Chapter 32 #2
The USB sat in my palm like a brand—hot, permanent, and impossible to ignore. Iron had already told me it was going to change everything, and I didn’t doubt that. I just didn’t know if I was ready for what was to come.
I sat there alone, the silence pressing in. Somewhere behind it, I could still hear Logan’s laugh. My father’s slurred rants. The lies we used to tell ourselves about family. Ghosts. Every one of them.
When I knew I wouldn’t be disturbed by any wandering eyes or ears, I darted to my office and flipped open my laptop, dropping into my chair behind the desk. The old leather creaked, too loud, in the quiet of the room. My movements barely registered, running on muscle memory.
Every sound blurred into static as quiet panic settled into my bones. Hands shaking, I shoved the USB into the socket on the side of the device and waited for the files to load.
I wasn’t about to hand this shit over to Sadie without knowing what was on it first. She deserved the truth, but at what cost? Her fucking sanity? Over my dead body.
The files—or file—loaded up. Just one video.
I swallowed over the lump lodged in my throat and clicked on the grainy still-image.
It flickered to life, the images blurry at first before the camera zoomed in and the image cleared up.
The video had been taken outside of what looked like a farm shed, like the ones at Hollow Creek Farm.
At first, there was only a muffled static, then distant voices before two people came into view.
I leaned forward, squinting. “No. No fucking way,” I muttered. “What the hell was Patricia up to?”
Patricia Cooper, Sadie’s mother is the one I recognised. The other? No fucking idea. What I did know was that he was wearing club colours. Not the Ridge Riders colours— a rival club.
My heart set a fast pace in my chest. I didn’t want to believe what I was watching, but there I was, struggling for breath, and any fucking sense as to what the hell had happened.
I guessed the video had been shot just before her death. The scene dragged on in slow motion as the stillness pressed in from all sides, a silence too thick for what I was witnessing.
The man stepped between Patricia’s legs, close—too fucking close considering she had been a married woman—and she threw her head back, laughing like she wasn’t burning everything else down around her. But more importantly, was the way he had his hands on her waist and his lips against her neck.
She didn’t know she was being filmed. If she had, I wouldn’t have been watching at that moment. Had she even realised she was about to blow up the only life Sadie had known?
The image stuttered, focus scrambling. But it was too late. I’d seen it. Every fucking second of it. The way she touched his face. The way they kissed like they were the only two people alive. They were almost too happy. Too in love. Sickeningly so.
My eyes burned as the footage played out in front of me—a past that was now haunting my present, my future. Sadie’s too.
Patricia had been cheating on John. She had a whole other life. A secret one. One that didn’t involve Sadie. And what the fuck had she been doing sleeping around with a member from a rival club?
The longer I stared at the screen, the more the pieces began falling into place. And the darker and more fucked up the image became.
We knew from our half-arsed attempt at digging into Patricia’s notebooks, her last days had been filled with investigating the mayor, the Ridge Riders.
But for what? For that fucking arsehole slobbering all over her like a goddamn dog to gain the upper hand?
Had she sold out her own town to a rival club? Or was this something else entirely?
The camera shifted, as though the person holding it was settling in, getting comfortable. On screen, motorbikes rumbled in the distance.
Then came a voice from behind the camera. “Shit. This isn’t good.”
Those four words sucked all the air from my lungs until I was barely breathing at all. I didn’t move. Didn’t blink. The breath in my chest went stale. That voice had haunted my memories, my nightmares, and my waking hours for the past six years.
At that moment, everything else ceased to exist except for the incessant voice in my head reminding me that no matter how much I had tried to escape my past, it was always going to come back to drown me.
My brother . . . I knew it was him behind the camera, the way you know yourself in a mirror.
He’d been the one to film whatever the fuck happened that night.
I hadn’t heard his voice in years, but it still sounded like failure.
Like I should’ve done more. It was practically screaming at me from the past.
I shoved the laptop away and shot to my feet, yanking at my hair.
My heart pounded. My chest ached.
I couldn’t shake the sense that what Logan had witnessed back then—whatever was about to play out on the screen—might have been the reason he was no longer with me.
My head spun, demanding answers I couldn’t begin to fathom.
