I didn’t wait to be manhandled; I moved to position without being told. But instead of heading to the bottom of the sad little lineup, I squeezed myself into the center.
Straightening my spine, I kept my face blank as the black-haired man raised an eyebrow. “Fine. Good enough, I suppose.”
A chill darted down my spine. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I just knew.
He’s here.
Awareness was a woodpecker knocking tiny holes into my soul as I tilted my head, looking over my shoulder.
Walking tall—taller than most of his entourage—he moved with dangerous grace. A mesmerizing war between a fighter’s bulk and a dancer’s elegance.
His black jeans and T-shirt hid the puddle of blood well. He’d zipped up his dark brown jacket, further hiding whatever injury he’d sustained in battle.
Planting himself in front of us, he glowered at each woman. The other men faded behind him, his army of leather-jacketed warriors all beaten up, bruised, bloodied, and war-weary.
What had they been fighting over? What was this place?
The man never looked at me, skipping my awareness as if I were invisible.
My mind was more intrigued by my predicament than the most important question I continued to ignore. I didn’t want it to form because the moment it did, it would itch my brain until it drove me mad.
Why can’t I remember anything?
The question blurted loud and fierce—cutting through my wavering ignorance.
What happened to make me like this?
Or maybe not what but who?
My left hand cupped the singed skin of my right forearm. I winced in pain from the moderate burn.
What happened to me?
Green-eyed man froze as his gaze landed unwillingly on mine. His attention dropped to where I cupped my arm. His feral energy seemed to reach between us, drawing me deeper into his spell.
I tingled with a desire so powerful, it overrode my current situation and the fear dancing on the outskirts of my brain.
Who are you?
Almost as if he heard my question, his eyes locked onto my mine once again, glowing with pent-up emotion. Recognition flickered, love smoldered, and a heartbreaking sorrow only those who have loved and lost can know etched his eyes.
He clenched his jaw, shoulders seizing with tension the longer we stared. Regardless of what happened, or what would become of me, I knew he was a clue.
A vital clue.
The linchpin that would be the catalyst to my undoing.
My heart pumped and tricked beneath his careful scrutiny. My lips parted as fingers of magnetic awareness drew us tighter and tighter and tighter together.
His nostrils flared as if he tasted the air—unraveling my secrets by scent alone.
I waited for him to speak. I willed him to touch me again—to hold my face and dive into my locked thoughts. But he stayed frozen, bristling with rage and hate.
Please, let him have answers.
Even if he did, he’d probably never tell me. I might not suffer a debilitating level of terror, but I wasn’t an idiot. I didn’t need to know my history to guess the likely scenario of my new future wouldn’t end well.
I’ll find a way to run before that happens.
My mind raced, eyes locked with his. A silent duel ensued, each wielding sharp-edged questions, trying to decipher the other without a spoken word. He was as remote as the peak of Everest with his height and unreadable icy gaze.
The shock and passion he’d shown when we first met was absent. Gone. Never existed.
The longer I stared, the more the sense of familiarity stuttered, pushed further inside as the green fire in his eyes scorched my thoughts. There was no denying he was handsome, scary, and throbbing with power—despite his injury—but there was something else there… something he hid so well… too well.
The way he so effortlessly cut me out, left me floundering with fear worse than any I’d felt up till now. The severance of any connection made me throb as if he’d cut out a piece of me.
My hands fisted.
To be denied the tiny piece of home I’d found in him reinforced my conviction that I would do anything—absolutely anything—to get the answers I desired.
I didn’t care what I had to do.
I didn’t care who I had to tolerate.
I would find out the truth.
I will.
The men behind him shuffled uncomfortably. Black Mohawk cleared his throat. “Eh, Prez?”
Earthquake Man stiffened, balling his hands. Instead of looking away, our connection lashed tighter—tentacles crisscrossing the space until we’d somehow knitted an intense cognizance.
It grew deeper, firmer—more demanding than ever.
The chill down my back evolved to a tremor, an aftershock rippling down my spine to my legs.
Something threaded blistering hot between us. A dangerous combination of competition, attraction, and threats.
