Chapter Two

Ice fell silent, fell into thought about The Road Devils MC and what the past few years had brought his beloved band of brothers. It had been nothing but a fucking litany of tragedies, one thing right after the other. It had been unceasing and completely out of control.

First, the tattoo parlour had been blown up and Keira, Zoe Parish’s baby girl, had almost been kidnapped by her own killer father. Then Scars Innis – the club VP – had been badly burned running into the blaze to rescue Keira as she sat on the floor wailing.

Just a year after that whole disaster, Jolene Angeles – the MC accountant and Silver Bennett’s girlfriend – had killed her abusive ex-husband after he came back and almost beat her to death.

Then there was the whole cover-up and clean-up of that mess, which just led to yet another mess when Elle Turner – known back then as Iris, back when she’d been a cult member on the run – had clambered into Viking Callahan’s van when he’d been burning Jo’s ex’s body deep in the Utah woods. He’d unwittingly brought her back to Denver – and that had put The Road Devils on the cult leader’s radar.

After Elle had been snatched up by the cult, Ice and a few of the other boys had stormed the compound, shot first and asked questions later, and rescued Elle and Violet, one of her fellow woman-servants. They’d managed to get away, and Ice had hoped hard that that might be the end of the raging ocean of shit… but he’d been way wrong. In fact, things became worse than ever.

Violet, Elle’s old servant buddy, promptly sold everyone out to Gideon, the maniacal cult leader; unbelievably, the asshole had had a direct link to Crusher Alcott, the President of The Highway Hellions MC out of Utah. Crusher had a grudge against The Road Devils in general, and against the club President Wolf Connor personally. His involvement had directly led to the murder of Rebel Armstrong, one of Ice’s MC brothers. It was bitterly meagre comfort for Ice to know that Crusher was dead too, brutally stabbed in the neck by his own old high-school friend.

Again, if Ice had hoped that that might be the end of it all, he’d been way, way wrong. His fellow Enforcers, Dux and Drake Keeler, had decided to leave the MC, with Wolf’s blessing. They’d moved to Pennsylvania to live with their pregnant girlfriend (Ice didn’t actually know what to call Briley Cross, who the twins shared in every single way, and who was carrying twins of her own), and were officially long gone.

And they’re not the only ones.

That’s what’s really got you all stressed out, isn’t it? That’s he’s going too?

“Yeah,” he said to the empty room. “Yeah. It is.”

He got to his feet, and headed back to the kitchen for another cup of black-as-the-night coffee. After he poured it, he leaned against the counter, sipping morosely as he yet again thought about Wolf leaving the MC. Going out to Utah as some kind of fucking human sacrifice to Viper Grant, Crusher’s right-hand-man who was now in charge of The Hellions. Doing it to keep everyone else safe, Wolf had said, but if the past few years had taught Ice anything, it was that no matter how hard he tried – and he really had tried, he’d fucking tied himself up in knots trying to protect everyone – The Road Devils were not safe, their loved ones and friends were not safe. Not even fucking close.

Ice had begged his President to take him to Utah too. Ice had argued that he could watch Wolf’s back out there, that Wolf going alone was nothing but suicide, and that whatever promises Viper had made regarding his safety were useless and worthless. Wolf had flat-out refused his Chief Enforcer’s help, and had told Ice to stay here in Denver and support Scars, who was stepping in as Acting-President.

It seemed to Ice that the MC was slowly but surely falling apart, one devastating piece at a time. Death and destruction, murder and mayhem, foes and fuck-ups, everywhere that he looked. And if all of this shit had happened on Ice’s lookout, when he’d been actively on alert and had been watching for trouble, just what the hell was going to happen to his Prez when Ice wasn’t anywhere close-by, didn’t have eyes on him?

Ice had a horrible feeling, way deep down in the pit of his stomach, that when Wolf peeled off into the sunset and headed to Utah, that would be the last that any of the boys saw of him. He might be the toughest fucker that Ice knew, and Wolf also possessed a level of cunning and smarts that left every other man in the MC in the dust… but he wasn’t invincible.

And that’s what had Ice’s parents poking their heads out of their graves, that’s what had him up at four o’clock in the morning. That’s what was setting off every single fucking nerve in his body, and they were vibrating so hard that they were practically jangling like Christmas bells.

Jingle bells, jingle bells.

Shut the fuck up.