What the fuck had my brother gotten himself into? And what did Patricia have to do with it? Had I been right all along, and Logan had been working for the club? Following Sadie’s mum? For Iron? For our old man? Fucking who ?
The questions landed hard—sharp, final.
Everyone had been lying to me. My stomach twisted with all of it. But worst of all was that the truth was staring me straight in the face.
All the evidence was right there, every pixel pointing to Logan and the shit he’d managed to bury himself under.
I braced myself, knowing that whatever was on the damn USB, I had to see it through to the end. I dropped back into the chair and scrubbed my hands over my face, like I was preparing myself for the blow that was about to obliterate me.
The rumble of bikes grew louder on the video. That sound had always meant freedom to me. For my brother, it had been a death sentence.
As the steady revs of the bikes’ engines came to a grinding halt, Patricia and her lover exchanged looks, their panic almost palpable, even through the screen. They moved quickly, pulling themselves together, adjusting their clothing and appearances. Clearly their visitors were unexpected.
My focus stayed glued to the screen, the ground beneath me tilting and shifting until all that surrounded me was Patricia’s fear and the sound of my brother’s heavy breathing.
Disembodied voices blended together, but Logan’s breathing cut through it all—jagged, shallow, like he couldn’t suck in enough air.
I could barely see past my fear, my panic.
All I wanted to do was reach through the fucking screen and pull my brother free, to wrap him in my arms and tell him how sorry I was I hadn’t been there for him when he needed me the most. This was my version of hell, but it was only then I realised I’d been burning right alongside the secrets this town had been adding as fuel.
The crunch of gravel under boots echoed through the speakers, growing louder by the second. Then two men appeared, hovering at the edge of the screen. Ridge Riders patches. My fucking club. My family.
What the hell had they been doing there? Still, their faces remained vague. Men from my father’s time, not mine.
Patricia tensed, and the man with her did, too. He barely shielded her, the cut on his back unworthy of such a spineless bastard. If he loved her—truly loved her—he’d have made sure she was less of a target than he was. Yet, he used Patricia as his own personal bodyguard.
She stepped forward, hand outstretched and trembling as she handed an envelope to one of the Riders. He snatched it from her with a grunt and handed it off to someone else off screen.
“This it?” That voice—rough, cocky, familiar. Fucking Iron.
The camera shifted again, the image blurring as Logan had moved into a better position. But what I would have liked was for him not to have been there at all.
The voices remained muffled, but Logan’s breath wasn’t. It came out in ragged bursts as he hid in his spot, witnessing everything that was unseen outside the scope of the camera.
Another figure stepped into view then. Snake. Of course he had been there with that wild, unhinged glint in his eye. A younger version of the crazed arsehole I knew all too well. A fourth stepped in, right at the video’s edge. But I saw enough of him to know who it was.
Troy Knight—my fucking father.
The entire thing was turning into a goddamn family reunion, only without the love.
Even from behind the camera, Logan’s shock was palpable. “Shit,” he mumbled, his voice low, trembling. “Dad? What—what the hell is he doing here? ”
The camera zoomed in just as Snake pulled a gun out from under his leather cut and held it to Patricia’s head.
Jesus fucking Christ. That was how she’d died. The car accident had been a front, a cover up to keep the Ridge Riders on top, and everyone else fearing their wrath. The same as it had always been.
On screen, Patricia threw her hands up, the shock and fear on her face undeniable, even in the dim light of the bulb flickering overhead. “Please,” she said, shaking her head wildly, the desperation in her voice slicing me open. “I’ll stop. I’ll stop investigating.”
Stifling heat burned through me. There was nothing left inside me but smoke. My breathing ramped up, but I couldn’t look away as the screen glowed in the darkness of my office.
I owed it to Patricia—to Logan—to see this through.
Iron stepped forward, his face cutting through the haze of the video.
“This isn’t about that.” He sniffed. “Well . . . not really.” My lungs seized up.
Logan must’ve felt that same sense of panic back then, watching from where he was, knowing he couldn’t do a damn thing about any of it.
“A little birdie told us you’d be here tonight.
” He motioned for someone off screen. “Come on out, John.”
John? John Cooper?
I scrubbed my hands over my face. I must have heard wrong.
