Zara

Nearly a decade has passed since Zara last walked through the gates of the Hell's Riders. Daughter of the club's enforcer and blood tied to an Albanian mafia clan across the sea, she should have come home untouched by the world. Instead, she returns changed, carrying years no one can explain. No one knows where she has been or how she survived it, and Zara plans to keep it that way. Marked by scars she never explains and ghosts that refuse to loosen their grip, she comes back to Colorado determined to reclaim the life stolen from her without surrendering the pieces of herself she fought to keep.

Killian has spent those same years becoming exactly the man the Hell's Riders need at the top. Cold, precise, and brutally loyal, he stands as the club's vice president beneath his father's rule, carrying a reputation no one questions. He has his own ghosts and too much blood on his hands to still believe in innocence, but Zara has always been the one thing that fractures his control. She comes back sharper, wilder, and harder to hold, and every part of him that should know better still turns toward her. As old loyalties strain and buried truths begin to surface, Zara and Killian are forced to face a love shaped by everything the world made them become.

"I've spent half my life watching you leave," I murmured.

Her eyes stayed on mine.

"Albania. Texas. Every fucking place that took you somewhere I couldn't follow."

Her throat moved.

The scar across her cheek. The exhaustion around her eyes. The woman she had become while I had spent years searching.

"Every time you came back, I remember thinking you'd somehow gotten more beautiful while I wasn't there to see it happen."

Her bottom lip trembled harder.

A tear gathered along her pretty lashes.

I hated it. Because I had missed enough of her tears already.

My hands tightened slightly around her waist, still careful, still nowhere near the damaged skin.

"And this time is no different, Flower."