Page 13 of Twisted Steel

“I’ll send Savage the update.”

“You do that.”I hang up and ride back toward Station Eight instead of the clubhouse.

Because I am a bastard.Because I am not done watching.Because Harper Quinn is inside that building pretending the world has not shifted around her, and I know better.

She is in it now.Club blood touched her hands, my card sits in her pocket, and our enemies know her name.I park in the dark across the street and wait.Around dawn, she comes outside again with Milo beside her.He says something that makes her roll her eyes.She looks tired.Pale but alive.

My hands flex on the handlebars.

She turns suddenly.This time, there’s no mistaking it.She sees me.Across the street.Across the early morning quiet.Across every line that should keep a woman like her away from a man like me.

Her gaze locks on mine.She doesn’t wave, doesn’t smile, doesn’t look scared.She looks fucking furious.She reaches into her pocket, pulls out my black card, and holds it up between two fingers like evidence in a trial.

Even from here, I can feel the shape of her thoughts.‘I’m not calling you.’

I almost smile, because she doesn’t understand yet.She already called.Not with a phone.Not with her voice.She called the second she walked into my world and survived it.

Now I’m here, and until the threat is dead, I’m not leaving.

Chapter Three

Gargoyle At My Door

Harper

There’s a black motorcycle outside my apartment.

Not parked directly in front.That would be too obvious, and apparently, Marcus “Steel” Holt is the kind of terrifying man who understands subtlety when subtlety helps him be more terrifying.

Yes, I did some digging.I now know more about him than before, though none of it has helped me feel better about the damn situation or the way he makes me feel—which I’ll deny with my dying breath.

I glare at the motorcycle as it sits across the street beneath a broken streetlamp, all chrome and shadow, angled toward my building like a guard dog with an engine.

I stop on the sidewalk with my keys clenched between my fingers.

Behind me, Milo makes a thoughtful noise.“Huh.”