Chapter 14
BONES
She thinks I stole from her. That’s a joke. The money never touched my hands. I sent it through shadows, ghost accounts, dead shells, false fronts until it vanished like smoke. Every reroute was a shield, not a score. I wasn’t stealing. I was burying her trail before the Vultures caught the scent.
And still, somehow, the Vultures found her.
Now, every choice I made to protect her looks like betrayal written in blood.
The club’s already side-eying me, like I traded my patch for silver.
Maybe that’s what I deserve. But they don’t know the whole story.
Nobody does. They wouldn’t believe me anyway.
In this life, proof’s just another lie you haven’t caught yet.
It hasn’t even been twelve hours since she walked out with Bishop at her back. I can still see Rebel’s face in my head. Eyes like fire through glass. She used to trust me with her life. Hell, I’d have taken a bullet for her, and I almost did.
Now she looks at me like I’m the one holding the gun.
I lean against the table, the one still stained with oil and whiskey, and stare down at the files spread across it. The same numbers Carter showed her. The same ones I’ve been doctoring for months.
Every ledger line is a wound I carved to hide another. Every transfer is a lie told to keep her name off the kill list.
When the Vultures started reactivating the Syndicate’s old pipeline, I saw what was coming. They wanted leverage, family names, debts, and blood ties. Rebel was next in line, whether she knew it or not.
So I made myself the middleman. The bad guy. The fucking villain, if that’s what it took to keep her safe.
Didn’t matter. The reaper still came calling.
Rain drums on the roof now, steady and cold. Somewhere outside, a Harley kicks to life and dies again, nervous engines, restless ghosts.
The Vultures traced the reroute. Not all of it, but enough to draw blood. Her name’s marked now. The Harlots, too. And me? I’m the ghost they’ll want to bury first, just to prove they still run the streets.
Fine. Let them try. I’ve buried worse men than they’ve sent.
But the part that keeps me awake isn’t the Vultures, it’s him. Bishop. Carter. Whatever name he hides behind when he’s crawling into her bed.
The thought grinds through my molars until I taste copper. I can picture it too clearly, the way she probably laughs softer now, the way her guard might drop for him. The bastard gets to see the version of her I only ever caught glimpses of between wars.
He doesn’t deserve that.
He doesn’t deserve her.
She’s too sharp for him. Too scarred. Too mine.
Maybe that’s what eats me alive. The idea that she’s letting someone else fix the pieces I shattered trying to keep her breathing.
I drag my fingers across the table, over the ink lines and coordinates, stopping on one spot circled in red. Vernon. A warehouse dressed like a front, empty on paper, crawling with heat signatures Divine flagged an hour ago.
A trap.
That’s where I’ll start fixing this.
Divine’s smart enough to trace the accounts back to me. The Harlots will come sniffing again. Rebel will too. But by the time they find me, it’ll be done.
Either I take out the Vultures before they reach her, or they take me down trying.
Either way, she’ll be clear.
That’s the plan. That’s all that’s left.
I thumb the lighter in my pocket until the metal warms, then set it down beside the whiskey glass, one small ritual before war.
I holster my pistol, slide my knife into the small of my back, and shrug into my cut.
The skull stitched across it feels heavier tonight, like it knows something I don’t.
I grab my keys. By the time my brothers realize I’m gone, it’ll already be too late.
The clubhouse is quiet when I walk out. The kind of quiet that happens before bad news. The kind that tastes like last chances.
I look once toward the door she left through this morning. My chest feels hollowed out, ribs aching around the empty space where her trust used to live.
She thinks I betrayed her. Let her. Better she hates me than dies for me.
But if Bishop gets in my way, if he thinks he’s going to save her from the fallout I started, he’ll find out what the skull and crown on my back really means.
If I can’t protect Rebel, no man will. Not even him. Because she deserves the kind of peace I’ll never get to see.