Chapter 1
Zachary “ZZ” Jeffries slipped the padlock onto the door of the last shipping container and slammed it shut with a loud click. After adding a metal shipping seal, he turned to leave, facing the remaining men on the docks. He gave them a nod to signify that everything was ready and they could start loading, and then he walked off.
As he headed in the opposite direction, the muffled whimpers and cries from inside the container became louder. A heady, adrenaline-inducing emotion powered through him, making his heart race. Unable to stop himself, he curled his fingers, balling them into clenched fists.
He knew what those women were experiencing, locked up in that dirty, dark container, their futures unknown. He knew all too well that raw emotion as your heart pounded and you could barely breathe because your own fear was fucking suffocating you. He’d been running from… well, from everyone for a long time now, so yeah, fear was his fucking middle name.
It was also what had kept him alive this long.
He’d turned the fear into rage. Fought his way to the top of the lowest of the low, and took his place on a throne made of garbage and rot.
He didn’t give a fuck if his empire was built on the blood and bones of innocent men and women, didn’t care that more people would have to die so he could continue his reign, continue surviving. This was his life now, this was what they had made him, the monster they’d forced him to become.
“Boss man.”
ZZ cut his eyes to his right as Tommy, one of his men, fell into step beside him as he crossed the docks. “What?” he snarled as he came to an abrupt stop.
Tommy swallowed hard, and ZZ fought the urge to laugh. They were all afraid of him. Even a mean old son of a bitch like Tommy was scared shitless that at any second, ZZ’s temper would turn on him. Once that happened, no one was safe. Not a single fucking person.
“Big guy wants numbers,” Tommy said quietly.
ZZ snorted. “He’ll get ’em when I’m ready to fuckin’ give ’em.”
The Russian mafia might think they owned his ass, but the reality of it was that ZZ had ensured the loyalty of the men who worked under him. If the Russians ever decided to turn on him, make a play against him, ZZ had plans in place to start a war that would crumble the golden ground those fuckers thought they walked upon.
As Tommy reluctantly nodded, ZZ started walking again, cursing quietly over the summer heat, still suffocating even in the dead of night. But wearing short sleeves wasn’t an option for him. His club colors, evidence of his former loyalties, were still tattooed all over his body, something he kept as a reminder of why he’d ended up in the fucking ditch he had.
Still cursing, he reached into his pocket and pulled a rubber band from his jeans. After tying back his long brown hair into a knot, he wiped the sweat from his forehead, cracked his neck a few times, and walked away.
Making a sharp right in the direction of the parking lot, ZZ headed for his truck. He was eager to get home—get drunk, get high, jack himself off—even if home was a piece of shit. It was off the grid, out of the way, and that was all he cared about.
He’d just reached the parking lot when the rumble of a motorcycle gave him pause. Self-preservation, ever present in his every move, slammed into overdrive and he sidestepped to slip behind a nearby vehicle. Crouching, he pulled his piece from the back of his jeans and waited.
Who the fuck was here this late? He planned his shipments to the last second, ensuring that everyone here was on his team, their silence bought and paid for. To his knowledge, no other shipment was on the schedule for tonight, and this unexpected arrival put a damper on his good mood.
As he waited, not just one or two but five bikes came to a slow stop in the center of the parking lot. Raising himself just enough to see better, ZZ looked over the trunk of the vehicle he was crouched behind, and his breath caught in his throat.
Five leather cuts were illuminated by the moonlight, highlighting the Grim Reaper on the back, the Hell’s Horsemen rocker above it and the Miles City patch beneath it.
No fucking way. They couldn’t know he was here, and after all this time, why would they bother to look for him? He’d been so sure that once Deuce had come to an unhappy truce with the Russians, his former club president would stop sending runners after him. And he had. For years now, ZZ hadn’t heard as much as a whisper of the Horsemen sniffing around his business.
But as the bikes lined up and the men riding them cut their engines, toed their kickstands, and dismounted, ZZ couldn’t help but wonder if that had been the plan all along. Let enough time pass, let him believe he was safe, and then pounce when he least expected it.
Too bad for them. He always expected the unexpected.
“You’re stupid as fuck, Dev,” one of the men called out in a deep voice ZZ didn’t recognize. “Prez finds out you brought along your bitch, he’s gonna put you in the damn ground.”
“Shut up, asshole,” a feminine voice called out.
ZZ’s eyes zeroed in on the slim figure that moved to stand beside the circle of men. Dressed in head-to-toe leather, showcasing a body built for sin, she reached up with small, feminine hands to remove her full-face helmet.
His heart stopped. It couldn’t be… but it was. The blonde hair, the killer body, the grin punctuated with dimples glinting under the parking lot lights. Danny looked just like he remembered her, as if she hadn’t aged a day since he’d last seen her.
