Page 5 of My Enemy Biker

"Handle it."

"I am."

He studies me another few seconds, then nods. "Keep me updated."

Inside, I pull up property law files on my laptop. Easement precedents. Everything she cited. I'm supposed to be finding holes in her argument.

Instead I'm replaying the moment she looked at my jaw before catching herself.

Chapter 2 — Anna

I slept like shit.

Kept replaying the conversation. Not the property law part, though that matters. How he sat completely still while I presented my case, like he had all the time in the world. His hands on the table, scarred and steady. The moment we were both leaning forward over the survey map and the air between us changed into something I could almost touch.

I wanted him to touch me.

That's the problem sitting in my kitchen at seven in the morning with coffee I'm not drinking.

I'm attracted to a man who rides for an outlaw motorcycle club. A man who showed up at my door to negotiate access to my property because his organization has been using it without permission for eight years. A man who's years older than me and probably has a body count.

I left Detroit to get away from this exact thing.

Now I'm sitting at my kitchen table where he sat yesterday, thinking about his mouth.

I need information. That's what I do when things get complicated. Research first, decide second.

My laptop is already open. I start with the basics:Vigil MC Bloomfield.

The first hit is a news article from three years ago about a territorial dispute on Route 9. Marrow MC from the next county trying to establish distribution routes through Bloomfield.

Vigil pushed back. Three hospitalizations. Police investigated, no charges filed.

I keep digging. Two years ago, the founding garage where Vigil was established burned to the ground. Arson, suspected Marrow involvement, never proven.

They rebuilt outside town limits. No interviews, no statements.

A police report from eighteen months ago mentions Cain by name. Present at a scene involving a Marrow member found beaten outside a bar.

No charges filed. The report is clinical. Just notes he was there.

The structure is identical to Detroit. Patches, hierarchy, territory, violence as enforcement. The Devils operated the same way.

Always there, never charged, always just outside what could be proven.

Jonathan was sixteen when they recruited him. Brilliant at math, had plans for college.

Three years later he was dead on a sidewalk three blocks from my house. Shot in a territory dispute over distribution rights.

I went to his funeral. Watched his sister cry until she couldn't breathe, their mother collapse at the grave. The Devils showed up in their vests like they were honoring him when they were the reason he was dead.

Mr. Russo was sixty-seven. Missed three payments on a loan he should never have taken.

They beat him in his store, broke his arm, left him on the floor. He has a scar across his face now that pulls when he talks.

The Devils hollowed out my neighborhood. Made it smaller, quieter, afraid. People stopped looking at each other directly.

The fear became atmospheric, something you breathed.