Claimed By The Iron Reaper’s Son

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Ava’s pov

The terrible words stayed in the air like a heavy death sentence.

For one long second, everything in the big room completely froze. My father’s desperate offer kept echoing inside my head—You can take my daughter, Ava Wang—and all I could do was stare down at him. A horrible mix of deep betrayal and pure terror twisted together inside my chest. It grew so tight that I could not get any air into my lungs.

“No,” I choked out. I started yanking my body back, trying to break away from the giant guard’s iron grip on my upper arm. “Dad, what the hell are you saying? You cannot do this! You cannot just give me away!”

But he would not look up at me. His head stayed bowed down toward the dirty concrete floor. His shoulders were shaking up and down as he cried big, messy tears. He had just thrown me straight to the wolves to save his own skin, and he was too much of a coward to face me.

Stone Callahan’s cold eyes slid over to me very slowly. He looked me up and down, checking me out to see what I was worth. His mean face did not soften even a little bit.

“Interesting offer,” Stone said in a flat, uncaring voice. “A young girl like you might actually be pretty useful behind the bar at our place. You can keep the drinks flowing for the men. You can keep the boys in line. You can work hard to pay off your old man’s big debt.”

“I am not a part of this!” My voice cracked loudly. It sounded high, sharp, and frantic with fear. I twisted my body even harder, trying to pull away from the guard. Panic flooded through every single nerve in my skin. “Please, listen to me! I had nothing to do with his gambling problem! I did not play those cards! I will help pay what I can from my own money, but you cannot just take my body. This is completely insane. This is k********g!”

Jake rose up to his full height. He stopped crouching and stood tall, looking incredibly big, powerful, and imposing under the dim light. Those stormy gray eyes locked right onto my face. For the very first time, I felt the full, heavy weight of his attention.

It felt exactly like being pinned down by a wild predator in the woods—it was intense, unflinching, and far too focused. Even though I was shaking with terror, a strange, sudden heat crawled right up my neck because of the way he looked at me.

“You heard your father,” Jake said. His voice was a low, gravelly rumble. “He made the deal to save his neck. The debt is fifty thousand dollars. You work it off at our clubhouse, or we finish this whole thing the old way.” He jerked his chin down toward my dad, who was still on his knees on the floor, crying and sniveling like a baby.

I shook my head from side to side violently. Hot tears spilled over my eyelids and ran down my cheeks. “Please… Mr. Callahan—Stone—please do not do this to me. I have a real life. I have a job. I am just a student trying to finish my college degree and take care of him. I will find another way to get your money, I swear. I will take out bank loans, I will work extra shifts at work, I will do anything. Just let me go home tonight. Do not take me.”

The giant guard who was holding my arm let out a dark, mean chuckle right behind my ear. Stone merely raised one thick eyebrow. He did not look impressed by my tears at all.

“It is way too late for negotiations, sweetheart,” Stone said, waving his hand. “Your old man already sealed the deal. You belong to the Iron Reapers now until that big debt is completely cleared. Honestly, you should consider it a mercy. Most men who owe us money do not get any options at all. They just die.”

“No!” I begged. My voice rose up into a loud, desperate shout. I lunged my body forward toward my father, but the big guard roughly hauled me right back against his chest. “Dad, tell them you didn’t mean it! Look at me! Tell them to stop!”

But my father stayed completely silent. He remained broken, small, and cowardly on the cold floor. He would not even raise his eyes to meet mine.

Jake stepped closer to me. He moved so near that I could smell him. I caught the strong scent of dark leather, wood smoke, and something else—something deeper and more dangerous. His massive, muscular frame blocked out almost all the light from the swinging bulb.

“Save your breath, Ava,” he murmured very quietly. His voice was almost too low for the other bikers in the room to hear. There was something strange in his tone. It sounded like a warning mixed with something much heavier that I could not understand. “Fighting against us will only make this whole thing much harder on you.”

I kept pleading anyway. The words just came tumbling out of my mouth in a wild, fast rush. “I will pay you double the money if I have to! Just give me some time to get it. Please do not do this to me. I am not like you people. I cannot live in some… some clubhouse with criminals. Please, let me go!”

Stone did not listen. He just nodded his head once to the giant guard holding my arm. “Take her to the clubhouse right now. Put her right behind the bar tonight. She starts working immediately. Fifty grand does not pay itself off.”

The guard's strong hands began dragging my body backward across the floor toward the metal door. I dug the heels of my shoes into the hard concrete, scratching the floor and thrashing my body wildly from side to side. “Stop it! Let me go! You cannot do this to me!”

But they could. And they did.

As they pulled me out of the warehouse and into the dark night air, the very last thing I saw through the doorway was my father. He was still kneeling there on the floor, alive and safe because he had traded his own daughter away.

Jake stood by the door and watched me go with those intense, stormy gray eyes. His jaw was set tight, like he was already calculating exactly what having me around the clubhouse was going to cost him.

The heavy iron door slammed shut with a loud, booming sound, instantly cutting off the noise of my father’s weak sobs.

And just like that, I belonged to them.