A CURVY HACKER FOR THE RUTHLESS BIKER GANGS

Chapter 1 Elizabeth “I’m not the maid, Oliver!” The words tore out of me before I could stop them, weak and trembling as I stared at the mountain of dishes stacked on the counter. Grease still clung to my fingers from the shop. My back ached. My head pounded like someone was driving a nail through my skull. Oliver stopped mid-step. His shoulders went rigid. His hands curled into fists so tight the knuckles turned white. Slowly—so slowly it made my stomach drop—he turned to face me. “What did you say?” The quiet in his voice was worse than shouting. I swallowed hard. The fight drained out of me the way it always did. “I—I can’t do this today,” I whispered, already folding back into the soft, apologetic wife he preferred. “Please just let the maids prepare for the meeting dinner this time. My head hurts so badly.” “Of course.” He stepped toward me, eyes blazing with something ugly. “It’s always the same thing with you, Lizzy. Don’t you see it?” My heart slammed into my stomach. I already knew where this was going. “See what?” “Your body, goddamnit!” The words exploded out of him. “You get tired from every little thing. Your body is too heavy to be carried around, and now you’re turning into a liability!” Contempt dripped from every syllable. Tears burned behind my eyes. I pinched the soft flesh of my thighs hard enough to bruise so I wouldn’t let them fall. “How can you say that to me?” My voice cracked. “You know I didn’t choose this. I did every diet you recommended. I starved when you told me to. But you never even notice the inches I’ve lost—because of you.” His face twisted with disgust. “Then do it better. Maybe you should take some lessons from my mother. She’s given birth to three children, and she’s still sexier than you.” The kitchen door suddenly opened to reveal the devil herself. Daria, my mother-in-law, walked in like she owned the air itself. That cold, perfect smile slid across her lips as her eyes dragged over me from head to toe. “Oliver,” she purred, voice soft and poisonous, “you’re the one who caused this. I warned you not to dirty your hands on a woman who repairs cars for a living. People like her are filthy. Smelly. It seems the grease from those engines crawled under her skin and turned into all this excess fat.” I waited. I waited for my husband to defend me. To tell his mother she had gone too far. To remember that I was the woman he once swore he would protect with his life. He didn’t. He just stood there, biting down on his lower lip, eyes narrowed at me like I was something disgusting on the floor. Then he spoke, calm and final. “What she looks like right now doesn’t matter. She’ll lose weight. Even if I have to skin her alive to make it happen.” The words landed inside my chest like heavy stones. My vision swam. I could still see him—the Oliver from only a few months ago. The man who had rented an entire cinema just for my birthday so we could watch every movie I loved with no one else around. The man who had flown me to Paris for a week and silenced his phone every time his assistant called, just so he could hold my hand under the lights of the Eiffel Tower. The man who used to kneel and kiss my swollen feet in the morning when the blood rushed too hard because of my diabetes, whispering that I was still the most beautiful thing he had ever touched. Where had that man gone? Where was his compassion for me hiding? This weight wasn’t my fault. I had been born diabetic. I had always been curvy—soft hips, full thighs—but never like this. The stress of becoming his perfect housewife, of serving his mother like a personal maid while still crawling under cars in my little downtown shop, had wrecked my hormones. Cortisol flooded my body until I barely recognized myself in the mirror. The hatred had started slow. First, it was the way he watched me eat dinner, jaw ticking with every bite I took. Then, the maids were ordered to put only vegetables and fruit on my plate. Soon, a nutritionist appeared. She made me go days without a real meal. I hadn’t eaten properly in seventy-two hours. My vision darkened at the edges. My hands shook. But I couldn’t tell him. He would have my head. “Karen would have been a better wife,” Daria spat finally, almost bored, before she brushed past me and disappeared toward the garden. The name hit me like a slap. Oliver stepped closer. For one stupid, desperate second, his expression softened, and I thought, maybe this time, he would pull me into his arms. Maybe he would apologize. Instead, he only said, “My colleagues from the neighboring club will be here any minute. I want the dinner ready in thirty minutes.” Then he turned and walked away, leaving a familiar, cheap, sweet perfume hanging in the air behind him. I knew that scent all too well. Karen. His ex. The woman who now sat at the desk outside his office as his personal secretary. I didn’t want to believe he was sleeping with her. But the signs were everywhere—red lipstick on his collars, late nights that smelled like her, the quiet million-dollar transfers from our joint account into a female name I was never allowed to ask about. I should have accepted it by now. This marriage was already dead. Oliver’s heart no longer beat for me. But I had given up everything—my family, my heritage, the little house my grandmother left me—just to stay with the man who once promised me the world. He still loved me. He had to. Next week was our anniversary. By then, he would remember. He would look at me the way he used to. I forced my shaking hands to finish the last dish. Footsteps echoed from the sitting room, and I immediately knew his partners had arrived. I lifted the heavy tray of ginger-glazed fish. The hot metal seared my palms. I ignored the burn and carried it into the dining room, heart hammering, expecting the usual cold, professional faces. What I saw instead stopped the air in my lungs. Three men stood by the long table. The same two faces that had haunted my childhood. The boys who used to corner me behind the school, who teased me when I began to grow into my curves. The boys who forbade other boys from coming close to me until I eventually left all of them behind for Oliver. My brother’s best friends. My bullies. And every single one of them was looking straight at me.