Page 29 of Treachery

Growling, Locust snapped, “Her motherfucking step-brother trashed her closet looking for that goddamn burner phone. With the kind of trouble that fuck is in, I don’t want his sister out there, unprotected.”

The need for violence thrumming through his veins, Locust waited in the silence from the other end.

Second later, Red reported, “The phone is popping up right next to yours, brother.”

Locust turned to look at the house. Fuck. She must have left her phone there.

What thefuckwas she thinking, leaving her house without her phone, without a way to contact him if something happened?

You think she’d contact you? You’re the last one she’d call.And the truth of that twisted the knife in his chest. He had to get her back; he couldn’t breathe without his woman. And shewashis woman…she just had to fucking let him explain, to tell her how he felt, then they’d be good—nogreat!—again.

“You wouldn’t, by chance, have snuck a tracker on her…like subcutaneous?” Red asked, making Locust furrow his brow.

“What the fuck? No, goddammit,” Locust exclaimed, shaking his head. Yeah, he was an invasive asshole, but he drew the line at outright violating her.

“What about her credit cards? I can flag ‘em, wait and see if she uses them,” Red offered, but Locust grunted at that idea.

“Nah, brother. I remember seeing her purse on the counter. Probably right next to her phone.” Scraping his hand over the top of his head, he found no comfort in the familiar feeling of the bandana fabric under his fingers.

“How do you want me to do this?” Red asked, probably wondering if he should put out an APB through their police contacts or rouse the brothers to go on the hunt for her.

Heading back into the house, he slammed the front door behind him, then strode toward Nadia’s bedroom. He openedthe door hard enough for it to bang against the wall, and immediately he saw how she got out.

The fucking window.

Goddamn stubborn woman!He couldn’t help admiring her wiliness, though. He just wished she hadn’t wielded it againsthim.

“I don’t know what the fuck to do, Red,” Locust admitted, hating the fear in his own voice. “But I have to find her before whoever is after her fuck up of a brother finds her.”

“Speaking of her brother,” Locust tensed, “I’ve got a lead on him. Facial recognition software picked him up heading into Mohegan Sun. That was a few hours ago. I sent the info to Patriot, and he said he’d send Horde and Tornado to pick him up.”

Not him? Shit. Patriot was probably wary about Locust pounding the little shit until he was bleeding from his asshole. And Patriot was right to be wary.

“They grab him yet?” They had to get him before the Souci’s did; that family was deadly as fuck, and Ratchet had got himself on their bad side.

“Not yet. They can’t just take him off the casino floor, they have to wait for him to leave. The little jackpot junkie will probably be in there for hours,” Redtube remarked, a hint of disgust in his voice. The man had his vices and kinks, but one thing he didn’t tolerate was letting your vices and kinks rule your life, and that fucker Ratchet was a puppet to his addictions.

Back in the living room, surrounded by the scent of her and the memories of all the good they’d shared in that one room, Locust closed his eyes as a deep, weary sigh exploded from his chest. Rubbing his jaw, he opened his eyes and peered out the front windows to his disabled bike.

“Send out a club-wide text, let the brothers know to keep an eye out for Nadia,” Locust demanded, knowing Redtube would be right on it. “I’ve got to call a prospect for a fucking tow.”

Before Red could ask why Locust needed a tow, Locust ended the call. Scrolling through his contacts, he hit the number for the club’s garage. Tony Dos answered on the third ring, and Locust told him to come to Nadia’s with a tow truck. Tony Dos said he’d be there in twenty minutes, so unless Locust wanted to hitch a ride with another brother, riding bitch, he needed to wait for Tony to get there so he could ride back to the garage with him. It was easy enough to replace the tires, but that could take another hour he didn’t want to spend without tracking down his wayward woman and spanking that luscious ass of hers.

Fuck. He hated waiting, especially with his woman out there, and potential danger in the wings.

Outside, an old Buick drove by, its exhaust sputtering and clicking, telling Locust the system needed replacing.

Now. It was silent. The weight of all he’d done was already heavy on him, but after Nadia’s confrontation…what she’d said…the silence in her house, her sanctuary, was pulsing with the echoes of her words.

“You think that I’m so pathetic, all you need to do to get me to comply is kiss me, make me feel like you actually want me, and then the lonely fat chick will follow right behind you like you’re the goddamn biker Pied Piper?”

He remembered them, word for word, because they were etched into the stone around his heart. There was so much wrong with what she’d said…but so much right as well. He had hoped that kissing the shit out of her would make her compliant, but his intentions weren’t to make her think she was weak or pathetic—she was far from it. All that she’d endured in her life, from losing her family, from the shit Ratchet had put her through, with whathe’dput her through, she was one of thestrongest, least pathetic people he’d ever known. It was one of the things that made him fall for her in the first place; her strength, her ability to find peace in all the chaos.

What made him truly livid, though, was how she saw herself, what she’d spoken about herself.

“…lonely, fat chick….”

The moment those words had slipped from her mouth, he’d recoiled, shocked, raging.

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