“She stays in the parking lot,” another voice called out.
This one ZZ recognized as his former brother Bucket, but the years hadn’t been kind to him. He looked worse than ever, grimy as fuck, and older than ZZ knew he was.
“What’s the big fuckin’ deal?” another man said, this one much younger than Bucket. Coming to stand beside Danny, he swung his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him.
ZZ blinked with a strong sense of déjà vu. It had been a while since he’d seen any of his former crew, but if he didn’t know any better, he’d have said that man was Cox. Only he wasn’t. Cox had been covered in tattoos, and this guy didn’t have any visible ink.
“It’s a fuckin’ cash drop-off,” the young man said. “Wham, bam, we’re back on the road.”
Bucket shook his head. “She stays in the parking lot.” This time his voice brooked no argument, and the younger man’s arm fell away from Danny.
“Yeah, man,” he muttered. “She stays in the parking lot. Fine.”
“Fuckers,” Danny bit out. “You’re all a bunch of no fuckin’ fun.”
ZZ’s head spun. Wasn’t Danny married to Ripper? Didn’t she have a kid with him? And here she was with another brother?
In a heartbeat, his confusion and surprise transformed to anger. The Hell’s fucking Horsemen were here in his fucking territory, and doing business, no less.
But even worse, Danielle West was here. The reason his life had gone from damn near perfect to shit staining a motherfucking gutter was here. And she was just as beautiful as ever, living a carefree fucking life doing whatever the fuck she pleased.
His anger spiking, ZZ felt a cold tremor slither along his spine as his hands began to shake. And suddenly, he wanted more than he’d ever wanted anything to wrap his hands around her perfect fucking neck and squeeze the life out of her.
As the group turned away, headed in the direction of the docks, ZZ could no longer be bothered with their reasons for being here. He was solely focused on Danny, who was headed back to the line of bikes.
Huffing loudly, she slammed her helmet onto the seat of the Harley she’d ridden in on. Turned away from him, she dug into her back pocket and pulled out a brightly lit phone.
ZZ scuttled back into the shadows as the men passed by him. His breathing shallow and his heart racing, he counted under his breath as he waited, something he often did when preparing himself for the unknown.
Once he could no longer hear the booted footsteps echo through the night, he shot up from his hiding place, and with careful, silent steps maneuvered through the vehicles in the lot. As he approached Danny, who was still facing away from him, entirely unaware of his presence, he raised his arm, lifting his gun.
But he wasn’t going to shoot her. No, he was going to make her pay for what she’d done to him.
“Danny,” he growled. The muscles in his face twitched violently. Rage long suppressed had been released, coursing angrily through his veins at a super speed he had absolutely no control over.
Startled so badly that her phone clattered to the ground, Danny spun around. All that long blonde hair went flying, whipping around her as she turned to face him.
As it settled away from her face, ZZ looked her up and down. Tight black leather jacket and pants, her lips painted a bright red, and her eyes lined in black. This was not Danny. Forget that she was far too young, even younger than he’d thought. Now that he was standing directly in front of her, he could see the subtle differences between this woman and Danny. Her body wasn’t as slim, was more curvy than athletic; her bright blue eyes were bigger, almost too big for her face; and her lips were thicker, the bottom one curving in a sexy way reminiscent of…
Eva.
The young woman’s surprised gaze dropped to the gun in his hand and then back to his face. Just as she opened her mouth, a scream forming in her throat, he lunged forward.
• • •
My eyes blinked open. A sharp throbbing pounded in my head, and my first thought was that I’d drank too much.
It was dark wherever I was, and I was lying on my side. The air was stale, thick with heat, but the floor beneath me was smooth and cool.
When I reached to touch where it hurt, my hand came away sticky and wet. I brought my fingertips in front of my face, trying to see in the darkness.
What the hell had happened to me?
That’s when I noticed the extra weight at my wrists, making my arms heavy. Steel manacles wrapped around them, connected by a thick chain.
I sucked in a sharp, startled breath, tried to think past the pain in my head. The last thing I remembered was—
Clang. Clang. Clang.
A sharp clash of metal on metal caused the throbbing in my head to worsen.
Confused and disoriented, I tried to push myself upright only to have my arms buckle. I tried three more times before I managed to sit up. Limbs made of jelly folded beneath me and my back bumped something hard. A bolt of fear followed by a spurt of adrenaline made me flail in the darkness, and I scooted myself backward across the floor. Gripping the length of chain beneath me, I crawled alongside it, following it to wherever it might take me.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
What was that awful noise?
The crown of my head smacked against something hard and I cried out softly, pain radiating through my skull. With tears in my eyes, I clenched my teeth and reached blindly in front of me until my shaking hand closed around a doorknob. Gripping the handle, I pulled myself to my knees. I paused to breathe with my forehead pressed to the door.
