Chapter 1

The smell of Oakridge Preparatory Academy was always the first thing that suffocated me. It wasn’t the scent of old books or polished wood like you’d expect from a school that charged ninety thousand dollars a year in tuition. No, it smelled like inherited arrogance. It smelled like Tom Ford cologne, freshly minted black American Express cards, and the faint, sterile scent of privilege that told you, instantly, that you were breathing air you couldn’t afford.

I certainly couldn’t afford it.

I was fifteen, wearing a second-hand Oakridge blazer that was half a size too big across the shoulders, and scuffed penny loafers I had spent three hours polishing with cheap wax the night before. I was the charity case. The scholarship kid. The aesthetic diversity quota they needed to maintain their tax-exempt status.

And they never, ever let me forget it.

“Look who it is,” a voice sliced through the hum of the hallway. It was a voice perfectly calibrated to sound bored, yet dripping with absolute venom.

I froze, my grip tightening on the strap of my canvas backpack. I didn’t need to turn around to know it was Chloe van der Woodsen. She was the undisputed queen of Oakridge, a girl whose father basically owned half the real estate in the city. Chloe didn’t walk; she glided, flanked by her two permanent accessories, Sloane and Madison. They were dressed in the exact same uniform I was, but somehow, theirs looked like it was spun from gold, tailored to within a millimeter of their lives.

“Nice shoes, Lily,” Chloe drawled, stopping right in front of my locker. She looked down at my scuffed loafers, her lip curling in a textbook sneer. “Did you find those in a dumpster behind a Goodwill, or did you have to fight a homeless guy for them?”

Sloane and Madison giggled on cue. It was the same high-pitched, soulless laugh they practiced in front of their vanity mirrors.

“Excuse me, Chloe. I need to get to class,” I muttered, keeping my eyes fixed on the cold marble floor. Rule number one of surviving Oakridge: never make eye contact with the apex predators.

“Oh, she’s in a rush,” Chloe mocked, leaning her hand against the locker right next to my head, effectively trapping me. “Rushing to what, Lily? To AP History? To pretend you actually understand European aristocracy? It’s hilarious watching you read about royalty when your family probably lives in a trailer park.”

My jaw clenched. If she only knew.

My family didn’t live in a trailer park. We lived at the compound. A heavily fortified, industrial garage complex on the gritty south side of the city. My father was Jax, the President of the Iron Hounds Motorcycle Club. The men I called uncles had rap sheets longer than Chloe’s designer receipts, and they solved problems with tire irons, not lawyers.

But I had begged my dad to let me go to Oakridge. I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted a life outside the grease, the roar of V-twin engines, and the constant, thrumming danger of the MC life. Dad had agreed, under one condition: keep my head down, keep the club out of it, and get the grades.

So, I swallowed the anger burning in my throat. I let the insult slide off me like water on a freshly waxed tank.

“Move, Chloe,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

She sighed dramatically, stepping aside. “Run along, little rat. Don’t leave your poverty germs on my locker.”

I hurried away, my heart pounding against my ribs. I just needed to make it through the day. Just one more day. But the universe, it seemed, had a very different, very violent plan in store for me.

Fifth period was AP European History. Mr. Harrison, a tenure-fatigued man who cared more about his upcoming retirement pension than his students, was running late. The classroom, a sprawling, amphitheater-style room with tiered mahogany desks and state-of-the-art smartboards, was chaotic.

I took my seat in the very back corner, pulling out my massive, hardcover textbook. It weighed at least five pounds, filled with glossy pages of dead kings and forgotten wars. I buried my face in it, trying to become invisible.

It didn’t work.

“Well, well, well. Look who’s trying to educate herself.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. Chloe. Again.

She marched up the tiered steps, Sloane and Madison right on her heels. The chatter in the classroom began to die down. The other students—future CEOs, politicians’ kids, and trust-fund heirs—turned in their seats, their eyes gleaming with the predatory thrill of an impending show.

“I heard about your little stunt in the cafeteria yesterday,” Chloe said, stopping right in front of my desk. Her perfectly manicured hands rested on her hips.

“I didn’t do anything,” I said, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to keep it steady. Yesterday, I had accidentally bumped into Sloane, spilling a drop of water on her pristine white blouse. I had apologized profusely, scrubbed the floor, but in Oakridge, a perceived slight from a ‘peasant’ was an act of war.

“You exist. That’s what you do,” Chloe spat, her facade of bored indifference cracking, revealing the sheer, ugly hatred underneath. “You breathe our air. You walk our halls. You taint everything you touch, you filthy little charity case.”

She slammed both hands down on my desk, the loud crack making me jump in my seat.

“You don’t belong here!” she screamed, the volume of her voice shocking even her minions. The classroom fell dead silent. You could hear a pin drop on the carpeted floor.

“Please, Chloe,” I whispered, tears welling up in my eyes. I hated myself for crying. I hated that I was showing weakness. Dad always told me to look my enemies in the eye, to never let them see me bleed. But I was fifteen, completely alone, and surrounded by wolves in designer clothing. “Just leave me alone.”

“Leave you alone?” Chloe scoffed, a manic, cruel light dancing in her eyes. “You think you can just come into our world, disrespect us, and we’ll just leave you alone? You need to be taught a lesson. A lesson about your place.”

She reached down and grabbed my five-pound AP History textbook.

“Wait, what are you doing?” I panicked, raising my hands.

“Teaching you a lesson, trash!”

With a terrifying, unhinged screech, Chloe hoisted the massive, heavy hardcover book above her head and hurled it violently, directly at my face.

I didn’t even have time to scream.

CRACK.

The spine of the textbook collided squarely with the side of my face and my temple. The impact was deafening, a sickening thud that echoed off the mahogany walls.

Pain, hot and blinding, exploded behind my eyes. The force of the blow threw me out of my chair. I crashed onto the floor between the desks, my shoulder slamming into the hard wood.

The world spun out of control. A high-pitched ringing pierced my ears, drowning out the gasps of the classroom. I lay there on the floor, disoriented, gasping for air. I brought a shaking hand up to my face. My fingers came away wet. Blood. It was dripping from a gash above my eyebrow, warm and sticky, staining the collar of my oversized, thrifted white shirt.

I looked up through blurred, tear-filled eyes.

Chloe stood above me, her chest heaving, a look of absolute, sickening triumph on her face. Sloane and Madison were laughing. Actually laughing. The rest of the class was silent, watching me bleed on the floor like it was an entertaining piece of theater.

“Let that be a reminder,” Chloe sneered, staring down at my bleeding face. “You are nothing. You have nobody. And you will never, ever belong here.”

I lay there, the cold reality settling over me. She was right. I didn’t belong here. I had tried to play their game, tried to follow their rules, and they had broken me for sport. I sobbed, the tears mixing with the blood on my face, the salt stinging the open wound.

I felt so small. So helpless. So completely alone.

But then, beneath the ringing in my ears, I felt something.

It wasn’t a sound at first. It was a vibration.

A deep, rhythmic tremor that started in the floorboards and slowly began to rattle the windowpanes of the classroom. It was low, guttural, and immense.

The students stopped whispering. Chloe’s smug smile faltered. She looked toward the massive windows that overlooked the front courtyard of the school.

The vibration grew louder, building into a deafening, thunderous roar. It sounded like an earthquake, like a storm tearing through the pristine manicured lawns of Oakridge.

But it wasn’t thunder.

It was the roar of fifty heavy, V-Twin engines.

And they were coming right for us.

Chapter 2

The roar didn’t just rattle the glass; it shook the very foundation of Oakridge Preparatory Academy.

It was a sound that didn’t belong in this zip code. This was a neighborhood of hushed electric vehicles, whisper-quiet sedans, and polite, gated driveways.

What was vibrating through the floorboards right now was the unmistakable, guttural scream of raw horsepower. Unfiltered, un-muffled, and angry.

The sneer completely vanished from Chloe’s perfectly contoured face. She blinked, the heavy AP History textbook slipping from her manicured fingers to hit the carpeted floor with a dull thud.

Sloane and Madison stopped their sycophantic giggling. Their mouths hung open, their eyes darting nervously toward the massive, arched windows that overlooked the front gates.

“What is that?” someone in the third row whispered, the bravado completely drained from their voice.

“Is it an earthquake?” another panicked voice asked.

It wasn’t an earthquake. I knew exactly what it was. My stomach dropped into my scuffed penny loafers, and a cold sweat broke out across the back of my neck.

I pushed myself up onto my elbows, my head throbbing violently where the heavy book had struck me. The blood from the gash above my eyebrow was beginning to drip down my cheek, tasting metallic on my lips.

I looked toward the window, dread and an undeniable, terrifying surge of adrenaline mixing in my veins.

“Look!” one of the lacrosse players shouted, jumping out of his mahogany desk and pointing a shaking finger at the glass.

