Chapter Eight
686 Words
The speedometer had been pegged at eighty-five for twenty solid minutes, but the violent vibration in Nadia’s hands had absolutely nothing to do with the RPMs.
The formation tore down a fractured, sun-bleached access road, kicking up a blinding wake of white dust. River finally signaled—a sharp, aggressive downward chop of his left hand—and killed the throttle, cutting hard into the rusted skeleton of an abandoned commercial weigh station.
Nadia downshifted, fighting the heavy machine's inertia, and brought the bike to a violent, skidding halt beside him.
She killed the ignition.
The sudden silence was deafening, broken only by the sharp, metallic tink-tink of superheated exhaust pipes cooling in the dead summer air. Nadia didn't swing her leg off the seat. She couldn't. If she uncurled her locked fingers from the rubber grips, the brutal tremor running up her forearms would be visible to every man in the yard.
River kicked his side stand down. He didn't check his engine. He didn't look back at the road. He walked straight toward her.
He stopped inches from her front tire, reached into his leather saddlebag, and pulled out a dented aluminum canteen. He held it out.
Nadia forced her right hand to let go of the throttle. She reached for the water. Her fingers were vibrating so intensely that she misjudged the distance, her knuckles knocking awkwardly against the metal instead of grasping it.
She froze, humiliated by her own biology.
River didn't say a word. He didn't smirk. He simply pulled the canteen back a fraction, unscrewed the metal cap himself, and held it out again. A silent, irregular grace from a man who, less than half an hour ago, had aimed a heavy-caliber sidearm at a moving blockade.
She took it. She drank. The water was hot and tasted aggressively like metal, but it shocked her throat enough to unlock her vocal cords.
"Who was that," she said. It wasn't a question. It was a demand.
"Bratva. Russian syndicate out of Charlotte," River answered, sliding his weapon from his waistband to casually check the chamber.
"They don't run this far south," Kayne’s rough voice cut in. He had parked his Dyna horizontally across the entrance of the weigh station, effectively blocking the choke point, his eyes scanning the empty road. "Not for a standard sweep."
"They do when they're tracking a live asset," River replied smoothly, slamming the magazine home and holstering the gun.
Nadia gripped the canteen. "I'm a mechanic. I don't work with syndicates."
"They aren't looking for a mechanic," River said, shifting his gaze to her face. His eyes were entirely flat, completely devoid of the adrenaline that was currently drowning her. "They're looking for Marcus Cole's bloodline."
A hot gust of wind blew a layer of white grit over her boots.
"The forty thousand your uncle owed us was a business loan," River said, closing the distance until his chest was practically flush with her handlebars. "The two hundred thousand he owed them was a theft."
Nadia stopped breathing.
"He came to me six months ago," River continued, his voice dropping to a low, heavy register that vibrated against her chest. "He knew he couldn't pay them. He knew exactly what they do to families to settle accounts."
Slate had dismounted two bikes down. He was standing completely still, watching her, his jaw clamped tight.
He already knew. They all already knew.
"The six-month contract," Nadia whispered, the disjointed pieces of her uncle's betrayal violently snapping into a new, terrifying configuration.
"Was never about the money," River confirmed. "It was the only binding charter loophole that allowed me to legally claim you as Inferno property. They can't touch you without declaring open war on this club."
He reached out and gently took the open canteen from her frozen hand.
"He didn't sell you to a cage, Nadia," River said softly, screwing the cap back onto the aluminum threads. "He sold you to a shield."
She stared past him at the five heavily armed men standing in the dust.
The debt wasn't a punishment. It was a ransom.
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