No fighting or violence on club grounds. Penalty is an ass-kicking.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Arianne awoke to a gentle rapping on the front door. Soft morning light filtered through her curtains. Jagger? She quickly dismissed the thought. No way would Jagger ever knock. He would just barge in.
Wrapping a blanket around her shoulders, she threw on some sweats and called out. “Who is it?”
“Wheels.”
With a sigh of both relief and disappointment, Arianne opened the door to the pinched expression of a clearly agitated Wheels.
“Jagger asked me to come and get you. He’s got something he wants you to see.” He shifted from foot to foot, avoiding eye contact, and Arianne frowned.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” He stuffed his fists in his jeans pockets and looked away. “Just … don’t like to keep Jagger waiting. You know how it is. He says now, he means yesterday. He says yesterday, he means last week.”
Still disconcerted by the events of last night, Arianne grimaced. “Come on in. I’ll just be five minutes.”
Five minutes became ten as she scrambled to wash up and tidy her hair before throwing on her jeans and T-shirt. All the while, she agonized over whether to ask Wheels about the night at Peelers. Had that been him by the door that night? If so, why had he let her go?
By the time she joined him in the living room, she had resolved not to raise the issue unless he did. The consequences for him were severe, and she couldn’t risk anyone overhearing their conversation. Plus, he was already in full anxiety mode, muttering to himself as they walked down the stairs.
Wheels’ Harley Sportster was small and compact, not designed for the comfort of a pillion rider, and she shifted in her seat as he raced through Conundrum, blowing through red lights and careening through back alleys. By the time they arrived at the clubhouse, she knew something was seriously wrong. Even a senior patch wouldn’t take the kind of risks he’d taken on that ride unless he’d been threatened with death.
He led her through the clubhouse in silence, his hand pressed against her lower back as if she might suddenly turn and run. But she stayed on course, curious about what could rile the easygoing Wheels and make Jagger demand her presence instead of coming for her himself.
They descended the stairs to the basement, and Wheels led her down a long narrow hallway, and through a spacious games room, his fingers twitching against her.
“What’s got you so agitated?” She skirted around the pool table, and eyed the well-stocked bar with appreciation.
Wheels stared straight ahead and mumbled. “Sometimes I forget.”
“Forget what?” she said in an uncertain tone.
“Who he really is and how careful I have to be.”
She didn’t have to ask what he meant. They walked into a small room with blacked-out windows, and she knew.
“Banks!” A sudden coldness hit her core, and she flung herself forward, her cry echoing through the small space.
Tied to a chair in the center of the room, his left eye swollen shut, blood trickling down his temple, and his face a mass of cuts and bruises, Banks regarded her with a resigned expression. His eyes flicked to Jagger standing to his right, fist raised to deliver another blow.
“Bastard.” Banks growled. “Did you have to bring her down here?”
“No.” Arianne threw herself in front of Jagger and held up her hands, palms forward, taking in Cade and Sparky, leaning against the wall and Zane behind the chair. “Don’t touch him. Don’t you dare touch him.”
The room, pungent with the scent of blood and sweat, stilled. Jagger turned to her, his eyes cold, hard, and resolute. “He has information I need, and so far he’s been reluctant to give it up. Apparently, the women who took you to him told him the whole story, and it’s a story I want to hear.”
Seized by an unbearable fury, heedless of the muttered warnings around her, Arianne turned on Jagger. “You’re doing this to get information I did not want you to have. This is between you and me. Let him go. Now.”
Jagger’s eyes narrowed. “Careful, sweetheart. There’s a line you don’t cross, and you’re standing on the edge. I’ll tolerate only so much disrespect, and right now my patience is at its end. I want a name and I’ll do what has to be done to get it. He knows who fired the gun.”
Her face twisted in revulsion. “So you’re going to beat him up? He looked after me, Jagger. He took a bullet out of my arm. And right now he’s suffering for being a good friend to me. And this is the thanks he gets? I trusted you—”
“You don’t trust me.” He said through gritted his teeth. “You told me last night. What would the Jacks think if they found out was a woman I had claimed had been shot and I did fuck-all about it? Or the Triads? Or the Mafia? Everything we do or don’t do sends a message. Everything is a power play. I have one hundred men depending on me to keep them safe. We are the dominant club in the state, and we stay that way because we make sure no one fucks with us. And beating my girl, tying her up, chaining her to a floor, and shooting her goes way beyond that.”
“I’m not your girl.” She couldn’t hide the bitterness in her voice. “I’m your prize. Your finger to Viper. The life you took for Cole’s life. If I were anything more, you wouldn’t be doing this.”
“You were mine the second you drove onto Sinner property.” His flat, toneless voice sliced through her heart. “You will be mine until I let you go.”