The entire AP History class abandoned their seats. The illusion of their untouchable elite status shattered in an instant as human curiosity and primal fear took over. They swarmed the windows, pressing their faces against the glass.

I dragged myself up, leaning heavily against the side of a desk, and looked out.

The sight below was something straight out of a billionaire’s worst nightmare.

The pristine, manicured front lawns of Oakridge—the ones the landscaping crew spent forty hours a week detailing with nail clippers—were being absolutely decimated.

Fifty massive, custom-built Harley-Davidsons and heavy cruisers had just violently breached the wrought-iron front gates. They didn’t stop at the security checkpoint. They didn’t wait to be buzzed in.

The lead rider had simply kicked the heavy security boom gate clean off its hinges without even slowing down.

Now, a sea of matte black paint, gleaming chrome, and worn leather was flooding the circular, cobblestone driveway. They rode in a tight, militaristic formation, the synchronized rumble of their V-Twin engines sounding like a squadron of bombers descending on a target.

“Oh my god,” Chloe breathed out, her hands flying to her mouth. The color had completely drained from her face, leaving her looking like a terrified porcelain doll. “Who are they?”

“They’re… they’re bikers,” Sloane squeaked, instinctively stepping backward, away from the window.

They weren’t just bikers.

They were the Iron Hounds Motorcycle Club.

My family.

I recognized the bikes instantly. There was Uncle Bear’s custom chopper with the ape-hanger handlebars. There was Trigger’s modified Road Glide. And leading the pack, riding a massive, terrifyingly loud Street Glide with a blacked-out engine, was my father. Jax.

He wasn’t wearing his usual mechanic’s overalls. He was wearing his full cut. The heavy, battered leather vest that bore the three-piece patch of the Iron Hounds. The grimacing metallic wolf head on the back was a symbol that commanded fear and respect across the entire state.

They didn’t park in the designated visitor spaces. They didn’t care about the lines.

They rode their heavy machines directly up the wide, marble steps of the academy’s main entrance, their thick tires leaving deep, black, rubber skid marks across the pristine white stone.

“They’re coming inside!” Madison shrieked, sheer panic finally breaking through her perfectly curated composure.

Down in the courtyard, the school’s private security team—two retired cops in neat, pressed uniforms who usually spent their days giving out parking warnings—ran out of the front doors, waving their hands frantically.

They looked like ants trying to stop a freight train.

My father didn’t even tap his brakes. He revved his engine, the explosive sound cracking through the air like a gunshot. The security guards dove into the perfectly manicured rose bushes to avoid getting completely run over.

The fifty bikers cut their engines in unison.

The sudden silence was almost as deafening as the roar had been. But the silence only lasted for a second.

Then came the sound of the kickstands. Fifty heavy metal stands slamming into the expensive cobblestone and marble.

“Call the police!” Chloe screamed at Mr. Harrison, who was currently cowering behind his large oak desk, completely paralyzed by fear. “Call 911! They’re trespassing!”

Mr. Harrison fumbled for the classroom phone, his hands shaking so violently he knocked the receiver onto the floor.

Down below, my father swung his heavy, steel-toed boots over the seat of his bike. He stood at six-foot-three, built like a brick wall, his arms covered in dark, sprawling tattoos that told the story of a life lived outside the boundaries of polite society.

He reached into his leather cut and pulled out a heavy, forged steel tire iron.

The other forty-nine men followed suit. Heavy chains, reinforced flashlights, and thick, calloused fists resting on their belts. They didn’t look like they were here to negotiate. They looked like an occupying army.

“They’re coming into the building,” the lacrosse player whispered, taking a massive step back from the window.

The heavy, reinforced double glass doors of the academy’s main entrance didn’t stand a chance.

SMASH.

The sound of shattering glass echoed all the way up to the third floor. My father had simply swung the tire iron, obliterating the entrance in a shower of expensive safety glass.

They marched inside.

The vibration in the floorboards changed. It was no longer the hum of engines. It was the synchronized, heavy thud of fifty pairs of steel-toed combat boots marching in unison on the marble floors.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

It was the heartbeat of pure, unadulterated vengeance.

I touched my bleeding forehead again, my heart hammering against my ribs. I had told my dad I was fine. I had told him the kids here were just snobs, that I could handle it. But the club had ears everywhere. Someone must have seen what happened yesterday. Someone must have made a call.

And now, hell had literally arrived at the gates of heaven.

“Lock the door!” Chloe shrieked, turning her panicked eyes to the heavy oak door of the classroom. “Someone lock the door right now!”

Nobody moved. The students of Oakridge were used to their parents solving their problems with lawsuits, passive-aggressive emails, and massive donations to the endowment fund. They had absolutely zero survival instincts when faced with raw, physical intimidation.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The boots were on the second-floor stairs now. The sound was echoing through the wide, locker-lined hallways.

The school’s PA system suddenly crackled to life. Principal Sterling’s voice echoed through the speakers, completely devoid of its usual arrogant, Ivy-League polish. He sounded like a man who was hyperventilating.

“Attention… attention all staff and students. Initiate a… a lockdown procedure immediately. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. We have a massive security breach. Stay in your classrooms. Do not—”

The announcement cut off abruptly with a loud crash, followed by the sound of Principal Sterling whimpering. Someone had just ripped the microphone right out of his hands.

“AP History,” a deep, gravelly voice growled over the intercom. It was Uncle Bear. “Third floor. Room 314. We’re coming.”

The intercom clicked dead.

The classroom erupted into absolute chaos.

Rich kids were scrambling over mahogany desks, tearing their expensive tailored blazers in their desperation to hide in the back corners. Sloane and Madison were openly sobbing, huddled together under the smartboard.

Chloe, the untouchable queen, was hyperventilating, her back pressed against the chalkboard. She looked around wildly, her eyes finally landing on me.

I was still sitting on the floor, the blood dripping from my brow onto my thrifted uniform.

“What did you do?” Chloe hissed, pointing a trembling, manicured finger at me. “Who are those animals? What did you do?!”

I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t.

Because the heavy, rhythmic thud of the boots had stopped.

They were right outside our door.

The scent of gasoline, stale cigarette smoke, and worn leather began to seep under the doorframe, instantly overpowering the sterile smell of Tom Ford cologne and floor wax.

The silence in the hallway was terrifying. It was the deep breath before the plunge. The moment before the bomb goes off.

Chloe stared at the door, her chest heaving, her eyes wide with a terror she had never experienced in her pampered, sheltered life.

For the first time since she threw that book at my head, I looked her dead in the eye.

“You wanted to know about my family,” I said, my voice eerily calm over the ringing in my ears.

Before Chloe could respond, the heavy, solid oak door of the classroom—a door meant to withstand fire and sound—exploded inward.

It didn’t just open. It was violently kicked off its heavy brass hinges. The massive piece of wood flew through the air, crashing onto the front row of desks, splintering mahogany and sending laptops flying.

A collective scream ripped through the classroom.

The dust from the shattered doorframe plumed into the air.

And stepping through the wreckage, blocking out the light from the hallway, was Jax.

My father.

He stepped into the pristine classroom, his heavy boots crunching over the splintered wood and shattered glass. Behind him, the hallway was completely packed with massive, leather-clad men, their faces hardened, their arms crossed.

The contrast was jarring. It was a collision of two entirely different universes. The sanitized, elite world of the 1% had just been violently invaded by the gritty, unforgiving reality of the streets.

Jax didn’t say a word. He didn’t look at the screaming kids, or the cowering teacher, or the luxury backpacks scattered across the floor.

His dark, furious eyes scanned the room with the precision of a predator.

And then, his gaze locked onto me.

He saw me sitting on the floor. He saw the oversized, second-hand blazer. He saw the heavy AP History textbook lying near my feet.

But most importantly, he saw the blood.

He saw the deep gash above my eye, the red trail staining my pale skin, and the tears I was desperately trying to hold back.

The temperature in the room seemed to plummet by twenty degrees.

Jax didn’t yell. He didn’t scream.

His face went completely, terrifyingly blank. It was a look I had only seen once before, right before a rival gang had their warehouse burned to the ground. It was the look of a man who was about to unleash absolute hell.

He slowly turned his head, his cold, dead eyes shifting from my bleeding face to the girl standing closest to me.

Chloe.

Chloe was pressed against the chalkboard, her designer uniform suddenly looking very flimsy, her arrogant smirk replaced by pure, unadulterated horror. She was shaking so violently I could hear her pearl necklace rattling against her collarbone.

Jax took one slow, deliberate step toward her. The sound of his heavy boot hitting the floor echoed like a gunshot in the silent room.

“Which one of you,” Jax growled, his voice so low and vibrating with malice that it made the hairs on my arms stand up. “Which one of you touched my daughter?”

