Chapter 1
Shady
Miami looks clean from this high up.
That’s the lie Lady’s glass tower sells better than any man I’ve ever met. Forty stories over Biscayne Bay, the city spreads out beneath us in gold light and blue water, all shine and money with the sun crawling over windows that cost more than most people’s homes. From up here, Miami looks like a postcard somebody forgot to bloody.
No alleys.
No bodies.
No bikers washing sins off their knuckles in the sink behind Vice Ink.
Just ocean, traffic, palms and rich people pretending the world can’t climb this high.
Lady sleeps like she believes that lie.
One arm above her head. Dark curls spread across white pillows. One bare leg kicked out from the sheet like she fought the bed and won. Glitter still clings to her cheekbone, catching the early light every time she breathes. There’s a faint smear of red lipstick at the corner of her mouth and my bite mark highon her inner thigh where no camera, no fan, no thirsty club promoter gets to see it.
Mine.
The word settles low in my chest before I can kill it.
I don’t do that. Don’t look at a woman asleep in my reach and think forever. Don’t think about where she keeps the coffee or why she folds her clothes by color or how the place smells like expensive perfume. Lady’s trouble with a trust fund.
I’m Saints Outlaws.
Road Captain. My job is movement. Routes. Timing. Engines. Exits. Back roads. Bad roads. Who rides where. Who takes point. Who carries weight. Who doesn’t come home if I misread a turn.
I don’t get soft. Soft men miss threats and bury brothers. Soft men fall asleep in high-rise beds with women who got famous and forget the city below still collects debts.
Lady rolls onto her side and opens one eye.
“You’re staring, papi.”
Her voice is sleep rough, smug, and sexy enough to make a smart man leave before he does something stupid.
I’m still here, so that tells you plenty.
“I’m checking for damage,” I say.
Her mouth curves. “To me or your ego?”
“To the bed.”
She laughs into the pillow, low and warm. That sound would crawl under my cut, if it wasn’t on the chair across theroom, folded over the back as if it belongs in a place with marble floors and floor-to-ceiling glass.
It doesn’t.
Neither do I.
Lady Nyx belongs here. In the sky. In silk sheets. In a condo where everything shines and nothing smells like gasoline. She’s Miami famous in the way Miami loves best. Nightclub queen. DJ. Influencer without acting like she’s trying. A woman who can walk into a room and make every phone tilt toward her like she’s the damn sun.
She lives above the noise, then comes down at night and turns the volume up until nobody remembers their bad decisions have consequences.
I live in the consequences.
“Road captain got lost last night,” she murmurs.