Ghost Riders (A Dark MC Romance)

Useful Information

Victor framed the kitchen doorway. He occupied space without trying. Anna set a carrot against the scarred maple board, the paring knife steady in her hand. Cutter occupied the line alone; his back stayed square to the room while grease popped in iron.

“Walk-in still organized, or is the back shelf crowding out the crates?” he asked. The tone carried nothing. Anna set a carrot against the scarred surface of the maple board. “Back shelf took the dry goods overflow; produce rotates left to right, oldest forward. It holds.”

“Delivery days change?”

“Mendoza comes Tuesdays. The Fresno run is Thursday, sometimes Friday if the driver makes Palmdale first.” Her gaze remained fixed on the steel edge. “Dairy’s Wednesday. That one never misses.”

“Does the Thursday truck ever come in short?”

“Rarely,” she said; this was the work, ordinary and procedural, the compound moving on its tracked routines while she settled back into place.

The cut rounds dropped into a metal bowl. She reached into the crate for the celery.

Cutter’s cleaver cracked against the end of his butcher block, far harder than the cut required. Once, then twice. Anna kept her attention on the green stalks under her hands.

“You remember which supplier runs the fuel additives?” Victor asked.

“That’s not kitchen inventory.”

“No,” he agreed, quiet. “Just curious what passes the gate.”

She gave him the distributor and the schedule, naming facts known to anyone on the docks. The words were harmless, part of the compound’s daily traffic, and speaking them put her back inside the machine where she belonged.

Victor thanked her. He crossed the tiled floor and laid one heavy palm on her shoulder, pressing down for two seconds before he turned back for the exit. Anna kept both hands braced on the stalks; the heat of his grip remained locked in the fabric of her shirt, heavy and cold.

Paper rustled behind her, followed by the dry click of plastic.

She shifted enough to catch his profile. A small, black notebook with a sewn spine rested in his left palm. She had seen that notebook before. Never in the kitchen, never around common chores; she had seen it laid flat across clubhouse tables in the back rooms, pulled out in the quiet hours before someone vanished or was marked for a ditch out past the perimeter. The pen made three rapid passes across the page. He clicked the cap shut, slid the pad into his interior coat pocket, and walked out into the corridor without a backward glance. Anna held her breath. A sick, cold weight settled beneath her ribs. The celery remained clamped under her palm; the paring knife lay idle on the board. Cutter’s rhythm at the burners had grown rigid, every strike deliberate, measured to maintain an absolute, unbroken silence. She stared into the empty hall where Victor had stood. Just inventory notes, she told herself, fighting the chill in her blood. Routine supply lists, nothing that carried weight.

The bowl held its mound of orange discs. She took up the handle once more and cut.The yard was quiet when the movement started.

Anna reached for the colander on the upper shelf, her back turned to the window, when boot soles ground into gravel. Two sets, then three, moving fast. She turned without thinking.

Two men from the loading rotation had a third pinned between them. They dragged him by the arms; his boot heels carved twin ruts through the loose stone.

She set the colander on the zinc.

Victor stood by the bay doors, fingers resting easy in his coat pockets, talking to someone behind the frame. His frame showed nothing new; he stayed patient, contained.

“Take him down,” Victor said. His tone barely carried across the yard. “Check the inventory slips in his pockets first.”

The two men dropped the third onto the stone. The beating began with steady rhythm. There was no fury in the swings; they handled it like warehouse work, routine and clean, striking with heavy boots and knuckles until the denim ripped.

Anna kept her gaze fixed on the dirt.

One of the loaders hauled the man up by his collar, exposing the split along the cheekbone and the black smear of oil and blood beneath it. He wore a blue thermal undershirt with a frayed left cuff.

Her pulse thrummed behind her ears.

He stocked the walk-in cooler. She had watched him rotate the pantry storage crates twice, stacking bulk beans and canned lard by code date. That morning Victor had asked where the shortages had started. Walk-in shelves, she’d told him. Third row back. He checked the dates, nothing else. She had delivered the words like inventory, just compound routine. She had said it like it was nothing.