Chapter 3

“Which one of you touched my daughter?”

The question hung in the air, heavy and suffocating. It wasn’t a shout. It didn’t need to be. The low, gravelly vibration of my father’s voice carried more lethal intent than a screaming drill sergeant.

The silence that followed was absolute. You could hear the buzzing of the fluorescent lights overhead. You could hear the ragged, terrified breathing of thirty trust-fund teenagers who were suddenly realizing that their parents’ bank accounts couldn’t buy them a shield against a furious, 250-pound biker.

Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.

Chloe, who just five minutes ago had been parading around like a tyrannical queen, was currently pressed so hard against the green chalkboard that she looked like she was trying to melt into it. Her perfectly glossed lips were trembling. Her eyes were wide, unblinking, fixed entirely on the massive man blocking the doorway.

Jax didn’t wait for an answer. He didn’t need one. He was a man who read rooms for a living, who could spot a liar across a crowded, dimly lit dive bar. He could smell the guilt radiating off Chloe from twenty feet away.

But he didn’t go to her first.

He turned his broad shoulders and walked toward me.

The sound of his heavy, steel-toed combat boots crunching over the shattered wood of the doorframe was the only sound in the room. Every student watched him, completely paralyzed, as he navigated the narrow aisles between the expensive mahogany desks.

When he reached me, the terrifying aura of the Iron Hounds President seemed to vanish for a fraction of a second. He dropped to one knee, the heavy leather of his cut creaking loudly.

He reached up, pulling off his thick, reinforced riding glove, and gently cupped my chin with his calloused, grease-stained hand.

“Lily,” he whispered, his voice cracking slightly.

He tilted my head, examining the deep, bleeding gash above my eyebrow. His thumb gently wiped away a tear that had mixed with the blood on my cheek. I could see the muscles in his jaw ticking frantically, a physical manifestation of the violent rage he was desperately trying to keep leashed.

“I’m okay, Dad,” I choked out, my voice sounding incredibly small in the massive, wrecked classroom. “It just hurts a little.”

“Who?” was all he said. One word. But it held the weight of an executioner’s axe.

I hesitated. I had spent the last six months trying to survive by being invisible. But looking at my dad, feeling the unconditional, fierce protection radiating from him, the fear suddenly evaporated. I was done being the victim. I was done being their punching bag.

I raised a shaking finger and pointed directly at the girl still pinned against the chalkboard.

“Her,” I said clearly. “Chloe.”

Jax didn’t look at her right away. He kept his eyes on me. He reached into his leather vest and pulled out a clean, dark bandana. He folded it carefully and pressed it gently against the cut on my forehead.

“Hold that there, baby girl,” he instructed softly. “Keep the pressure on.”

I nodded, pressing the thick cotton to my wound.

Jax stood up.

The moment his boots hit the floor, the tender father vanished, and the President of the Iron Hounds returned. The shift in his demeanor was so violent, so palpable, that several students in the front row physically flinched backward.

He slowly turned to face Chloe.

“Hey, Bear,” Jax called out, not taking his eyes off the blonde girl.

A massive shadow detached itself from the crowded hallway and stepped into the classroom. Uncle Bear was even bigger than my dad. He stood six-foot-five, with a thick, graying beard that fell to his chest and a jagged scar that ran from his ear to his collarbone. He looked like a grizzly bear forced into human clothing.

“Yeah, Boss?” Bear rumbled, his voice shaking the windowpanes.

“Keep the hallway clear,” Jax ordered coldly. “Nobody comes in. Nobody leaves. Not the cops, not the security, not the damn Pope. Understood?”

“You got it,” Bear grinned, a terrifying, toothy smile that made the lacrosse players in the back row whimper. Bear turned around, crossing his massive, tree-trunk arms, effectively barricading the ruined doorway with his sheer bulk. Behind him, dozens of other leather-clad bikers formed an impenetrable wall in the corridor.

Jax began to walk toward the front of the classroom.

Chloe finally found her voice. It wasn’t the arrogant, venomous drawl she usually used. It was a high-pitched, reedy squeak of pure panic.

“Y-you can’t be in here!” she stammered, raising a shaking hand. “This is private property! M-my father is Richard van der Woodsen! He’s on the board of directors! He’ll have you arrested! He’ll ruin you!”

It was the classic Oakridge defense mechanism. When cornered, throw your father’s net worth and legal team at the problem. It had always worked for her before.

It wasn’t going to work today.

Jax didn’t even break his stride. He walked straight up to the front of the room, stopping inches away from the massive, heavy oak teacher’s desk where Mr. Harrison was currently curled into a fetal position underneath.

“Mr. van der Woodsen,” Jax repeated, testing the name on his tongue as if it were a bad piece of meat. He looked at Chloe, his eyes dead and devoid of any human empathy. “Does Mr. van der Woodsen know his daughter likes to throw heavy objects at girls half her size?”

Chloe swallowed hard, her eyes darting frantically toward her two best friends. “Sloane! Madison! Tell him! Tell him she tripped! Tell him it was an accident!”

Sloane and Madison, the girls who had literally laughed as I bled on the floor five minutes ago, proved exactly how deep loyalty ran in the 1%.

“We didn’t do anything!” Sloane shrieked instantly, pressing herself against the wall and pointing a manicured finger right back at Chloe. “It was all her! Chloe threw the book! We told her not to! We tried to stop her!”

“She’s crazy!” Madison sobbed, nodding frantically. “She hates Lily! We had nothing to do with it, I swear!”

Chloe’s jaw dropped. The ultimate betrayal. Her impenetrable social armor was dissolving in real-time.

“Liars!” Chloe screamed, her voice cracking. She looked back at Jax, her chest heaving. “Listen to me, you… you thug. You have no idea who you’re messing with. My family owns half this city. I will press charges! I will have you locked up for the rest of your pathetic life!”

Jax stared at her for a long, agonizing moment. The silence stretched, tight as a piano wire.

Then, he moved.

He didn’t hit her. He didn’t even touch her.

Instead, he reached out and grabbed the edge of the massive, solid mahogany desk sitting right in front of Chloe. The desk was a beast of a piece of furniture, easily weighing over two hundred pounds, bolted together with thick iron brackets.

Jax gripped the thick wood with both hands. The muscles in his tattooed forearms bulged, the veins rising against his skin like thick ropes.

With a guttural roar that echoed off the high ceilings, he ripped the heavy desk entirely off the floor and flipped it violently backward.

CRASH!

The sound was apocalyptic. The massive wooden desk flew through the air and slammed onto its back, splintering loudly. Expensive laptops, textbooks, and designer pens exploded across the room like shrapnel.

The entire class screamed in unison. Chloe shrieked, throwing her hands over her head and dropping to her knees, completely overwhelmed by the raw, explosive display of physical power.

She wasn’t dealing with a lawyer. She wasn’t dealing with a school board. She was dealing with a monster of her own making.

Jax stepped over the ruined wreckage of the desk, towering over Chloe, who was now cowering on the carpet, shaking uncontrollably.

“Listen to me very carefully, princess,” Jax growled, his voice dropping to a terrifying, deadly whisper. “I don’t care about your daddy’s bank account. I don’t care about his lawyers. And I sure as hell don’t care about his real estate.”

He leaned down, his face inches from hers. Chloe squeezed her eyes shut, sobbing openly, the tears ruining her expensive makeup.

“You people think you run the world because you have pieces of paper in a vault,” Jax continued, his words cold and precise. “You think you can treat people like dirt because they don’t wear your fancy clothes or drive your fancy cars. But out there, in the real world? Your daddy’s money doesn’t mean a damn thing when you’re bleeding on the pavement.”

Jax reached out and grabbed the thick, heavy AP History textbook that Chloe had thrown at me. The one with my blood smeared across its glossy cover.

He dropped it onto the carpet right in front of Chloe’s face. The heavy thud made her jump.

“Pick it up,” Jax ordered.

Chloe kept her eyes squeezed shut, hyperventilating, completely paralyzed by fear.

“I said,” Jax roared, the sheer volume rattling the smartboard on the wall behind him, “Pick. It. Up.”

Chloe scrambled backward, her hands trembling so violently she could barely function. She reached out with shaking fingers and grabbed the heavy book, clutching it to her chest like a shield. Her immaculate white blouse was now smeared with the dirt and dust from the shattered desk.

“You think you’re untouchable,” Jax sneered, standing back up to his full, imposing height. “You think there are no consequences for you. But you just learned a very hard lesson about the food chain.”

He slowly looked around the room, making eye contact with every single terrified student. He made sure they saw the violence in his eyes, the promise of absolute retribution.

“Lily is under the protection of the Iron Hounds,” Jax announced, his voice carrying through the ruined classroom and into the crowded hallway. “She doesn’t just have a father. She has fifty uncles who will burn this entire city to the ground if someone looks at her the wrong way.”

