Chapter 2 #5
Above us, voices rose. Doc barking orders. Regan fussing. Edge demanding answers nobody had yet. Women moving fast. Water running. Someone crying softly and trying not to be heard.
Then Edge came back down.
Not all the way.
Just to the middle landing.
His face had changed. The terror was locked down now, shoved behind something colder. The father was still there, but the president had taken the wheel.
“Lock it down,” he said.
The room snapped to attention.
I had been in clubhouses across three states. I had seen presidents speak, sergeants roar, enforcers threaten, and old-timers command without moving from their chairs.
But Edge didn’t raise his voice.
He didn’t need to.
“Gates shut. No one in or out without my say. Bullet, get eyes on every road between here and that party. River, I want names. Every kid there. Every parent. Every cop who answers that call. Cal, call the lawyer. Tarak?—”
“I’m going back for the bike,” Tarak said.
His voice was dead flat.
Edge stared at him.
For a second, I thought he would say no.
Then he gave one sharp nod. “Take two. Bring it home clean.”
Callum lifted his chin toward two of his San Diego men. “Go with him.”
Tarak looked like he wanted to argue against San Diego help on principle.
Then his eyes flicked up the stairs.
Destiny.
He swallowed whatever pride got in the way and nodded.
Edge turned toward a skinny brother with a laptop already tucked under one arm.
“Hacker.”
“Already on it,” the man said.
“Destiny wasn’t here tonight.”
Hacker’s fingers flew over his phone. “Give me the story.”
Edge didn’t blink. “Graduation cruise.”
Regan’s voice came from the top of the stairs, raw and fierce. “Cabo.”
Everyone looked up.
She stood there with blood on her hands.
Destiny’s blood.
Her eyes were red, but her voice could have cut glass.
“My daughter is in Cabo with me,” Regan said. “Celebrating graduation early. Spa. Boat. Sunburn. Whatever rich people post about when they’re trying to look relaxed.”
Hacker nodded. “Got it.”
“She was never at that party,” Regan continued. “She never saw those kids. She never touched that Bronco. She never stole that bike. She is in Cabo with her mother.”
The word mother cracked something open in the room.
Regan didn’t seem to notice.
Or maybe she noticed and didn’t care.
Hacker’s jaw tightened. “I’ll build the trail. Tickets, hotel, location noise, posts scheduled, receipts. I’ll make it airtight.”
Nate muttered beside me, “Airtight is doing a lot of work.”
Regan’s eyes snapped to him.
He shut up.
Smart man.
I wasn’t as smart.
“You really think that’s going to work?” I asked.
Every head turned toward me.
Edge came down another step.
Slowly.
“What did you say?”
I should have shut my mouth.
I didn’t.
Because I had seen the scene. I had seen the phones.
I had seen the kids. I had seen enough modern messes to know old-school cleanup didn’t work the way it used to.
Not when every rich kid had video, every parent had lawyers, and every story could be online before the fire trucks finished hosing down the cars.
“I said, do you think that’s going to work?” I repeated. “Because everyone saw her face.”
Regan came down the stairs now, one step at a time, grief giving her spine a hard, brutal shape.
“The kids were drunk,” she said.
I held her gaze. “Yes.”
“Drugged.”
“Probably.”
“Hallucinating.”
“Some of them.”
“They were screaming about ghosts,” she snapped. “About curses. About Mandy. About things none of them understand. None of those kids could pass a drug test right now if their trust funds depended on it.”
“That helps,” I said.
“My daughter didn’t do anything.”
The room went so still I heard a floorboard settle.
Regan lifted her chin.
“She’s in Cabo with me,” she said again. “She is not in that desert. She is not on camera. She is not in police reports. She is not taking the fall because a pack of drunk, drugged-up rich kids decided to tell ghost stories around a fire.”
Edge’s eyes stayed on me.
“My daughter’s not taking the fall for shit,” he said.
It wasn’t a debate.
It was a law being written.
Before anyone could answer, headlights swept across the front windows.
Men outside shouted.
Guns lifted.
Someone called from the gate, “Three kids! They’re asking for Destiny!”
The room erupted.
Edge’s expression went lethal, but not at me this time.
At the world.
“Bring them in.”
Callum caught my eye.
This was not going to improve the night.
The front doors opened a minute later, and three teenagers were shoved inside by two armed prospects who looked like they weren’t sure whether to pat them down or apologize for scaring them half to death.
The girl in front came in first.
Braided hair. Turquoise jewelry. Face streaked with tears and smoke. She had the look of someone trying very hard not to fall apart because falling apart would waste time.
