Chapter Twenty-Two
SAGE
Ghost walks beside me, his hand resting against the small of my back just long enough to steer me through the doorway before it slips away.
The gesture lingers anyway.
Before we left the workstation, he’d looked at me with that steady certainty of his and said the words I keep hearing on repeat, ‘I’m not handing this to him. You built it. You tell it.’
At first, I thought he was pushing me into the spotlight.
Now I understand.
He isn’t asking me to stand alone.
He’s reminding me this fight has always been mine to lead.
Sin sits behind his desk with his poker chip resting between two fingers, not moving yet, and his eyes come up to mine the second I step inside.
There’s nothing unkind in his face. There rarely is.
But there’s a stillness to him, the kind of attention a man gives when he already suspects the conversation is going to annoy him. “Sit,” he says.
I do. Ghost takes the chair beside mine instead of standing behind me, close enough that I can feel the solid presence of him without needing to look.
My hands are folded in my lap, and I make myself unfold them, force myself to stop pressing my thumbnail into my palm the way I do when I need somewhere for the nerves to go.
I start with the texts, reading them out loud because seeing them typed on a page never carries the same weight as hearing the words land in a room, and I want Sin to feel exactly what I felt standing in that break room when I received it.
My voice catches once, on the line about Piper’s contract, and I clear my throat and keep going, because stopping now would mean admitting how much that sentence still costs me every time I say it out loud.
I tell him about the group home inquiry.
These twelve families trusted me with the worst parts of their lives, twenty-three individual accounts documented and cross-referenced until I could recite them in my sleep.
I tell him about the grant rejections, three of them, each one wearing the careful language of an accident.
I keep talking, watching Sin carefully. You learn pretty quickly who’s listening because they have to and who’s actually hearing you.
Sin is hearing me.
Ghost slides another page across Sin’s desk. “I’ve got him.”
Sin looks up. “Who?”
“The man behind the man… Travis Cole.” The name lands in the room as if it should mean something.
To me, it doesn’t.
Not yet.
Ghost nudges the photograph toward the center of the desk—late forties, immaculate tailored suit, expensive watch, and the kind of practiced smile politicians wear when they’re shaking hands and promising things they already know aren’t going to happen.
“He’s Calloway’s right hand,” Ghost says. “Every state funding application your organization submitted passed through him.”
My stomach tightens. “So…” I look between them. “He’s the one who kept saying no.”
Ghost doesn’t answer straightaway, and that alone makes something uneasy uncurl inside me.
He studies the paperwork again, like he’s making sure the conclusion still survives the evidence.
When he finally speaks, his voice is as steady as ever.
“I don’t think anyone on that committee was ever deciding whether Unsilenced deserved funding. ”
A small laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
Not because it’s funny, but because my brain refuses to accept what he just said.
“What?”
Ghost turns another page around. “Look…”
I lean forward. Highlighted organizations fill the page with names I don’t recognize, community centers, youth outreach programs, mental health initiatives, domestic violence services. On the surface, it looks exactly like the kind of funding I’d spent years trying to secure.
“They’re all different,” I murmur.
“They’re meant to be.” Ghost traces one line with his finger.
“Different directors.” He points to another one.
“Different boards, different suburbs…” He pauses.
“Same accounting firm.” My eyes flick up, and his finger moves again.
“Same consultancy.” He points again. “The same three administrative contractors collecting fees within forty-eight hours of every grant being paid.”
I frown. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to.” Ghost slides the financial map beside it.
The lines I’d stared at for what felt like forever suddenly look different with him explaining them.
“The organizations are legitimate,” he says. “Most of them probably have no idea what’s happening.” His finger follows another trail across the page. “They receive the grant, pay mandatory consultancy fees, compliance reviews, and administrative costs.”
Every line eventually bends back toward the same cluster of shell companies.
Toward the same people.
Sin’s thumb drags slowly down the page. “Fuck! They’re laundering public money.”
Ghost nods once. “They’re hiding it inside legitimate funding.”
The room falls quiet, and I look back down at the list, recognizing two of the organizations.
One of them beat us for funding eighteen months ago.
I remember sitting in my office after the rejection email came through, convincing Sandy that maybe the next round would be different. That maybe I hadn’t explained the program well enough or perhaps I should have rewritten the proposal.
Maybe I’d asked for too much.
Maybe… God.
I swallow hard. “My applications…”
Ghost’s gaze shifts to me. “They were never part of this pipeline.”
I stare at him. “I still don’t understand.”
“I know.” His voice softens. “They weren’t looking for the best organization.” Silence stretches. “They were looking for organizations they could control.”
“But…” My voice comes out quieter than I expect. “Unsilenced met every requirement.”
“You exceeded them, baby.”
My brows draw together. “We had independent audits. I ran everything by the book.”
“You still do.”
“We accounted for every cent.”
“Exactly.”
“We published every outcome.” I hear my own voice getting tighter with every sentence. “We—” I stop, because suddenly I know where this is going.
Ghost does too. His eyes never leave mine.
“They couldn’t move money through Unsilenced.” The room seems to tilt. “Because you would’ve found it, Sage.”
Three years.
Three years of rewriting applications.
Three years of budget meetings.
Three years of late nights trying to shave five thousand dollars here, ten thousand there because maybe we’d asked for too much.
Three years of looking families in the eye and telling them we couldn’t help because the funding hadn’t come through.
Three years of wondering what I’d done wrong.
“W-what if…” My voice cracks. “What if I’d written them differently?”
Ghost answers before the thought can grow. “It wouldn’t have mattered.”
“What if we’d—”
“It wouldn’t have mattered, Sage.”
His words are devastating because they’re so certain.
I shake my head. “No…”
“They filtered you out before they ever looked at what you’d written.”
