Chapter 2

Roxy POV: Cold air and a jagged spike of pain dragged me from the dark. A rough hand shook my shoulder, wrenching me awake. Instinct took over before my eyes even cleared—I curved my upper body over the twin bundles tucked under the thin blanket. Towering over the cot was a thickset man wearing a faded leather cut with the Raven MC skull patch. One of Viper's enforcer prospects. "Wake up, charity case," he grunted, slapping a crinkled stack of papers and a cheap pen against my chest. The bold header sneered up at me: Irrevocable Surrender of Parental Rights and Termination of Old Lady Affiliation. I swept my arm across the mattress, knocking the papers to the dirty concrete. "Get out." The prospect sneered, crossing tattooed arms over his chest. "Viper's feeling generous, Roxy. Sign the brats over to the club as chapter property, and you walk with fifty bucks and your skin intact. Refuse, and I dump you in the swamp behind the salvage yard." I glanced down at the floor, where Viper's arrogant scrawl was already penned on the witness line. A dry, venomous laugh scraped past my cracked lips. Leaning down, I hooked the nearest page, brought it to my chest, and tore it cleanly down the middle. "Tell Jaxson," I whispered, meeting his ugly stare, "that he can burn in hell." Rage twisted his face. He drew a black Glock 19 from his hip and jammed the cold steel muzzle hard against the center of my forehead. "You don't make demands, bitch," he spat, his finger tightening on the trigger. "Sign the backup copy, or I leave three corpses in this bed." I didn't flinch. I tilted my chin up against the barrel, locking my arms around the sleeping twins. If I died, he would have to look me in the eye when he pulled the trigger. Before the hammer could drop, the door swung open without a sound. A tall man stepped into the dingy room. He wore a tailored black shirt with sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms, dark trousers, and wire-rimmed gold glasses perched on a sharp nose. In his left hand, he carried a heavy silver medical case. He moved with the terrifying, effortless silence of a man who owned the air in the room. The prospect spun the Glock toward him. "Who the fuck are you? This is Raven territory! Turn around and—" The man didn't waste a single syllable. His right hand blurred forward, gloved fingers clamping around the thug's gun wrist like an industrial vice. A sickening, wet crack echoed through the room as bone splintered under raw force. The prospect shrieked, dropping the Glock as his hand flopped at a grotesque, useless angle. With a clean flick of his polished boot, the newcomer kicked the pistol under the sink. "Get out," he said softly, his deep baritone cold enough to freeze blood. "Or I will sever the radial artery in your other arm and watch you bleed out before you hit the hall." Clutching his shattered wrist, the prospect whimpered, scrambled backward out the doorway, and tripped over his own boots as he fled. The heavy door clicked shut. Silence filled the room. The man turned toward my cot, yellow light glinting across his gold-rimmed glasses before his eyes locked onto me and the twins. I pressed myself back against the iron frame, baring my teeth like a cornered wolf. "Who sent you? If Viper sent a clean-up man, shoot me now." He set the silver case on the stainless tray, popping the latches with two crisp clicks. He withdrew a pre-filled syringe. "You can call me Ryder," he replied, his voice rich, steady, and vibrating in the small space. "And Jaxson Vance doesn't have the rank or the bloodline to command me to do a damn thing." He stepped closer, his broad shoulders blotting out the harsh fluorescent light. "You're hemorrhaging. Lie back." "Don't touch me," I snapped, lashing out to strike the syringe away. The motion dragged the collar of my torn gown down my left shoulder, baring the pale, bruised skin below. Ryder's hand froze in midair. Behind the gold frames, his pupils narrowed to pinpricks. His gaze locked onto the faded, jagged burn scar etched deep into my shoulder blade—the rearing stallion encased in an iron ring. The breath left his chest in a sharp, ragged hiss. I saw the sudden, terrifying intensity in his eyes and yanked the fabric back up, wincing as pain tore through my hips. "I said get away from me!" Ryder took a slow, measured breath, a muscle ticking violently beneath his bronze jaw. The clinical detachment vanished from his face, replaced by a dark, volatile fury. "Be still, little bird," he murmured, his voice dropping into a low, reverent rumble. "I am going to stop your bleeding. And then I am going to take a single drop of your blood." Before I could fight, his gloved fingers clamped gently but immovably around my bicep, smoothly depressing the plunger into my IV port. The analgesic flooded my veins, instantly blunting the razor-sharp edge of the pain. My limbs turned to lead. My eyelids grew heavy as thirty hours of brutal exhaustion pulled me under. Through the gray fog, I watched Ryder take a sterile lancet, prick my ring finger, and press a bead of crimson into a glass micro-vial fitted with a gold circuit chip. He slotted the vial into a portable black diagnostic analyzer resting in his case. Ryder POV: The sequence bar crawled across the analyzer's LCD screen with agonizing slowness. 10%... 45%... 88%... My heart hammered against my ribs like a caged beast. My knuckles turned stark white as my fingers dug into the rusted metal table, denting the steel under sheer pressure. Beep. The screen flashed solid, blazing crimson. GENETIC MATCH: CROSS BLOODLINE. DIRECT DESCENDANT: 99.98% PATERNAL CORRELATION (RICHARD "IRON" CROSS). I closed my eyes for three brutal seconds, swallowing the raw roar clawing up my throat. Twenty years. Twenty bloody, relentless years of burning down state lines from California to Maine, hunting for the lost daughter of the IronHorse mother chapter. And here she was. Lying on a blood-soaked rag in a filthy back-alley clinic, discarded like roadkill by a two-bit, bottom-feeder MC Prez who wasn't fit to spit on her boots. I turned back to the cot. Roxy was fast asleep now, pale and peaceful beneath the grime, her arms still locked around her newborn twins with the ferocity of a mother who would burn the world to keep them breathing. The Cross blood ran pure in her veins. She was royalty in an empire forged in asphalt and iron, and these bastards had treated her like trash. I reached inside the breast pocket of my custom cut and pulled out the encrypted satellite transceiver. I flipped the emergency toggle and slammed the red broadcast button. "Prez," I whispered into the mic, my voice steady, low, and deadlier than a hollow-point round. "Code Red. The princess is found. Send the horde."