Where is Devin? Where am I?
It came back to me in fragments.
“Danny,” a voice had growled.
I remembered being startled, whirling around, and—
Something familiar nagged at my memories. A voice, a face, something I couldn’t quite remember—like a sense of déjà vu or a remembered dream, or—
Clang. Clang. Clang.
I turned the knob slowly, surprised to find the door unlocked. A sliver of light broke through the darkness, and I squinted as it highlighted a nearby… toilet?
The realization that I was in a bathroom calmed me for a moment until I remembered the manacles on my wrists. Swallowing hard, I pulled the door open.
Bright light poured inside the small room, temporarily blinding me. I blinked several times, trying to see past the spots dancing in front of my eyes.
I was in a house, as far as I could tell, although it lacked the creature comforts that usually made up a home. A ragged old sofa appeared haphazardly shoved against the corresponding wall. Beside it stood a floor lamp without a shade. The wood-paneled walls were blank aside from several large holes, giving the impression that something once hung there but had been ripped away.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
With the door open, the noise was louder, worsening the pain in my head.
My tongue darted out, licking my dry lips. Thirsty and dizzy, I swayed, and the ankle tucked beneath me rolled painfully over the hard floor.
My boots, I realized, were gone. As was my jacket.
As I shifted onto my backside, I lifted my hands to inspect the heavy black cuffs encircling my wrists and the rusty chain looped through them. Blood coated my fingertips. My blood. The pain in my head doubled at the realization I was injured.
Slowly shifting around, my gaze followed the length of chain to where it was looped around the bars of an old-fashioned heat radiator.
It hit me then—really, truly struck me—what had happened to me. What was happening to me.
“Danny,” the man had said, snarling my sister’s name as if it were an accusation.
I’d spun around, seen the gun, and…
And I’d woken up here. Chained inside an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar house.
You see it in the movies and on television. You read about it in books, and even occasionally hear about it on the news—the unfortunate people in real life who’ve had the bad luck to have something truly terrifying happen to them.
Terrible things had happened in my family, to my own mother even. Horrific, gut-wrenching things that no one ever talked about because of the deep emotional scars they’d caused.
But even knowing all of that…
You still don’t expect it to happen to you.
My head spun and I shook it, seeing spots again that had nothing to do with the shade-less lamp in the other room. Where was Devin… and the rest of the guys?
Again and again, I gulped in warm air, each inhale faster, noisier, until I was hiccupping. Panicky, I clutched at my chest as if that could somehow help me to remember how to exhale.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Air rushed from my lungs. Adrenaline danced along my skin, making it tingle.
What was that noise?
Rather than remain in the doorway and envision one horrifying possibility after another, I forced myself forward. Holding my breath and with my pounding heart lodged in my throat, I peeked around the doorjamb.
Scanning the area, I saw more of the same. A sparsely furnished room, colorless and unremarkable, its remaining furnishings a small metal table, a lone bottle of water on top of it, and a sad-looking folding chair beside it.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
I dragged myself another inch forward. The door to a nearby room was open, and the view inside caused every hair on my body to stand to attention. A chill skittered up my spine.
The man inside wore only a pair of black sweatpants. His back and arms were sculpted muscle beneath colorful skin—a veritable mural of ink. Up he went, rung by rung on a salmon ladder affixed to the wall. He moved effortlessly, as if pulling his considerable muscle mass up over the metal bar in his grip and then jumping up through the air, hooking the bar into the next rung, was the easiest thing in the world.
As terrified as I already was, witnessing the sheer strength of this man managed to instill even more fear in me.
Down he came, rung by rung, until his feet slapped to the floor. Releasing the bar, he turned to grab a towel off the back of another folding chair.
That’s when I saw it, the bold black lettering inked vertically along his right arm that read HELL’S HORSEMEN. A gasp escaped me before I could swallow it back.
He whipped around and our gazes collided, his keen, dark eyes meeting mine.
There was no sound as he crossed the room, his stride decisive. His feet were as bare as his chest, quietly carrying all those formidable muscles straight toward me. Shock and fear froze me in place as I took in my oncoming doom.
The voice I couldn’t place, the face I couldn’t recall, the indefinable something I couldn’t quite remember, all of it coalesced into this terrifying man as he bore down on me like a predator does its prey.
He stopped, looming over me, and bent close enough that I could smell the sweat clinging to his body, see the tiny lines bracketing his eyes, note the specks of gray in his weeks’ worth of scruff. I was too scared to move. Too stunned to even tremble.
“Do you know who I am?” His face was expressionless, his voice a stone slab dropping from the sky, slapping the earth, crushing and killing all living things beneath it.
I did know him. He’d loved my sister once, had smiled every time he looked at her.
Still frozen, I breathed his name. “ZZ.”