Every word was like a jab to the heart. Magenta was gone. Vanished. Nothing but a fare-thee-well and a fistful of memories to console him. He couldn’t believe it. How could she do this to him?
He didn’t pay for Candy that night. Instead, he got on his bike, rode to The Dragons’ Den, and drank himself under the table.
He woke up the next morning fully dressed, reeking of blunt smoke and alcohol, lying on his bed with no idea how he’d gotten there. Stripping in slow motion, he dragged his ass into his ensuite and stood in the shower, letting the rain heads wash over him like tears that he swore not to shed.
She wasn’t worth it. Fuck her. After everything he’d done for her, after everything that they’d been through, she didn’t even have the balls to say goodbye to his face.
Bitch.
Quake started the morning depressed. By the end of his shower, he was filled with righteous indignation and burning with a need for vengeance. He’d planned to go after Khan, but there wasn’t much point if all he wanted to do was avenge Magenta’s honor. She’d just proven to him how little she had, the way she’d discarded him so easily.
No, he needed to find her. Find her and make her suffer like he was hurting, dammit.
He didn’t care how long it took.
One day, he would have his revenge.
Epilogue
Twelve months later . . .
The Hell’s Fury MC was back in New York for another Thanksgiving celebration with The Order of the Phoenix. This was supposed to be a mini-vacation, a break from all the drama with the Death’s Head MC back home. Instead, they’d helped hunt vampires and attended a fight, where they’d survived a bombing and helped foil a kidnapping attempt on Ash Gabrielli, the Citadel’s newest fated mate.
Things had changed at the Citadel and not for the better as far as Quake was concerned. Every fucking Phoenix was mated, including Tobias, who’d proven to be a sly old fox and landed the youngest one of the bunch. The place never seemed free of the smell of shitty diapers. The only good thing about having babies left and right were the tits popping out to feed them. He tried not to stare but damn. A man could get used to a sight like that. Mother and child forging and strengthening the bond between them.
They hadn’t brought any she-wolves with them this time. Madam Belle had let three of her girls come with them for the fight in September when they’d last visited but no more, not after Candy had been kidnapped. Some of the men who’d abused her and the other shifter women were dead but the sick fucks who’d run the experimental lab where they’d been held were still at large. The hunt continued for Dr. Liu Chan, a Chinese chimera shifter, the vampire Etienne de Foix, his minion Dr. Damgaard, and a Russian arms dealer named Ivan Michalov.
As long as they were out there, no woman here was safe.
Right now, Ash was in the infirmary and Tobias was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, worried about his babygirl and his security head Lukas Schmidt, injured tonight when a bomb went off beneath the cage while they were watching him fight.
To distract the Citadel superior, Stone suggested that he buy leathers for Ash. The Dragons had given her some just to mess with Tobias, but Quake didn’t think he was too happy with her wearing the Hell’s Fury colors.
They followed Tobias into the security center, where his cyber expert Zac Blackstone was running security camera footage around the fight venue, looking for Dr. Damgaard or any of the vampire Etienne’s minions. Malik Nassir sat at the computer next to him, a printed list on the desktop and a search engine window pulled up.
“Shopping for the mates,” he explained. “Black Friday sales are already on and some things sell out quickly. We’ve all added to the list for our women. Lucky me, I am tasked with ordering for everyone.”
Quake started scanning the list and nearly chuckled. With not one but two dungeons in the building, it didn’t surprise him when designer fetishwear and toys topped some of their lists. Picking it up, he started reading aloud. “Terithian Dildo by Lady Chatterley’s Lovers. French Maid Peignoir Set by Lady Chatterley’s Lovelies. Leather corset and matching garter belt from Lady Chatterley’s Leathers. Who the fuck is Lady Chatterley?”
Malik turned from the website and looked at him like he was a relic from the Stone Age.
Not quite, but sometimes he felt like it.
“It’s the hottest place on the planet for adult toys and fetishwear. I can’t believe you’ve never seen it. Here.”
Quake looked over Malik’s shoulder, expecting to see an e-store front. Instead, his search engine had pulled up one point two million hits.
The top story had an image that hit him like a sucker punch to the gut. She had red hair and blue eyes now, not the dyed stuff and contacts she’d worn at The Pole Barn, but Magenta was wearing his damn guitar pick that he’d given her. Set in silver and made into a pendant, it hung from the necklace she wore with a black lace corset that barely covered her nipples.
“Click on that,” he told Malik. He obeyed without question, pulling up an article about a recent fashion show where Rory Lockheart, CEO of Lady Chatterley Unlimited, had modeled one of her creations in her “dear friend” Sydney Tremaine’s fashion show.
Quake stared at the image long and hard. It had been a year since he’d set eyes on her. A year since she’d vanished. All the feelings he’d been carrying around since that day threatened to overwhelm him.
All his anger and resentment. The times he had worried about her, wondering where she was, what she was doing. How she was doing. Well, it looked like Magenta—Rory—was doing just fine.
Stone stepped closer, looking at the screen.
