Chapter 5 ✮⋆˙ 5 ˙⋆✮

The motorcycle tore away from the curb so fast my stomach seemed to stay behind.

I clung to the stranger in leather with both arms and heard the first bullet crack against the street where we had been seconds before. The sound split the air, sharp and final, proof that men were willing to put holes in a bride if it kept her from becoming a problem.

I buried my face against the stranger’s back.

The leather of his cut was warm beneath my cheek. He smelled like smoke, engine heat, and rain on asphalt. Under my arms, his body was solid in a way that made panic worse instead of better. There was no softness to him. No hesitation. He leaned into the first turn like fear was a language he had never learned.

The bike roared beneath us.

The world became wind and noise and flashes of color. Parked cars. Wet pavement. A woman screaming from the sidewalk. The black sedan jerking into motion behind us. My veil snapped loose and vanished somewhere into the street, and with it went the last fragile piece of the bride Nico Varra had tried to make me.

I should have been thinking about death.

Instead, some wild part of me thought, I got out.

Not free. Not safe.

But out.

The thought was so sharp and bright it hurt.

“Where are you taking me?” I shouted, but the wind tore the words apart.

The stranger did not answer.

Of course he did not answer. Why would the dangerous man I had thrown myself onto suddenly become polite and informative?

I twisted enough to look back.

Bad idea.

The sedan was still behind us, though farther than before. Another SUV shot out from a side street, tires screaming, trying to cut across the intersection ahead. My grip tightened around the biker’s waist.

He saw it.

I did not know how. His head barely moved, but the bike dropped lower, faster, sliding through the narrow gap between a delivery truck and the SUV’s front bumper with so little room that my dress brushed metal.

I screamed.

He laughed.

Actually laughed.

Not loud. Not joyful. A dark, rough sound I felt more than heard.

“You are insane!” I shouted.

This time, he glanced back just enough for me to catch the edge of his smile. “You picked the bike.”

“I was being chased!”

“Still picked it.”

I hated him for sounding amused.

I hated more that he was right.

The city blurred around us, streets turning from expensive estate roads into older blocks with cracked sidewalks and low buildings. I did not recognize where we were. Nico’s estate sat outside the polished part of town, the kind of place where money bought privacy and privacy bought silence. Now we were somewhere rougher, louder, alive in a way the estate had never been.

He took another turn without warning.

I slammed into his back, my arms locking around him.

Heat crawled up my neck beneath the oversized helmet.

Fear, I told myself.

Only fear.

It was not awareness of his stomach tensing beneath my forearms. Not the way his hand controlled the throttle with brutal confidence. Not the strange, humiliating fact that the first man who had touched me all day without trying to arrange me into a prettier shape was a stranger who drove like he had made a private agreement with death.

The sedan fell farther behind.

The SUV tried again.

The biker shifted, and the motorcycle answered him like it belonged to his bones. We shot down an alley barely wide enough for a car. Brick walls flashed close on both sides. My dress dragged along something sharp, tearing loudly. A trash can exploded behind us as the SUV clipped it at the alley mouth.

The stranger did not slow.

At the far end, we burst into traffic, horn blasts crashing around us. He cut between lanes, through a yellow light, then under an overpass where the air turned cool and smelled like oil.

The vehicles behind us disappeared.

For several blocks, there was only the motorcycle’s growl and my ragged breathing.

My hands were shaking against his ribs.

He noticed. I knew he did because one of his hands left the bar briefly and tapped my wrist. Once. Firm. Almost impatient.

Still there, the gesture said.

I hated that it helped.

“Take me to the police,” I said when the wind eased enough for my voice to reach him.

“No.”

I lifted my head. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“Take me to a police station.”

“No.”

The word hit harder the second time.

I looked around wildly. We were moving through a part of the city I did not know, past warehouses and shuttered storefronts tagged with faded paint. “Then take me somewhere public. A hospital. A hotel. A gas station. Anywhere with cameras and people.”

“No.”

My fear sharpened again.

I loosened one arm, stupidly considering whether I could jump from a moving motorcycle in a wedding dress and survive with only broken bones.

The bike slowed immediately.

Not stopped. Slowed just enough to tell me he knew exactly what I was thinking.

“Do not,” he said.

Two words. Low. Certain.

A chill slid down my spine.

I leaned away from him as much as the bike allowed. “Who are you?”

We turned onto a wider road lined with chain-link fences and old industrial buildings. Far ahead, I saw more motorcycles parked outside a garage with a black crown painted over the bay doors.

The stranger finally spoke.

“Knox Maddox.”

The name meant nothing to me.

Then he added, “Most people call me King.”

My blood went cold for the second time that day.

I knew that name.

Not from society pages or wedding invitations or any of the polished circles my father had dragged me through. I knew it from whispers. From Nico’s men going silent when someone mentioned the west side. From my father once telling me to stay away from any building marked with a black crown because the Devil’s Crown did not negotiate like civilized men.

Knox “King” Maddox.

President of the Devil’s Crown MC.

I had not chosen a stranger.

I had climbed onto the motorcycle of the one outlaw powerful enough to make mafia men hesitate before firing again.

Behind us, no cars followed.

That scared me more than the chase had.

“Why did they stop?” I asked.

Knox turned into the garage lot, where half a dozen men looked up at the sound of his bike. Their faces changed when they saw me on the back.

A barefoot bride in torn silk, clinging to their president like desperation had hands.

Knox killed the engine.

The sudden silence rang in my ears.

I ripped off the helmet with shaking fingers. My hair spilled loose around my face. “Why did Nico’s men back off?”

Knox swung one leg off the bike and looked at me over his shoulder.

Up close, his eyes were not gray or green.

They were both. Storm-colored. Merciless.

“Because your fiancé knows,” he said, “I don’t return what lands in my hands.”