The President's Collateral

Chapter 2 — The Ledger

EMBER

The sound of my palm hitting Jax’s jaw rang through the cemetery like a gunshot.

My hand stung, but his head barely moved. Behind him, leather creaked as eleven heavily armed bikers stepped forward together.

Jax raised one black-gloved hand without looking at them. The Savage Saints stopped at once.

“Don’t,” I said, breathing hard. Rain stuck my hair to my face. “Don’t you ever talk to me like I’m something you can take back.”

Jax slowly turned his head. A red mark rose on his cheekbone next to the white scar through his eyebrow. His gray eyes did not look angry. They looked cold and amused.

I pulled back to hit him again.

This time his hand moved faster than I could see. His fingers locked around my wrist like a steel cuff and yanked me forward. My chest slammed into his leather vest. The air left my lungs.

“One free shot, princess,” he said in a rough voice, leaning close so his stubble brushed my temple. “That was for Dylan. Try it again and I’ll put you over my knee in front of your preacher.”

“Let go of her!” Lily screamed, grabbing Jax’s heavy leather sleeve.

Jax did not flinch. He did not look at her. His eyes stayed fixed on me.

“Ember,” he said quietly. His thumb pressed against the fast pulse in my wrist. “Look at me.”

“Go to hell, Jax.”

“I’ve been there since Dylan burned,” he said, his voice lower and raw. “Now listen to the terms. Your old man didn’t just borrow money. He promised services. He put up his property and his bloodline as collateral. He was supposed to move club money. He died still holding our cash.”

“We don’t have it!” I shouted, trying to pull my arm free. It felt like pulling against iron. “He died broke! Look around, you bastard! I put his funeral on a credit card!”

“I know,” Jax said quietly. “Which means the only thing Thomas Hayes left behind is an ER trauma nurse with steady hands and no family left to protect her.”

“I have Lily.”

“And you want to keep her alive, don’t you?”

The air left my lungs. “Are you threatening my sister?”

“I’m telling you how the world works outside your clean hospital,” Jax said. His grip loosened enough to trace the inside of my wrist before he let go completely. “The Saints aren’t the only ones Thomas owed. The Iron Vipers know he’s dead. By tonight they’ll know he didn’t pay. If I don’t claim you under Saint protection by sunrise, Silas and his men will drag you and your sister into a ditch.”

“I don’t need your protection.”

“You do.” Jax stepped back and adjusted the collar of his vest. Cold air rushed into the space where his heat had been. “Twenty-four hours to pack a bag, Ember. That’s me being generous. Tomorrow at noon I send a bike to pick you up.”

“And if I’m not there?”

Jax pulled his black helmet over his head. Even through the dark visor I could feel his stare.

“Then I come get you myself,” his voice said from behind the shield. “And you won’t like how I pack your bags.”

He turned and walked through the mud toward his customized Harley. The big blond man next to him—Cash, the Vice President—tipped two fingers at me in a mocking salute.

Twelve engines started. Twelve bikes tore the quiet of the cemetery apart. They sprayed wet gravel and dead flowers into the air as they raced past the iron gates and disappeared onto the highway.

“Ember…” Lily said, grabbing my soaked coat. “What did he mean? What did Dad do?”

“Nothing,” I lied through chattering teeth. I shoved the plastic bag with the paper into my coat pocket. “He was bluffing. It’s just biker intimidation.”

“He didn’t look like he was bluffing.”

“Get in the car, Lil.”

I pushed my sister into the passenger seat of our dad’s old 2012 Honda Civic, turned the heater on, and drove through the heavy rain. My hands shook so hard on the steering wheel that the car drifted over the center line twice.

Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

A bloodline debt.

Collateral.

I dropped Lily off at her college dorm first. I made her promise—swore her to God—that she would not leave the locked dorm, would not open the door for anyone without checking the peephole, and would call campus security if she saw a single motorcycle within three blocks.

“I’m fine, Em,” she said, her eyes red. “Come inside. Stay with me.”

“I have to cover some shifts at the hospital,” I lied again, kissing her wet forehead. “I’ll handle this. I swear.”

I drove the six miles across town to my run-down second-floor apartment on Elm Street. The rain had slowed to a steady drizzle. Streetlights flickered over greasy puddles. All I wanted was dry clothes, a locked door, and twenty minutes to figure out how to get a second mortgage on a house that was already being taken by the bank.

I took the rusted iron stairs two at a time and pulled my brass key from my wet pocket.

I reached the second-floor landing and stopped cold.

The key slipped from my numb fingers and clattered on the concrete.

My front door was not locked.

The deadbolt had been ripped completely out of the doorframe. Wood splinters covered the welcome mat. The door hung open a couple of inches, creaking in the cold autumn air.

Inside, the dim hallway light showed total destruction.

My sofa was cut open. Yellow foam spilled across the floor. My nursing textbooks were torn from their spines. Every cupboard, every drawer, every piece of my life had been ripped apart, turned over, and destroyed.

And right across from the entrance, stabbed six inches deep into the drywall with a jagged hunting knife, were two words carved in rough, angry strokes:

**WHERE IS IT?**