ZAK & FLORA (POV)
ZAK (POV)
I’ve seen women look pretty on a sports bike, but I’ve never seen a girl look like she was actively inviting the asphalt to kill her.
That was Foxy Flora's Biker name.
She sat on her matte-black Suzuki GSX-R, her long legs framing the tank, full hips resting perfectly against the leather seat. From a distance, with that flawless fair complexion, sharp doll-like nose, and those small, naturally pouty lips, she looked like something you’d buy in a boutique window.
A pristine, serene walking doll. Until she pulled her long hair into that high, trademark ponytail. That was the warning track. Once the hair went up, the doll died, and the demon took over.
“You’re going to blow the engine if you keep redlining it like that before the tires are warm, Foxy,” I said, leaning against the garage pillar, sliding my leather band down to tighten my own hair back.
She didn’t look at me. She just snapped the throttle again. The roar of the exhaust echoed through the underground bunker of the club, a brutal, vibrating hum that made my teeth ache. She turned those massive, hyper-expressive hazel eyes toward me, her long lashes casting shadows on her cheekbones.
“Maybe I want it to blow up, Zak,” she taunted, her voice dripping with that signature, razor-sharp sarcasm. “Maybe I like the smell of burning metal. It smells a lot less suffocating than real life.”
“You’ve got a fresh bruise on your collarbone,” I noted, stepping closer, my eyes dropping to the purple mark peeking out from her low-cut tank top. My chest tightened. I wanted to touch it. I wanted to track whoever gave it to her and snap their fingers. “Another accident?”
She let out a dry, sarcastic little laugh, tilting her head back. “Let’s call it a disagreement with physics. Physics lost. I just got a souvenir.”
God, she was magnificent. And completely out of her mind. Five years younger than me, but she carried herself like she’d already walked through hell and bought the souvenir t-shirt.
I’d fallen for her the second week she joined the club. She was honest with me—brutally so. She’d told me straight to my face, over a cheap bottle of beer, that she belonged to someone else. Some older guy. Her father’s best friend. A man she hadn’t seen in a decade.
It was a ridiculous, fairy-tale obsession, but looking into those dark, mysterious hazel eyes, I knew she wasn’t joking. She was a girl possessed by a ghost.
But as I watched her grip the handlebars, her small waist shifting as she balanced the heavy machine, I didn’t care. I wanted to be the one who brought her back to the land of the living.
“Race me tonight,” I demanded softly, stepping directly into her perimeter. “If I win, you let me clean that scrape on your knee.”
She leaned forward, her full breasts pressing against the tank as she looked up at me, a wicked, taunting smile playing on her lips. “And if I win, Zak? You have to tell my father to go straight to hell when he calls your phone looking for his runaway asset.”
Before I could answer, she dropped her visor, kicked the gear shift, and tore out of the bunker, leaving nothing but the scent of burning rubber and a ghost in her wake.
FLORA (POV)
The wind at 140 miles per hour doesn’t have a voice. That’s why I love it. It’s the only thing loud enough to scream over Viktor’s demands and the agonizing, slow-burning ache in my own chest.
Azen.
The name was a splinter under my skin. Ten years. Ten years since I was an eight-year-old girl watching my father’s tall, ancient-statue of a best friend walk out of our estate after a dark syndicate meeting. He was 6′4" of pure, terrifying perfection—wavy hair falling over a sharp forehead, thick lashes masking eyes that had seen too much blood. He didn’t look thirty-eight now, and he certainly hadn’t looked like a mere mortal back then. He looked like an immortal myth.
My father wanted a son. He made sure I knew that every single day of my life. “A daughter is a liability, Flora. A daughter is a diplomatic chess piece. You have your mother’s soft lips and none of my iron.”
Every dinner was a courtroom execution. Every conversation ended with me throwing a crystal glass against his sterile mahogany walls, screaming until my throat was raw, before sprinting to my bike to find a high that could numb the rejection.
Viktor wanted an empire builder. Fine. I’d build one on two wheels, in the dirt, in the dark clubs where his pristine reputation couldn’t follow.
I pulled the bike up to the gates of my father’s estate, the adrenaline still pulsing violently through my veins. I didn’t even take off my helmet until I kicked the front doors open.
“You look like a street whore,” Viktor’s cold, booming voice cut through the grand foyer before I even hit the bottom step of the staircase.
I stopped, slowly pulling the helmet off, letting my long hair cascade down my back. I turned to look at him. He stood on the landing, looking down at me with absolute disgust, his tailored suit immaculate, his hands resting on the railing of the empire he loved more than his own flesh.
“And you look like a man who’s one heart attack away from leaving his precious empire to a street whore, Dad,” I shot back, my voice dangerously calm, laced with heavy, venomous wit.
“Careful with your blood pressure. I might just liquidate your shipping lanes to buy a fleet of Ducatis.”
“You are an embarrassment!” he roared, slamming his fist onto the wood. “Look at you! Bruised, bleeding, running around with grease monkeys and bikers! I am trying to secure a future for this family, and you are playing games on the asphalt!”
“I’m not playing games,” I said, walking slowly toward the stairs, my boots leaving faint tracks of road dust on his imported rugs. I stopped at the bottom step, looking up at him with wide, unblinking hazel eyes.
“I’m practicing. Because the day you die, Viktor, I’m going to burn this house to the ground. I am the only heir you have. Get used to the sight of my bruises. They’re the only real thing in this entire house.”
“Get out of my sight,” he hissed, his face turning a dark, dangerous crimson.
“With pleasure,” I whispered.
I walked straight out to the garage, my mind entirely detached from the burning pain in my knee. The argument with Viktor was just the fuel. The destination had been decided ten years ago.
Tonight was the night. I knew where his elite, nameless clubs were. I knew the ghost went by ‘Phantom’ now. I knew he hired faceless women just to satisfy a biological urge because his life was a hollow, boring purgatory of his own making.
He thought he was safe behind his strict rules and his sacred ‘bro-code’ with my father. He thought I was still the little girl who watched him from the balcony.
He was about to find out how dark the night could really get.
