Lena’s POV
“Lena… your father is dead. He was murdered.”
Those were the words I heard the moment I answered the phone, the words didn’t sound real, not through the crackling of the phone at two in the morning. Murdered. My father. The man I’d spent three years of my life running from. The man whose shadow stretched so long it reached across state lines, across the walls I’d built for myself, across every night I’d tried to sleep without remembering the smell of gasoline and leather.
I pressed the phone harder to my ear, as if crushing it against my skull would make the voice say something different. But the man repeated it, slowly this time, like he was speaking to a child. “Your father is gone. Found dead in his room at the clubhouse. It wasn’t natural, Lena. Someone made sure of that.”
My throat tightened until I could barely swallow. Murdered. My father had been many things, violent, broken, cruel, but untouchable had always been one of them. The Dead Ravens were feared for a reason. If someone had reached him, if someone had dared, it meant the whole city was shaking.
The man on the line kept talking about arrangements, about family, about respect for the dead. I heard none of it. My hand shook as I ended the call. I sat there in the dark, in the quiet apartment I’d carved out for myself far away from New Orleans, with the sound of his voice echoing in my skull like the aftershock of a gunshot.
I should have stayed, stayed in the quiet town where no one knew my last name, where no one whispered about my brother’s club or my father’s sins. But blood drags you back. Blood always drags you back where you belong.
I opened my closet, pulled out the old black suitcase that still smelled faintly of the cigarettes I’d packed it around when I left home, and started throwing clothes inside. My hands moved on instinct. My mind was somewhere else, three years ago, standing on a porch with my face hot from tears as my father shouted and my brother tried to hold me back.
Don’t come back, Lena. This world will eat you alive.
And yet here I was, booking the first flight into hell.
The airport was a blur of bright lights and tired faces. I moved like a zombie among them, dragging my suitcase, checking my phone for updates I didn’t want to read. The flight was half-empty. I sat by the window, forehead pressed against the glass, and let the hum of the engine drown my thoughts.
Clouds swallowed the plane as we flew through the night sky. My reflection stared back at me in the glass, pale skin, lips pressed thin, dark eyes that had seen too much too young. At eighteen, I’d been reckless, soft, desperate for freedom. At twenty-one, I was sharper, harder, angrier. But the thought of walking back into that city, of seeing the faces I’d left behind, made me feel like that terrified girl again.
I told myself I was going for the funeral. To pay my last respect. To close a chapter forever.
But deep down, I knew better.
New Orleans hit me in the chest the moment I stepped off the plane. The air was thick, heavy with humidity and something else, something I’d always associated with danger. Gasoline, sweat, and secrets.
I grabbed a cab. The driver glanced at the address I gave him and his mouth twisted. He didn’t ask questions. Nobody with sense ever did when the destination was Dead Ravens territory.
We drove past shops and neon signs buzzing outside wine bars. Past porches where old women smoked and stared, eyes following the cab with the weight of knowledge. Past alleys where shadows shifted just out of sight. My city hadn’t changed. It had only gotten meaner.
The cab slowed as we turned onto a street I knew too well. My father’s house stood waiting, its paint peeling, its porch sagging, its windows dark. But it wasn’t empty.
Bikes lined the curb, shining chrome under the streetlights. Men in leather cuts stood outside, smoking, talking low. Dead Ravens. My brother’s men. The family business.
I paid the driver with shaky hands and stepped out. The sound of the cab pulling away left me feeling exposed. I dragged my suitcase up the walkway, each step heavier than the last.
The front door opened before I could knock.
“Lena.”
Her voice hit me like a memory I’d forgotten I needed. Grams. My grandmother looked smaller than she had three years ago, her hair all gray now, her shoulders slumped. But her eyes, sharp, unflinching, hadn’t changed. She rushed forward, pulled me into her arms, and for a moment I let myself sink into the warmth, into the smell of peppermint and old perfume.
“My baby’s home,” she whispered, her voice breaking.
I swallowed hard. “I’m here, Grams.”
When she finally let me go, I looked past her into the house. He was there, standing in the hallway with his arms crossed and his face hard. My brother, Ray George. Thirty-one now, older, harder, the president of the Dead Ravens Motorcycle Club. He looked at me like I was both a stranger and a reminder of everything he couldn’t control.
“You came back,” he said flatly.
“Of course I did.” My voice came out sharper than I intended. “He was my father too.”
The air around us thickened. Ray’s jaw twitched, but he didn’t answer.
And then I felt it. A presence. Heavy, dark, pulling my attention before I even saw him.
He stepped forward from the shadows behind Ray, the light hitting his face.
Tall. Broad shoulders with jaws like it had been carved into that position. Eyes so dark they pulled the air from the room. His leather jacket hung over his upper body, patches stitched across the front, Enforcer. Dead Ravens.
Jax Maddox.
My brother’s best friend. The man who had once carried me out of danger when I was sixteen, blood running down my leg and terror in my chest. The man who had disappeared from my world the day I ran.
Now he was here. And he was staring at me like I was the last person he wanted to see and the only one he couldn’t look away from.
My mouth went dry. My chest tightened.
“Jax,” I whispered, the name breaking off my lips before I could stop it.
His mouth curved, not a smile, not even close. Something darker. Something that felt like a warning. His voice was low, rough, like the sound of gravel dragged against steel.
“You shouldn’t have come back.”
