixes would have at him, then he’d be dumped at the police station, a pile of flesh and broken bones. That was how Nash foresaw the near future, but only if everything worked out according to plan.

 

The three descended into the underground labyrinth in silence. If Eliza thought anything of the assault rifles and weapons hanging from the walls, or the stacks of unmarked bills piled up on a table they passed, she said nothing. She didn’t even squeeze his hand. She just followed, observing, seeming calmer than he’d expected. In that moment, he thought he might actually love her.

 

“So what do you need?”

 

“Sedatives,” Nash told Micky, then dumped the grocery bag full of coke he’d been hauling around all day on the counter of the drug storage room. Even in his drug running days, he had never carried around that much cocaine before, but the key was to act like there was nothing valuable in the bag and no one would pay it any attention. If anything, it was just his groceries that he’d picked up before going to the hospital. That was how Nash carried himself with thousands of dollars’ worth of coke on his person.

 

“Sedatives?”

 

“I’m going to take Phillip the drugs he wants,” Nash told him, and before Micky could protest, he held up a hand to silence him. “Not every bit of it, of course. I want to put some back. But the stuff I bring him, I’m going to lace it. I know him and his boys snort it.”

 

“Bit of a Trojan horse, I guess,” Micky muttered, as he opened one of the supply cabinets. Eliza, meanwhile, loitered by the door, holding herself in a solo hug. Nash just wanted to scoop her up, but she probably wouldn’t want to touch him after she heard what he had to say next.

 

“I’m going to go to him shortly,” he explained, pacing back and forth as Micky pulled out the pharmaceutical drugs he planned to cut the coke with. “I’ll go alone. Eliza stays here and you watch her, Micky.”

 

“What?” Her protest was expected, and he let out a soft sigh. “Nash, don’t just—”

 

“You’re not going there, to him,” Nash said sharply, and she pressed her lips together in a tight frown when he looked back at her. “I’m sorry, but no. I don’t want you anywhere near him.”

 

They held one another’s gaze for a long moment, long enough for Micky to clear his throat, until Eliza finally exhaled deeply and nodded. “Fine. I’ll… I’ll stay here.”

 

“You can keep me company,” Micky interjected. “My bum leg won’t let me go out on this kind of sh— stuff anymore.”

 

Eliza gave a nod that told him she wasn’t thrilled with the idea of hanging behind with Micky, but she wasn’t going to argue with him about it anymore either. With that settled, Nash and Micky got to work drugging the drugs, adding crushed sedatives into the white powder and mixing them until they were virtually indistinguishable from one another. When he was sure he had what he needed, he helped Micky load about half of the coke back into the vaults.

 

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Micky said in a gravelly voice, as they headed for the stairs again. “Otherwise it’s your ass.”

 

“Just stick to the plan and everything will be fine,” Nash told him, and Micky carried on up the stairs in a hurry, leaving him alone with Eliza for a moment.

 

“Don’t do anything stupid,” she said, her voice finally giving way to the shakes now that they were alone. She faced him, standing a few stairs higher so that they could look in one another’s eye. Licking her lips, she reached out and brushed his hair back. Nash wanted to melt into the touch. “I mean it. Don’t, you know, get yourself killed.”

 

“Don’t worry about me,” he urged, hoping he sounded as confident as she needed him to be. “Once he’s out cold, he’s my hostage. The tables are going to turn, Eliza. I’ll be back here before you know it.”

 

“I just…” She looked at her feet and swallowed hard, and when their eyes met again, hers were watery. “Don’t die, okay? I mean it.”

 

“Eliza, sweetheart,” he whispered, trying the name for the first time in a long time and finding that he liked it, “I’m not going anywhere.”

 

She gave an unsure nod, and then they kissed in the dark stairwell for far too long, slowly sinking in to one another until it was almost painful to pull away. Taking her hand in his, Nash tugged her back upstairs, where the conversations going on with the rest of the Steel Phoenixes were positively thunderous—and none of them stopped for him. Micky met them at the back emergency exit, where he had his bike waiting for Nash and the same warning he gave before about taking care of it.

 

“Take care of her,” Nash fired back, his eyes flickering to Eliza. Micky nodded, a fierce determination in his eye, and then Nash was gone. No sense in dragging out the goodbye, not when it would only make things harder on both of them.

 

He just wished he’d kissed her at least one more time, but as he climbed onto Micky’s Harley, the bag of spiked cocaine thrown over his shoulder, he knew just one more kiss would never be enough.

 

Although he hadn’t been conscious when he was first taken to Phillip’s warehouse headquarters, he’d been observant as ever when his handlers had left with him earlier in the day. Growing up in Blackwoods gave him a good idea of where he needed to go and how he needed to go about getting there.

 

Nash was about halfway there before police sirens wailed behind him, and a quick glance in his mirrors showed flashing red and blue lights.

 

“Fuck,” he hissed. They were definitely following him. Had he been speeding? Maybe. His head so full of other things that he’d just been letting instinct guide him through traffic. Were Micky’s fucking plates expired? Another possibility.

 

If he tried to make a run for it, he’d never make it to Phillip. The sun was already setting, and the man didn’t strike Nash as the kind to have a lot of patience for things not going according to plan.

 

Groaning, Nash slowed the bike and searched the curb for a good spot in which to pull over. Behind him, the cop car pulled up, shut the siren off but kept the lights flashing, and all Nash could do was wait.

 

But if there was one thing he was certain of, he sure as hell wasn’t going to jail today.