He sidestepped Arianne and looked down at Banks. “Name.”
“Fuck you.”
Without warning, Jagger punched Banks in the jaw. Banks’s head snapped to the side and he let loose a string of swearwords.
“Oh God. Stop.” She grabbed Jagger’s T-shirt and yanked him toward her. “Stop.”
His face twisted with rage. Stark, raw, and almost unrecognizable as the man who had been so gently cruel with her last night.
“I want a name.”
“Don’t fucking tell these bastards anything.” Banks spit blood on the floor. “Told you bikers were nothing but trouble. You keep your secrets to yourself and know they are safe with me. I’m not gonna break ’cause some pussy with marshmallow hands is pattin’ me on the cheeks.”
Jagger looked over at Sparky and dipped his chin. Sparky picked up an iron bar from the floor and tapped it in his hand. Wheels paled. Arianne took a step toward Banks, and Jagger grabbed her arm.
“Don’t interfere.”
Her stomach sank, and a wave of nausea washed over her. Wheels was right. She, too, had forgotten who Jagger was: not a friend or a savior, or even a lover, but a ruthless MC president who put his club above everything else. Just like her father.
Softening her expression, she swallowed her pride and dropped her voice to a pleading tone. “Please, Jagger. Don’t hurt him.”
But he wouldn’t be moved. “I’m tired of playing these fucking games, Arianne. You know I won’t hurt you, but I have no problem hurting him. None whatsoever. I want the name of the guy who did those things to you, or I’ll start at his ankles and work my way up.
She cast one last, frantic glance at Sparky, but he just gave her a sympathetic shrug and looked away. Zane snorted, amused. Wheels’s face contorted in shared anguish and he looked away.
Damn him. Damn them all. Damn stupid biker culture. How had she misjudged him so badly? How had she fooled herself into thinking he wasn’t like the other bikers she knew? He was as bad as Viper. Maybe even worse.
She spun around and stormed out the door, searching for a weapon. She had her .38 strapped to her leg, but she wasn’t prepared to go that far. Not yet. She grabbed a pool cue from the rack and raced back into the room. Jagger was still in front of Banks, his back to her. She moved quickly, swinging the pool cue before anyone could bark a warning.
“No.” The pool cue whipped over Jagger’s back and split in two with a loud crack, leaving her holding a splintered piece of wood.
Jagger reacted so fast, she barely registered that he had moved. One moment his back was bowing under her strike; the next she was against the wall, the broken pool cue against her throat. His chest heaved, eyes glittered, unseeing.
“Goddamnit.” Banks struggled against his bonds. “Leave her alone. I’m over here if you want a punching bag.”
Arianne glared as the stick pressed against her throat. “That’s right,” she gritted out. “Hurt me. I’m the one who won’t tell you what you want to know. And I can take it. I’ve taken it all my life. There isn’t anything you can do to me that Viper hasn’t already done. Hit me, Jagger. Show me how wrong I was about you. Show me you’re all the same. Do it for the club.”
A curious mix of emotions flickered across Jagger’s face—shock, fear, self-loathing, torment—but no compassion, no love. He hadn’t meant the words he uttered last night. And even if he had, he clearly didn’t know what they meant.
“I will protect you, Arianne. Whether you want it or not.”
Without another glance, he walked over to Sparky and took the bar from his hand. Holding it like a golf club, he touched Banks’s ankle, then raised the bar over his shoulder.
If she had been in that chair, she would have let him hit her. Viper hadn’t just used his fists, and she’d survived, she knew she could survive whatever Jagger dished out. But it wasn’t her in the chair. And just as she couldn’t be the instrument of Jeff’s death, she couldn’t watch someone she cared about suffer on her behalf.
“Jeff.” She screamed the name and ran over to the chair, blocking the bar with her body. “Jeff chased me and hit me. Axle knocked me out. It was Jeff’s idea to go to Bunny. They both took me there. Jeff’s the one who tied me up and chained me to the floor.”
“Who shot you?” His voice held no emotion, no anger, no disappointment. Nothing.
“Jeff had my gun.” Her chin and lips trembled as she gave him away. “He didn’t know what he was doing. He’s an addict. He gets psychotic when he’s tweaking.”
But for the first time, she didn’t feel any conviction for that excuse. Had he been tweaking when he picked her up or decided to sell her for a kilo of meth, or when he caught her in the alley and punched her in the face? There were moments when he’d seemed like himself, when she thought he knew exactly what he was doing. But in the end, did it matter? He was responsible for his actions, and his actions had led to her being tied up in the basement of Bunny’s pool hall.
Jagger made a disgusted sound. “And yet after everything he did, you protected him right to the very last second.”
“I don’t want him dead. He’s my brother. I owe him my life.”
