Page 1 of Scorched King

CHAPTER ONE

JD

Waking up with a hard dick and a need to choke the life out of someone was not ideal. Especially under the current circumstances. Those being, I had no fucking idea who it was I was supposed to kill.

I scrubbed my hands over my face and blew out a hard breath, before looking around my small private room. It had been a long damned time since I’d stayed in the clubhouse, but last night…

I turned suddenly at some commotion in the hallway outside and a hot poker of pain speared through my head.

Fuck.

I was going to pay all day for last night’s overindulgence. I’d lost track of my alcohol consumption halfway through the first bottle. I winced as the vise holding my brain in place tightened further. I was too old for this shit, and after that much whiskey, even walking home to my own cabin had been too much of a fucking hassle.

So, I’d stayed in my room at the clubhouse, where it currently smelled like rotten ass and smoke.

When the fuck was the last time someone opened a goddamned window in this place?

I closed my eyes and took a shallow breath of the putrid air. It was past time to start putting this club back together—again.

How many times were we going to go through this shit?

Our latest fight with the Mazzeo crime family might finally be over, but the damage we sustained in the process was proving to be a bitch to clean up. It didn’t matter that it had been weeks since all of it had gone down. With the amount of work still in front of me and the nightmares I couldn’t get out of my head, it might as well have been yesterday.

The poker club, one of our biggest revenue streams, was gone—burned to the ground.

Half the clubhouse I now sat in had been bombed, and the idea of rebuilding it all again seemed overwhelming.

Two of my soldiers were dead, with another lying in a hospital bed recovering from third degree burns across half his body.

And then there was her.

Sasha.

One of our club girls who had worked at the poker club. I scrubbed my hands over my face. While I considered every person either in the club or supporting it family, she was different. And no matter how hard I tried to pretend that wasn’t true, it was all one big fucking lie.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her no matter how hard I tried.

She was too fucking young. She had years ahead of her, and I’d already lived too damn many.

So I’d been an asshole, keeping her at arm’s length without actually cutting her loose.

It wasn’t just the shit she’d been through or how fragile she seemed now. It was her whole damned life.

I should’ve been pushing her toward something better. Someone better. A guy with a clean slate, and no blood on his hands. Someone who could give her the things I never could—a big, happy family, and an actual fucking future.

When the explosion had rocked the compound and the fire consumed the one building hidden on the property, she’d been trapped inside. Axel, my second in command, had barely gotten to her in time…

My stomach cramped at the memory. Partly because my fucked up ass hadn’t even known she was missing.

She wasn’t doing so hot now either. Her body may be healing, but she still refused to talk to me and I spent half my time sitting outside her hospital room waiting for her to throw me a goddamned crumb.

She was never yours to wait for.

My hands curled into fists, but it didn’t change a damn thing. I couldn’t get her out of my head.

Which reminded me…

I forced myself to hunt up my phone from the pocket of my jeans and checked the time. The screen glared at me.

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