You know me.
He gritted his jaw, almost as if he’d heard my thought.
I didn’t know if I should be overjoyed at the unswerving intuition that we were linked, or petrified that someone from my past could treat me like this.
Tell me.
Are you my lover?
My brother?
My nemesis or friend?
I hated wallowing in nothingness, where even reality wasn’t believable without the documentation of a past I could no longer recall.
The connection reached a fever pitch, turning the burn on my arm into an inferno.
Then… he blinked.
Smashing the awareness into smithereens and tearing his gaze from mine, he broke the web. Whatever I thought I felt or knew disappeared in a flash. The tremor left, dissolving into the ground, leaving me empty and more alone than before.
Any remembrance or realization in his gaze vanished, replaced with livid anger.
He was no longer intrigued or enticed by me but furious and hate-filled.
What changed?
How had he cut me out so successfully?
And how had he done it so completely that he made me doubt I’d even seen the hint of something deeper?
Is it all in my head?
Running a large hand through his hair, he paced in front of the lineup. His bloody and bruised hand opened and closed by his thighs, violence wisping around him like an aura.
Slamming to a halt facing us, he sniffed loudly. “Suppose it’s now my job to welcome you.” He kicked at nothing, grinding his large black boot into the floorboards. “Excuse the disorganization. And ignore the fight you saw.” His eyes landed on each of us, pinning us to the concrete. “My name is Arthur Killian, but you and everyone else, address me as Kill. You’re a transaction—nothing more, nothing less.”
My eyes widened. His name… I waited for it to jog a memory.
Nothing.
An influx of men, five or six, appeared from the corridor, moving to lean against the button-leather couches. They looked as if they belonged in a lawyer’s office—the couches, not the men; the men looked as if they were born riding Harleys with cigarettes in their mouths and their minds in the gutter.
The women beside me shuddered, sneaking glances at the new arrivals. They were just as bloody; some with torn clothes, others with cut lips and bruised cheekbones. They all had an edge—wiry, unpredictable.
I stayed locked in place, watching, drinking information, and trying to stay as unnoticeable as possible.
Arthur Killian, whom I’d placed into the center of my new world for lack of a better anchor, spun to face them. “You gonna behave, or do I have to kick your sorry asses again?”
The men smirked, crossing their arms. “We get it. You’re still the Prez.”
Kill growled, “You get it, but you don’t feel it. Too bad. It’s done. Been done for four fucking years and I won fair and fucking square. You obey my rules. You don’t, you’re dead.”
A man in his early thirties with a stringy moustache nodded. “Know your reasons. Can’t say I’m pissed but I’m on board with what you’ve been saying. Wallstreet vouched for you many times. Gonna trust his judgment, regardless if you’re a shit-eating Dagger.”
“Hey. Club business. Visitors.” Black Mohawk cocked a chin at us.
Kill scowled, reining in his anger. “You’re right. Shut the fuck up. The lot of you.”
“You’re telling us to shut up? You’ve been demanding us to pledge fealty for years, and now that we’re about to, you want us to shut the fuck up?”
Kill gritted his jaw, a vein pumping in the cords of his neck. “Fine! But let’s get one thing straight, I’m not a Dagger. Not anymore. I’ll be the first to take them out—so stop this in-house fighting and have my fucking back for a change.”
The guys shifted but they nodded. One muttered, “That’s what I’m trying to do. You got my weapon.”
“Good.” The Prez—I guessed short for president—nodded. “We’re no longer sloppy one-percenters. We’re done with that shit. Haven’t I already proven that if you follow me, Wallstreet’s vision comes true and no one else has to die?”
A man with a short crop of dark hair and a skull shaved into the strands snapped, “That’s all fine and fucking dandy to say, but you’re hardly here! A Prez is meant to be seen with his army—”
“Enough!” Kill roared. “What I do in the name of this Club is none of your goddamn business.” He moved forward, his head cocked threateningly. “You’re grown men. I’m not your fucking babysitter.” Shoving a finger in Stringy Moustache’s face, he muttered, “You don’t like the money I’ve made you? Fine, give it back.”