Marcus "Tank" Reyes is forty-seven, a twenty-year veteran now serving as vice president of the Ironclad Saints, and he has kept every attachment at a distance since an extraction six years ago killed his best friend.
He lives by a single rule until he gives nurse Lexie Holloway his real name instead of the club name Tank: never get close enough that losing someone could break him again.
Lexie is twenty-nine, curvy and capable, a nurse who has quietly patched up half the club for two years without asking for anything, finished with being the reliable sister nobody chooses and looking to be wanted rather than rescued.
Eighteen years separate them, and Tank treats that gap as reason enough to stay away even when his own instincts and the club around him pull him closer.
Then Ortiz, a Vultures lieutenant running prescription drugs across three counties, realizes Lexie matters to Tank and turns her into a lever with a break-in, a warning, and a target on her back.
Tank moves her in under the excuse of protection, prepared to raze the county rather than lose another person he cannot afford to love, if he can admit that is what she is before Ortiz forces his hand.
