LOGINMilaBy the time, the car arrived at a private shopping avenue, I had forced myself to forget that anything had happened. Aaron stepped out, walked around the hood, and opened my door, offering his hand to help me down.I hesitated at first but then I placed my hand in his. His fingers wrapped around mine.He didn't let go as he led me toward a storefront with a frosted glass door.As soon as we stepped inside, I noticed something weird.The store was also entirely empty.A nervous-looking store manager stood by the register. She quickly flipped the sign on the door to Closed and locked it. Her eyes darted to Aaron with both awe and respect."La tienda es suya, señor Wylder." She said.Aaron gave her a single, dismissive nod. She left without another word.I felt blank. “What did she say?”He turned his focus back to me. “The store is yours, senora.” He finally released my hand, gesturing to the sea of cashmere and soft cotton. "Pick whatever you want."I stood frozen in the center o
Mila I didn’t even know where he was taking me to. My mind was a mess.He gave Ryan a paper trail. It was a suicide mission.But, Aaron remained very calm, relax even.He pulled me out of the front doors and took me to the underground garage. It looked like a luxury showroom, lined with sleek, black vehicles.Aaron led me toward a SUV. He pulled open the passenger door and waited. “Get in.”I climbed inside and the rich scent of new leather surrounded me. I stared straight ahead through the tinted windshield and my thoughts clouded my mind again.Ryan knows where I am. Justin knows I am alive. What was Ryan going to do? What if Richard intercepted them first?The driver’s side door opened and shut. The engine roared to life but I felt like I was floating in a sea."Seat belt, Mila."I heard Aaron say something. But I didn't move. I couldn't. I was staring blankly at the polished dashboard, entirely zoned out as the horrifying possibilities of his master plan played on a loop in my he
ReaperThirty days since Justin told me about Belly.The southside was drowning in a street war I had started. I had torn through rival charters, gutted Aegis supply lines, and burned through millions of the club’s cash. Every lead had turned to ash. Every Aegis contractor we captured died before giving up the black site.But Justin’s memory of the St. Justin's foster home had given me a thread. And for thirty days, I had pulled on that goddamn thread, tracking down every corrupt county clerk, every retired social worker and every piece of scum attached to that bulldozed brick building.It led me here.The apartment was a rotting shithole on the city limits. Gunner was standing by the locked door next to me.I was standing over Gable.Gable used to be the head case worker for the county’s toughest districts. He was the man who had overseen St. Justin's ten years ago. Now, he was a trembling, pathetic junkie backed into the corner of his filthy living room, clutching a bloody rag t
MilaThe biting wind coming off the ocean whipped my hair across my face.I walked slowly along the shoreline. On my left, the sea stretched out forever. On my right, tall cliffs surrounded the quiet cove. High up on the rough rocks, partly hidden in the shadow, I saw a square metal vent.I stared at it as I walked.If I had gone through with my plan at three in the morning... if I had squeezed my pregnant body into that tomb, tearing my fingernails and bleeding my knees for four hundred feet in darkness... I would have dropped straight down onto this sand.I would have fallen right into the exact place he had already scheduled to take me.My grand rebellion. My desperate fight for freedom. It was nothing more than a rat running through a maze entirely designed by the man who owned the cheese.The sand crunched softly behind me.I didn't have to turn around to know how close he was. He was exactly three steps behind me. He wasn't holding my arm to prevent me from running into the
MilaI felt so numb. My lungs forgot how to pull in oxygen. Every memory I had of the last two years fractured and shattered into a million irreversible pieces.It had all been a trap. A beautifully constructed trap, and we had walked right into it with our eyes wide open."Do you..." I started, but my voice broke. I swallowed hard, forcing my paralyzed throat to work. "Do you… do you think Richard will win? Do you think Ryan will actually fall back into line?""The Reapers are already breaking, Mila.” Aaron replied, not giving me any false hope. "Richard's money is flooding the streets. He is funding rival charters, paying off the local precincts and squeezing the club's legitimate fronts. Ryan is a king swinging a sword in the dark. He is bleeding resources trying to find you, and a desperate king makes fatal mistakes. Eventually, the club will turn on him, or he will break. Richard just has to wait."A cold sweat broke out across the back of my neck. Ryan was losing. The empire he
MilaRichard Wylder. The man who helped Ryan to destroy Caleb and save me. He was behind all this.My mind raced, desperately trying to find a hole in Aaron’s logic or a lie in his eyes. But there was nothing. Only the terrifying, suffocating truth.I had to take a few deep breaths before steadying myself. "If you knew." I forced the words out of my mouth. "If you knew he was planning this, you could have warned us! You could have told me or warned Ryan! We could have reinforced the clubhouse. We could have hidden!"Aaron’s eyes darkened, the shattered green hardening into something sharp and unapologetic. "Warn Ryan?" He arched a brow. "So he could do what, Mila? Start a street war with a billionaire who owns the police commissioner and three federal judges? Ryan would have taken his guns and marched right up to the Wylder estate. Richard would have legally wiped the Reapers off the map before dinner, and you still would have ended up in a black site.""You could have told me!" I y







