Vengeance Road (Torpedo Ink 2)

“Seriously, baby, let it go. Just for now.”

“You can’t know what I’m thinking.” She tried scowling at him, but she couldn’t meet his eyes because he was right. He was always right.

“Your face is an open book, sweetheart,” Steele said and caught up a small bag of baked pretzels, her favorite kind. “You’re thinking about walking into the clubhouse and seeing me with those other women. I asked you to hold off thinking about them until I had the chance to explain.”

“I don’t want your explanation. I’m grateful I saw you with them.” She tilted her chin at him. “Every time I think I might be buying into what you’re selling, I think about them and remember none of it was real and you’re very, very good at conning people—especially women.”

He nodded. “I am. There’s no question about that, but I wasn’t conning you, and I’m not now.”

“Because I’m so different from every other woman.” Sarcasm dripped from her voice. “I might have swallowed all this, Steele, if you’d come looking for me, but I have your son and you want him. You think I need to be part of that package, but you’re wrong. I don’t have to be. There are so many couples making it work when they aren’t together. We’ll do just fine apart.”

“We’re not going to be apart, Breezy. We’re going to talk this out.”

He made it a decree. There was nowhere to go with that, so she changed the subject. “What kind of deal are you making with that very nice woman?” There was a bite to her voice she couldn’t quite keep out of it, because Inez seemed extremely friendly and not at all a woman involved in anything illegal.

“She owns this store and we were hoping to get a smaller version up and running in Caspar. We have the funds and she has the name. If we can get her to work the store for us even for just a few days a week for a few months, just to get it going, we can make a success of it. We need her to bring the locals in. She knows her value too.” He flashed a smile Inez’s way.

“Are you going to be laundering money through the store? Or selling drugs out of it?”

“No, baby. All businesses in Caspar are legit. We’re putting down roots here. This is our community. You don’t fuck with local royalty, and Inez is just that. Everyone loves her. Besides, her silent partner is Jackson Deveau, and he’s a sheriff.”

She mulled that over as they paid and got back on the bikes. Could it be the truth? Was Torpedo Ink that different from the Swords? She hadn’t been around any club other than the Swords and those they did business with. The local people here seemed to accept Torpedo Ink—but then there hadn’t been locals at the party taking place at the clubhouse. The Demons had been gone, but she’d seen their colors. She knew patches and what they meant. They weren’t angels any more than Torpedo Ink was.

Steele took them back down the highway to Caspar, but he didn’t turn toward the Torpedo Ink clubhouse. Instead, he chose a winding road leading to the cliffs above the ocean. From there, he chose a lane that seemed to be more of a long drive than a public street. He slowed the bike even more once he turned away from the ocean and back toward a slight hill all overgrown with tall shrubbery. The road narrowed more, the vines climbing high on trees lining the road, so thick they formed an impenetrable wall on either side, preventing anyone from seeing the landscape, other than the occasional glimpse of light.

They went through a long archway created by the tree branches. She found herself looking upward at the flowering limbs. It was really quite extraordinary. Breathtaking even. How had Steele found such a place? It was an avenue of pure beauty.

Then he slowed even more and came to a halt. Breezy sat up straight and looked around her. A house sat straight ahead, tucked into the hillside, rising up like a great palace. It was something out of a fairy tale. Unreal. There weren’t houses like that in real life. The structure stretched out in length, with rounded turrets and wide long windows facing the sea. It rose up maybe three stories, but she couldn’t be sure because one of those stories was tucked into the hillside.

Steele took her hand and helped her off the bike. She kept her eyes on the house while she removed the helmet, afraid such a beautiful home couldn’t be real.

“Who lives here?” She didn’t want anyone to call the cops on them and she really, really wanted to look around.

“It’s ours.”

Her heart clenched hard in her chest. She scowled at him. “First, Steele, there is no us, so nothing is ours. Second, this place has to be worth millions. Millions. I don’t have a huge concept of real estate and what it’s worth, but this place is enormous. The grounds alone are worth a fortune, and it overlooks the sea.”

He nodded slowly. “Seven million and some change. We got it for a steal.”

She felt a little faint. “Steele.” She whispered his name. Shocked. It didn’t occur to her, not even for a moment, that he was kidding her. He wasn’t. She could see that on his face and hear it in his voice. He meant every word.

“And yes, we are together. There is an us. You. Me. Zane. This is our home. I bought it because we’re putting down roots here. I like the view.”

“That’s it? You like the view? Where did you get that kind of money?”

A slow grin transformed his face from dangerous to gorgeous. He looked mischievous, as only Steele could look. “The Swords.”

EIGHT

Steele never did anything without a plan. That was why he was vice president of Torpedo Ink. Like Czar, he saw an entire picture, the problems and every possibility along with solutions that worked. His brain worked at an extremely fast speed and remembered details, right down to the smallest particular. Nothing got past him—until Breezy.

His body had responded to her immediately and, worse, his heart. He’d never had that happen. Not once in all his years. Torpedo Ink was a closed society. They were whole when they were together and none of them—with the exception of Czar—had ever considered that anyone else might be brought into their very fucked-up family. He’d been thrown. Completely.

He’d known if Czar or the others were aware of how he really felt about Breezy, they would have insisted he take her and leave. He couldn’t do that. He knew that none of them worked away from the others. They functioned because they were together. Whole. They had tremendo

us gaps in their social education, but they could function and survive. Alone, they would fall apart. He couldn’t take the chance that things would go haywire with the person that mattered to him. He also couldn’t leave his family when they needed him. Every gun counted—every single one—when they were up against an international club like the Swords.

He knew Breezy better than she knew herself. He knew her insecurities. He knew her character. He knew every unselfish thing about her. He especially knew what to appeal to in order to keep her with him. This plan was more important to him than anything in his life had ever been because, like those dark days of his childhood, it was about survival.

Steele had found that once he had a glimpse of what life could be like when it was good, he couldn’t go back to dark, ugly days and nights. He had existed before Breezy. He’d thought he was free, so it was better than when he’d been a captive forced to do his master’s bidding, but it hadn’t been good. He hadn’t been alive. Breezy had changed all that. Once she was gone, he was back to—nothing. To empty. To an existence he didn’t want anymore.

Her fingers on his skin, her mouth on him, his body moving in hers, she’d taken away every trace of those earlier days, the nightmare existence he’d lived. The more he’d taken her, the less he’d felt that yawning abyss threatening to swallow him whole. Now he had her back, and he wasn’t about to lose the most important war of his life.

He had a campaign already planned out. Each step. He couldn’t afford a misstep. It was Breezy. He didn’t know anything about love, not in the accepted sense of the word, but anything he did know—or feel—all belonged to her. He had a serious battle plan. He was going to use everything he knew about her, everything he’d ever been taught and everything she felt for him, to get his woman back. Nothing was going to be too big or too small in his campaign, but he wasn’t losing her a second time.