Chapter 19 – Madeline
My phone buzzed on the table, pulling me out of the haze I’d been lost in for the past hour. I glanced at the screen and saw Quinn’s name flash across it.
Quinn: Hey, hon! how are you holding up after… you know,everything?
I sighed, picking up the phone and leaning back against the couch. Leave it to Quinn to check in at the exact moment when I was actively trying not to think about everything.
Me: I’ve been better. It’s been a long couple of days.
Her reply came almost instantly.
Quinn: Spill. What happened? And if you try to play this down, I will absolutely track you down, drag you out, and interrogate you until you crack.
I smiled despite myself, shaking my head. Quinn wasn’t one to let things slide, and I knew there was no getting out of this.
Me: Jax and I… we had a fight. A bad one.
Quinn: OMG. You fought withJackie? Mister “I Am Stoic Hear me Grumble”? I didn’t even know that was possible. What happened? Tell me everything.
I hesitated, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. Part of me didn’t want to rehash it all, but Quinn had a way of prying things out of me without judgment. And I knew she wouldn’t let this go.
Me: He said I had “daddy issues.”
There was a beat of silence, and then her reply hit like a lightning bolt.
Quinn: He. WHAT?!
Me: Yeah. It was… not his finest moment.
Quinn: Maddie, you better tell me you ripped him a new one, because I’m about to lose it over here.
Me: Oh, he knew he messed up. The second the words left his mouth, he realized how badly he’d stepped in it. I didn’t even have to say much — my face said it all.
Quinn: As it should! What anidiot! I mean, he’s a hot idiot, but still an idiot. Ugh, I’m torn between wanting to yell at him and giving him a hug because youknowhe’s probably dying inside over this.
Her ability to switch between outrage and empathy in a single sentence made me laugh under my breath.
Me: You’re not wrong. He actually tried to fix it. Like, really fix it.
Quinn: Did he grovel? Please tell me he grovelled.
Me: Kind of? He apologized, likereallyapologized. He opened up about his time in service and why he’s so… you know. It was a lot.
Quinn: Hold up. Are you telling me the Jaxon Brooks, King of Emotional Stonewalling, actually opened up to you? This is major. Like, you just unlocked a whole new level. Congrats, babe!
I rolled my eyes but couldn’t stop the smile creeping across my face.
Me: It was… intense. And then he gave me his dog tags.
Quinn: I’m sorry, WHAT?!As inhis dog tags? Like the ones he’s probably worn through hell and back? Are you sure we’re still talking about the same Jax Brooks here? Because that’s… wow. That’s HUGE.
Me: Yeah, he said I was a badass…
Her reply came faster than I could blink.
Quinn: Maddie, do you have any idea what that means? That’s like… I don’t even know. That’s like him carving your name into his chest with a knife.
Me: I don’t know if it means all that, Quinn.
Quinn: Oh, it does. Trust me. That’s “I can’t live without her” territory.
I stared at her message, my chest tightening as I toyed with the dog tags resting against my collarbone. Could she be right? Did I mean that much to him?
Me: I don’t know what to do with that.
Quinn: Toots, you don’tdoanything. Just let it happen. You ARE a badass!
I tossed my phone onto the coffee table, Quinn’s words still swirling in my head.
My chest still felt heavy, the weight of everything pressing down like I couldn’t quite catch my breath.
I fingered the dog tags around my neck, their cool weight grounding me for a moment. Jaxon trusted me, in his own guarded, messy way. And I knew that trust wasn’t something he gave lightly. If he could open up to me like that — if he could hand over something so personal, so tied to his identity — then I owed it to him not to let fear or hesitation stop me.
Which is why I couldn’t ignore what I’d found about Sean.
Standing, I grabbed my laptop off the couch and settled at the dining table. I’d been piecing things together for weeks, small scraps of information that didn’t make sense on their own but started forming a pattern the more I looked.
Jaxon might not like me poking around in club business, but this wasn’t about the club anymore. This was about him—and about protecting what he’d built.
I opened my notes, the ones I’d been keeping locked and buried deep in a folder no one else would think to look for.
Names, dates, numbers — they stared back at me like puzzle pieces, begging to be fit together. My heart raced as I traced over the lines, the patterns, looking for the one thing I’d been missing.
This wasn’t new. I’d been digging for weeks. Not with malice — not because I didn’t trust him — but because I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t sit by and pretend like the secrets surrounding the club didn’t matter, like the whispers and the warning signs weren’t building toward something dangerous.
It had started small. A casual glance at a ledger Quinn had left open on the bar. A quick listen in on conversations between staff when they thought no one was paying attention. Little pieces of information I hadn’t even known I was gathering until they started to form a picture.
I’d roped in my colleague Tim to help. He had a razor-sharp instinct for uncovering details that slipped past everyone else — a real bloodhound for hidden information. I liked to think I was pretty damn good at my job, but if there was one person I trusted to catch what I might have missed, it was him.
If there was something to find, Tim would find it.
That’s why, when the pieces of this puzzle weren’t lining up the way I needed them to, I called him.
It wasn’t easy admitting I needed help — I prided myself on my ability to dig, to investigate, to uncover the truth. But Tim? He had an edge, a sixth sense for the details that lived in the margins.
“I figured you’d call me sooner or later,” he’d said, his tone half smug, half curious. “What’s got you stumped this time, Hart?”
“Nothing’s stumped me,” I’d replied, refusing to let his teasing get to me. “But I’m chasing something big, and I want another pair of eyes on it.”
“Flattering,” he’d drawled. “Send it over. If you’re asking me, it must be juicy.”
“It’s not flattering,” I shot back. “You’re just good at what you do, and I need a second opinion. Don’t let it go to your head.”