Outside, Victor raised his chin.

He found the glass immediately. He held her eyes through the dirt-streaked pane for three full seconds, wearing no readable expression, simply settling the weight of his attention on her face; then he looked back to the stones.

Anna pressed her palm hard into the laminate counter edge. The gravel showed dark wet spots. The man’s legs stopped thrashing.

“Clear the yard,” Victor told the loaders, his command flat and quiet. “Burn the paperwork behind the incinerator.”

“What about the shipment?” one asked.

“Lila handles the tally now.”

Anna went cold. Her shoulder blades hit the cupboard frame, breath locking hard in her throat. Lila. Victor had said Lila. Not a dock hand, not one of the warehouse crew. Lila was Jason’s world, Jason’s lifeline on the outside, and now Victor spoke her name like she was just another piece of clubhouse machinery logged on his payroll. Cold sickness pooled behind Anna’s ribs. Had Victor broken her? Was Lila trapped inside the gates, or had she crossed the floor willingly while Jason was blind to it? Across the stones, the beaten loader slumped onto his side; one man backed away, and Victor walked across the yard without hurry. He pulled a white linen square from his pocket and cleaned his knuckles with the same deliberate care he had used when he settled a wool blanket over her shoulders at dawn.

The bowl of orange carrot coins sat by the sink. The kitchen steel rested where she had set it down.

She had said it like it was nothing.Victor came in while she was still at the prep counter. She heard the heavy door swing, heard boots settle on the grease-stained tile, and kept her blade moving through the celery. The colander sat on the zinc beside the carrot coins.

“Ready for tonight?” he asked.

She nodded. That was all.

He crossed to her side of the counter without hurry, bringing the faint smell of wool, gun oil, and cold stone. Her elbow nearly brushed his heavy coat, but her hands stayed steady on the cutting board. Stalk, cut, bowl.

Then he reached out, setting two calloused fingers beneath her jaw to tilt her chin upward. She met his stare. He looked back, patient and unhurried, like a man who held every key in the valley.

“You’re protecting what we built here,” he said. “Don’t lose sight of that.”

She held still.

“Marcus would be proud of you.”

Her father’s name in his mouth landed warm and wrong, an old weight pressing behind her teeth. She remembered the runner in the blue thermal shirt, the frayed cuff soaked through, the dark pooling across the gravel by the fence. She had given up his name without blinking, then watched the yard go dead quiet while her palm dug into this same zinc rim. A sudden, dangerous pull made her lean toward the praise, because the alternative was standing alone in this kitchen under the cold halogen glare.

The smile came up on its own. She did not stop it.

Victor dropped his hand. He stepped back into the doorway, easy and composed.

“South bay freight hits the gate around nine,” he said. “Keep the burners low, heat the stew, and have the dry inventory log ready for the manifest check.”

“Lila handles the tally now,” he added. “You just run the count.” The name hung between them, heavy and lethal. Anna’s throat tightened so fiercely she could barely swallow. Victor watched her, his eyes weighing every fraction of a second she took to answer, measuring whether she would flinch, whether she knew what Jason knew. If Victor had Lila doing the books, Jason was walking directly into an ambush, or Lila was already marked for the same gravel where the loader had bled out ten minutes ago. “I understand,” she forced out, her voice level, flat as tin. He gave her one last look before turning down the hall. The kitchen held its sounds: the hiss under Cutter’s skillet, the slow drip from the zinc faucet, and the frantic pounding in her ears. She faced the board again. Lila inside the compound. Lila tallying freight for the usurper who wanted Jason in the ground. The room offered no leverage and nobody she could trust without buying them a shallow trench in the scrub. Victor had already stripped every scrap of it.

The false smile had faded before she noticed it drop away.

Stalk, cut, bowl.

The freight would come at nine, and she would count every box.