Page 5 of Blackbeard
At last, the shooting stopped and the Forsaken sped off into the distance, leaving us surrounded by wreckage and destruction.
Smoke hung thick in the air. Shattered glass littered the ground. Black tire marks scorched the pavement. Bullet holes pockmarked the garage walls.
“Dude, you’re bleeding.”
Hot Shot gestured to my shoulder. I glanced down to see a tear in my shirt and my flesh had been scored deeply by a bullet. Blood seeped down my arm, staining my sleeve.
“It’s just a scratch,” I said.
We were lucky to walk away with our lives. But this skirmish was merely a warning. The next one would be worse.
Chapter two
Leigh
I tapped Torch on the shoulder, signaling to circle back around. He obeyed, directing his bike into a U-turn. By the time we reached the garage, it was sheer chaos.
Four of my father’s men surrounded the building. Smoke billowed from the garage, boiling into the air. Bullet holes peppered the cinder block walls and shattered the windows until the ground sparkled with broken glass like a layer of diamond dust.
“This is as close as you’re getting,” Torch said, his voice muffled beneath his helmet.
A block away—too far to participate, barely close enough to see what was going on.
That’s the problem with being the club princess. I was coddled, pampered, and spoiled, yet raised among wolves. It didn’t matter that I instigated this mayhem and anarchy just like they did, because in the heat of the moment, I was kept separate from it all at the same time. I didn’t hold rank, didn’t standshoulder to shoulder with my father’s men, and I didn’t have the camaraderie of calling them brothers.
As the President’s daughter, these men were tasked to protect me at all costs. I could walk among them, banter and flirt, even sleep with them if I really wanted to. But there was a wall that remained between us, knowing that my survival could come at the cost of their lives.
Maybe that’s why I agreed so readily when my father asked for my help.
I would tear the Blackjacks apart from the inside, turning brother against brother. Destroying the fabric of their bonds until they were utterly decimated.
I wanted to prove I was more than just a princess.
“I’ve seen enough,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Torch took off with a roar of his engine. As we rode through the small town of Brightwater, Montana, I couldn’t wait to see the look on my father’s face when this territory officially became his after we wiped the Blackjacks off the map.
Ever since my mother walked out on us when I was five years old, I had been glued to my father’s hip. Just the two of us against the world.
But now that he’d reached his mid-sixties, it scared me to see the stoop in his shoulders, and the uncontrollable tremor in his hands that he tried to hide. He didn’t ride with his club as often as he used to either, sending someone else to serve in his place instead.
My father was getting old. What would I do without him?
Torch pulled up to the curb of the Forsaken clubhouse—formerly a pole barn, converted into a meeting space with a bar, pool tables, and a handful of spare rooms. He reached back and squeezed my knee.
“You looked good out there, Leigh,” he said, flipping up his visor.
I pushed away those morbid thoughts of my father, grateful for the distraction of Torch’s attention.
We fooled around now and then, scratching a mutual itch once in a while. There was no love involved—that wasn’t the point. Ovulating around so many testosterone-laden men drove me up the wall, and Torch was a giver. He knew how to reach every pleasure point that released my pent-up tension.
I climbed off his bike and backed up to the clubhouse, flashing him a smile.
“I look good everywhere I go, Torch.”
He chuckled.
“And so humble about it, too.”
