جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 40

UtahEarly the next morningBriley approached The Garden of Divine Light from the south road, the one that didn’t go through Walton. It took an extra hour to go around, switch roads, and come back this way, but she was used to it. It was better than being seen by the townspeople going to and from the compound.She couldn’t let her fellow police officers see either.She pulled up to the guardhouse at the gate, saw that it was that creep Michael on the gate this morning. To be fair, the Guardians were all creeps, but this one hadn’t fully shaken his ex-pimp vibes when it came to looking at women, and he also had a pathetic, puppy dog desperation to please. Briley knew just by looking at him that Michael wanted nothing more than to crawl up Gideon’s golden ass and live there. Michael would do anything that his Master asked, and he’d do it happily, if it meant advancement in the Garden and basking in Gideon’s approval.Ass-kisser Michael nodded at her, buzzed her into the compound. As alw

Iris turned over in bed, already fully awake and sure what time it was before she even opened her eyes: Zoe had brought her an alarm clock, but Iris knew that she wouldn’t need it. Her body had been quite violently conditioned to wake itself up at five every morning.She lifted her lids and looked at the clock on the small nightstand next to her bed, and sure enough, it was a few minutes before five. She sighed, knowing that there would be no return to sleep for her. She was awake.She swung her feet to the floor and got up. She didn’t have to be in the kitchen until ten to help Rebel prep everything for the lunch rush, so she had to find some way to pass the hours. Having down time was an odd thing for her now: on the one hand it was a complete luxury that Iris had nothing to do for hours on end, but on the other, she was at a loss at how to enjoy it. She had no books – not that she’d ever been much of a reader, and her school grades attested to that – or even magazines. She had no

Almost four hours later, Viking walked into Satan’s Bar to quickly check on Iris before his shift at Blue Dragon Ink. He was sure that she’d be a nervous wreck, seeing as it was her first day at a brand-new job. He imagined that she’d be going through some serious culture shock, having been in a cult for a year, and now surrounded by new people in a new place. The fact that these people were members of an MC would surely only add to her sense of uncertainty.What he saw stopped his dead in his tracks.Iris was standing at the bar talking to Cain, Dux and Drake. She looked a bit shy and quiet, but she was smiling at them. His brothers were sitting there drinking coffee and eating what looked like cake. Satan’s didn’t serve cake, was the confusing thing – it opened for lunch at noon and although Rebel never had a problem with whipping up breakfast, baked goods weren’t part of his culinary repertoire.Perplexed, Viking walked over and Iris glanced up at his approach. When she saw that it

Iris dried the last saucepan and hung it up on its designated hook, gave the counters a final wipe, checked that the fridge was shut tight, and took off her apron. Her first full day in the kitchen was done, now on to the cleaning she hadn’t gotten to between meal rushes.She caught her reflection in the gleaming metal counter, and was surprised at how happy and glowy she looked. It was funny to think how her life had utterly changed in some ways, but stayed exactly the same in others. After all, she was still cooking and serving and cleaning, still getting up stupid early and staying on her feet all day – but this felt completely different.This time, it was her conscious, informed choice to do all of these things. This time she was getting paid. This time, she could eat the damn muffins and the pasta.She went out to the bar area and saw that Cole was already pouring drinks for the hovering waitresses, while Holt and Cowboy sat chatting. When they spotted her, they jumped to their f

“Nooooo. God, no. Iris, you know you’re safe here, right? Nothing goes on that you don’t know about beforehand and consent to… you get that? No matter what we all look like we’re capable of, nobody is going to show up at your door one night and force their way in.”Iris took a deep breath. “I get that. I do. It’s just – sometimes I kind of forget.”“Conditioning and training are powerful things. In the case of fuckers like Gideon, they’re called brainwashing.”“Yeah, they are. OK, so… what does this mean, that you’re staying upstairs with me?”“It means that Cain gets to go home and sleep at night in his own bed, and then he can go to work the next day actually rested. He works on Cowboy’s ranch, you know.”“No,” she said, surprised at both of those pieces of information. “I assumed they both worked around here somewhere. It seems like you MC members are all connected to the club businesses one way or another.”“It’s true that quite a few of us are, but some of the guys have their own