He turned his gaze back to the pathetic, sobbing mess of a girl on the floor.

“If anyone ever disrespects her again,” Jax whispered, the deadly calm returning to his voice. “If anyone ever touches a single hair on her head, breathes her name wrong, or even looks at her funny… I won’t just break your doors down. I will find where you sleep. Do you understand me?”

Chloe couldn’t speak. She just nodded frantically, tears and snot running down her face, entirely broken. The reign of the platinum card princess was officially over.

“Good,” Jax muttered.

He turned around, ignoring the wreckage of the classroom, and walked back to where I was standing. The bandana was still pressed to my head, but the bleeding had slowed.

He wrapped a massive, protective arm around my shoulders, tucking me safely into his side. The smell of worn leather and stale cigarettes had never felt so comforting. It smelled like home. It smelled like safety.

“Come on, kid,” he said softly, guiding me toward the ruined doorway. “We’re going home. You’re done here.”

We walked out of the classroom together. As we stepped through the splintered doorframe, Uncle Bear stepped aside, offering me a gentle nod. The hallway was completely packed with my family. Fifty heavily tattooed, terrifying men in leather cuts, all standing at silent attention as their President and his daughter walked through.

The students of Oakridge watched us leave, their eyes wide with a newfound, permanent terror. They had spent their entire lives believing they were the apex predators.

But as we walked down the marble hallway, the heavy boots of the Iron Hounds falling in unison behind us, they finally realized the truth.

They were just prey.

And they had just poked the biggest, baddest bears in the forest.

But as we reached the top of the grand staircase, the shrill, piercing wail of police sirens suddenly cut through the heavy silence of the school. Not just one siren. Dozens of them.

The red and blue lights began to flash frantically through the massive front windows, illuminating the grim faces of the bikers surrounding me.

Jax stopped at the top of the stairs, his grip tightening protectively on my shoulder. He looked down at the shattered front entrance, where a dozen armed police officers were already swarming the steps, their weapons drawn and leveled at the doors.

“Well,” Uncle Bear rumbled from behind us, pulling a heavy steel chain from his belt. “Looks like Mr. van der Woodsen has a fast dial.”

Jax didn’t look worried. He didn’t look scared. He just smiled. A dark, dangerous smile that promised absolute chaos.

“Let them come,” Jax whispered.

Chapter 4

The strobing red and blue lights of the police cruisers painted the shattered marble foyer in violent, chaotic colors. The rhythmic flashing reflected off the polished chrome of the Harleys parked outside and danced across the heavily tattooed faces of the Iron Hounds standing on the grand staircase.

I stood frozen under the heavy, protective weight of my father’s arm. The adrenaline that had kept me numb was beginning to wear off, replaced by a deep, throbbing ache in my skull and a creeping, icy terror.

Down below, the scene was straight out of a tactical urban warfare movie.

At least twenty uniformed officers from the city’s most affluent precinct had swarmed the ruined entrance. They weren’t holding the standard-issue batons or pepper spray used for crowd control. They had drawn their Glock sidearms, and behind them, two officers were leveling heavy, black tactical shotguns directly at my father’s chest.

“Oakridge Police Department!” a voice boomed through a crackling megaphone, echoing deafeningly off the high, arched ceilings. “Stand down! Drop any weapons and put your hands on your heads! You are completely surrounded!”

The sheer show of force was staggering.

If this had been a fight at a public school on the Southside, the cops might have sent one or two cruisers, taking their time to arrive. But because this was Oakridge Preparatory Academy—because the children hiding under the desks upstairs had last names attached to hedge funds and political campaigns—the entire precinct had responded in under four minutes, ready to deploy lethal force.

It was a sickening display of how the system actually worked. Wealth bought you a personal, heavily armed militia. Poverty bought you a waiting time.

My breath hitched in my throat, a tiny, terrified whimper escaping my lips. I gripped the thick leather of my father’s cut, burying my face into his side. I was terrified of guns. I had grown up around tough men, but this was an execution squad waiting for a single wrong move.

Jax felt me tremble. His massive hand tightened around my shoulder, his thumb gently rubbing my arm in a silent promise of absolute safety.

“Easy, Lily,” he murmured, his voice impossibly steady. “They aren’t going to do a damn thing.”

He didn’t raise his hands.

None of the Iron Hounds did.

Instead of surrendering, the fifty massive men standing on the staircase seamlessly shifted into a defensive phalanx. They didn’t draw weapons—that would have been a death sentence—but they crossed their arms, widened their stances, and formed a solid, impenetrable wall of leather and muscle around me and Jax.

Uncle Bear stepped down one step, intentionally putting his massive, 300-pound frame directly in the line of fire of the tactical shotguns. He grinned down at the trembling officers, his jagged facial scar twisting menacingly in the flashing police lights.

“You boys lost?” Bear rumbled, his voice projecting easily over the megaphone sirens. “The donut shop is three blocks down on Fifth Avenue.”

“Shut your mouth and put your hands up!” a young, sweat-drenched officer yelled from the front line, his hands shaking so badly I thought he might accidentally pull the trigger.

“Lower your weapons!” another officer screamed.

The standoff was on a razor’s edge. One flinch, one loud noise, and the pristine, ninety-thousand-dollar-a-year academy was going to turn into a slaughterhouse.

Then, a familiar figure pushed his way through the barricade of police officers.

It was Captain Miller. He was a seasoned, gray-haired cop who ran the organized crime division downtown. He looked entirely out of place in this wealthy suburb, his cheap, wrinkled suit a stark contrast to the tailored uniforms of the Oakridge private security.

Miller stepped into the foyer, holding his hands up, signaling his own men to hold their fire. He looked up the grand staircase, his eyes scanning the sea of Iron Hounds until he locked eyes with my father.

“Jax,” Miller shouted, his voice rough with exasperation and a heavy dose of anxiety. “What the hell are you doing? Are you out of your damn mind? You can’t invade a private academy with a fifty-man wrecking crew!”

“I didn’t invade, Miller,” Jax replied smoothly, his voice echoing with cold authority. “I’m picking up my daughter. Early dismissal.”

Captain Miller wiped a hand across his sweating face. “You smashed through a security gate, destroyed the front doors, and terrorized a classroom full of minors. You’re looking at twenty different felonies right now, Jax. Have your men stand down. Do it before this gets out of hand.”

Jax didn’t budge. He slowly descended one step, bringing me with him. The entire phalanx of bikers moved with him in perfect, intimidating synchronization.

“Get out of hand?” Jax echoed, a dark, bitter laugh escaping his chest. “It’s already out of hand, Miller.”

Jax gently pulled me forward, just enough so that the flashing police lights illuminated my face clearly for the officers below.

I heard a collective gasp ripple through the front line of cops.

Captain Miller stopped dead in his tracks. His eyes widened as he saw the blood-soaked bandana pressed to my forehead, the crimson stains ruining the collar of my white uniform shirt, and the deep, angry purple bruising already swelling around my eye.

“Take a good look, Miller,” Jax growled, the deadly calm returning to his voice. “That’s what a fifteen-year-old girl looks like after an entitled, trust-fund brat throws a five-pound textbook at her head. In a classroom. While the teacher watched.”

Miller swallowed hard, his eyes darting between my battered face and Jax’s furious expression.

“Where were your sirens for that, Captain?” Jax demanded, his voice suddenly rising, cutting through the cavernous foyer like a whip. “Where was the SWAT team when my kid was bleeding on the floor? Oh, right. Because my last name isn’t attached to a country club, you don’t care. Because she’s a mechanic’s daughter, she’s supposed to just take the hits from the 1% and say thank you.”

The absolute silence that followed was deafening. The young officers holding the guns suddenly looked deeply uncomfortable, their weapons lowering just a fraction of an inch. Jax had just laid bare the ugly, undeniable truth of the city’s justice system.

“Jax, I hear you,” Miller said softly, holding his hands out in a placating gesture. “I do. If there was an assault, we will file a report. We will handle it legally. But you can’t wage a war in a high school. You have to let us do our jobs.”

“Your job,” a new, sharply arrogant voice sneered from the doorway, “is to arrest these filthy animals immediately!”

The crowd of police officers parted, and a man stormed into the foyer.

It was like looking at an older, male version of Chloe. He wore a bespoke charcoal suit that probably cost more than my dad’s entire motorcycle. His hair was perfectly silvered, his posture radiating absolute, tyrannical entitlement. He was flanked by two men in slick suits carrying briefcases—undoubtedly high-priced corporate lawyers.

This was Richard van der Woodsen. The king of Oakridge.

He didn’t look at me. He didn’t look at my bleeding face. He looked at the shattered mahogany doors and the deep black skid marks on the pristine marble floor, his face contorting in aristocratic rage.

