Substitute Bride: Sold To The Ruthless Biker

Annelise POV:

"Hold your breath and stop slouching," Eleanor sneered, yanking the zipper of the emerald silk dress until the cold metal teeth bit straight into the skin of my spine.

I didn't flinch. I sat motionless before the mahogany vanity, my hands resting flat on the polished wood. In the triple mirror, the reflection staring back at me looked like a ghost wrapped in high-society satin.

"You should be grateful your father found a use for you," my stepmother continued, spraying a cloud of sickly sweet tuberose perfume into the air. The heavy, artificial scent caught in my throat, mixing with the metallic tang of dried blood beneath my tongue. "The Watkins family might be feral, but Collier Watkins is still a man who honors a debt. Try not to embarrass the Roman name before the ink on the settlement is dry."

From the chaise lounge near the balcony, my half-sister Brielle adjusted her cashmere shawl. She tilted her head, her blue eyes gleaming with venomous delight.

"Don't be so harsh, Mother," Brielle said, her voice dripping with artificial sympathy as she glided toward me. She picked up a hairbrush, dragging it through my dark hair with deliberate, painful pressure. "Collier 'King' Watkins is known for taking care of his property. Of course, they say he hasn't walked without pain in two years, and the last girl who spent a weekend at his clubhouse left in the back of an ambulance. But I'm sure you'll manage, Annelise. You've always been tough."

I looked into the mirror, watching Brielle's perfect smile twist with malicious anticipation.

I didn't answer her. Instead, my thumb traced the pale, three-inch scar running across the radial artery of my left wrist. It was an old habit, a nervous anchor from the five years I spent in underground basements, stitching gunshot wounds by flashlight and cleaning septic lacerations for men who carried dirty cash and unregistered pistols.

They thought they were sending an obedient, broken daughter to the slaughter.

What they didn't know was that forty-eight hours ago, I picked the lock on my father's private study. Behind the false panel in the wall safe, I hadn't just found financial ledgers. I had found a forty-page encrypted briefing from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives-a RICO target profile on the Iron Wraiths Motorcycle Club.

I had memorized every line.

The file ended with a bloody prediction. In eighteen months, during a violent three-way turf war along the interstate corridor, Collier would lose his mind to a lethal concoction of neurotoxins and PTSD, driving his club into a federal ambush.

They thought they were tossing me into the jaws of a monster.

They didn't know I had already read the monster's obituary. And under all that scarred flesh and criminal notoriety, Collier wasn't just a brutal warlord; he was a dying man on a ticking clock. A man with resources. A man with an army.

"Are you even listening to me, you mute bitch?" Brielle's voice snapped, her fingers digging sharply into my collarbone.

I raised my eyes, locking my gaze onto hers through the glass.

I didn't blink. I let the cold, flat void of my former life flood into my eyes-the coldness of a surgeon looking at rotting tissue that needed to be cut away.

Brielle's hand froze. The smirk faltered on her lips, her knuckles tightening around the silver brush as she took an involuntary step back. "What... what is wrong with you?"

"Nothing," I whispered, my voice level and dry as desert dust. "I'm just wondering how long it will take for this house to burn down once I'm not here to take the blame."

Downstairs, the heavy oak doors banged shut. Gregory Roman,my brother,his booming voice drifted up the curved stairwell, speaking into his cell phone with the smooth arrogance of an untouchable real estate tycoon.

"Yes, the package is ready," my father was saying. "Three o'clock sharp. Tell Watkins's men the gate will be open."

Package.

The word settled into my chest, snapping the final frayed wire of sentimentality. I wasn't their daughter. I wasn't Brielle's sister. I was collateral.

I stood up, smoothing the emerald silk down over my hips. I looked at my reflection one last time, letting a thin, razor-sharp smile curl the corners of my mouth.

Annelise POV:

The grandfather clock in the corner of my bedroom hammered out its relentless cadence. Two-fifteen.

I sat on the edge of the mattress, my fingers clasped tightly in my lap to keep the fine tremor of adrenaline from showing. The silk dress felt like a straitjacket, binding my shoulders and suffocating my ribs.

The bedroom door didn't open; it slammed against the wall with a violence that made the crystal chandelier tremble overhead.