“And my clubhouse? Cole? He was my brother.”
“Jeff said he wasn’t the shooter.”
Jagger tapped the bar in his hand, and the skin on the back of her neck prickled. He wasn’t finished with this. What else did he want?
“Maybe it was you. You’re good on your bike, good with a gun. Hard to believe someone could knock you off. Easy to believe you could take someone out while riding.”
“You fucking bastard.” Banks snarled and struggled against the ropes. “Arianne, get me the hell outta this chair and I’ll teach this betraying piece of shit about honor and loyalty and how to tell a good person from a piece of fucking Sinner crap.”
She didn’t feel Banks’s anger. Or his indignation. Although she was grateful he believed in her. She felt nothing but a deep aching sadness for the loss of something she had known in her heart was too good to be true.
“If you really believe that,” she said to Jagger. “If you really believe I could do those things, then do your duty. Give your club justice. Revenge. Show us what you’re made of, Mr. President. Use that bar on me.” She spread her arms and stood in front of him, fully prepared to die.
And in that moment she was sixteen again and determined to win her freedom, even if she had to die for it. But that time, she’d been holding a gun.
His jaw twitched and he held her gaze, his face an expressionless mask. They both knew she had left him with only two choices: He could kill her, or he could release his claim. Either way she would be free.
The seconds passed in interminable silence. Finally, Jagger handed the bar to Zane. “Find Jeff. Bring him here. Take as many brothers as you need. I don’t care how many Jacks you have to go through to get him. Then go deal with Bunny. He should have called me the second he saw her, and he never should have let her go.”
Zane gave him a curt nod. “Axle?”
“Spread the word through the underground: Mafia, Triads, Russians, every MC, and our law enforcement contacts. He’s an enemy of the Sinners, and we’ve put a price on his head.”
“You want me to take Arianne home?” Wheels took a step forward, his face stark, brows deeply furrowed. He looked like he’d aged ten years in the last ten minutes.
Jagger leveled his gaze at Arianne. “I can’t protect you if you aren’t honest with me. I can’t keep you safe if you choose to protect the very people who mean you harm. And I can’t trust you if you keep secrets from me. I release you from the Sinner claim. We’re done.”
And then he was gone.
* * *
Leaves crunched beneath Jagger’s feet as he pounded his way through the forest. Max ran by his side, unusually quiet, as if he could sense Jagger’s torment.
His sweat-soaked shirt clung to him and his thighs burned in protest, but he couldn’t stop, couldn’t go back, couldn’t think about Arianne’s face when she walked into the room and saw Banks tied to the chair.
Shock. Devastation. Betrayal.
Nothing had ever cut him so bad, except making the decision to push her away in the first place. He’d never be able to tell her he’d done it to protect her. That it was partly a charade.
He stumbled. Caught himself. Pushed on. She should be gone by now. Someplace safe. Away from him. Away from Viper, Jeff, and everyone who meant her harm. She would find the happiness she had been looking for. She would be free.
Max stopped suddenly and barked. Relieved to have an excuse to stop punishing himself, Jagger slowed to a walk and greeted Zane, who waited for him near the low stone wall surrounding the property.
“Hey.” One word. A host of questions. But mostly Zane wanted to make sure he was okay.
He didn’t answer. No, he was far from okay, but he couldn’t admit that weakness, even to his best friend. Instead, he paced along the wall toward the house, cooling down, wondering if self-loathing could kill, determined not to talk about the real reason Zane was here. “What’s up?”
“Sherry wants to come back. She’s hounding everyone.”
Max bounded over to them and Jagger picked up a stick and threw it far into the trees. “I don’t kick people out so I can bring them back. She made her choice. She chose poorly. I can’t undo her mistake.”
“If you say so. But she came clean about helping Axle steal the guns, and I believe her when she says he forced her to do it.”
Jagger bristled at the implicit admonishment. “Anything else?”
“Gunner thinks the same person who tipped off the Jacks at the ice house also tipped off the Jacks about our party at Riders. He’s gonna recommend an information lockdown regarding future missions and gatherings until we flush the bastard out.”
“Christ. Everything’s falling apart. How did a rat get into the club? We fucking screen them to death.”
Zane lifted a shoulder. “Could be someone turned, like Axle did. He’s gone underground, by the way. No one can find him. I’ve doubled the reward and made it clear we’ll take him alive or dead. If I was him, I’d get out of the state as fast as possible.”
“I hope he leaves our fucking guns behind.”
“Lotta guns floating around,” Zane said. “T-Rex ID’d Jeff as the leader of the protection-run ambush, which means Viper has Sheriff Morton’s guns, too.”
Jagger slapped at a tree branch in his path. “We’ll have to offer Morton the money we picked up from trunking a few weeks ago, smooth his ruffled feathers. Christ. If we can’t get at least one stash back, we’ll have a hard time getting new contracts.”