“Captain Miller, why are these men not in handcuffs?” van der Woodsen barked, jabbing a finger toward the staircase. “They are trespassing on private property! They have vandalized a historic institution! My daughter called me in tears, terrified for her life! I want them arrested, charged, and locked away, and I want it done five minutes ago!”

Captain Miller sighed, rubbing his temples. “Mr. van der Woodsen, please step back. We are managing a highly volatile situation—”

“You’re mismanaging it!” van der Woodsen interrupted, his face turning an angry, blotchy red. He stepped forward, glaring up at my father with utter disgust. “Do you have any idea who I am? Do you know who you just crossed?”

Jax stared down at the billionaire. The contrast between the two men was the embodiment of America’s class warfare. One man wore tailored silk and wielded wealth like a weapon; the other wore stained leather and wielded raw, unforgiving survival.

“I know exactly who you are, Dick,” Jax said smoothly, intentionally using a disrespectful nickname. “You’re the guy who failed to teach his daughter that actions have consequences.”

“How dare you!” van der Woodsen spat, taking another step forward, completely oblivious to the fifty heavily armed bikers staring him down. “You white-trash thug! You bring your gang of criminals into this school, you threaten my child, and you think you can walk out of here? I own this city’s DA. I own the judge who will preside over your arraignment. I will see you buried under a prison for this!”

He turned to Captain Miller, his voice shrill with authority. “Shoot them if you have to! They are violent intruders! Neutralize the threat!”

I gasped, terrified that the cops would actually listen to him. That was the power of billions of dollars. It could turn police officers into personal hitmen.

But Jax didn’t flinch. He didn’t even reach for a weapon. He just let out a low, menacing chuckle.

“You want a bloodbath in this foyer, Dick?” Jax asked, his voice dripping with dark amusement. “You want these cops to start firing tactical buckshot in a hallway right beneath a classroom holding thirty of the most expensive kids in the state? You think bullets care about tax brackets?”

Van der Woodsen hesitated, his eyes darting to the tactical shotguns.

“My boys won’t go down easy,” Jax continued, his voice dropping an octave, becoming cold and mechanical. “We’re cornered. If they shoot, we charge. It’ll be a slaughter. Cops will die. My brothers will die. And a whole lot of very expensive architecture is going to get painted red. And when the dust settles, the national news isn’t going to talk about a biker gang.”

Jax pointed a heavily tattooed finger straight at van der Woodsen’s chest.

“They’re going to talk about how the great Richard van der Woodsen ordered a shootout in a school full of children just to protect his spoiled daughter from an assault charge.”

The billionaire’s face paled perfectly. The pure, unchecked arrogance in his eyes was suddenly replaced by a cold, calculating panic. He was a businessman. He understood risk management. And Jax had just laid out a public relations nightmare that no amount of money could ever bury.

“You’re bluffing,” van der Woodsen hissed, though his voice lacked its previous venom.

“Try me,” Jax whispered.

The silence stretched again, thick and suffocating. The air in the foyer was heavy with the smell of spilled gasoline, ozone, and pure fear.

Captain Miller saw the opening and took it. He stepped between the billionaire and the staircase, holding his hands up to Jax.

“Jax,” Miller said firmly. “Walk out. Just… walk out. You leave the premises right now, with your daughter, and no one gets shot. We sort the legal mess out later. Deal?”

Van der Woodsen opened his mouth to protest, but Miller spun on him, his own temper finally snapping. “Shut up, Richard! Unless you want to explain to the mayor why thirty trust-fund kids caught stray bullets, you will let me handle this!”

The billionaire snapped his mouth shut, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles were stark white. He glared at Jax with a hatred so pure it was almost radioactive.

Jax looked at Captain Miller for a long moment. Then, he looked down at me. He saw the exhaustion in my eyes, the pain radiating from my forehead, and the desperate plea to just go home.

“We’re leaving,” Jax announced loudly.

He didn’t wait for permission. He didn’t ask the police to move.

Jax simply started walking down the marble stairs.

The fifty Iron Hounds moved with him, a massive, unstoppable tide of black leather and heavy boots.

The front line of police officers, despite their weapons and their numbers, instinctively took a step back. They parted like the Red Sea, creating a wide, completely clear path through the shattered entrance.

It was a surreal, intoxicating moment. The untouchable elites, the armed guards of the upper class, were yielding to the absolute, unyielding loyalty of the streets.

We walked right past Richard van der Woodsen. As we passed, Jax stopped for a fraction of a second, turning his head to look the billionaire dead in the eye.

“Tell Chloe,” Jax whispered softly, “that if she ever looks in my daughter’s direction again, I won’t flip a desk. I’ll flip her father’s entire empire.”

Van der Woodsen didn’t say a word. He just stood there, shaking with impotent rage, watching the very people he considered “trash” completely dominate his world.

We stepped out through the ruined doorway and into the cool, crisp afternoon air. The front courtyard was a chaotic sea of flashing lights, news vans that had just begun to arrive, and terrified parents pulling up in luxury SUVs.

“Mount up!” Uncle Bear roared, his voice cutting through the sirens.

The synchronized sound of fifty heavy Harleys roaring to life was the most beautiful symphony I had ever heard. It drowned out the sirens. It drowned out the shouts of the police. It drowned out the sterile, suffocating atmosphere of Oakridge.

Jax lifted me effortlessly and set me gently on the back of his massive Street Glide. He climbed on in front of me, his broad back a solid wall of protection. I wrapped my arms tightly around his leather cut, pressing my cheek against the embroidered wolf’s head.

He kicked the bike into gear.

We didn’t ride out quietly. We rode out like conquerors.

The Iron Hounds tore down the immaculate driveway, their engines screaming, leaving a massive cloud of tire smoke and exhaust fumes hanging over the manicured lawns. We blasted past the broken security gates, leaving the billionaire, the cops, and the ruined academy far behind us.

The wind whipped through my hair, cooling the hot, throbbing pain in my forehead. As we hit the highway, heading south toward the industrial district, the adrenaline finally left my system entirely, leaving me hollow and exhausted. I squeezed my eyes shut, burying my face in my father’s jacket, finally letting the tears fall.

I had survived. The club had protected me.

But as we crossed the bridge into the Southside, the familiar, gritty landscape of rusted warehouses and chain-link fences coming into view, a cold realization settled into the pit of my stomach.

You don’t humiliate a man like Richard van der Woodsen and just ride away. Billionaires didn’t fight with tire irons or fists. They fought with banks, lawyers, politicians, and silent assassins wrapped in legal tape.

We hadn’t ended a war today. We had just fired the opening shot.

The roar of the bikes slowed as we approached the massive, heavily fortified steel gates of the Iron Hounds compound. Uncle Bear rode ahead, punching the code into the keypad to open the heavy sliding doors.

We rolled into the massive concrete courtyard of the compound, the familiar smells of engine grease, stale beer, and exhaust welcoming us home. The men began to cut their engines, the deafening roar fading into the deep, metallic clicks of kickstands hitting the pavement.

Jax cut the engine of his Street Glide and turned back to look at me, a soft, weary smile touching his lips. “You okay, kid?”

I nodded, sliding off the back of the bike. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

But before Jax could say anything else, a sharp, echoing voice cut through the courtyard.

“You’re an absolute idiot, Jax.”

Jax froze. His hand instinctively dropped toward the heavy iron chain on his belt. The rest of the club instantly went quiet, their hands reaching for their weapons.

I turned around, squinting through the fading afternoon light.

Parked in the darkest corner of the compound, entirely out of place among the rusted pickup trucks and heavy motorcycles, was a sleek, blacked-out Mercedes Maybach.

Standing in front of the luxury vehicle was a woman.

She was dressed in a razor-sharp, custom-tailored white pantsuit that looked completely absurd against the oily concrete of the garage. She wore dark designer sunglasses, despite the setting sun, and carried an aura of power that rivaled my father’s—just refined, polished, and deadly in an entirely different way.

Jax’s jaw dropped. The fierce, intimidating President of the Iron Hounds suddenly looked completely blindsided.

“Evelyn?” Jax breathed out, taking a step backward as if he had seen a ghost.

The woman slowly took off her sunglasses, revealing piercing, ice-blue eyes that locked instantly onto my bleeding face. Her expression tightened, a dangerous, maternal fury flashing across her perfectly sculpted features.

“I leave her with you for three years,” the woman said, her voice dripping with ice, “and you let the van der Woodsens use her as a punching bag?”

I stared at the woman in the white suit, my heart stopping completely in my chest.

It was my mother.

And she hadn’t been dead for ten years like I was told. She had been ruling the corporate underworld.

Chapter 5

“Mother?”

The word felt like ash on my tongue. It felt foreign, wrong, like a heavy stone I was trying to swallow. I hadn’t said that word out loud in ten years.

