CRAVING THE WRONG MAN

HIS ENEMY BROTHER

MIA

The voice on the other end of the phone goes completely silent. I can hear him breathing, and for some reason, that familiar sound makes my throat tighten more than anything else has since I escaped.

"Mia?" he says again, his voice lower now, stripped of the confusion it carried a moment ago. "Where are you?"

I look down the empty road, then over my shoulder at the darkness behind me. "I don't know."

"That's not good enough."

There is something different about his voice. Three years ago, I knew that voice when it was softer, when he would tease me just to see me roll my eyes, when he would lean against the bar at my father's clubhouse and watch me from across the room while pretending he wasn't. I remember how easily we used to talk before everything became complicated, and hearing him now makes those memories feel strangely close.

"Are you hurt?"

I swallow. "Yes."

"How badly?"

"I don't know."

"Mia."

The way he says my name makes me close my eyes. "Please," I whisper. "I just need somewhere to go."

There is a pause before he asks the question I have been trying not to think about.

"Did Saint do this?"

My chest tightens so quickly that I almost can't breathe.

"No."

The answer comes out too fast. I don't want to say Saint's name. I don't want to explain what happened, and I especially don't want to hear anyone ask me why my husband didn't save me.

"Then who did?"

"I was taken."

"Who took you?"

"I don't know."

"Are you alone?"

"Yes."

"Good. Stay exactly where you are."

My fingers tighten around the phone. "You know where I am?"

"No."

"Then how—"

"I'll find you."

The line goes dead.

I stare at the receiver for several seconds before slowly lowering it. I don't know whether I have just made the safest decision of my life or the most dangerous one, because Rhett is the last person I should have called.

He is one of Saint's oldest enemies, a man who has been absent from the Nights Saints MC for three years, and someone Saint has spoken about with enough hatred that I never needed to ask whether the two brothers would ever find their way back to each other.

And yet, when I needed someone, Rhett's was the number my fingers remembered.

I don't even know why.

Maybe it is because once upon a time, before my father's death changed everything, Rhett was one of the few people who looked at me and saw Mia instead of the president's daughter. He had already left Night Saints MC by then, taking several men with him and eventually building his own club, the Black Reign MC.

His club was nothing like my father's or Saint's. Black Reign was built around power, trade, and the kind of business that made people lower their voices when they talked about it. Rhett became known as a merchant who could get almost anything moved through almost anywhere, and his reputation for ruthlessness grew until people stopped questioning whether the stories about him were true.

I knew a different version of him.

When my father was still alive, Rhett would occasionally come to the clubhouse to deliver things I was never allowed to know much about. Crates would arrive, his men would unload them, and my father would disappear into his office with him for hours. I never asked what was inside those crates because my father had a way of making certain subjects feel like doors I shouldn't open.

Back then, Rhett would find me afterward and somehow make me laugh.

He remembered little things about me that I never expected him to remember, like the fact that I hated raisins in cookies and loved strawberry candy. Once, after I complained that I couldn't find my favorite kind anywhere, he showed up weeks later with an entire box of it. I had laughed and accused him of being ridiculous, and he had simply shrugged as though bringing me candy from another state was the most normal thing in the world.

I knew he liked me.

I wasn't stupid.

I knew it from the way his attention lingered whenever I was with him, from the way his teasing changed when we were alone, and from the uncomfortable feeling I started getting whenever he looked at me for too long. But I only had eyes for Saint, and Rhett knew that better than anyone.

I remember one afternoon when he finally asked me what I wanted from him.

I had laughed nervously and told him nothing because I thought we were friends. He stared at me for a long moment before saying, "You really don't see it, do you?"

I had pretended not to understand.

His smile had faded a little. "You look at my brother like he's the only man in existence."

I didn't know what to say because he was right.

Saint had always been the only man I saw.

Rhett knew it, and perhaps that was why I eventually started keeping my distance from him then. I didn't want to hurt him, but I also didn't want to encourage feelings I could never return. We had been close enough to memorize each other's numbers, and I knew that if I ever needed him, I could call him. I just never imagined I would actually have to.

Then my father died and Saint became president.

I became his wife.

And Rhett disappeared.

I never saw him again.

For three years, I heard nothing from him, not a call or a message, and he never came near the clubhouse. Then the rumors started. Saint told me Rhett had been involved in my father's death, and I remember the way my stomach dropped when I heard it because suddenly his disappearance didn't seem like a coincidence.

"He had a hand in it," Saint had said when I asked him.

That was all.

I believed him. I still do.

Maybe I shouldn't, but Rhett vanished immediately after my father died, and whatever relationship he once had with my family disappeared with him. That has always been enough for me to believe there was something he wasn't telling us.

So calling him tonight isn't simply dangerous. It is a gamble I may not survive.

But I've already made it. Now I have to live with it.

I sit on the edge of the roadside curb because my legs are beginning to shake again. The adrenaline that carried me out of that building is fading, and everything I refused to feel is returning at once. My shoulder aches, my wrists burn, and there is dried blood on my skin, but none of that frightens me as much as the thought of what could happen to my baby if I don't get somewhere safe.

I put both hands over my stomach.

"I'm going to keep you safe," I whisper.

I don't know whether I'm promising the baby or myself, but I need to believe it.

Less than twenty minutes later, I hear an engine approaching.

It isn't a motorcycle.

It is something much bigger.

The sound grows louder until headlights wash across the road, and a massive black Chevrolet Silverado 2500HD truck rolls to a stop a few feet away from me.

My stomach drops before I even see the driver. I don't need to

Somehow, I know.

The driver's door opens, and Rhett steps out