HELD BY THE PRESIDENT

Im Ronan Voss, president of the Cinder Hollow MC, and I stopped counting the men Ive put in the ground somewhere around double digits.

Forty-three years old, and Ive spent half my life holding this stretch of the Kentucky hills together through nothing but fear and force. The cut on my back means something out here. It means I dont flinch, I dont apologize, and I sure as hell dont let anything soft get close enough to use against me.

That rule held fine until Dahlia died because I let my guard down for her. Its held fine every year since.

Then Marigold Prentiss rents the empty storefront two doors from my clubhouse and starts filling the block with the smell of cardamom and butter, like she has any business setting up shop in a town that chews through people like mine. Twenty-four years old, soft in all the ways Im hard, with a laugh that carries down the whole street and doesnt seem to know it should be afraid of me.

I warn her off. She brings me a slice of pie instead and asks if I take my coffee black.

Ive got the Talon Riders creeping over the county line looking for a reason to burn my operation down, and the last thing I need is a reason they can use against me. But then somebody puts a brick through her window with a message wrapped around it, and every plan I had about keeping my distance goes up like gasoline on a match.

Now shes under my protection, and theres no version of this where I let her walk away from it. Not with the Riders circling. Not with whats already started between us in the quiet hours after she closes up her shop and I lock the clubhouse gates.

She keeps telling me Im not as dark as I think I am. I keep waiting for the night I prove her wrong.

But Goldie Prentiss doesnt scare easy, and shes not going anywhere, not even when the Riders make their move and drag her straight into the middle of the war I swore Id never let touch her. Ill tear this whole county apart before I let them take her from me.

She walked into my life like the first warm day after a hard winter. Im not giving that up. Not for the Riders, not for my own ghosts, not for anything.