Page 20 of Blade's Princess

"And you think I'm Blade's...um...old lady?" The thought sends a strange thrill through me.

Angel smiles. "I know it. From the moment he put you on the back of his bike and brought you here, he was telling the whole club that you're special to him. Letting you sleep in his room, protecting you, threatening anyone who looks at you wrong—these are all ways of staking his clim on you in front of his brothers, his club."

I absorb this information, trying to understand this new world with its unfamiliar rules and customs. "But isn't it... I don't know, old-fashioned? Being someone's 'property'?"

"It's not about ownership in the way you might think," Angel explains, her expression thoughtful. "It's about belonging. Having a place. Being valued. In a world where loyalty is everything, being claimed as someone's old lady is the highest form of respect."

Her words resonate with something deep inside me. All my life, I've been treated as a burden, a nuisance to be tolerated. The idea of being treasured, of belonging to someone who sees my worth—it's intoxicating.

"So... Cherry doesn't like me because I'm with Blade?" I ask, still trying to understand the clubhouse dynamics.

Angel laughs lightly. "Cherry doesn't like any woman who threatens her perceived status. The club whores are at the bottom of the hierarchy, but they've carved out their ownpecking order among themselves." She sighs, leaning back in her chair. "Honestly, they're the bane of my existence here."

"Why does the club keep them around?" I ask, genuinely curious.

"Tradition, mostly," Angel says with a grimace. "The single brothers like having willing women around. I've been trying to nudge Ghost toward making the club more family-oriented, less... whorish." She smiles ruefully at her own choice of words. "But it's a process. I haven't been here that long myself, and I recently spent some time recovering from heart surgery. A congenital condition," she adds, seeing my concerned expression. "I'm fine now. But the last thing I wanted to do was come in and start criticizing everything about how the club operates."

"That makes sense," I nod, understanding her caution.

Angel leans forward, lowering her voice. "Maybe, now that you're here, we can work together as a team. Between the two of us, we can work on the guys. Slowly persuade them that they don't need these women hanging around causing drama."

The conspiratorial way she includes me in her plans makes me feel warm inside—like I'm part of something, like I have an ally.

"Angel..." I hesitate, uncertain whether I should mention what I saw earlier. "I don't want to cause trouble, but earlier, before you found us in the hallway, I saw Cherry coming out of Ghost's office. She was acting... suspicious. I think... I'm not sure, but I think she hid something in her bra."

Angel's expression turns serious.

I nod. "And then she was listening at the door where the church meeting is happening."

"That's... concerning," Angel says, her brow furrowing. "I should probably let Ghost know she's acting suspiciously."

"How long does church usually last?" I ask, glancing at the clock.

"Hard to say. Sometimes it goes on for hours." She shrugs, then her face brightens. "We could fix lunch so it's ready for the guys when they get out?"

"Sounds good. Especially if it will help me get on their good side."

"Without a doubt." She stands, offering me her hand. "The way to a biker's heart is definitely through his stomach."

Chapter 9

Blade

"This motherfucker is getting bolder," Ghost says, his voice deadly calm despite the fury burning in his eyes. "Last week, another girl was snatched from just outside the local high school. Only sixteen years old."

I lean forward in my chair, my forearms resting on the scarred wooden surface as the rest of the chapel falls silent.

The club has been working on gathering intel on Ivan Kovalev, a Russian slime ball who, until a short time ago, we thought was nothing more than a small time loanshark.

It was when Ghost brought Angel here, claiming her as his old lady, that we learned Kovalev had graduated to human trafficking. Angel’s former foster parents were trying to sell her to him to cover their gambling debts.

The club staged a raid on one of his shipments, hoping to shut his operation down, but the raid went awry leading us to suspect there’s a rat somewhere in our club.

"Cipher," Ghost nods toward our tech expert, "tell 'em what you found."

Cipher is former military intelligence, discharged after hacking into classified Pentagon files—not because he had badintentions, but because his brain doesn't recognize normal boundaries when it comes to information. He stands.

"Kovalev's operation is expanding," Cipher explains, pointing to different locations on the map. “It appears they've taken over three more businesses along the waterfront. The Golden Touch massage parlor, the new nightclub—Velvet, and that storage facility by the pier."

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