Page 66 of Queen of Blades

“Great. More complications.” Mickey sighed as he combed his hand through his hair. “We don’t need all these liabilities.”

“Things are what they are,” Joseph admonished. “We have to roll with the punches.”

Mickey sat back, folding his arms over his chest and shaking his head in contempt. Obviously, he wasn’t supportive of Paul’s choice. Well, tough shit. It had nothing to do with him.

“As I was saying,” Uncle Michael said, interrupting the staring match between the cousins. “They’re expecting us. I think we need to wait for them to be lulled into a sense of security.”

“No,” Paul snapped. “They have Harper. The longer she’s there, the more danger she’s in. They’re the ones who put the price on her head.”

“Who says she isn’t already dead?” Mickey asked. “There’s no reason to run in there all knight in shining armor like to rescue a corpse.”

“Then I will burn their clubhouse to the ground and hunt down every biker asshole in leather and slit their throats,” Paul declared.

“Uh,” Eddie said on the phone. “So, I see we have the angel of death with us, but I think we need something a little less impulsive.”

37

Harper

Whimpering,Harperstruggledtoopen her eyes. At every turn, she thought she’d hit the limit, only to learn that things could actually hurt way worse than before. She was in absolute agony. Her bare ass was on fire despite the rest of her being chilly. Every time she inhaled or exhaled, it felt like someone had stabbed her in the chest. She’d never been more sure of anything in her life than she was that she’d cracked a rib or two. It would go well with her bruised face and likely concussion.

As the room around her came into focus, she realized the zip ties were no longer binding her. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only thing missing. She’d been stripped down to a bra and a thong. Where the panties came from, she hadn’t a clue. Which definitely skeeved her a bit, but it hurt to move, so she wasn’t about to take them off.

Wood paneling covered the walls of the dimly lit room with mismatched, very dated furniture. Posters with bare-assed women on Harley-Davidsons decorated the walls. An oldSports Illustratedcalendar hung between them. Whose room was this? Some teenage boy?

Something was off, though. Why were there black stripes everywhere? Blinking, she tried to clear the fog. Flinching, she pushed herself up to a seated position, only to slam her head on something hard.

Metal.

“What the fuck?” she muttered.

Then it all came clear. Bars. Those black lines weren’t stripes—they werebars. She was in some sort ofcage.

Gritting her teeth through the pain, she twisted her body and fully assessed her situation. When she’d passed out from the pain of being branded like a fucking animal, those fuckers had tossed her in a big-ass dog kennel. The rage boiling inside her matched the agony coursing through her body.

Kicking at the front of the cage, she did her best to rattle the hinges. The large lock dangling from the opening swung back and forth.

Loud laughter from another room was muffled by the closed doors, mocking her as though they could see her futile attempt at escape. This cage had been constructed to keep rowdy animals in place. In her current weakened state, she wouldn’t be able to escape it easily.

When the door to the room opened, the celebration became louder. It only further enraged her to know her father’s men were content with her locked in a cage. Not only that, but they were complicit in her suffering.

Her dad would never have allowed this. He was a bad man, Harper knew that, but he wasn’t a monster. He still had integrity. This wasn’t the way he ran the club.

What the fuck had happened while she was in North Carolina?

Wearing an enormous smile, Dwight sauntered into the room like a king. All she could do was glare at him as he stood out of reach, his legs apart, his hands on his hips, and his gaze cast down at her. “Morning, baby. Nice of you to join us.”

“Fuck you,” she sneered and kicked at the cage again.

She squeezed her eyes shut as more pain rattled her bones.

Dwight chuckled. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

Like seeing her in pain wasn’t a source of amusement for him.

He groaned as he sat on the floor. Stroking his beard, he studied her for a moment as she panted, trying to ride the latest wave of nausea. He placed two Solo cups in front of him before twisting the cap off a bottle of Evan Williams bourbon.

Where the hell had that come from?

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