The video blurred again. I couldn’t tell if the blur came from the camera. Or from me. My head was spinning with the sound of Sadie’s father’s name exploding in my skull. I leaned closer to the screen just as John appeared, stepping up beside Iron.
“John?” Patricia’s voice wavered, trembling as much as the camera in Logan’s hand. “What have you done?”
Some part of me wanted to turn it off, but I couldn’t. I could only watch as all the truth bled through the screen and begged me to drown in it.
“Me?” John took a step toward her, toward the man who was fucking his wife.
The betrayal was written all over his face, like a tattoo of grief and guilt and every sin he’d buried.
He jabbed a finger in the air. “What have you done?” His hands shook, violence barely contained.
I didn’t know if it was anger or something else, didn’t know if anything made sense anymore.
“Cheating on me with this piece of shit.” His voice grew louder, but no-one stepped in.
They all just watched on with quiet amusement as he moved closer.
“Betraying everything I’ve bled to keep buried—your investigation, the mayor, the drugs, all of it.
You cracked the dam wide open, Patricia.
And now you’re going to know what the other end of defeat looks like. ”
“Jesus Christ, John,” Patricia said, scoffing.
“Look at you.” She pinned all of them with a panicked glare.
“You’re as corrupt as they come. I’m the one trying to save this town, not you.
” The words were more for herself than for anyone else.
It didn’t matter. They fell on deaf ears, anyway.
“You want Sadie growing up in this? With a father who just fucking stands by?”
John laughed, the sound hollow as it echoed through the laptop speakers.
“You don’t even look at our daughter. Not anymore.
Too busy fucking your boyfriend to notice she even exists.
” He didn’t care that they were all watching, didn’t have a conscience to gnaw at him like Patricia thought he did.
“When was the last time you had a conversation with her, Patricia?”
She stumbled back like the words had knocked the air from her lungs. Her hand flew to her mouth as tears spilled over. Sadie was so much like her mother—beautiful, stubborn, and always getting herself into situations that could have gotten her killed.
“This isn’t just about me,” she whispered. “It’s for her. For you , John. I’m trying to protect our daughter—don’t you see that?”
My head spun. Her words hadn’t mattered. Not to John. Not to any of them. They had seen her as another obstacle that needed to be dealt with, the only way they knew how.
John shook his head, his expression cold and unforgiving.
“No Patricia, you’re doing this for yourself,” he said, his voice sharp with accusation.
“You don’t think I know what you’ve been doing?
You want the Ridge Riders gone, so this piece of shit”—he waved a hand at the man beside her—“can swoop on in and take their place. I won’t let that happen. It ends now.”
In an instant, he stepped back, distancing himself from the stain of it all, and Snake stepped forward. Another Rider, one I didn’t recognise, joined him, holding a gun to Patricia’s lover’s head. That arsehole didn’t even flinch, didn’t even try to protect her.
My hands fisted on the desk, my heart lodging in my throat.
“You sure you want to do this, John?” Iron said, glancing over his shoulder like he couldn’t believe how far John was willing to go.
“Get it over with,” John muttered, already turning his back as he shook his head.
“Fuck. Oh god—fuck.” Logan’s muffled sob cut through the noise in my head.
That is the reason he had killed himself. He’d witnessed his best friend’s mother’s murder. And her father had been the reason.
“As you wish,” Iron said, waving a dismissive hand.
The words echoed in my mind like a death sentence.
Almost simultaneously, the gunshots rang out, the sound like a thunderclap inside my skull. The laptop vibrated on the desk, the screen glowing with the aftermath. Patricia cried out, then her body slumped to the ground, followed by the man behind her.
“Fuck!” I slammed the laptop shut, and pushed away from the desk, heart racing.
My breathing came out in short, sharp pants as I paced, tugging at my hair like it could somehow erase what I’d just witnessed.
How the fuck was I supposed to tell Sadie her father had her mother murdered, then made it look like a fucking accident?
I bent over, hands on my knees as I sucked in warm air, the walls closing in on me. “Oh, God. What—what the fuck.” I swallowed down the bile rising into my throat.
Christ. John had killed his wife. But worse—Logan knew. My brother fucking knew and said nothing.
My entire body locked up.
Sadie.
She was with John.
I’d failed her again.