He’d laughed, “Too late. It’s already there.”
Despite his ego, he could be trusted.
I hadn’t meant to keep anything from Jaxon at first, but the deeper I went, the harder it was to bring him into it. The harder it was to say:
“ Hey, by the way, I’ve been poking around your club’s business dealings because I think something shady is going on. This story might be bigger than any of us thought…”
Especially when I knew how much he’d already put on the line for me.
So, I’d kept going, sneaking glances at files, taking mental notes of things that didn’t add up. I told myself it was harmless, that it didn’t mean I didn’t trust Jax. I trusted him with my life – that much was obvious, but telling him this? Involving him when I was looking into Sean, his friend… that was different.
I took a steadying breath and turned back to the screen, forcing the memories aside. If I was going to do this, I needed to focus. I needed to figure out what Sean was involved in and how deep it went.
The transactions stared back at me like they were mocking me, daring me to connect the dots.
Each one was tied to the same company, the kind that didn’t show up on a casual search but crumbled under scrutiny. I’d found them by accident — an errant receipt Quinn had left lying around on one of her less-organized days.
That receipt had led me to more discrepancies in the club’s financial records, things that didn’t add up no matter how I tried to twist them. Payments that came out of nowhere. Inventory logs that didn’t match the orders.
And Sean.
My stomach turned as I pulled up the timeline I’d pieced together. Sean’s name wasn’t on anything directly, but his shifts lined up too neatly with the discrepancies. The payments… I couldn’t prove anything.
I bit my lip, pulling up the flagged account I’d found the last time I dared to dig this deep. There it was again, the same account tied to the same company, the same account that funnelled money into the club, and then… elsewhere.
Presumably.
Allegedly.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard, my heart racing as I thought about what this would mean. For Jaxon. For us.
Was there an us? Fuck Maddie, you’ve clearly had a stroke of insanity.
The chain around my neck felt heavier somehow, like they were reminding me of everything Jaxon had shared with me, of the trust he’d placed in me. I was risking that trust by doing this, by keeping this from him, but how could I bring it to him when I wasn’t ready? When I wasn’t sure?
“Just a little more,” I whispered to myself, scrolling further. “I just need to be sure.”
But deep down, I already knew. I’d already observed enough to know that Sean wasn’t just involved — he was at the centre of it. It was a gut feeling.
I stared at the screen, the evidence piling up like a dam about to burst. Every transaction, every timestamp — it all pointed back to Sean. And not just him. The more I dug, the more it became clear this wasn’t just a simple scheme. There were others involved. Bigger players. People whose names I didn’t recognize but who seemed to operate in the shadows, using the club as their playground.
I pulled up the grainy security footage I’d saved earlier, my stomach twisting with each frame. Watching Sean lean in close to another man — one I’d tried my best to identify — made my gut churn.
The guy was a ghost, slipping in and out of focus, his features too blurry to make out clearly. I didn’t need a perfect ID to know what I was looking at.
He was the type — rich, entitled, the kind of man who acted like the world owed him everything. He carried himself like someone who walked into a room and expected the walls to bow down to him, like he owned the place.
His power, his influence, it was all there, invisible but palpable. I didn’t need to know his name to know that kind of man could be dangerous.
Men like him didn’t get their hands dirty, not directly. They let others do the heavy lifting, while they stayed clean enough to smile for the cameras and avoid the consequences.
I hit play, my eyes narrowing as I studied their movements. The conversation was too far away to catch, but their body language was unmistakable. It wasn’t casual. It was calculated. Sean’s posture was relaxed on the surface, leaning slightly forward with an easy smirk on his face, but his eyes — his eyes were sharp, darting around like he was aware of every angle, every person nearby.
The other man didn’t move as much, his stance deliberate and still, like he was calling the shots without needing to say a word. He exuded control, the kind that came from knowing he had power in places most people couldn’t see.
I paused the footage, zooming in on the man’s face, even though I already knew I wouldn’t find anything new
My stomach tightened as I hit play again, watching the two of them exchange a few more words before Sean handed something over. A flash of white—an envelope, maybe? — but the resolution was too poor to make it out clearly.
I leaned back in my chair, dragging a hand down my face as the weight of it all settled in.
Sean wasn’t just involved. He wasn’t just laundering money or skimming off the club’s profits. He was tied to this man somehow.
I stared at the screen, watching the footage loop back to the beginning, my mind racing.
Why?
Why would Sean get himself tangled up in something like this? Was it desperation? Greed? Or had he been dragged into it, the same way people like this guy dragged everyone else into their webs, promising rewards while holding knives behind their backs?
I chewed the inside of my cheek, trying to piece it together.
Sean was an idiot, sure, but he wasn’t stupid. He had to know that these people werent the kind of men you walked away from.
The more I thought about it, the more the picture started to come into focus.
The payments, the meetings, the calculated risks — it wasn’t just Sean freelancing. He was a cog in a much larger machine, if I had to put a bet on it. A machine that could crush him—and anyone close to him—if it went off the rails.
Which meant Jaxon was in danger, too.
My pulse quickened, and I stood abruptly, pacing the room as I tried to think. I needed more than this. If I brought this to Jaxon now, he’d blow up — at Sean, and at me for keeping this from him in the first place.
But if I waited too long, if the wrong people got wind of what I was doing…
I glanced at the dog tags around my neck, their weight a reminder of the trust Jaxon had placed in me. He’d trusted me to be honest, to let him in. And here I was, still holding back because I didn’t know how to give him the truth without breaking him.
I sat back down, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. One more piece of evidence. Just one more, and I’d tell him.
Even as the thought crossed my mind, I knew it was a lie. I wasn’t stalling for more proof. I was stalling because I was scared.