Page 1 of Scornful

PROLOGUE

Astrid

The Raiders of Valhalla MC have been my family since I was born, but it wasn't until death came calling that I truly understood what that meant.

I was seven when Mom's car was hit.

One minute everything in my life was normal, and the next… well, it fell apart.

They said she died instantly, but I only found that out years later.

After my mother’s death, I learned what it meant to be the only daughter—at the time—of the VP.

Within hours, my father was back in our home, motorcycles lining the driveway outside.

Brothers arrived so fast. I remember seeing everyone there and thinking about how empty it felt before.

What I didn't know then—what they shielded me from until I was old enough to handle the truth—was that my mother's death was no accident.

The Culebra Cartel had made it look like one, but she had been targeted, murdered.

The "accident" had been carefully orchestrated as a way to hurt the club, but more specifically, my father.

I was sixteen when Dad finally told me the truth and I didn’t know what to do with it.

It felt good to know the truth in a sense, but it gutted me at the same time.

By then, the Culebra Cartel no longer existed—at least not in any form that would threaten our family again.

The cartel had been causing issues for the Mackenzie family, so Runes made a deal with them and suddenly the problem with the cartel had ceased to exist.

I don’t miss the shadows in my father's eyes whenever they happen to come up, ghosts that haunt him still.

All I know for certain is that every man responsible for my mother's death met an end far more painful than the one they gave her.

Raiders protect their own, we avenge our fallen.

These aren't just words in our world—they're sacred vows written in blood.

Seventeen years later, I still remember Runes—President of the Raiders and the closest thing to a grandfather I've ever known—kneeling in front of me at my mom's funeral.

My small hand disappeared inside his massive, calloused palm. "You'll never be alone, little one," he'd promised, ice-blue eyes so like his son Tor's locked on mine. "We protect our own."

He wasn't lying.

My father may have been broken by grief, but the club was there for him every step of the way.

My brothers Emil and Oskar—fourteen and ten at the time—stepped up, becoming more than siblings to me in a sense.

They became my guardians, my fierce protectors.

When nightmares had me screaming at 2 a.m., Oskar would appear in my doorway, baseball bat in hand, ready to fight whatever monsters haunted me.

Emil taught me to throw a punch by thirteen.

Oskar showed me how to hot-wire a car by fifteen—"Just in case," he'd said with that crooked grin that got him out of trouble with everyone except our dad.

They were my safety net, my constant shadows.

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