My fingers curl so tightly around the edge of the chair that my knuckles ache. “They never intended to fund us.”
“No.” Ghost doesn’t look away.
“They intended to make sure they never had to because I was too efficient.” The rejection letters I’d carried around in my head for years suddenly feel different.
Not proof that I’d failed.
Evidence.
Evidence that the game had been fixed before I’d ever stepped onto the field.
I don’t know whether I want to cry or burn Travis Cole’s entire world to the ground.
And even if we did receive the funding, Calloway and his minion, Travis Cole, would have pocketed money on the side from the grants anyway.
Jesus Christ!
“Three years of family testimony,” Sin says finally, his gaze coming back to me.
“Twelve families. Twenty-three individual accounts. Photo documentation,” I answer. My voice comes out steadier than I expect it to, and I hold onto that steadiness because it feels like the only thing in the room that’s fully mine right now.
“And this man threatened your sister?”
“And Ghost, and he sent men after the club,” I specify.
Sin is quiet, giving the multiple facts room to sit beside each other so their weight becomes obvious without either of us having to say it out loud.
He looks at Ghost. Ghost looks back. There’s a conversation happening between them that doesn’t need words, the kind of understanding that belongs to two men who have known each other a long time and trust each other completely, deciding without speaking exactly how far this is going to go.
“We’re not going to the police with this,” Sin says.
“I didn’t think you were,” I say.
“You’re not concerned about our methods?”
I hold his gaze, waiting for the guilt to hit.
It doesn’t.
Instead, I feel lighter.
“Senator Calloway has been using the police’s regulatory channels to threaten my organization for months. No. I am not concerned.”
Something almost like a smile touches the corner of Sin’s mouth, gone before it fully forms. “Build the complete picture,” he says. “I’ll handle the meeting.”
He doesn’t add anything more, and I don’t ask him to.
A few months with Defiance has taught me that silence isn’t the end of the conversation.
Sometimes it is the answer.
There’s a version of me from a year ago who would have kept pushing, who would have needed every detail laid out before she could sit still.
That version of me isn’t in this room today.
I trust these men in a way I didn’t know I was capable of trusting anyone outside my own family, and the strange part is how much lighter that trust makes the weight I’ve been carrying alone for months.
Ghost stands first. His hand finds the small of my back again as we leave, and this time he doesn’t take it away.
Outside, the desert heat presses down hard, the kind of Vegas afternoon that makes the air over the asphalt shimmer, rows of bikes lined up under a bright sky.
My mind is already moving through everything that comes next, the pieces stacking on top of each other faster than I can properly file them.
The regulatory complaint. The families who need to hear something before the fear does more damage than Calloway has managed on his own.
Piper, and how much of this she’s allowed to carry, and whether there’s a version of that conversation that doesn’t put her more at risk just by having it.
“We should call my director tonight, because if Sin’s going to move on this soon, I need Unsilenced positioned before anything happens publicly.
” I continue, “And Piper still doesn’t know about the texts, which means we need a plan for that conversation before—” I stop talking when Ghost looks at me, taking both my hands in his.
The kind of look that makes my heart forget what it’s doing.
I’ve learned enough about Ghost to know this isn’t hesitation. It’s quite the opposite. This is the moment where he’s already made his choice and is finding the courage to live with it.
His eyes never leave mine.
Ghost steps into my space, his hand sliding up to cradle my jaw. “I’ve been wanting to do this all damn day.”
A laugh catches in my throat. “Only today?”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “Fuck, no.”
My heart stutters. “Good answer.”
I don’t give him the chance to say anything else before I catch the front of his cut and pull him the rest of the way to me.
His mouth crashes into mine with enough force to steal every coherent thought I had left.
It’s nothing like the careful restraint we’ve been dancing around for months.
It’s heat, relief, and every conversation we’ve kept quiet instead of having.
His hand slides into my hair, holding me there while my fingers curl into the leather beneath them. Somewhere in the distance, someone whistles.
Probably Deek.
But neither of us even blinks.
When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing harder than we should be from a kiss.
His forehead rests against mine. “That’s becoming a problem.”
I can’t stop smiling. “I don’t know…” my thumb brushes across his jaw, “… feels like we solved one.”
A quiet laugh escapes him. “Dangerous woman.”
“You keep saying that like it’s going to scare me.”
“It scares me.” The honesty in his voice steals the smile from my lips.
“Why?”
His eyes search mine. “Because I don’t think I know how to stop.”
Warmth blooms through every inch of me. “You don’t have to.”
Something soft settles across his face before he presses one last kiss to the corner of my mouth. “Come on.” He takes my hand instead of letting it go, leading me toward the row of bikes. “You’re riding with me.”
I look at his bike, then back at him, and a ridiculous flutter erupts in my stomach. “Okay.”
He hands me his spare helmet before swinging onto the seat. I climb on behind him, my hands hovering awkwardly for all of half a second. He reaches back, catches one of them, and settles it around his waist. “There.”
My cheeks hurt from smiling. “I knew where to put my hands.”
“Mm…”
“You just wanted an excuse.”
“I did.”
I laugh against his shoulder, while the engine rumbles to life beneath us, vibrating through both our bodies.
As we pull out of the clubhouse, I tighten my arms around his middle, resting my cheek between his shoulder blades.
Ghost reaches down long enough to squeeze my hand where it’s clasped across his stomach before returning it to the handlebars.
The desert opens around us in ribbons of gold and fading orange, warm wind tugging at my jacket as the clubhouse disappears behind us.
I have no idea what we’re calling this.
Boyfriend?
Girlfriend?
Whatever comes after months of stubbornness, one spectacular argument, and finally finding the courage to stop pretending.
Maybe it doesn’t need a label yet?
All I know is that I’m exactly where I want to be, wrapped around Ghost.
Finally feeling like I am home.