Divorced by the Devil Rider

Chapter 6 — First Blood

The gray sedan stayed in the mirror. It didn’t get closer. It didn’t disappear. It just stayed there.

It wasn't close enough to be a legal threat, but it was close enough to be a promise. It had the anonymous, rounded edges of a car designed to be forgotten, the kind of car no one remembers seeing. We had turned three times, and each time, the gray shape drifted after us, maintaining a clinical distance that made the hair on my arms stand up.

I didn't notice it at first. I was too busy trying to breathe through the suffocating proximity of Kade’s body. Six months ago, I would’ve leaned into him without thinking. Now I sat stiff behind him, trying not to touch him more than I had to.

Kade noticed it before I did. I felt the change in the machine beneath us first. The growl of the Ducati’s engine shifted, a subtle drop in RPMs that wasn’t a deceleration so much as a lure. He slowed just enough to see if they’d react. Behind us, the sedan’s nose dipped as the driver tapped the brakes to match our new, lethargic pace.

"That car," I said. The wind caught the words, tearing them from my lips, but I knew he heard me. I could feel the tension in his shoulders, a hardening of muscle that made him feel less like a man and more like a tectonic plate shifting. "It’s been following us since the bridge, Kade."

"I know."

His voice was too calm. There was no spike of adrenaline, no curse, no frantic checking of mirrors. Just that flat, terrifying competence that always made me feel like a passenger in my own life.

My hands, which had been hovering awkwardly, suddenly clamped onto the sides of his jacket. It was an instinctive reaction—a plea for gravity in a world that had suddenly gone weightless. I felt the pebbled leather under my fingernails and immediately felt a hot flash of shame. I tried to pull back, I tried to let go, but the bike suddenly leaned.

He didn't slow down. He didn't explain. He just banked right, a sharp, aggressive pivot that forced me to bury my face into the space between his shoulder blades. I hated how tightly I clung to him. I hated that my body knew the contours of his back better than I knew my own mind.

We weren't heading toward the main drag anymore. The neon lights of the city faded, replaced by the skeletal remains of the old industrial district. The streets here were cracked, lined with corrugated metal fences and "No Trespassing" signs that looked like signs that looked like no one had listened to them in years.

"Kade, this is a dead end," I hissed, panic clawing at my throat. "Where are you going?"

"Quiet, Clara."

Two words. That was all it took to strip me of my voice. He cut the engine, and the sudden silence was more violent than the roar of the wind. We drifted to a halt in the center of a narrow alleyway, flanked by windowless brick walls.

The gray sedan turned the corner ten seconds later. It stopped twenty feet away, its headlights cutting through the gloom to headlights locked on us. Didn’t move.

"Get off," Kade said. He didn't look back at me. He dismounted, the kickstand clicking into place with a sound like a guillotine blade dropping. He walked three paces forward, leaving me perched on the leather seat, exposed.

The car doors creaked open. Two men stepped out. They were dressed in expensive suits, but their faces were blunt instruments.

"Mr. Thorne," the taller one said. "You're making a scene. We were sent to collect what belongs to the client."

His eyes shifted toward me. He didn't see a woman; he saw a ledger entry. A liability.

Kade went still. A terrifying, absolute stillness.

The second man, the shorter one, reached into his jacket. It was a slow motion, almost lazy, as if he didn't think Kade was a threat.

He was wrong.

The explosion of movement was so fast I didn't see it—I only felt the aftermath. Kade didn't close the gap; he erased it. His fist collided with the man’s jaw with a sound like a bat hitting a wet rug. I saw a tooth spray into the air, caught in the beam of the headlights.

The man crumpled.

"Kade!" I screamed, but the sound was swallowed by the brick.

The taller man fumbled for a weapon, his professional veneer shattering into raw, panicked clumsiness. Kade grabbed him by the throat, his fingers digging into the soft tissue. He slammed the man against the hood of the sedan, the metal groaning and denting under the impact.

It wasn't a fight. It was a dismantling. He didn’t stop. He just kept hitting him.

"Stop! Kade, stop it!" I scrambled off the bike, my boots slipping on the oily grit of the alley. I stumbled toward them, reaching out to grab Kade’s shoulder.

He spun around, and for a heartbeat, I didn't recognize him. His eyes were blown out, pupils huge and dark, His eyes looked wrong. Like he wasn’t seeing me. He didn't see Clara, his ex-wife. He saw a distraction.

He shoved me back—not hard enough to hurt, but enough to make me realize I was an intruder in his world. "Stay back!" he roared.

I fell against the bike. I watched as he turned back to the man on the hood. Kade’s knuckles were split, blood dripping onto the gray paint. He hit the man again. And again. With every strike, the version of Kade I had loved was dying.

"Who sent you?" Kade hissed, his face inches from the broken man’s.

"They... they know," the man wheezed. "The Council... they know you kept her. You can't... hide the prize forever, Thorne."

The prize. The word made me feel sick. I wasn't a person. I was a bargaining chip. And Kade hadn't let me go during the divorce because he loved me—he had let me go because he was trying to hide the collateral.

Kade’s grip tightened until the man’s face went a terrifying shade of blue. "She isn't a prize," Kade whispered, his voice vibrating with a possessiveness that made my skin crawl. "She's mine."

Not 'she's free.' Not 'she's innocent.'

She's mine.

The finality of it shattered something inside me. I had never been free by the men in the car; it had been signed away the moment I let Kade "protect" me.

The sound of more engines began to echo through the alley—a low, rhythmic thrumming that shook the ground. Black bikes. Leather vests. The Hellhounds.

They didn't come to help me. They came to report to their King.

Rex, the vice president of the patch, killed his engine and stepped off his bike. He looked at the bodies, then at Kade’s bloody hands, and finally at me.

"It's done then," Rex said.

Kade dropped the man like a piece of trash. He stood in the center of the c*****e, chest heaving. He looked at me, and for the first time, I saw the instability in him. He wasn't the one in control. The violence had changed the air.

He walked toward me, his movements stiff. He reached out a hand to touch my face.

I flinched.

His hand stopped in mid-air. His eyes narrowed, a flash of hurt crossing his features before being swallowed by a cold, hard mask. He didn't apologize.

"Get on the bike, Clara," he said.

"I want to go home," I whispered. "Kade, please. Just take me to my apartment."

Kade looked at Rex, then back at me. A slow, dark smile that didn't reach his eyes touched his lips.

"You don't have a home anymore," he said softly. "You have a cage. And I'm the only one with the key."

He didn't wait for me to agree. He grabbed my waist and lifted me back onto the bike. I didn't fight him. I couldn't. My bones felt like lead, my will dissolved by the realization that the world had just narrowed down to this alley, this man, and the blood on the pavement.

The Hellhounds surrounded us. As we roared out of the alley, leaving the broken men behind, I looked back at the gray sedan.

The first blood had been drawn. Nothing was stopping this now.