Chapter 7
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— Colt —
Glitch had been at it for hours. The rest of us had come and gone—eating, drinking, trying to pretend like everything was normal—but he’d stayed glued to his laptop, digging deeper and deeper into the past I thought I understood.
When he finally looked up, his eyes went straight to Dutch. “Call a meeting.”
Now we were all at the table—Dutch at the head, Indira beside him, Holden and Handful opposite me, Glitch standing at the other end with his laptop connected to the big screen we used for planning operations.
“Your story doesn’t add up,” he said.
“What do you mean it doesn’t add up?” I asked.
“I mean everything your Death’s Head brothers told you was a lie.” Glitch pulled up a document on the screen. “You said Lilac was having an affair, right? That your brothers had proof she was seeing someone else?”
“That’s what they told me. Said they’d seen her with him. Multiple times.”
“Then where is he?” Glitch pulled up screen after screen—phone records, credit card statements, social media archives, witness statements.
“I’ve gone through every piece of Lilac’s life from that time period.
Every call, every text, every transaction, every movement I can track.
There’s no other man, Colt. No secret meetings, no mysterious phone numbers, no unexplained absences.
She went to work, she came home to your apartment, she went to the grocery store. That’s it.”
I stared at the data scrolling across the screen. “They could have met somewhere that didn’t leave a trail—”
“Not in this day and age.” Glitch shook his head. “Everyone leaves a digital footprint. Security cameras, transactions, cell tower pings. I found nothing. The only man in Lilac’s life was you.”
The words hung in the air. Indira leaned forward, studying the screens.
“But Scar showed me photos.” The words came out rough. “Lilac with another man. They had timestamps, locations—”
“Yeah, about those photos.” Glitch’s expression darkened. He pulled up a series of images on the big screen, and suddenly they were there—unavoidable, the images that had destroyed my world blown up for everyone to see.
Lilac. Smiling at a man in a coffee shop. Lilac, walking next to him on a street. Lilac, standing close to him outside what looked like a motel.
It hit me. Even knowing something was wrong, seeing them hurt.
“Look at this one first.” Glitch zoomed in on the coffee shop photo. “See the timestamp? Now look at this.” He pulled up another screen—a work schedule. “This is Lilac’s shift schedule from her job. She was at work when this photo was supposedly taken.”
He moved to the next image. “This one, outside the motel. See the problem?” He zoomed in on the background. “That’s a Starbucks logo. This specific design was only used in Japan. This photo couldn’t have been taken in Texas.”
My mouth went dry.
“And this one—” Glitch enhanced the street photo, zooming in on Lilac’s face.
“Look at the edge of her hair here. See how it’s slightly blurred, how there’s a faint halo effect?
That’s a classic sign of photo manipulation.
Someone cut her from one image and pasted her into another.
The lighting on her face doesn’t match the lighting on the street—it’s off by about fifteen degrees.
And look at the shadow angle compared to the man’s shadow. They’re not consistent.”
He pulled up more screens, lines of metadata scrolling past. “I ran these through forensic analysis software. Every single photo has been doctored. Some are composite images—Lilac from one photo, the man from another, the background from a third. Some have edited timestamps. And this man—” He zoomed in on the guy’s face.
“I ran facial recognition. His photo is from a stock photo library. Death’s Head paid for access to his images just hours before these photos were shown to you. ”
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t process what I was seeing.
“Fuck.” Dutch’s voice was hard. “They fabricated evidence?”
“They didn’t just fabricate it, they did it badly.
” Glitch’s jaw was tight. “Anyone with basic photo forensics training could have spotted these fakes. The metadata is sloppy, the compositing is amateur hour, the timestamps are internally inconsistent. They didn’t think you’d ever question it. They didn’t think you’d ever check.”
He was right. I hadn’t questioned. I hadn’t checked. I’d looked at those photos and I’d believed, because why would my brothers lie? Why would Scar hand me an envelope full of fabricated evidence and look me in the eye with pity?
“The lies didn’t stop there.” Glitch pulled up another document. “The divorce papers. You said Lilac signed them, right? Agreed to the divorce without contest?”
“That’s what the lawyer said.”
“Here’s the thing.” Glitch zoomed in on a signature. “This is the signature on the divorce papers. And this—” He pulled up another document. “—is Lilac’s actual signature from her employment records at the time. Look at the L, the way the loop is formed. Look at the C at the end.”