“Viper must be suffering from the loss of the ice house if he’s trying to take over our arms trade.” Zane swatted at a branch overhead. “You know what the dealers are like when they don’t get their stuff.”
“Small consolation.” Jagger kicked at the leaves as they passed a broken fountain, two cupids entwined, their bows broken, bodies covered in moss. “What about Banks? Did you offer him a place as a prospect?”
“He told me to shove my head up my ass.”
Any other time he would have chuckled. Instead, he scraped a hand through his hair and sighed. “I’m not giving up. I want him in the club. He said he was Special Forces, and Sparky told me he had six of our boys groaning on the floor of his apartment in under five minutes. I think he let them take him, just so he could check up on Arianne. He’s not a man who goes anywhere he doesn’t want to go.”
“So how are you going to change his mind?” Zane whistled and Max bounded over to them. Jagger bent to ruffle Max’s fur before continuing down the path.
“I told Cade to call in a coupla marks and send a construction crew over to his bar to fix it up. And I’m sending Doc Hegel over to check him out after he’s finished with the six Banks beat up.”
“He’s a fucking fighting machine,” Zane said, his voice laced with admiration.
“And I want him.” Jagger rubbed his brow. Banks wasn’t going to come to them easy, especially after what he’d done, but with the truce broken, he needed good men and Banks had skills beyond those of the average biker. “I’m going to lean on him until he caves,” he said, with a confidence he didn’t feel in the least. “Man like that would be an incredible asset for the club. He knew what was going down with Arianne the first time I hit him. He knew it was all for show. He played the game because in the end, we both wanted the same thing.”
They paused at the steps to the clubhouse and Zane twisted his lips to the side. “You ever wonder what a guy from Special Forces is doing running a bar in Conundrum?”
“Already checked him out. The car, bar, and his apartment are all in the name of Joe Banks, but except for those three records, Joe Banks doesn’t exist. He has no history, pays no taxes, and has no bank accounts.”
“And soon he’ll have no bartender.”
Jagger gave his friend a cool warning glare. “Don’t go there, Zane. It fucking killed me to do what I had to do, but it was the only way to keep her safe. I had to make her hate me enough that she’d leave Conundrum and never look back. That picture T-Rex brought back did it for me. With the Black Jacks putting a mark on her, it was Christel all over again.”
Zane sat on the top step, resting his elbows on his thighs. “This situation is nothing like what you faced with Christel. She was a sweet girl, but she wasn’t cut out for this life. She didn’t have the edge or the street smarts to stay alive. She needed someone to take care of her, but you were already spread too thin. I’m sorry you lost her, but there was a reason you never made her an old lady, and that’s because you knew she wasn’t right for you.”
“Zane…” But the usually reticent Zane was on a roll and didn’t heed his warning.
“Arianne isn’t anything like her. She can take care of herself. Would Christel ever have tried to escape out a window, stand up to Viper, or shoot Leo when he busted up her party? Would she have hit you with a pool cue when she thought you’d crossed the line, and fucking dare you to take her life? Arianne’s the kind of woman who will always have your back. If she thinks someone’s sneaking outside her house at night, she’s not gonna call you a hundred times, sobbing into the phone. She’s gonna pull out her gun and shoot the fucker in the nuts. She’s an asset, not a liability. She’s probably the only woman I’ve met who is worthy of you. A woman to stand by your side instead of in your shadow. She makes you stronger, not weaker.”
Jagger sat heavily on the step beside his old friend. “I thought you didn’t like her. You accused her of being a spy. You’ve spent the last two months trying to push her out.”
Zane shrugged. “I changed my mind. Seeing her today, all bruised up, her arm bandaged, and she’s still telling you off, whacking you with a pool cue to knock some fucking sense into you, doing everything she could to protect the people she loved—even you. She changed my mind.”
Max trotted over and settled beside Jagger, resting his head on Jagger’s shoe. He felt another tug on his heart. Loyalty. One of the fundamental tenets of biker culture. Arianne had it in spades. But he hadn’t been loyal to her. Yes, he’d wanted to protect her, but he hadn’t given her his faith or support. He hadn’t trusted her judgment or respected her wishes. Instead, he had pushed her away, long before this latest plan to keep her safe.
Just as his dad had done to his mother. He was his father’s son, after all. Ironic how history came full circle.
He rubbed Max’s back, brushing out the leaves and twigs with each long stroke of his hand. “The Jacks have marked her because of me and the choices I made. She’ll be safer if she leaves Conundrum.”
“Christ.” Zane gave an exasperated groan. “What does she have to do to prove herself to you?”
The opposite of what his mother had done.
Stay.