Chapter 25
A couple of hours later, wrought iron gates close behind us, and my chest finally unlocks.
We’re back at Monarch Hills. Last night, the last thing I wanted to do was potentially trail Luther to my home. I wasn’t prepared to have riders on my doorstep when the party bus came home.
I’d stayed at that hotel before and my driver doubled as security. But today, after changing cars and sneaking out the back, we made it back to Monarch Hills. I don’t know if Luther is coming. Though I believe Delilah, we aren’t one hundred percent sure he’ll come or that he’s sending men for her.
But here, I have armed guards, two ex-Navy SEALs and several locations to bunker down. Not to mention Marcus might have law enforcement in his pocket in Sacramento, but in Echo Valley, the Chief of Police is on my side.
I still haven’t been able to figure it out. If that really was Luther’s man at the party, he could have taken her, or at least tried to.
We push through my front door, still in our party clothes, and Tina launches herself across the floor, leaving behind dribbles of excitement on the oak.
I’d been in touch with my dad about the sweet mutt, and he grabbed her from the stable hand this morning.
The pooch comes straight to me, her whole backend wagging, front paws scratching at my shins like I've been gone a year.
I crouch down and let her climb me, scratching behind her ears.
Delilah crouches down, too, and Tina rolls over. Delilah rubs her belly.
“He’s your favorite now?” There is a smile in her words.
I give Tina one last scratch and stand.
When Delilah goes, Tina goes with her.
This house was once my sanctuary, but that’s not what it will feel like again when they’re gone.
It’ll just be empty.
Dad appears from around the corner. "Good timing. I've got to get to the stables — I told Owen and Theo I’d rope with them this morning.” He squeezes Delilah's shoulder as he passes, nods at me. “You two have fun last night?”
If only he knew.
“Yeah,” I answer, noncommittal. “Thanks for staying with Tina this morning.”
“You know I’ll babysit anytime.” He winks and heads out in a hurry, waving his hand behind him.
The house settles around us. For a moment, we don’t move. The whole scene is ridiculously domestic and calm despite the urgency crashing around us.
But it’s not real. None of it is real.
Delilah jogs to the kitchen and comes back with antibac spray and paper towel. She hastily wipes up Tina’s accident.
She feels me watching her and she glances up. We share a moment that’s warm and emotional in a way I don’t understand. Something changed last night. Hell, it started changing a while ago.
"Enzo's already waiting." I hitch my thumb toward the stairs. “I’m gonna get changed.”
"Go face the music," she says simply. “Good luck.”
I wish luck was all we needed.
What we all need now is a miracle.
Enzo is already waiting for me when I cross the grounds to the entrance of the footpath that makes its way around our land. We can’t talk at the office. Not yet. The only person I want hearing this right now is Enzo. We all stand to lose something because I fucked up, but he, the most.
He's leaning against the post and rail fence that borders the east paddock, a coffee mug in one hand, watching the horses move across the field in the morning light.
He doesn't turn around when he hears me coming, which means he’s deep in concentration. I slide in next to him and say nothing, just let myself sit in the eye of the storm for a moment.
But the reckoning comes soon enough.
"I have two questions," Enzo says, still watching the horses.
He turns then, leaning his hip against the fence, and fixes me with the particular look he reserves for moments he has all but one thing figured out.
Behind his glasses, his eyes are steady.
Patient. The same eyes I've looked into my whole life, from the minute we were brought into this world. The same eyes as mine.
The ones that have never once assumed the worst of me, even when the worst was true.
“The first question, you know. Why does David have full system access?" He pauses.
I don’t answer because I have a feeling question two is worse than one, and I know he’s going to ask it right away.
"And two–” He pins me with an earnest stare even I can hardly handle. “Why is the daughter of the Iron Covenant MC president suddenly your girlfriend?"
The morning air moves between us, carrying the smell of grass, horses and something cooler underneath. Usually, this kind of cool invades my senses and slows the tempo. It doesn’t do anything for me right now.
I'm not surprised he looked into her. Of course he did. That's the problem with being the twin brother of a cybersecurity genius.
I fucked up.
He picks up his coffee, turns it in his hands. "Delilah Cross. Twenty-five. Daughter of Marcus Cross, president of Iron Covenant. Engaged to Luther Vaughn, new president of Black Ridge." He glances at me over the rim of his cup. "That's a lot of MC royalty you’re rubbing shoulders with.”