I squinted at the screen. They looked different. The divorce signature was shaky, uncertain. The employment signature was bold and confident.
“They’re not even close,” Indira said. “That’s a clear forgery.”
“Why would they forge—”
“And the money.” Glitch pulled up another screen—bank records this time. “You said Lilac cleaned out your joint account, right? That she took everything before she ran?”
“I saw it myself.” My voice sounded hollow even to my own ears. “Logged in, account was empty. My brothers gave me the cash to replace it. Said it was the least they could do after what she’d done.”
“Look at the timeline.” Glitch pointed to a series of transactions.
“The money wasn’t touched until the day after Lilac supposedly left.
It was transferred to a Death’s Head MC account—” He highlighted the line.
“—and then four days later, the exact same amount was deposited into your personal account.”
I stared at the numbers. The dates. The account names.
They’d taken the money themselves. Moved it around to make it look like Lilac had stolen it, then “generously” replaced what she’d supposedly taken. All part of the story. All part of the lie.
“Jesus Christ,” Dutch muttered.
“It gets worse.” Glitch’s voice was grim as he pulled up another screen. “I dug into medical records from that time period. Lilac was admitted to a hospital two days before you got back from that club run. Emergency room visit—she’d fainted at work. They ran tests.”
My heart was pounding. “What? Why?”
“Pregnancy confirmation.” Glitch met my eyes. “She was eight weeks along with twins. The records are right there.”
The room tilted. Eight weeks. My mind raced backward, counting. Eight weeks before she disappeared would have been… late September. Right after I’d gotten back from the run to El Paso.
The memory slammed into me like a freight train.
Five days on the road, missing her like crazy.
Walking through our apartment door to find her waiting for me in nothing but one of my t-shirts, that shy smile on her face that always undid me.
I’d barely made it past the threshold before I had her pressed against the wall, her legs wrapped around my waist, her fingers digging into my shoulders as she gasped my name.
We hadn’t made it to the bedroom that first time. Or the second. By the third, we’d at least gotten as far as the couch, her body arched beneath mine, my name falling from her lips repeatedly.
“I missed you so much, Colt. Don’t ever leave me again.”
“Never, baby. I’m never leaving you.”
I’d meant it at the time. God help me, I’d meant every word. Until the next run had come around and Prez had insisted I go. It was the life. It was only a few days. Lilac would be at work. So I’d gone.
“Look at the record.” Glitch zoomed in on the hospital document. “Attending physician: Dr. Don French. Ring any bells?”
Yeah, I knew that name. Don French. Doc French.
Doc. The Death’s Head brother who handled all the club’s medical needs—the one who’d patched me up after more bar fights than I could count.
The one who’d been at the clubhouse that night, who’d helped calm me down after Scar told me the story about Lilac running off.
He’d known. He’d examined her, confirmed her pregnancy, and then he’d helped cover up whatever happened.
“And here.” Glitch pointed to another field on the screen. “Father’s name, as reported by the patient: Cliff Spencer.”
My name.
The room spun. No affair. No other man. Just Lilac, pregnant with twins, eight weeks after our last reunion. Lilac, who’d listed me as the father because I was the father. I was the only man she’d been with.
Those boys with green eyes and stubborn jaws—
“They’re mine.” The words came out strangled. “Those boys are mine.”
“Your brothers lied about everything.” Glitch’s voice was flat. “The affair that never happened. The money she never took. The divorce papers she never signed. And Doc French knew she was pregnant with your kids. I’d bet my cut your whole club knew the whole goddamn time.”
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.
Somewhere in those desperate, hungry hours of reunion, we’d made two sons who didn’t know their father existed.
And my brothers had known. They’d looked me in the eye and told me she’d betrayed me, that she’d run off with another man.
They’d known it was all a lie.
“But why?” Dutch asked, his voice hard. “Why would Death’s Head lie about this? Why would they forge divorce papers and tell Colt his wife cheated?”
“That’s what I’m still trying to figure out.” Glitch started to say more, but Holden’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it and frowned.
“Prospect at the gate,” Holden said. “Says there’s an old woman and two men demanding to see Colt. Woman’s name is Betty. She’s a retired nurse. One man’s Graham, the other gave his name as Bernard Mischewski. Retired lawyer.”