J-twenty-two is the apartment number. As I near it, I hear “Last Resort” by Papa Roach coming from behind the door. Dana always plays that song when she’s feeling particularly low. If those two things aren’t the mother of all bad omens then I don’t know what is. The lyrics slice like razor blades crisscrossing over my heart, cutting deeper as each word penetrates.

For thirty-seven days, I’ve been a dead man walking. My sanity hanging by a thread. A thread that’s been thinned with each passing day. I can’t eat. Can’t sleep. Can’t think of anything but finding her. I’ve gone from bar to bar. Searched every goddamn dive and drug house. Trolled central. Cap even promised a marker to the 13 Ds if they helped us find her. We bled every one of our contacts dry and they in turn bled theirs.

Daily, I concocted scenarios in my head. Where she was. What was happening to her. Maybe she hadn’t left me. Maybe she’d been taken. Maybe she was being held somewhere by someone who had a beef with the club. Maybe she’d checked herself into rehab. But fuck. I’d checked all of those too.

Hearing the song, and seeing the apartment number that eerily reminds me of my tattoo, is all it takes for me to know . . . know that today is the last day I search for her. I glance back to Cap. We lock eyes. I see he knows it too. My life will forever be changed after this day.

It takes two kicks to bust the door in. What I see when the door opens has my entire body shaking with rage. Naked bodies. Drugs. A fuckin’ brick of coke, only half of it left, and lines cut on a glass table waiting to be snorted. The place fuckin’ reeks of reefer, sex, old food, and sweat. The boys flood in behind me. They easily subdue the two men and a whore who starts screaming at us to get the fuck out.

With ice in my veins, I turn over passed out junkies and inspect each one. The skin and hair color aren’t familiar, but I still examined every female. She could have tanned, or died her red hair back to its natural color or something else.

The junkies grumble and moan as I move them. I slap a few awake and yell questions at them, like where’s Dana? Is she here? Have you seen her? A redhead? A goddamn white skinned redhead . . . have you seen her?

But they’re useless. Zoned out. Lifeless zombies. The lot of ’em.

My heart soars when I realize I’ve searched everyone and she’s not here.

Cap snatches up the brick and orders D to flush the shit. Cap’s not a fan of drugs either. He lost his only blood brother to heroine. It’s the why behind him stepping down as VP of the Greenbacks, and him and Griz starting the HOCs. He was done smuggling that shit into our borders for the cartel. He’d already lost more brothers as a Greenback dealing drugs, than he ever lost in Nam, and w hen he couldn’t convince Pappy to steer the club to a new course, he left. And Griz left with him.

“Mav.” Goose calls my name from down the hallway and the sick feeling permanently residing in my gut crashes up like a tidal wave against the walls of my stomach. I enter the hallway. Goose stops me by putting his hand on my shoulder. His eyes close and he slowly shakes his head. “I’m sorry, brother.” He squeezes my shoulder hard.

My body is a bomb . . . ticking . . . fucking . . . ticking.

My skin itches like it wants to detach and float away.

A barbwire coils around my heart, becomes hot, like it’s been lying in the pits of hell and it shreds my heart in as many seconds as it takes for me to understand what his apology means. His pain is my pain. Mine . . . his. Every muscle in my face constricts and my teeth crack from the force I’m using to hold it together. I will not let the moisture rising behind my eyes push forward. . . .

She’s in the third room on the right. And she’s not alone. Some dark-skinned fat fuck is lying naked beside her. She’s on the bed, passed out, wearing only a dirty midriff. Everything else is visible. Her red hair has blonde roots, and the ends are almost crimson with sweat and grease. She’s thin. Too thin. Her stomach is too flat. Where there should be a baby bump, there’s not one. And I know. Know what she’s done whether intentional or not.

It’s gone. She’s gone. She never even gave her a chance.

Everything I wanted. Everything I’d planned for us burns to ashes before my eyes.

I pull out my piece from its holster. Arms—it feels like a million of them—grab at me and there’s a shit ton of shouting. My brothers drag me from the room as I do my best to fight while at the same time I try to get a clear shot at her. I never do.

Someone needs to pay though.

Cap must recognize my need for vengeance because he throws a man to his knees before me and mouths two words. “The dealer.” The arms around me disappear as I leap forward gun in hand.

Shooting him would be too quick. Too painless. Too easy. So I use the butt of the gun to beat his face into a puddle of flesh, blood, and broken bones.

I don’t regret killing the dealer. What I regret from that night is not taking the life of the woman who took the life of my child from me.

She was always weak. I knew it from the day we met. But I still gave her something precious to carry. To protect. I gave her my trust too. I believed her when she promised to stay clean and that she’d do the right thing.

But just like Doll, she lied to my fucking face.

I kick once, and Dozer’s door flies back and hits the wall. I don’t have my gun, but I have my knife. I pull it from its sheath as I bear down on her. She’s in the middle of the bed, her red hair fanned out behind her. Her eyes are wide. She’s propped up on her elbows and when her eyes lock with mine, her hand comes up to ward me off as she scrambles backward.

I pin her to the bed. Straddle her legs, hold down her arms with one hand above her head, and I press my blade into her neck.

“Mav, stop!” she screams. Her clear blue-green eyes flood with fear.

I snarl, “You fuckin’ swore you weren’t a junkie.” I punctuate each word by inching the blade deeper into her skin. “Said you were clean. But you were takin’ a hit when you went to the bathroom, not cleanin’ shit up. You lied to us. Lied to me.”

“No! I didn’t.”

“I can’t fuckin’ believe it. You’re just like her.”

“I’m not,” she whispers. Then again louder. “I’m not like Dana. You’ve been drinkin’ and you’re not—”

“She saw you!”

“Who?”

“Lita saw you snortin’ coke in the bathroom!”

She struggles under my grip and she snaps, “Look at me!” A desperate demand. “Do I look like I’m high? I mean it. Really look at me and this time see me and not her.”

“I’m looking at you!” I growl.

“Are you? Really? Because I didn’t lie to you. And I’m sick of you looking at me and seeing me for something I’m not. I’m not a junkie or a liar or your ex.” She raises her head up and gets closer to my face. By doing so, she digs the knife deeper into her neck and something inside me snaps as I watch blood droplets slide down her skin.

The light from the doorway mixes with the moonlight, both are illuminating her face and reflecting off her clear, and undilated eyes.

As it all starts to sink it, I grate out, “Lita said you were the only one she saw exit the bathroom after that.”

“Well, then she didn’t see the girl come out as I went in, did she? The one who was wiping her goddamn nose!” More blood leaks down her neck and onto the white sheet below her. “Get off me!”

I study her. She was asleep before I came in. Something she wouldn’t be if she was high on coke. “Why were you nervous then? Why throw the game and leave? Why were you in the bathroom so long?”