The wind whipping through the concrete courtyard of the Iron Hounds compound suddenly felt entirely too cold. The fifty massive, leather-clad bikers who had just terrorized a billionaire’s prep school were frozen in place, their heavy boots planted on the oily pavement, completely silent.

Evelyn didn’t move toward me. She stood perfectly still beside her blacked-out Maybach, a stark, pristine ghost in a tailored white pantsuit haunting a graveyard of rusted metal and exhaust fumes.

“Evelyn,” Jax warned, his voice a low, dangerous growl that I had only ever heard him use right before a bar fight. He took a deliberate step in front of me, using his massive body to shield me from her gaze. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“My job, apparently,” Evelyn replied. Her voice was terrifying. It wasn’t loud, but it cut through the hum of the cooling motorcycle engines with the precision of a scalpel. She took a slow step forward, the sharp click of her stiletto heels echoing unnaturally on the concrete. “I pay a small fortune in ghost-protocol security firms to ensure she stays entirely invisible. And what do I wake up to this afternoon?”

She reached into her sleek designer clutch and pulled out a slim, matte-black smartphone. She didn’t look at the screen; she just held it up like a piece of damning evidence.

“A viral video of fifty Iron Hounds breaking into Oakridge Academy,” Evelyn stated, her ice-blue eyes narrowing at my father. “Followed by a private security alert that my daughter’s facial recognition pinged at a local emergency dispatcher’s desk. Do you have any idea how exposed you just made her, Jax?”

“I protected her!” Jax roared, the veins in his thick neck bulging. He stepped toward her, towering over her petite frame, but Evelyn didn’t so much as flinch. “Some entitled little rich bitch cracked her skull open with a textbook! Where were your ghost-protocol security firms then, Evelyn? Where was your money when she was bleeding on the floor?”

Evelyn’s jaw tightened. Her eyes flicked past Jax’s broad shoulder, landing on me.

For a fraction of a second, the impenetrable, icy corporate exterior cracked. I saw a flash of raw, unfiltered agony in her eyes as she took in the sight of my bruised face, the blood-soaked bandana still clutched in my shaking hand, and the ruined, oversized uniform.

“Lily,” she breathed out, her voice suddenly losing its sharp edge.

She stepped around Jax, ignoring his warning growl, and walked right up to me. Up close, she smelled like jasmine, expensive espresso, and something metallic, like freshly printed money. She looked exactly like the faded polaroid Jax kept locked in his toolbox, but sharper, harder, completely forged in a different kind of fire.

She reached out with a trembling hand, her fingers adorned with a single, massive diamond ring that could probably buy our entire compound. She didn’t touch the wound. She just hovered her hand over it, her breathing shallow.

“Dad told me you died,” I whispered, my voice breaking. Tears were welling up in my eyes again, mixing with the dried blood on my cheeks. “He told me you died in a car crash when I was five.”

Evelyn closed her eyes, a look of profound guilt washing over her perfectly contoured face. She dropped her hand and looked back at Jax, pure venom returning to her gaze.

“You told her I was dead?” Evelyn hissed, the anger radiating off her in waves.

“I told her what she needed to hear to stay safe!” Jax fired back, crossing his massive arms. Uncle Bear and the rest of the Hounds slowly began to circle up, unsure of what to do. They knew how to fight rival gangs. They had no idea how to handle a furious mother in a five-thousand-dollar suit. “You walked away, Evelyn. You chose the boardroom. You chose the money. You told me the life you were building was too dangerous for a kid. So I raised her.”

“I left her with you because a motorcycle club was infinitely safer than the people I was dealing with!” Evelyn snapped, her composure finally breaking. “I am a corporate liquidator, Jax! I destroy empires for a living! The people I cross don’t send guys with chains; they send men in suits who make entire families disappear! I stayed away to keep a target off her back!”

She turned back to me, her eyes pleading. “Lily… everything I built, the billions of dollars, the shell companies, the ruthlessness… it was all to build a fortress so high that nobody could ever hurt you. I loved you enough to stay away.”

I stared at her, my head throbbing with a sickening rhythm. My entire life had been a lie. I wasn’t just the charity-case daughter of a gritty biker. I was the hidden heir to a corporate warlord.

“But someone did hurt me,” I said, my voice eerily calm despite the chaos in my chest. I looked my mother in the eye. “Chloe van der Woodsen.”

Evelyn’s entire demeanor changed at the sound of the name.

The guilt and the sorrow vanished, instantly replaced by something so dark, so cold, and so utterly ruthless that it made Jax’s earlier rage look like child’s play.

“Richard van der Woodsen’s daughter?” Evelyn asked, her voice dropping to a terrifying whisper.

“Yeah,” Uncle Bear rumbled from the sidelines, stepping forward. “The billionaire prick. He showed up at the school. Tried to get the cops to shoot us. Jax had to back him down.”

Evelyn slowly turned her head to look at Jax. A slow, chilling smile spread across her lips. It was a predator’s smile.

“You backed down Richard van der Woodsen with a tire iron and a PR threat?” she asked, a hint of dark amusement in her voice.

“I told him if his kid looked at Lily again, I’d flip his empire,” Jax grunted, not breaking eye contact.

Evelyn let out a sharp, genuine laugh that echoed off the rusted corrugated metal of the garage. It was entirely devoid of warmth.

“Oh, Jax,” Evelyn purred, turning on her heel and walking toward the trunk of her Maybach. “You are wonderful with a blunt instrument. But you don’t know the first thing about destroying a man like Richard.”

She popped the trunk of the luxury car. Instead of luggage, the entire back was retrofitted as a mobile command center. Multiple encrypted laptops were glowing in the dim light, cables running to a heavy-duty satellite uplink.

“Richard van der Woodsen is a paper tiger,” Evelyn said, her fingers flying rapidly across the keyboard of the primary laptop. “His entire real estate portfolio is leveraged against high-yield junk bonds. He’s been bleeding cash for three quarters, desperately trying to maintain the illusion of liquid wealth.”

She hit a few keys, and a massive web of financial data illuminated her face in the darkening courtyard.

“How do you know that?” I asked, taking a hesitant step toward her.

Evelyn looked up at me, that terrifying, predatory smile returning. “Because, sweetheart, my firm owns the holding company that quietly bought up sixty percent of his debt last month.”

A heavy silence fell over the fifty bikers. Even men who spent their lives breaking bones understood the absolute, world-ending power of what she had just said.

“You…” Jax started, his brow furrowing. “You own him?”

“I own him,” Evelyn confirmed, turning back to the screen. “I was planning to wait until the fourth quarter to liquidate his assets and strip his company for parts. It was just business. But now?”

She hit a button on the keyboard, bringing up a video feed. It was a live broadcast from a major financial news network.

“Now,” Evelyn whispered, her eyes glowing with absolute malice, “it’s personal.”

She picked up her phone and dialed a single digit. She put it on speakerphone, setting it on the edge of the trunk.

“Yes, Ms. Sterling?” a crisp, professional voice answered immediately.

“Marcus,” Evelyn said coolly. “Execute Protocol Lazarus on the van der Woodsen portfolio.”

There was a brief pause on the line. “Ma’am? We’re fully positioned, but a sudden margin call of that magnitude will trigger a catastrophic stock plummet. He won’t be able to cover. It will bankrupt him by tomorrow morning.”

“I am aware of what a margin call does, Marcus,” Evelyn replied, her voice dropping to a deadly, icy octave. “Call the loans. Freeze the auxiliary accounts. Dump the stock at ten percent below market value to trigger an algorithmic panic sell-off. I want his company entirely insolvent before the New York Stock Exchange opens tomorrow.”

“Understood, ma’am. Executing now.”

The line went dead.

Evelyn didn’t stop there. Her fingers flew across the keyboard again.

“Jax, you gave him a warning,” Evelyn said, not looking up from the glowing screens. “But billionaires don’t respect warnings from men in leather vests. Richard is currently sitting in his penthouse, on the phone with his lawyers, trying to figure out how to frame you for domestic terrorism. He thinks he can outspend you.”

She hit the enter key with a sharp, decisive clack.

“Let’s see how brave he is when his credit cards start declining.”

I stood there, mesmerized and terrified, as I watched my mother systematically dismantle a billionaire’s life with nothing but a wireless connection.

“What did you just do?” I asked, my voice trembling.

“I just seized the trust fund,” Evelyn said simply. She looked at me, her ice-blue eyes softening just a fraction. “Chloe van der Woodsen thinks she is untouchable because of the plastic card in her designer wallet. I just drained it. Every offshore account, every hidden shell company, every college endowment fund. It’s gone, Lily. Frozen under international financial investigation.”

Jax took a slow, deep breath, shaking his head. “You’re a monster, Evie.”