Sean Roman filled the doorway. My older half-brother carried himself with the heavy, unearned swagger of a man who had never faced a consequence his father's money couldn't erase. His jaw was clenched, his knuckles red and raw from an earlier sparring session at his private gym. Behind him, Brielle slipped into the room like a shadow, clutching a square, velvet-wrapped box against her chest.

"Still sitting there like a goddamn statue?" Sean barked, crossing the Persian rug in three heavy strides. He stopped inches from where I sat, the sour smell of bourbon and sweat rolling off him in waves. "Don't get any clever ideas about slipping out the service entrance, Annelise. Dad has two private security guards posted at every gate. You're getting on that bike, or in that truck, or whatever the hell those grease monkeys drive. You're leaving this family today."

I looked up at him, keeping my breathing shallow and even. "I hear you, Sean."

My lack of terror always drove him crazy. His eyes narrowed, his chest heaving as if my calm was an insult designed specifically to mock him.

"Sean, please," Brielle purred, stepping between us with that sickening, doe-eyed grace she performed so well for audiences. She placed a delicate hand on Sean's muscular forearm, squeezing gently. "Don't yell at her. She's terrified. Anyone would be."

She turned toward me, offering a trembling, tear-filled smile that belonged on a daytime soap opera.

"I packed a few essentials for you, Annelise," Brielle murmured softly, holding out the silver-ribboned box. "I know those biker clubhouses don't have the things you're used to. It's... it's just a little sisterly token. To show there are no hard feelings."

I looked at the silver ribbon. Then I looked into Brielle's eyes.

I had treated enough back-alley sociopaths to recognize the faint dilation in her pupils, the subtle twitch at the edge of her lip. There wasn't an ounce of sisterly remorse in that box. It was a booby trap, a petty cruelty packaged in silk.

"Keep it," I said, my voice dead flat. "Where I'm going, I won't have room for garbage."

Brielle gasped, jerking back as if I had slapped her across the mouth. Tears welled up in her eyes instantly, glistening on her eyelashes with theatrical perfection.

"I... I only wanted to help," she whimpered, letting the box drop to the floor with a soft thud.

"You ungrateful little cunt!" Sean roared.

The shift was instantaneous. The air cracked as Sean's hand shot forward. He didn't use an open palm; he used both hands, shoving me with all the weight of his two-hundred-pound frame.

The momentum hurled me backward off the bed. My right side collided violently with the sharp, brass-edged corner of the bedside nightstand.

A sickening, wet crack resonated through my ribcage.

Pain exploded across my thoracic cavity, white-hot and blinding, stealing every drop of oxygen from my lungs in a single gasp. A hairline fissure I had sustained three days ago during my father's initial "persuasion" session snapped entirely under the blunt-force trauma. The jagged ends of the bone ground against tissue, sending shockwaves of agony straight up my spinal cord.

I collapsed onto the rug, curling around my shattered side, my fingernails tearing through the emerald silk as I fought not to black out.

Sean stood over me, his chest expanding with arrogant satisfaction. "That's just a preview of what King Watkins is going to do to you if you give him that lip. Be thankful I'm your brother."

Behind him, Brielle watched me struggle for air, her lips curving into a slow, satisfied smirk.

I bit the inside of my cheek until warm, copper-flavored blood filled my mouth. I didn't groan. I didn't scream. I forced my watering eyes open, staring up through the strands of hair falling across my face, carving Sean's smug expression into the back of my eyelids.

You broke my bone, Sean, I thought, the agony sharpening my focus until the world turned crystal clear. I will break your entire life.

A brisk knock sounded on the open doorframe. The elderly butler stood there, his eyes studiously avoiding my crumpled form on the floor.

"Mr. Sean. Miss Brielle," the butler said, his voice flat with forced neutrality. "The Iron Wraiths have just passed through the main gates. Watkins's enforcer is waiting in the courtyard."

Collier POV:

The phantom fire in my right leg was chewing its way up through my hip, hot as battery acid and relentless as a drill.

I leaned forward in the leather high-back chair behind the heavy oak desk of my office, grinding my molars until my jaw ached. Outside the reinforced windows, the roar of twin-cam V-Twins echoed off the corrugated steel of the Iron Wraiths Clubhouse garage. The steady, deep bass of sixty idling Harleys was usually enough to drown out the noise in my skull.

