Page 4 of Unmasked Anarchy
The memory claws at my brain, and my heart skips a beat, sweat trickling over my skin as a sick feeling washes over me.My head is spinning, and I don’t know if I can stay with it a second longer.
Michael glances back at me, then Kael, then at the heart monitor.“Her BP is bottoming.We have to move.”The ambulance lurches, sirens cracking open the silence.There’s a pressure against my belly, cold, familiar.I look down and see my blood leaking out through the bandage.
I try not to think about what my insides look like right now.I try not to remember the way I dragged myself through mud, or how close I came to closing my eyes and never opening them again.
The rest of the ride goes by terrifyingly slow, as if the whole world has stopped.All I can hear in the haze of my mind is Michael barking codes and rain slamming on the roof.I squeeze Kael’s hand until my muscles flutter, until the world starts to gray out again.
I hear him speak as I close my eyes, letting the darkness take over.“Don’t let go.Even if you want to.You hear me?Hang in there, Sable.”
But it’s peaceful here.
Really damn peaceful.
~*~*~*~*~
VOICES WAKE ME.
They seem distant, but the more I come to, the clearer they get until I realize someone is in the room with me.Multiple someones, actually.They aren’t happy, kind voices but instead shouting ones.Men, growling in low tones, hissing curses, and as my eyes flutter open, I slowly focus on the scene before me.
Kael is a member of the Fallen Sons MC, a notorious motorcycle club known for its rough reputation and tight-knit brotherhood.The club's emblem, a fallen angel with battered wings, symbolizes their resilience and defiance.Kael, with his back turned, represents a complex figure—someone deeply entrenched in the club's world, yet perhaps carrying his own burdens and secrets.The Fallen Sons MC is recognized by everyone, a group that commands both respect and fear in equal measure, known for their loyalty to each other and their willingness to protect their own at any cost.
The part I failed to tell Kael is that I am someone's old lady.
I guess he is about to find out the hard way.
That someone is standing in the room by the door, his presence almost filling the room.Gage ‘Grim’ Reyes.My husband.President of another MC:The Blood Creed.Gage is so unlike Kael in every single way.Where Kael has a kindness that radiates from his soul, shining beyond even the cut he wears on his back, Gage does not.
He is terrifying, and yet, when he walks into a room, everyone stops in their tracks.His overwhelmingly dark personality takes your breath away.His hair, dark as the night, rolls down his back, curling slightly on the ends.His eyes are more black than brown, and his beard only adds to his mystery.He’s taller than Kael and bulkier, tattoos inching over almost every part of his body.
I don’t ever think there will be a time when I don’t look at Gage and my breath doesn’t get caught in my throat.
Our relationship is well beyond complicated, but I’ve remained loyal to him for a long time.Our paths crossed six or so years ago, and the secrets of our past kept us together.That year was the worst year of my life, until it became the best, or maybe the worst in a more beautiful way.The kind of beautiful that chews you up and spits you back out, teeth marks still fresh on your bones.
Gage found me in a halfway house, hiding from half the city.I’d shot three inches above my mother’s heart and watched the last air leave her in an uneven hiss, then spent five years in and out of juvie.On the day I met Gage, I’d been out exactly six hours.I didn’t trust anyone.Not the system, not the other girls in my dorm, sure as hell not the man who appeared out of nowhere.
At first, I thought it was a joke, another prank by some girl with a meaner streak than mine.But then he told me things, things I had never told another soul, and I knew this man understood me on a level I could never fully understand.He knew about my mother, about the drugs I had been selling, about the people after me, about the darkest parts I thought only I knew.
He had a way of taking up the whole room; I couldn’t look away.At first, I thought he was like every other MC guy who rolled through looking for a good time with the girls here.Gage was different.He didn’t bother with jokes or borrowed charm.Instead, he started with the last day I saw my mother alive, and how he’d watched the ambulance pull away with me in it, and how it took him a decade and a lot of ugly actions to find me again.
“You don’t remember me,” he said.I’d tried to squint the memory into place, but nothing stuck.
Confusion washed over me.
“Should I?”
He just nodded and handed me a candied orange slice from the pocket of his cut.“You were ten the last time we met.You bit me so hard I thought you were going to take my thumb clean off.Thought I was a predator, instead I was a curious teen who lived next door, one that you never noticed.”
I’d stared at it, the cheap cellophane crinkling like static in my hand.“I don’t like oranges.Too sour.”
He winked at me, then took the slice and tossed it into his mouth.“One day you will.”
I’d like to say I fell in love with him then and there.I didn’t.What I fell in love with was his certainty.How he never flinched, even when I shoved at him, even when I accused him of wanting to fix me because he was bored or horny, or because he wanted to be some white knight.I tested him like a cough rattling my lungs, even after he moved me out of the halfway house and into his place.Even after he tattooed my name over his heart in Gothic black and let me design it myself.
He wasn’t kind, not the way people mean when they use the word, but he was honest.God, he was honest.There wasn’t a single moment in our time where he ever held the truth from me, even when it scared me.But the thing about dangerous men is that sometimes they’re dangerous to themselves, too.
The world outside never stopped being sharp.
He never asked for much.Just that I keep quiet about certain things, don’t hang around the bar when he’s working deals, keep my rage tucked away for special occasions.But I always knew Gage had secrets.There was always another ghost to chase, and most nights he woke up slick with sweat, shaking, staring holes through the ceiling.He’d let me talk him down but never let me all the way in.