I push off the fence and begin walking because I can’t look him in the eye anymore. He falls into step beside me without a word. We move along the fence line, the horses lift their heads with mild curiosity, before dropping back to the grass.
I don't know where to start, so I start at the beginning. Not the beginning he knows — the one he doesn't.
"You knew I spent time in an MC before GhostEye,” I say, my mouth feeling suddenly dry.
"I knew you were around an MC, yeah." He keeps his voice neutral. "You never said which one."
"Black Ridge. I was patched at Black Ridge.” I keep my eyes on the dusty path ahead. "I ran their books. Found their leaks. Made them money."
Enzo is quiet beside me and his lack of judgment only makes me think about how I should have known better than to get involved with something so stupid.
Black Ridge made sense at the time. In my twenty-something life, I was a ranch boy sick of being poor, sick of grief, sick of my family suffering in the wake of tragedy built on tough times. Blac Ridge felt like massive action. It felt like a way to solve all our problems.
Clearly, it wasn’t.
The past is never dead.
I continue. “When I wanted out, Ray, the president then, let me go. But he kept insurance. He promised one copy. Nothing digital. He would be the only one with it." I pause, working out how to say the next part. "It was enough to tie me to the club, which I assumed he wanted to keep me quiet."
"But it was leverage." Enzo’s words aren’t a question.
"Not at first. For years, Ray was silent. But when GhostEye started becoming something real, Ray started calling in favors." I stop walking. Turn to face him. "I found names for him. Locations. People he was looking for. Not often. But I did it."
Enzo takes that in. His jaw shifts slightly, but his expression doesn't crack. I’m usually the only one who can read his unreadable expression, but right now, I can’t.
And I hate it because that means whatever he’s thinking, he’s hiding it from me.
A stone forms in my chest.
But I keep talking.
"Ray died six months ago," I walk again. "I thought the insurance died with him." I drag a hand through my hair. “But three weeks ago, Delilah walked into my office with photos she snapped of the documents he kept, and dropped them on my desk."
Enzo exhales through his nose. Not quite a laugh. Not quite disbelief. Something in between. "She blackmailed you?"
"Yeah." The admission hardly makes its way out.
He combs his fingers through his hair. "Okay." He nods slowly, processing. "What did she want?"
“She wanted me to find two women. Chilean nationals. Brought over by her father under the guise of dancing at his strip club and trafficked. She felt complicit in that and wanted to rescue them.” I don’t add why; Enzo doesn’t need to know.
“David has found a location of the women but not the other. It appears to be an operation reaching beyond these two women, but I only got so far with David.”
Enzo walks beside me, one hand in his pocket. He tosses out the remaining coffee from his mug onto the grass alongside. He’s frustrated.
"I know what you're going to say," I start.
"No, you don't." He interrupts. "You have no idea what I'm going to say because if you did, you would have come to me three weeks ago."
I stop walking.
He turns to face me. “Better yet, you should have come to me long before three weeks ago. The whole time we were building up GhostEye together, you had this sitting on your chest and you never said a word."
"I didn't want it near you," I explain. “Or near any of you. What I was before — it stays away from this."
"Why do you think like that?" Enzo asks, sharper now.
He turns to face me fully, and there it is — not anger exactly, but something rawer than I've seen from him in years.
"Rio. We built this together. Every decision, every risk, every time we bet everything on one move and held our breath — we did that together.
And the whole time you had this sitting over you and you just—" He shakes his head. "You just–”
I think he’s going to say kept it from me. Lied to me. Deceived us all.
But he doesn’t.
“You just carried it." His eyebrows furrow over his black frames. His every feature is etched with concern.
For me.
His voice drops. "That's not how this works. That has never been how this family works." He looks at me steadily. "We win together. We lose together. You should have told me a long time ago."
The words settle into the ground between us, into the grass and the dirt and the fence posts, into everything this land has always meant.
I don't say anything because there isn't anything to say. He's right. I chose my version of protection over his version of partnership, and the gap between those two things has been wider than I let myself see.
“But you actually care about Delilah now.” He hooks his thumb in his pocket. “I can see that much.”
I pause.
"It's complicated."