Chapter 4

Prologue continued

“I’m asking how far you think this is gonna go,” he’d said softly, rubbing his thumb across her palm. “Because I’m pretty sure I’m looking at my future wife.”

Nala had stared at him in complete disbelief. “You barely know me.”

“I know enough.”

“That’s insane.”

“Probably,” he’d agreed easily. “Still true though.”

And somehow, impossibly, it had been.

Cole had loved her openly from the very beginning, with a kind of reckless certainty that had both thrilled and terrified her. He brought her to bars where conversations stopped when she walked in beside him. He held her hand at club parties where some of the older members barely concealed their disgust. He introduced her as his woman with his head high and his arm firm around her waist, daring anyone to say something sideways about it.

Some of them did anyway. Not to her face, usually. Men like that were cowards more often than not, but she heard and saw enough. Looks lasted too long, conversations died when she approached. Certain women refused to speak to her altogether, as though proximity itself might contaminate them somehow.

And Cole fought every single battle she never asked him to fight. Sometimes literally.

The first time a prospect called her a slur within earshot, Cole had broken the man’s nose so badly there’d been blood sprayed across the concrete floor of the garage. Wheels had nearly lost his mind afterward, screaming about discipline and hierarchy and how no pussy was worth raising hands against a future patched-in member.

Cole hadn’t even looked sorry. “Then don’t let your future patched-in members disrespect my wife.”

Not girlfriend. Not old lady. Wife. Even before she actually was.

The punishment for that kind of defiance had come quietly over time. No official conversations, no dramatic ultimatums. Just doors that stopped opening for him inside the club, opportunities that went elsewhere, promotions that somehow never materialized despite the fact that everybody knew Cole was smarter than half the men outranking him.

He accepted it all without complaint, stayed behind the bar, pouring out drinks and handling drunks. From her side, Nala accepted that she would never truly belong in his world.

And that was OK, all of it was OK, because she belonged to him, and he belonged to her. That had been enough, more than enough.

Until now. Now, Wheels Jordan was standing in front of her talking about her baby like it was something contaminated. Something unclean. Something that needed to disappear.

Wheels’ gaze dropped to her stomach again, and when he spoke next, his voice softened into something infinitely more terrifying than shouting ever could have been.

“If you know what’s good for that thing inside you, you’ll get the fuck out of Colorado today.”

“You’d hurt a baby?” she whispered before she could stop herself.

Wheels’ expression didn’t even flicker. “That depends on you.”

Nala stopped breathing.

There it is, she thought wildly. There’s the truth.

Not hidden beneath legal paperwork or threats or insults anymore, but laid bare right in front of her in all its monstrous simplicity. Compliance or consequences.

This had never really been about the divorce, she knew. This was extermination, and removal, and erasing her from Cole’s life so thoroughly that it would be as though she had never existed in the first place.

And now the baby complicated matters.

Her entire life had shifted off its axis in less than ten minutes. This morning she’d stood in her bathroom holding a pregnancy test with trembling hands and laughing through tears of joy. Now she was trying to figure out whether refusing to sign divorce papers would get her killed.

A sickening thought slithered through her mind then, one so terrible it physically hurt.

What if Cole really does know about all of this?

The possibility devastated her for half a second, and then she knew that it wasn’t true. Cole hadn’t sent divorce papers; Cole hadn’t suddenly decided he wanted a fresh start without her; Cole hadn’t spent the last week telling her he loved her and missed her and couldn’t wait to come home, only to orchestrate this behind her back.

No fucking way. This was Wheels, and maybe some others too. Nala thought suddenly of Ice Johansson, beautiful, monstrous Ice with his dead blue eyes and terrifying smile.

Cole had once told her quietly, late at night when honesty came easier in the dark, that Ice was not a man anyone wanted to owe, betray, or inconvenience. At the time, she hadn’t fully understood. Now she did.

These men destroyed people. Casually, and efficiently, and with zero remorse.

Nala’s stomach turned violently, and she covered it instinctively with both hands now, protective without even thinking about it.

Please. Please be okay.

Wheels saw the movement and his expression hardened further. “You think having a kid changes anything? You think that makes you family?”

Nala couldn’t answer because she finally understood the truth of it completely. To men like this, she would never truly belong. She had been tolerated because Cole wanted her, and maybe because Cole had enough standing within the club to force people to accept what they otherwise never would have tolerated.

But Cole was in prison now, and she was alone. Terrifyingly, completely alone.

“Sign the fucking papers,” Wheels snarled. “If I have to say it again, I swear to fuck that you’ll be crawling to the fucking hospital with blood running down your legs.”