SUITS AND SCARS: CLAIMED BY THE BIKER BOSS

They say Blackwood City has two heartbeats. The first is the one you hear at noon: the rhythmic, clinical pulse of the stock ticker, the hushed whispers of billion-dollar mergers, and the click of expensive heels on Italian marble. This is the world of Julian Vane. A man who looks like he was carved from ice and dressed in four-thousand-dollar charcoal wool. A man who sits in a glass tower and decides which empires live and which ones burn to the ground. For two years, I was the one who kept that heartbeat steady. I was his shadow. His gatekeeper. The woman who made sure his coffee was black, his files were flawless, and his secrets remained buried under the weight of iron-clad NDAs. But there is a second heartbeat. It starts when the sun dips below the smog-choked horizon. It’s a low, guttural roar that vibrates in your marrow—the sound of a hundred engines screaming for blood. It’s the smell of burnt rubber, stale whiskey, and the metallic tang of a chain hitting bone. This is the world of the Iron Vulture Syndicate. And there is a man at the center of that world, too. A man who trades the pinstripe suit for a grease-stained leather cut, and the boardroom table for the seat of a blacked-out chopper. I never should have seen him. I never should have looked behind the ivory mask of the billionaire to find the ink-stained predator beneath. In the boardroom, Julian Vane is my boss. He owns my time, my labor, and my professional loyalty. But in the shadows, under the flickering neon of a dead-end alley, he told me the truth. He doesn’t just want my loyalty. He wants my submission. He wants to see the exact moment the "good girl" I’ve pretended to be snaps under the weight of his hands. He wants to brand me with his name and drag me into the dirt until I forget what the light looks like. *"Join the ride, sweetheart,"* he whispered, his breath hot against my lips while his hands—the same hands that sign million-dollar checks—bruised my hips. *"Or be mine anyway. But don't think for a second you're walking away from either of us."* The game has changed. The suit is off. The vulture has circled. And I’m starting to realize that being his property might be the most dangerous, intoxicating sin I’ve ever committed. Welcome to Blackwood. Hold on tight. It’s going to be a rough ride.