Chapter 29
East
The world is a red blur of taillights and fury. The Harley’s engine is a raw, guttural roar, but it’s not loud enough. It can’t drown out the words echoing in my skull, a relentless, pounding drumbeat: He was aiming for you. He was aiming for you, East.
My hands are numb, my grip on the handlebars so tight my knuckles ache.
The wind rips at my cut with a cold, indifferent slap, but all I feel is the volcanic, sick heat coiling in my gut.
Seven years. For seven fucking years I’ve carried the weight of Declan’s last words, the phantom feel of his blood on my hands, a memory so visceral I can still smell the metallic tang of it in the back of my throat.
Seven years of holding his memory as a sacred, broken thing, defining my entire goddamn life by a promise made to a ghost.
All the while, she knew.
She’s been walking around with this truth, this jagged, poisonous secret, clutched tight in her chest. A shield. Not for herself. For me.
Betrayal twists like a knife in my gut, so sharp and hot it makes me want to vomit. It battles a fierce, terrifying awe that threatens to consume me whole. I don’t know which emotion will rip me apart first. I just know I’m coming undone.
Nash is a steady shadow in my rearview mirror, a silent, loyal anchor.
He’s giving me space to run, but he’s not letting me run alone.
My house, once a quiet sanctuary, now feels like a lie, so I can’t go back there either.
I push my bike past the town limits, veering down a long-abandoned dirt road, its tires spitting gravel, then I dive into the deep, dark woods.
A place to bleed. A place where no one can hear me shatter.
I kill the engine. The sudden, oppressive silence feels like a slap to the face. It’s the silence of the warehouse lot. The ringing in my ears starts up, high and shrill. The silence after the shot.
My body moves, stiff, each joint protesting.
I stalk to the back of my saddlebag, my hands trembling as I retrieve my Glock.
The cold steel is a familiar, grounding weight in a world that has just crumbled beneath me.
I slam a magazine in; the click-clack is a small, satisfying sound of order in the chaos of my head.
I don’t aim. I just fire.
The first shot is a flash of orange fire in the dusk, a brutal violation of the quiet.
The crack echoes, followed by the sound of splintering wood.
She knew. Another shot. She let me mourn him the wrong way.
Another. She watched him die saving my life.
Another. I empty the entire magazine into an old oak tree, the recoil slamming against my palms in a welcome, rhythmic punishment.
But it’s not enough. The noise, the violence, the acrid smell of gunpowder filling my nostrils—none of it silences the storm.
I stand there, chest heaving, the empty gun hanging uselessly at my side. My heart is pounding a furious, trapped rhythm. I’m teetering on the edge of something dark and dangerous, ready to plunge into the abyss.
“You done?”
Nash’s voice cuts through the ringing in my ears, steady and unyielding. He hasn’t moved from the bikes, his arms crossed over his chest, a silent sentinel.
My first instinct is to tell him to fuck off.
To leave me here to rot. Instead, the words rip out of me, raw and jagged like broken glass.
“She knew. The whole time, Nash. He wasn’t aiming at Declan.
He was aiming at me. And she stood there, watched him die saving my life, and never said a damn word.
” The betrayal feels like a fresh, gaping wound.
“The promise I made… it was all built on a lie. I’ve been honoring a ghost while she was protecting the truth. ”
I finally turn to face him, the weight of the gun heavy in my grip. “And the entire time… she was protecting me. She carried that burden alone for seven years, all to keep me safe.” The awe and the anger clash, a violent storm in my chest, and I can’t breathe. How could she? And how could she not?
Nash walks over, his boots crunching on the gravel, his expression grim.
“Makes sense now, doesn’t it?” he murmurs in a gravelly voice.
“Why she pulled away. Why she always looked at you like you were a ghost she was trying not to see.” He stops a few feet from me.
“What would you have done, East? If you had known a secret that big, one that could put a target on her back? You would have done the same damn thing.”
His words hit me like a bucket of ice water, slicing through the haze of my fury.
Would I? I try to fight it, to hold on to the simple, clean rage.
But he’s right. Fuck. I would have buried the truth and shouldered the weight.
A fortress of lies would have been constructed to shield her.
Exactly what she did would have been done.
The tension in my shoulders doesn’t disappear, but it shifts. My grip on the Glock loosens, my fingers going numb. The rage is still there, a wildfire in my blood, but it’s no longer aimed at her. It’s aimed at the man who did this to us. Winston.
Just as that thought settles in, headlights slice through the trees at the end of the long driveway. A car. My body goes rigid, my grip on the Glock instantly tightening again. Threat.
“Easy,” Nash murmurs, his hand firm on my shoulder, grounding me. “I texted Frankie our location. Figured you might need a minute before you went back.”
The car pulls up, and Darla steps out, looking pale but resolute in the dim twilight.
Frankie remains in the driver’s seat, a silent guardian.
Darla approaches cautiously, her movements deliberate, giving me space as her eyes search my face for the anger she knows is still simmering just beneath the surface.
Her voice is quiet but firm, cutting through the tension. “I’m going to stay with Frankie for a few days. To give you space.”
The words hang in the air, mature and respectful, and they feel like a knife twisting in my gut.
Space. The thought of her leaving, of her not being under my roof, a place where I can see her, where I know she’s safe.
.. it’s a physical impossibility. After seven years of nothing but space, it’s the one thing I will not accept.
A fresh wave of panic, hotter and sharper than the rage, claws up my throat.
If he finds out she told me... he’ll come for her. He’ll come for both of us.
“No.”
The word erupts from me, a low, guttural growl that stops her in her tracks. She flinches, taken aback by the venom lacing my tone.
I close the distance between us, my voice dropping to a deadly whisper, the finality of my words hanging heavy in the air.
“You’re not going anywhere. We’re done with secrets.
All of us.” I glance at Nash, my decision solidified.
“We’re heading back to the clubhouse. You’re telling them everything—Malachi, Knox, all of them. No more lies. No more protecting me.”
I turn back to her, my voice intense, my gaze locking onto hers. “And you’re going to tell me where that video is.”
She doesn’t hesitate, her resolve matching mine, a flicker of defiance igniting in her eyes. “It’s in a safe deposit box.”
“Where?”
“At Willowridge Bank and Trust,” she replies. “The one my father uses.”
Of course. The snake keeps his secrets close. “And the key?”
Her gaze meets mine, and I can see the new, terrifying obstacle laid out before us. A muscle in her jaw tightens.
“It’s at the house,” she whispers, her voice barely audible.
“Your father’s house?” I clarify, my voice taut.
She nods, swallowing hard. “In my old bedroom. I hid it a long time ago, right after it happened. It’s… it’s in the music box Declan gave me for our sixteenth birthday. There’s a false bottom.”
The music box. I remember it. A small wooden thing with a porcelain ballerina. I remember him spending a whole month’s allowance on it, his face so proud when he gave it to her. Another piece of our past, now the key to our future. The game is on.