Chapter 26
MEGHAN
T he wind still roared in my ears when Caleb helped me down from the helicopter. The blades slowed overhead, the chop in the air fading to a low, steady thump, but my heart was still going like we were airborne.
I hadn’t realized how quiet Charleston could be at night until we set down on the private pad by the marina—harbor lights winking across black water, the faint slap of waves against pilings, distant laughter from a boat somewhere out in the channel.
For a second, I let myself believe that maybe this was just another late night coming home. No notes, no shadows in the harbor, no sense of someone breathing down my neck. Just me, back from an evening with a man who made me forget what danger felt like.
Then I saw the look on Caleb’s face.
He had one hand on my elbow, steadying me off the last step, but his eyes were already tracking past me—toward the street. He was in motion before I could ask.
“What is it?” I called after him.
He didn’t answer. Just lengthened his stride until I had to jog to keep up, the damp air clinging to my skin as we cut across the lot to where his car was parked.
Ryker Dane was leaning against the passenger side.
I stopped dead. I’d only heard his name in Caleb’s stories—half-formed mentions of “my new brother” in the way people reference someone who’s both blood and battlefield.
He looked like both: broad shouldered, squared stance, dark hair buzzed short, eyes scanning the shadows like the night owed him something.
“You’re late,” Ryker said to Caleb, pushing off the car.
“I wasn’t expecting company,” Caleb replied, unlocking the door.
“You’ve got it.” Ryker’s gaze slid to me then, sharp enough to feel. “Meghan, right?”
I nodded, the sound of my name on his lips grounding me even as my stomach tightened. “And you’re Ryker.”
“That’s me,” he said, but didn’t offer his hand. His attention was already swinging back to Caleb. “We’ve got a problem.”
The car doors shut with a heavy thud that seemed to seal us into some unspoken code I didn’t speak yet.
“What happened?” Caleb asked.
“Promenade,” Ryker said. “Southwest dining room window—big one facing the street—broken out. Neighbor heard it around ten, called it in.”
I felt my pulse spike. “Called who in?”
“The cops,” Ryker said, like it was obvious. “Norton handled it.”
“Norton?” Caleb asked.
“Eric Norton,” Ryker clarified. “Detective. I had to get him out of bed.”
Caleb’s mouth pressed flat. “Bet he loved that.”
“Not as much as he’s gonna love keeping his mouth shut,” Ryker said. “He’s good for it. Knew you wouldn’t want uniforms crawling your kitchen.”
He was right. The thought of some patrol officer poking around my restaurant at midnight made my stomach turn. “Why wouldn’t I want the cops involved?” I asked, even though a part of me already knew.
“Because you want this quiet,” Ryker said evenly. “And cops don’t do quiet. They do reports. They do questions. And they do press.”
My mouth went dry. “So what, Norton just … looked the other way?”
Ryker’s gaze didn’t waver. “He made it go away.”
There was weight in that—an unspoken understanding that “go away” meant more than I wanted to unpack right now.
“What about the window?” Caleb asked.
“Boarded. No entry inside. Whoever did it wanted to make a point, not clean you out.”
The words landed like a cold hand on my neck. “What kind of point?” I asked.
Ryker reached into his jacket and pulled out an evidence bag. Inside was a single sheet of thick white paper, folded once. Ryker unfolded it and held it up so I could read.
You don’t deserve their praise.
The block letters were clean, deliberate, written in the same heavy hand that had pressed grooves into the photo.
My throat tightened. “They were inside?”
“No,” Ryker said. “Found it just inside the glass. My guess? They broke the window, leaned in, left it on a table, and walked. But who knows?”
“Ballsy,” Caleb muttered.
Ryker’s eyes were still on me. “Someone wants you off balance.”
“I know that,” I snapped, the sound sharper than I meant. But the note was already burning behind my eyes. You don’t deserve their praise . Whoever wrote it wasn’t just trying to scare me. They wanted me to feel unworthy. Small.
Ryker’s attention shifted to Caleb again. “Norton’s keeping his ears open in case anyone talks, but I wouldn’t count on that leading anywhere. You’ll want to sweep inside. Make sure nothing else is waiting.”
Caleb nodded. “We will.”
Ryker’s mouth quirked at the we , like he’d heard something in it worth noting.
We didn’t drive straight to Promenade.
Caleb took the long way—cutting down unfamiliar streets, watching the mirrors like we were being tailed. I told myself it was just habit for him, part of whatever training he’d had before we met. But the more turns we took, the tighter my chest got.
It struck me then—sharp and cold—that I’d never really been afraid for myself before. Not like this.
When I was a kid, fear had always been abstract, a thing that happened to other people.
Even the fire at my parents’ restaurant had felt like some freak twist of fate.
An act of God, people said, like the flames were sent from heaven itself to test us.
We lost everything in one night, but it hadn’t felt personal.
And when my parents died in a car accident a few years later—it had been the same.
Tragic. Unstoppable. They’d been on their way to pick me up from a friend’s house, the kind of simple, everyday errand you don’t think twice about until the world stops turning.
