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From where she was high above me, hazel eyes glinted and danced in the muted light that poured into the lot.

Girl grinning down at me like she’d won a prize.

I walked her around to the passenger side of her truck, two of us fully concealed by darkness and metal. “Doesn’t matter if I like it or not, I can’t have it.”

She leaned down to whisper in my ear. “It’s already yours.”

But she couldn’t be.

I groped around inside my pocket and pushed the button on the fob.

The lights flashed.

I yanked open the door and deposited her inside.

She wiggled on the seat, and I was assaulted with the way she’d looked with that dress fully bound around her waist.

I gritted my teeth against the vision.

“Mischief maker,” I grunted with a shake of my head before I slammed her door shut and rounded the front.

Phoenix stood at the top of the steps.

A foreboding mercenary.

Watching me with that warning scored on his face.

I just blew out a sigh and opened my door, turned over the engine, and started in the direction of Elena’s apartment.

Pretending the whole time that fifteen minutes ago her mouth hadn’t been wrapped around my cock and it was just another fucking day.

Chalking it up to another failed fantasy that was never going to come to be.

But I was pretty sure there was no chance I’d ever be able to wipe the imprint from my mind.

Because this girl was inscribed on me.

FORTY-SIX

TREVAN

TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OLD

Trevan had never imagined that this would become his life. It was strange to be saturated with the greatest guilt and still bear zero regret. As far as he was concerned, there was no other place that he could have ended up but there.

Riding next to Silas with the Iron Owls patch on his back. A part of the feared MC that viciously ruled the streets of LA.

When he’d come crawling to Silas, begging for forgiveness when he was eighteen, he knew he would do whatever it took to win Silas’s forgiveness and make his way back into his favor.

Into this family’s favor.

They were the only thing that meant anything to him.

It’d been easy to slide into this life, even though Meems had warned him not to follow in Silas’s path. Pleading with Trevan to help Silas see reason and change course rather than jumping right in beside him.

But he belonged here every bit as much as Silas did. Both of them hardened. Their souls mangled by the trauma. Each of their stories different but merging in a way that had tied them intrinsically.

So, he wore that cut with arrogant pride and still detested himself. The cruel, violent man he’d become. The things he did for gain and greed.