A boy followed behind her, jaw bruised, shirt torn, one sleeve burned at the cuff. He looked like he had run through hell and was ready to turn around if Destiny was still there.
The third girl came last, small and shaking, clutching a phone in both hands like it was the only thing keeping her upright. Her eyes darted around the clubhouse, taking in the cuts, the guns, the women, Edge on the stairs, Regan with blood on her hands.
She whispered, “Oh no.”
The first girl saw Regan.
Then Edge.
Her face crumpled.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “We’re so sorry. We tried to stop her.”
Edge came off the stairs.
The boy immediately stepped in front of both girls.
Terrified, but there.
I respected that.
Stupid, but respectable.
“You were with my daughter,” Edge said.
The boy swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
“Names.”
The first girl lifted her chin even though tears were still running down her face. “I’m Tris. This is Jake. And that’s Nyla.”
Nyla nodded, trembling.
“You let her ride my bike,” Edge said.
Jake’s face went pale.
Tris pushed around him. “She was already on it when she met us.”
“Tris,” Jake warned.
“No.” She wiped her face hard with the heel of her hand. “No, I’m not letting them think this was just her being crazy. I’m not letting them think she did this because she’s bad or because of her mother or whatever everybody always says.”
Tarak had come back inside through the side door at some point, or maybe he had never left yet. Either way, he froze at the edge of the room.
Tris looked at all of them.
At Edge.
At Regan.
At Tarak.
At every Royal Bastard who thought protection was the same as knowing.
“She didn’t tell you?” Tris asked.
Regan’s face went gray.
“Tell us what?” Edge said.
Tris’s mouth trembled. “What they’ve been doing to her.”
Silence.
This silence was worse than the others.
This one had teeth.
Jake stepped beside her, voice low but steady. “At school. Desert Saints. Since they found out who she was.”
Edge did not move.
But something in him changed so violently I felt it across the room.
Regan grabbed the stair rail.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
Her voice was thin now.
Scared.
Like some part of her already knew the answer was going to break her.
Nyla flinched at Edge’s stare, but she lifted her chin anyway. “They found old newspaper stuff. About Mandy. About Tarak. About the engagement. The crash. The funeral. They passed pictures around. Made posts. Group chats.”
Regan covered her mouth.
Jake’s jaw tightened. “They asked her who her real dad was. Said maybe Mandy didn’t know. Said maybe the whole club had a turn.”
A sound came from Tarak.
Not a word.
Not a growl.
Something broken.
Tris started crying harder, but she didn’t stop.
“They called her the club whore’s daughter.
They said Mandy named her Destiny because it was a stripper name.
They taped a dollar bill to her locker. They told her to earn tips at the bar.
They called her white-trash biker whore.
They told her bad blood shows eventually. ”
Edge’s face emptied.
Completely.
Regan’s eyes filled with a horror so deep it looked bottomless.
“No,” she whispered. “No, she would have told me.”
Tris shook her head. “She wouldn’t. That was the point.”
Regan looked at her.
Tris took a shaky breath. “She said if she told you, Edge would come to school. You’d destroy the mothers. Tarak would look haunted again. The club would show up, and everybody would say, see? Biker trash. Violent. Dangerous. Just like Mandy.”
Tarak turned away.
His shoulders shook once.
Regan made a sound that was almost a sob.
Edge didn’t move.
That scared me more than if he had put his fist through a wall.
Jake looked at Edge then, and whatever fear he had, he pushed through it for Destiny.
“She said the people Mandy actually hurt were the ones who loved her anyway. You. Regan. Tarak. The club. She said you didn’t pass Mandy’s sins down to her, so she wasn’t going to make you bleed for what those kids were doing. ”
Nyla wiped under her eyes. “She took it all because she was protecting you.”
That landed.
Hard.
You could see it hit every person in the room.
The guilt moved like smoke.
Regan sank onto the bottom step.
Edge finally turned his head toward her, but he didn’t go to her. I don’t think he could make his body move.
Upstairs, Doc shouted for someone to bring more towels.
That broke the room enough for Shaniqua and two women to rush up the stairs.
But most of us stayed frozen below, trapped in what Destiny had hidden.
Tris hugged herself. Her voice went small.
“She just couldn’t take it anymore,” she said. “Tonight, she told us everything, and it was like something snapped. She said they wanted Mandy’s daughter, so she’d give them Mandy’s daughter.”
Tarak flinched.
Regan closed her eyes.