Today, it wasn't doing shit.

I grabbed the heavy tumbler of neat bourbon from the desk and threw it down my throat. The alcohol burned going down, but it didn't touch the cold, venomous ache deep inside my marrow.

The heavy steel door swung open without a knock.

Cipher walked in. My Sergeant at Arms didn't bother with pleasantries. He was six-foot-four of scarred muscle and bad intentions, his leather Cut hanging heavy over broad shoulders, the Grim Reaper center patch gleaming against the worn cowhide. On his left breast, the diamond 1%er patch sat pinned above his road name. The grim reaper tattoo creeping up his throat seemed to twitch in the dim overhead bulb.

"Prez," Cipher rumbled, shutting the door behind him with a dull thud. "The advance team just radioed in from the Roman estate gates."

I set the heavy glass down on the wood with a sharp clatter. "Did Gregory deliver the collateral, or am I sending the crew to burn his commercial docks to the waterline?"

"He's delivering," Cipher said, though his scarred brow furrowed. "But the old snake pulled a switch."

I stopped rubbing the stiffened tendons above my ruined knee. I looked up, letting my gaze settle on my enforcer. "Explain."

"The deal was Brielle," Cipher said, his voice dropping into that gravelly tone he used before breaking fingers. "The pretty, blonde trophy daughter he parades around his country club. Our contact inside says Gregory is pulling a last-minute switch. He's trying to stash the blonde and dragged out the other one. Annelise."

I stared at him for three long seconds. A harsh, humorless laugh tore from my chest.

"Does Gregory think I give a fuck which piece of his bloodline sits in my house?" I growled, leaning back against the leather. "Brielle. Annelise. A pedigreed Roman mare or a stray. They're all the same. Collateral on a seven-figure debt his crooked shipping firm owes this club. As long as she breathes, she pays the interest."

"There's something else," Cipher added, his posture tightening. "Our boy tapped the second-floor intercom twenty minutes ago. The brother, Sean. He put hands on her."

The throbbing in my leg suddenly took a backseat. The room went dead, absolute quiet.

"He did what?"

"He slammed her into a piece of heavy furniture," Cipher said plainly. "Heard the bone give way through the mic. Right side. Sounded like cracked ribs. The girl didn't scream, but she's fucked up. Can barely pull a breath."

A cold, blinding fury ignited behind my eyes, fast and violent as a backfire.

My fingers, thick and calloused from twenty years of wrenching steel and cracking skulls, clamped onto the armrests of my chair until the wood groaned under the pressure.

"Gregory thinks he can send me broken goods?" My voice dropped to a lethal whisper, vibrating with a venom that made Cipher's shoulders square up. "That girl became the property of this club the second the debt defaulted. Her life belongs to the Wraiths. Her blood belongs to me."

"Say the word, King," Cipher said, his hand dropping casually toward the grip of the Glock 21 tucked into his tactical vest beneath his Cut. "I'll take four patched members and tear Sean's arms out of their sockets on his own front lawn."

"Not yet," I snarled, the possessive rage gnawing at my gut like a rabid dog. "Bring her here first. Put her in my truck, not on the back of a bike if her ribs are shattered. If she dies on the interstate, Gregory gets off too easy."

"Understood."

"And Cipher?" I called out just as he reached the steel handle.

He paused, looking back over his shoulder.

"Tell Gregory that if a single hair on that girl's head is out of place when she reaches the clubhouse steps, I won't just foreclose on his docks. I'll nail his son to the warehouse floor."

"Consider it done, Prez."

Cipher vanished into the hallway, leaving the door swinging.

I reached into the top drawer of the desk, grabbed a bottle of unlabelled white pills, and dry-swallowed three of them. Hollis, our club medic, called them experimental nerve blockers. I called them poison that barely kept the dark from taking over.

I leaned back, closing my eyes as the rumble of Cipher's bike fired up outside, tearing toward the highway to bring the girl in.

Annelise.

A broken throwaway. A damaged toy.

Let them bring her. In this house, broken things either learned how to heal, or they learned how to kill.