Contracted Wife to the MC President

Chapter 9

Harper POV

We packed in total silence.

Whatever had built between us in that bed burned off the second Reaper racked the slide on his Glock. Survival took over. I shoved my feet into the boots, laced them as tight as my numb fingers would let me. My trousers were stiff with dried mud and blood, useless at this point. I pulled the inside-out jacket on over the t-shirt, shivering as the morning cold worked through the cabin walls.

I grabbed the 9mm off the table and followed him out.

The mountain air hit like a blade. Frost coated the hood of the Charger. He threw the duffel and rifle in the trunk and slammed it shut, the sound cracking through the empty trees.

We got in. The seats were ice cold. He hotwired it again, the V8 roaring to life under us, and cranked the heat while pulling us down the dirt road away from the cabin.

He drove like the roads owed him something. Narrow, winding, slick with frost, and he never touched the brakes. Steering one-handed, his other arm braced stiff on the console to keep from jarring his ribs. Every gear shift, I watched his jaw tighten against the pain.

"Talk to me," he said, eyes on the road. "Who knew exactly when the lawyer was showing up?"

I watched the pines blur past the tinted glass, trying to shove the last twenty-four hours into some kind of order. "My father. And his Chief of Staff, Marcus Thorne. Thorne handled the legal side, made sure the license went through clean and fast."

"So Thorne knew the window." He took a corner hard enough to press my shoulder into the door. "Knew exactly when we'd both be standing in that room, distracted."

"What about your side?" I turned to look at him. "Who knew the perimeter?"

His knuckles went white on the wheel. "Knox. The Chaplain. Four guards at the south gate. Guards are dead. I watched them go down myself."

"Knox?" I asked carefully.

"My VP." His voice dropped, flat and cold. "Fifteen years bleeding for this club. But everybody's got a price. If your father found his, I'll put the bullet in him myself."

The lack of hesitation in his voice chilled me more than the air in the car did. The man from the bed was gone. This was the President again, all edges, all war.

He pulled a burner phone from the console, dialed from memory, put it on speaker on the dash.

Two rings. A rough voice answered. "Yeah."

"It's the mechanic," Reaper said, eyes still on the empty road. "Need a tow."

"s**t," the voice breathed, relief bleeding through even the static. "Where are you?"

"Out of the shop. What's the damage?"

"Totaled. South wall's gone, bar burned to the foundation. Six dead, maybe more. Feds are all over the yard, calling it a cartel hit. Everybody scattered. I've got half a dozen guys with me."

His jaw locked. Six men, gone. "You clean, Gage?"

"Wasn't followed. Swept the trucks."

"Meet me at the graveyard, two hours. Bring hardware. Come alone."

"Copy, boss."

He ended the call and dropped the phone back in the console. "Road Captain. If I can't trust him, we're walking into a crossfire blind."

I watched him. Rigid, wound tight, carrying a burned-down club and a hunted wife at the same time. He was treating me like something to protect and move, valuable, but still cargo.

I wasn't going to sit here and be that.

"If my father hired those mercenaries, Thorne paid for them," I said, cutting through the engine noise.

He glanced over. "And?"

"Mercenaries like that don't take wire transfers. No cash duffels either, too much of a trail. Thorne launders my father's bribes through a jeweler in the Diamond District. Elias Vance."

His eyes stayed on the road, but I felt the shift in him. He was listening now.

"Vance moves diamonds," I said, the adrenaline sharpening everything. "Untraceable, high value, easy to move. If my father funded an army to hit your compound, Vance handled the money. He'll have records. He'll know who ordered it and who fed them the layout."

He downshifted hard into a straightaway, then looked at me, actually looked. The ice in his eyes cracked into something closer to respect. He wasn't seeing a ruined heiress in oversized boots anymore. He was seeing someone useful.

"Vance's shop is a fortress," he said. "Private security, bulletproof glass. You don't walk in and ask for the books."

"You don't." I held his stare. "I do. He's known me since I was a kid. He knows I'm my father's proxy. He'll let me through the door."

His jaw tightened. "You're not walking in there alone."

"I won't be. I'll have you."

The quiet that followed wasn't tense the same way. It was something else now, something that had been sitting under the surface since we left that bed.

"Two hours," he said, pushing the gas down harder, the Charger eating the road. "We meet Gage. We gear up. Then we go pay Mr. Vance a visit."