WAYLON (Ruthless MC 1)

I swallow, my throat dry as a raisin. “Put the gun down. Please. You’re scaring me.”

“Are you crazy?” my brother asks behind me. “He was just talking about shooting us both and burying us someplace you’d never find us. You really think that psycho’s going to—”

Waylon lowers both guns without another word.

He’s breathing hard, I notice. Despite his upper hand when I came in, I can tell whatever happened with my brother took a lot out of him. He doesn’t have any bruises, but he’s panting and sweating like he just ran a marathon.

“What’s going on here?” I ask, worry replacing my anger.

Waylon says nothing, but Ant steps forward like he was just waiting for me to ask.

“The Atlantic Cartel was considering us to help them with a shipment. But this bitch told them we weren’t to be trusted,” my brother informs me. "Come to find out, he also got us blackballed by the EastSiders, Los Tiburones, and the Dinero de Muerte out of New York. Even Han from the Silent Triad’s talking to me funny now—what the hell, Mimi. You promised you’d keep him locked up.”

“I did!” I answer.

“You seriously telling me that because when we busted up in here to kill his ass for what he did, he was sitting on his phone in bed. Real comfortable. Like this was his crib—”

Ant breaks off, a suspicious detective replacing the whiny tattletale. “Wait a minute….”

He darts his eyes between Waylon and me. “You’re a good girl. You never let none of my crew near you. Tell me you didn’t spread your legs for this puta.”

Waylon falls in beside me before I can answer. “Don’t talk to her like that. You got any candy-ass complaints to make, you talk to me. But keep in mind what I told you before you tried to put me in that van. Payback ain’t a bitch. It’s a bastard. And that bastard is me. People don’t get away with crossing me. Ever.”

I’m so confused. Waylon threatened my brother? He’s been holding a grudge against him the whole time he’s been here?

Also….

“How were you even able to coordinate a whole blackball campaign?” I ask Waylon. “My shift was only a few hours, and you don’t have a phone.”

I trail off, realizing at the same time I say it. “That wasn’t the first time you left, was it? You were able to get out all along. That’s why you were never worried about getting word to your people. They knew where you were. They knew where you were the entire time.”

Waylon doesn’t respond. But his lack of answer tells me everything I need to know. Sick realization twists my insides.

“You accused me of playing games. But you were playing with me the whole time. This was all just some kind of manipulation to get between my legs.”

“Fuck no, it wasn’t,” Waylon says. He turns to fully face me as if Ant and Pequeño aren’t even a remote threat. “I meant every word I said. You belong to me. You. You’re the only reason I stayed as long as I did. And tonight, I was going to tell you everything—ask you to come home with me to Iowa, belong to me there.”

My heart melts a little at his words. No one…no one’s ever asked—

I remember before I can finish that thought.

I remember who I am…a needy former foster kid.

And I remember who he is…a ruthless criminal.

“Payback is a bitch,” I murmur, repeating what he told Ant earlier. “And imagine how Ant would feel if you not only got his gang blackballed but took his sister with you when you left.”

“No. No!” Waylon growls. “This isn’t about him. This is about you and me.”

He closes the little bit of space left between us. “You felt what I felt. Stop denying it.”

“I have no idea if any of what I felt with you is even real!” I spread my arms, my chest burning like a dumpster fire with all the new information I’ve just learned.

I think about my father, still rotting in a jail he was placed in when I was in diapers because he decided he just had to shoot the undercover cop who had infiltrated his gang. He was caged behind bars when my mother died—during all the years of my childhood when I needed him most.

I’d been doing so well. How did I end up getting involved with someone else who valued payback more than me?

I shake my head at Waylon. “All I know for sure is that you pretended to be weak and vulnerable. Then you fucked my brother over while you were fucking me.”

Silence. Ant, Pequeño, and I stare at the dangerous biker with the guns, waiting for his answer.

Waylon dips his chin to the side, grits his jaw, then admits, “Not while, before. I got a phone as soon as I was able to walk for a few minutes without keeling over.”