“I am exactly what the world requires me to be,” Evelyn shot back, slamming the trunk of the Maybach shut. She walked back over to Jax, stopping inches from his chest. “You taught her how to survive a fistfight, Jax. But she lives in a world where the real violence is done with fountain pens and NDAs. It’s time she learned how to fight back.”

Evelyn turned to me, holding out her hand.

“Lily,” she said softly. “Your father brought fifty men to your school today to show them who you belong to. Tomorrow, I’m going to show them who actually owns them.”

I looked at Jax. He looked exhausted, the weight of the day and the ghosts of his past finally catching up to him. But he gave me a slow, reassuring nod.

I reached out and took my mother’s hand. It was soft, manicured, but her grip was like iron.

“What happens tomorrow?” I asked, a new, dark kind of adrenaline replacing my fear.

“Tomorrow,” Evelyn smiled, a look that promised absolute, undeniable destruction. “We go back to Oakridge Academy. And we watch the van der Woodsen empire burn to the ground.”

Chapter 6

The next morning, the sun rose over the industrial south side, casting long, gritty shadows across the concrete courtyard of the Iron Hounds compound. But for the first time in my life, I wasn’t waking up to the smell of cheap coffee and engine degreaser.

I woke up to the hushed, frantic whispers of a hostile corporate takeover.

Evelyn hadn’t slept. She had spent the entire night in the back of her Maybach, flanked by two of my father’s most heavily armed men, orchestrating the absolute financial annihilation of Richard van der Woodsen. The glow of her encrypted laptops had been the only light in the garage, a modern-day war room where billions of dollars were being relocated, frozen, and weaponized.

I sat on the edge of my small, Spartan bed inside the clubhouse, staring at myself in the cracked mirror on the back of my door.

I didn’t look like the scholarship kid anymore.

Evelyn had a team arrive at 5:00 AM. They didn’t bring makeup to cover the bruised, jagged gash above my eyebrow—Evelyn had explicitly forbidden it. “Let them look at what they did,” she had said, her voice like cracking ice. “Let them stare at the physical proof of their own arrogance.”

Instead, they had brought clothes. I was no longer wearing the oversized, thrift-store uniform that Chloe had mocked. I was wearing a bespoke, perfectly tailored Oakridge blazer made from imported Italian wool, a crisp silk blouse, and designer loafers that cost more than my dad’s first motorcycle.

But I wasn’t just my mother’s daughter.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small, heavy piece of polished silver. It was a pin. The roaring wolf head of the Iron Hounds. I fastened it directly onto the lapel of my thousand-dollar blazer.

A knock on the doorframe broke my concentration.

Jax stood there, leaning against the wood. He wasn’t wearing his cut today. For the first time in years, he was wearing a suit. It wasn’t a sleek, Wall Street suit like Richard van der Woodsen’s. It was a heavy, broad-shouldered, charcoal suit that made him look like a mob enforcer stepping out of a prohibition-era nightmare. The tattoos crawling up his neck were still visible above his collar, a stark reminder that you can dress a wolf in wool, but it still has teeth.

“You look beautiful, kid,” Jax said softly, his dark eyes scanning the silver pin on my lapel. A fierce, proud smile touched his lips. “You ready for this?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, my stomach twisting into a tight knot. “What if he still has power? What if the police are waiting for us?”

Jax walked over and placed his heavy, calloused hands on my shoulders.

“The police work for whoever signs their checks, Lily,” Jax said, his voice a low, comforting rumble. “Yesterday, Richard was signing them. Today? Your mother bought the bank that holds the city’s pension fund. Trust me. Nobody is putting us in handcuffs today.”

We walked out into the courtyard.

The convoy was waiting. It was the most surreal, terrifying parade of power I had ever seen.

In the center sat Evelyn’s blacked-out Maybach, idling silently. Flanking the luxury vehicle on all sides were twenty Iron Hounds on their heaviest, loudest Harleys. Uncle Bear was at the front, revving his engine, his jagged scar twisting into a dark, anticipatory grin.

It was the ultimate synthesis of my dual bloodline. Absolute, untouchable corporate wealth shielded by raw, unfiltered street violence.

Evelyn was already in the back seat, typing furiously on her tablet. She wore a razor-sharp, pitch-black designer dress today, her blonde hair pulled back into a severe, unforgiving knot. She didn’t look like a mother dropping her kid off at high school. She looked like an executioner heading to the gallows.

Jax opened the heavy, armored door of the Maybach for me. I slid into the plush leather seat beside her. Jax shut the door, walked to his own custom Street Glide, and kicked it into gear.

“Are we ready?” Evelyn asked, not looking up from her screen.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Good,” she replied, finally locking her ice-blue eyes with mine. “Because the opening bell on Wall Street just rang. And Richard van der Woodsen is currently finding out that he no longer exists.”

The ride to Oakridge was a blur of adrenaline and anxiety.

As we approached the affluent, tree-lined streets of the suburb, the atmosphere shifted. People walking their purebred dogs stopped and stared. Commuters in their Teslas pulled over. The sheer noise of twenty heavy motorcycles escorting a diplomatic-level armored vehicle was deafening.

We pulled through the front gates of Oakridge Academy.

The wrought-iron gate that Jax had kicked down yesterday had been hastily replaced by a temporary chain-link fence. Two police cruisers were parked out front, their lights flashing lazily.

As our convoy rolled up the cobblestone driveway, the police officers stepped out of their vehicles, their hands hovering nervously over their duty belts. But they didn’t draw their weapons. They had clearly received the memo.

The bikes cut their engines. The silence that followed was heavy, pregnant with impending doom.

Evelyn stepped out of the Maybach first, her stiletto heels clicking sharply on the pavement. Jax dismounted his bike, adjusting his suit jacket, and walked over to my side, opening my door.

I stepped out.

The front courtyard was packed with students. Word had obviously spread. The children of the 1% were lined up along the walkways, their eyes wide, their phones out, recording every second of this impossible scene.

I kept my head high. I didn’t look at the ground. I didn’t hunch my shoulders. I let them see the silver wolf pin. I let them see the dark, ugly bruise on my forehead. I let them see that I wasn’t broken.

Evelyn didn’t wait. She marched up the marble stairs, right past the shattered, boarded-up main entrance, and into the grand foyer. Jax and I flanked her, with Uncle Bear and three other massive bikers trailing right behind us like a Praetorian Guard.

The hallway parted like the Red Sea. Teenagers who had spent the last six months mocking my shoes and my lunch now pressed themselves against the lockers, absolutely terrified to even make eye contact with my mother.

We walked straight to the administrative wing.

Principal Sterling’s office was at the end of a long, mahogany-paneled corridor. Through the thick glass of the door, I could already hear the screaming.

“I don’t care about the optics!” Richard van der Woodsen’s voice echoed through the wood. He sounded frantic, unhinged, entirely devoid of his usual aristocratic polish. “I want that biker arrested! I want him charged under the RICO act! I want that little trash scholarship girl expelled immediately!”

Evelyn didn’t bother knocking.

She reached out, turned the heavy brass doorknob, and pushed the door open.

Principal Sterling was cowering behind his massive desk, sweating profusely. Richard van der Woodsen was pacing the length of the expensive Persian rug, his face a blotchy, enraged red. Two of his corporate lawyers were sitting on the leather sofa, looking deeply uncomfortable.

Richard spun around as the door opened, his mouth falling open in shock.

“What the hell is this?!” Richard screamed, taking a step back as Jax’s massive, suited frame filled the doorway. “How did you get in here? Sterling, call the police right now! They are violating a restraining order!”

“There is no restraining order, Richard,” Evelyn said smoothly, stepping elegantly into the center of the room. “Because the judge you tried to bribe at 2:00 AM this morning works for a law firm that my holding company purchased three weeks ago. He politely declined your request.”

Richard froze. He blinked, finally looking away from Jax and focusing on the woman in the black dress. His brow furrowed in confusion, and then, a split second later, the color drained entirely from his face.

In the elite circles of global finance, Evelyn Vance wasn’t just a name. She was a natural disaster.

“Evelyn… Vance?” Richard breathed out, his voice suddenly sounding incredibly small, raspy with sudden, paralyzing fear. “What… what are you doing in this city?”

“I’m here for a parent-teacher conference,” Evelyn replied, her voice dripping with venomous sarcasm. She gestured gracefully toward me. “It seems my daughter had a slight disagreement with yours yesterday.”

Richard’s eyes darted to me, taking in my tailored suit, the silver wolf pin, and the bruised, battered face. His mind desperately tried to connect the dots between the gritty biker president he had threatened yesterday and the apex predator of Wall Street standing in front of him today.

