Page 1 of Colt’s Betrayal

CHAPTER 1

JAYNE

Iknow something is wrong with my father before he opens his mouth. It's the cut. I've seen that same black leather for as long as I can remember: hanging over kitchen chairs, thrown across the back of the couch, filling doorways when I was a kid because Dad never seemed to arrive anywhere alone. Only it isn't the same anymore. The leather is his. The name across his chest is still there. CHAINS.

Everything else is gone: the Kingdom Come patch that covered his back for most of my life, the rockers, the MC patch, every piece of stitching that said who he belonged to. Pale marks remain in the leather where they used to be. I stare at them as he walks past me into my house without waiting to be invited.

“You're just coming in without knocking?”

“You opened the door.”

“That wasn't an invitation.”

He looks over his shoulder. “You always this difficult now?”

“I've been this difficult since I was six.”

“That part's true.”

Usually, that might almost make me smile. Today, I close the door and look at his chest again.

“What happened to your cut?”

His expression changes by less than an inch. “You know what happened.”

“I know you left Kingdom Come.”

“I didn't leave.”

I fold my arms. “Okay.” He gives me the same look he used when I was sixteen and deliberately annoying him. “Don't start with that tone.” I don't get to answer him because someone knocks at the door behind me. Dad looks toward the door, and something about the way he does it tightens my stomach.

“You expecting someone?”

“Open it, will you?”

“You brought someone to my house without telling me?”

His jaw hardens. “Jayne.” The knock comes again, not impatient. Just certain. I look through the narrow pane beside the door. A motorcycle sits at the curb behind Dad's. The man on my porch wears black leather too, except his cut has patches. PERDITION MC curves across his chest. Beneath it sits a smaller patch. VP. I turn back to Dad. “Seriously?”

“He came with me.”

“That doesn't make this better.”

I open the door because leaving Perdition's vice president standing outside isn't going to make him disappear. He's taller than Dad, maybe early forties, with dark blond hair pushed back from his face and a beard clipped close along a heavy jaw. He's good-looking in the hard way men like him often are. The kind of face designed to make danger look like something a woman ought to want.

I've spent my entire adult life knowing better. His gaze moves slowly over me before reaching my eyes.

“Jayne.”

I keep one hand on the door. “You have me at a disadvantage.” His mouth lifts. “Raze.” Of course it is. Dad has mentioned him twice since everything happened, both times like I should be impressed. I'm not. I step back, and Raze walks in without waiting to be told where to sit. He takes the chair beside the window while Dad stays standing. For one ridiculous second, I notice how wrong the picture looks.

I grew up surrounded by bikers. Boots on floors. Cuts on furniture. Men calling me kid and stealing food off my plate because apparently boundaries weren't part of motorcycle-club culture. But this is my house. My quiet house. The place where I built a life where motorcycles don't line my drive and patched men don't walk through my door. Now two of them are in my living room.

Except only one is patched now. My gaze slips to Dad's chest again. Raze catches it. “Looks strange, doesn't it?” Dad's mouth tightens. “It's temporary.”

“Why, are the patches growing back?” I ask.

“Cyrus and Perdition know what I bring. Thirty years means something.”