A patch of wet asphalt, a driver who didn’t see the stop sign, and they were gone before the ambulance even got there.
I’d been old enough to know better, but not old enough to stop myself from believing it was my fault.
If I hadn’t asked them to come get me, if I’d just stayed the night, they’d still be alive.
That thought had burrowed deep, curling around my bones, shaping every choice I made afterward.
I’d never let myself depend on anyone again—not really.
Most of the men I’d dated since were chefs, people like me—tethered to their work, living in the same heat and chaos I did. We spoke the same language of prep lists and deadlines, and nobody tried to shield anyone from the hard parts. I never wanted—or thought I needed—anything else.
Until now.
Because this was different. This wasn’t fate. This wasn’t an act of God. Someone out there wanted to hurt me. And for the first time, I wasn’t facing it alone.
I had Caleb.
And Caleb came with his strange, dangerous Dane family—men like Ryker who could make things happen with a single phone call, who saw threats and moved like the world bent around them. It should have terrified me. Maybe it did. But it also made me feel … safer than I’d ever admit out loud.
When we finally pulled into the narrow lane behind the restaurant, the first thing I saw was Dean.
He was leaning against the brick near the back entrance, arms crossed, shoulders hunched against the night. The moment his eyes landed on me, relief softened his features—but only for a second.
It struck me then—Dean wasn’t trained like Caleb.
He didn’t have years of military precision drilled into his reflexes or the kind of silent, watchful presence that made people think twice before crossing him.
But he was still here. Still standing guard in the dark, alone, knowing full well that someone out there was trying to rattle me.
That kind of courage didn’t come from combat training.
It came from loyalty. From love. From the unshakable decision to show up, even when you didn’t know exactly what you were walking into.
For a moment, the fear in my chest loosened, replaced by something steadier. I had good people around me. The kind you could count on to stand between you and the unknown. Caleb, with his calculated watchfulness. Dean, with his unflinching resolve. I wasn’t carrying this alone.
“You all right, Meggie?” His voice was low, roughened in a way I’d only heard a handful of times before, usually after bad news.
I stepped toward him. “I’m fine. What happened?”
Dean’s jaw flexed. “I was here when it happened. Was watching TV when I heard the glass go. Thought it was a car backfiring until I saw the shadow.”
“A shadow?” Caleb asked, already angling closer.
Dean nodded. “Tall. Hood up. Came from the street, didn’t stay long. Rock in, note down, gone before I could clear the corner. Whoever it was knew exactly how to get in and out.”
I pressed my palm against my mouth, trying to picture it—the sound of shattering glass echoing through the dining room I’d built, the neat little note left like an afterthought. It felt like someone had taken a chisel to my ribs.
Dean’s gaze searched mine. “I didn’t see a face. Not even a glint.”
Ryker said, coming up behind us. “They wanted you to be standing right here right now—thinking about how easy it was.”
A hollow ache spread in my chest. “It’s working.”
Caleb’s hand found mine, warm and steady, grounding me before the words could root too deep. “That’s exactly why you don’t let it.”
I swallowed hard, my voice quieter. “I don’t know if I can keep acting like it doesn’t get to me.”
“You can,” he said. “And you will. Because whoever’s behind this doesn’t get to own your fear. That’s yours, and you decide where it goes.”
Something about the way he said yours lodged under my skin—like he wasn’t just talking about fear, but all of me.
Dean broke the moment. “You should see inside.”
The restaurant was dim, lit only by the glow from the emergency lights and the thin wash of the streetlamp outside the broken window. The plywood was already in place, but the floor still glittered with stray shards no broom could get in one pass.
And there, on the nearest table, was the ghost of it—the empty space where the note had been.
I wrapped my arms around myself. “It’s like they were sitting here,” I murmured.
“They wanted you to think that,” Ryker said from the doorway. “They wanted you to picture them in your space, comfortable. Like they belonged.”
It was working. God, help me, it was working. I couldn’t unsee it—the imagined tilt of a head, the press of a hand against my polished wood tables, the quiet moment before they leaned in to drop that piece of paper like a signature.
I turned away before they could see how much it was getting under my skin. But Caleb stepped into my space, anyway, close enough that the warmth of him cut through the chill in my bones.
“They don’t belong here,” he said, low and certain. “You do. And no one gets to take it from you.”
Something in me wavered, but I nodded.
Ryker crossed the room, his gaze sweeping over every corner like he was mapping it to memory. “We’ll put more eyes in here tomorrow. High corners, overlapping coverage. If they so much as breathe wrong near this place again, we’ll know.”
I looked between him and Caleb—two men who didn’t flinch at broken glass, who saw danger and responded with plans, reach, and power.
Dean caught my gaze from across the room. “You’re not alone in this, Meggie.”
The words should have made me feel better. They almost did. But underneath them was the echo of the note, sharp and deliberate. You don’t deserve their praise.
And the worst part? I didn’t know whose praise they meant. My customers’? My family’s? My own?