“She’s… she’s your daughter?” Richard stammered, taking another step backward until the back of his knees hit the leather sofa. He looked at Jax, then at Evelyn. “That’s impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible when you have enough leverage, Richard,” Evelyn said calmly. She walked over to the principal’s desk, picked up a silver paperweight, and turned it over in her hands. “Now. Let’s talk about your expulsion request.”

“Look, Evelyn,” Richard started, his arrogance completely evaporating, replaced by the desperate, oily tone of a cornered salesman. “This is a massive misunderstanding. Teenage drama. Kids being kids. Chloe is high-strung, yes, but we can settle this. Name your price. I’ll write a check to the girl’s… to your daughter’s charity of choice.”

“Write a check?” Evelyn repeated, letting out a sharp, joyless laugh. She dropped the paperweight onto the desk with a heavy thud. “Richard, you couldn’t write a check for a cup of coffee right now.”

Richard forced a nervous chuckle. “I assure you, my liquidity is perfectly fine.”

“Is it?” Evelyn tilted her head, a shark smelling blood in the water. “Check your phone.”

As if on cue, the heavy, silence of the room was shattered by the buzzing of Richard’s smartphone in his breast pocket. He pulled it out with shaking hands. He looked at the screen, his face turning an ashen gray.

He answered it, pressing it to his ear.

“Yes?” Richard whispered.

I couldn’t hear the voice on the other end, but I watched a billionaire die in real-time.

Richard’s knees literally buckled. He collapsed onto the leather sofa, the phone slipping from his fingers to bounce onto the Persian rug. His mouth opened and closed silently, like a fish pulled out of the water.

“What is it, Richard?” Evelyn asked, her voice laced with mock concern. “Did your CFO just inform you that Vanguard Acquisitions executed a hostile margin call on your commercial real estate debt? Did he tell you that your stock plummeted forty percent in the first ten minutes of trading? Or did he tell you that the SEC just froze your auxiliary accounts pending an investigation into offshore embezzlement?”

The two corporate lawyers on the sofa looked at each other, sheer panic in their eyes. Without a word, they stood up, picked up their briefcases, and bolted out the door, abandoning their sinking ship.

“You… you ruined me,” Richard gasped, clutching his chest, his eyes wide with an absolute, world-shattering horror. “Over a high school fight?”

Jax took a slow, deliberate step forward, the floorboards groaning under his weight.

“It wasn’t a fight, Dick,” Jax growled, his voice vibrating with suppressed violence. “Your kid tried to break my daughter’s face. You tried to get my men shot. I told you there would be consequences.”

“But my company…” Richard sobbed, actually sobbing, a grown man broken down to his foundational greed. “My legacy. It’s gone. Everything is gone.”

“It’s not gone,” Evelyn corrected coldly. “I own it now. I own the buildings. I own the board seats. Hell, as of 8:00 AM this morning, I am the majority shareholder of the Oakridge Academy endowment fund.”

Principal Sterling squeaked, dropping his pen. He looked at Evelyn with the terrified reverence of a peasant looking at a conquering emperor.

“Which brings me to my terms,” Evelyn said, walking over to stand right in front of Richard. She looked down at him, entirely devoid of mercy.

Before she could finish, the heavy oak door of the office burst open again.

“Daddy!”

It was Chloe.

She looked frantic. Her perfectly styled blonde hair was a mess. She was holding a stack of pristine, black American Express cards in her shaking hands.

“Daddy, what is going on?!” Chloe shrieked, entirely oblivious to the tension in the room. “My cards are declining! All of them! And the valet outside said his manager told him to tow my G-Wagon! Fix it right now!”

She stormed into the room, finally looking up.

She froze.

She saw my father, the terrifying giant who had flipped her desk yesterday, standing there in a tailored suit. And then, she saw me.

She looked at my bruised face, and then down at my clothes. Her eyes widened in shock as her brain short-circuited trying to process why the poor scholarship rat was standing in the principal’s office looking like a young corporate executive.

“You…” Chloe stammered, pointing a shaking manicured finger at me. “What are you doing here? Daddy, get her out! She’s the one who brought those gang members here!”

Richard van der Woodsen didn’t yell. He didn’t demand action. He just sat on the couch, staring blankly at the floor, completely broken.

“Sit down, Chloe,” Evelyn commanded. Her voice was quiet, but it commanded an authority that made Chloe’s mouth snap shut instantly.

“Who are you?” Chloe demanded, though her voice wavered.

“I am Lily’s mother,” Evelyn said softly. “And I am the new owner of this school.”

Chloe’s jaw dropped. She looked at her father, waiting for him to object, waiting for him to laugh and throw these people out. But Richard just buried his face in his hands.

“No,” Chloe whispered, taking a step back. “No, that’s not true. My dad is on the board. We practically built this place.”

“Your father,” Evelyn corrected smoothly, “is currently insolvent. He is bankrupt. His assets are frozen, his properties are being liquidated, and his credit line is zero. By tomorrow, your house in the Hamptons will be padlocked by federal marshals.”

Chloe dropped the black credit cards. They scattered across the floor like useless pieces of plastic.

“You’re lying,” she gasped, tears welling up in her eyes. The reality of her sudden, violent plunge down the socioeconomic ladder was crashing over her.

“I don’t lie about money, little girl,” Evelyn said, her voice turning to pure ice. She turned to Principal Sterling. “Mr. Sterling. I have reviewed Chloe van der Woodsen’s academic file. It is abysmal. She is only enrolled here because her father bribed the admissions board with a new science wing.”

Principal Sterling swallowed hard, nodding rapidly. “Yes, ma’am. That… that is correct.”

“Expel her,” Evelyn ordered without missing a beat.

“What?!” Chloe screamed, her voice cracking. “You can’t do that!”

“Wait,” I said.

The room fell silent. Everyone turned to look at me. Evelyn raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. Jax looked at me, a hint of a proud smile on his face, waiting to see what I would do.

I took a slow step forward, closing the distance between me and the girl who had terrorized me for six months.

Chloe looked at me, her eyes red, her chest heaving. The sheer terror in her gaze was intoxicating, but I didn’t want to destroy her the way my mother destroyed companies. I wanted to teach her the lesson she had failed to learn yesterday.

“Don’t expel her,” I said to Principal Sterling, my voice steady, ringing clear in the quiet office.

“Lily, are you sure?” Evelyn asked softly. “I can erase her from this city.”

“I’m sure,” I replied, keeping my eyes locked on Chloe. “Expelling her is too easy. She goes somewhere else, she pretends it was a scandal, she plays the victim.”

I stopped right in front of Chloe. She was slightly taller than me, but right now, she looked like she was shrinking.

“She stays,” I said coldly. “But her father can’t afford the tuition anymore. Which means, if she wants to graduate, she’s going to have to apply for the low-income financial aid program. She’s going to have to wear the second-hand uniforms from the donation bin. She’s going to have to work three shifts a week in the cafeteria washing dishes to maintain her scholarship status.”

Chloe let out a choked sob, clapping a hand over her mouth. The idea of serving food to Sloane and Madison, of wearing thrifted clothes, was a fate worse than death for a girl whose entire identity was built on superiority.

“You…” Chloe whispered, tears streaming down her face. “You’re a monster.”

I reached up and gently touched the silver wolf pin on my lapel, right below the dark, angry bruise she had given me.

“No, Chloe,” I said, my voice dropping to a deadly, quiet whisper. “I’m a survivor. You spent six months throwing stones at me because you thought I was alone. You thought I was weak. But you didn’t realize that some of us don’t need our daddy’s credit cards to be strong. Some of us have teeth.”

I turned away from her, walking back to my parents.

“Are we done here?” I asked them.

Jax grinned, a wide, terrifyingly proud smile. He wrapped a massive, protective arm around my shoulders. “Yeah, kid. We’re done here.”

Evelyn nodded, picking up her designer clutch from the desk. She looked at Richard van der Woodsen one last time. “You have twenty-four hours to vacate the penthouse, Richard. My liquidators will be there tomorrow at noon to inventory the furniture.”

She didn’t wait for a response. She turned on her heel and walked out the door.

We walked back down the mahogany hallway, leaving the shattered remains of the van der Woodsen empire in the principal’s office. The students in the hallway parted again, their silence a testament to the absolute shift in power that had just occurred.

They knew, without a doubt, that the hierarchy of Oakridge Academy had been permanently rewritten.

We stepped out into the crisp morning air. The twenty Iron Hounds were still lined up, their engines rumbling low, waiting for their President.

I looked at Jax, my father, the gritty street king who would burn the world down with his bare hands to keep me safe. Then I looked at Evelyn, my mother, the corporate warlord who could erase a billionaire with a single phone call.

I was the daughter of the streets. I was the heir to an empire.

And as I slid into the back of the Maybach, watching Chloe van der Woodsen sobbing on the school steps through the tinted glass, I finally realized the truth.

I didn’t just belong here.

I owned the place.

THE END