PROLOGUE: ROMAN
I looked downat the nasty line running up my forearm, starting from the edge of where my palm met my wrist and carefully stopping before it reached the inside of my elbow.
As if the person who had done this to me had been careful.
I closed my eyes and balled my hand into a fist, the pain burning as I stretched the muscles.
This was going to leave a nasty scar.
Not that I gave a fuck about scars, but hell, the fact that I didn’t see the fucker had come in with his friend told me exactly where my mind had been.
Totally fucked.
The fucker was a scrawny one, and his friend wasn’t much bigger.
They shouldn’t have been able to get to me, even if I had been outnumbered.
But they did, and I now bore the mark of my carelessness.
With a sigh, I uncapped the water bottle and poured it down my arms, watching as the clear water turned from a light red to pink, washing away the blood and dirt around the wound.
The angry skin surrounding it stared back at me, and I finished off the water bottle with a huge gulp before shoving it back into my backpack.
My eyes scanned the surroundings.
I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d seen this big of an open space.
California had seemed like worlds away from when I lived in West Virginia, but after a brief stint in the state prison for beating the shit out of the mayor’s son, coming here seemed like a good option to start over.
Micah was here.
He was the only family I had left.
And he couldn’t leave because of the MC.
The King’s Men MC was one of the most ruthless MCs in the west.
I didn’t know exactly what they did since it was club business, and I was sure most of it was something they wouldn’t want advertised to the public.
Micah was a club member, but I knew his more official title was the enforcer.
How apt, considering my big brother was one big scary and crazy motherfucker.
Protective, too.
That was probably one of the reasons why I decided to move halfway across the country in the first place.
I didn’t want to have to constantly live in his shadow.
And now I was coming back with my tail tucked between my fucking legs—figuratively speaking.
I shook my head and headed to where I had parked my bike.
I took in the small luggage strapped to the back. Everything in my twenty-five years of life, shoved in a small case.
The boots I wore, my only pair of shoes, had a small scuff on the tips, no doubt would tear into a hole soon. I had five hundred dollars to my name, and I didn’t know how the fuck things had gotten to this point.
I could laugh over the way my life had turned, even if there was nothing humorous about the situation I was in.