Page 1 of Fire
Prologue
Luca
After class, I walk two of my yoga students out to their car, then fight the urge to smoke the cigarette stashed in my pocket the whole way back.
Stubbornness wins over my addiction—barely—and I hurry back into my studio before addiction comes back and kicks my ass in the rematch.
As soon as I flip the flimsy lock on the door, I know I’m not alone.
“Been a long time,” a deep voice sounds from the dark corner of the room.
Fuck. I knew I’d stayed way too long in Chicago. My guest lease on this studio is longer than most of the ones I signed. If I’d just stayed the two months like I usually do, I would have been back on the road where my past couldn’t have caught up with me.
“Not long enough.”
“We used to be friends.” Grave Merrik walks into my view. He’s not wearing the sleeveless shirt and cut I was once used to seeing him wear as an enforcer for the Reivers MC. Instead, he’s dressed in a soft blue Henley and jeans that cover his tattoos and cage in his bulging muscles. His dark hair, which used to belong, is cut short, and his only facial hair is a short goatee and a rough five o'clock shadow from missing his morning shave.
This new, respectable look doesn’t fool me. Grave Merrik was one of the most dangerous men I worked with in my former life as a member of the Reivers MC and the closest thing to a friend I had back then—or not. I know him to be a stone-cold killer who never let sentiment get in the way of doing his job.
I take a deep, centering breath and remind myself that I’d always known my past would come for me someday.
I suddenly wish I’d smoked that damned cigarette. I meet Grave’s dark eyes. “You here to kill me?” I ask him point blank.
“Nah,” he says. “I don’t do that anymore.”
At the disbelieving arch of my eyebrow, he shrugs. “Well, only when I absolutely have to.”
Maybe I’ll believe him if I’m still breathing in five minutes, but until then, I’m doubtful. “Then, after six-plus years, why are you in my studio paying me this little visit?”
“I want to recruit you.”
A bitter laugh comes out of me. “I know you got busted, but you’re way out of the loop if you think the Reivers want me wearing the cut anymore.” I pull up my shirt to expose the burn scars a fellow Reiver gave me using a blow torch. “It nearly killed me, but I earned my right to have to never wear that fucking thing again.”
He nods in acknowledgment of my show-and-tell, his dark eyes moving cooly over my scars. “I heard about the culling.”
“Did you hear the part where I was the one who asked to be culled?”
“I did.”
“Then you should know that even if the Reivers wanted me back in their club, I’d prefer you shoot me where I stand before joining up with those bastards ever again.”
“You hate them,” he says matter of factly.
“Yep,” I agree. “And I hate myself for ever joining up with them. So unless you’re interested in the two-for-one yoga package I’m running, you can get the hell out of my studio.”
He seems to mull it over. “Dream might be. He loves all that bendy shit.”
“Dream?” The unusual name triggers an old memory of a diner waiter who went missing right before the feds caught up with Grave and hauled him off to serve time in Canada.
Dream is just one more name on the Reivers’ long list of victims. A list that haunts me every day of my life.
“Yeah. Dream is my boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend?” I scoff, not believing him for a second. The Reivers are the most homophobic pieces of shit out there. I know this. I was one of them once, and no way my old enforcer is casually mentioning having a boyfriend—not to mention one he'd terrorized and I’d always assumed he’d killed.
“It’s a long story,” he says, looking at his watch. “One I’d like to sit down and tell you about.”
I put up my hand. “Sorry, but I don’t want to hear it. Either kill me or walk back out of my life.”
