Chapter Twenty-Four
Twister
Leaving Tempi never sat right with me. Not even for a minute.
She was still tucked in her bed, curled up like the past few days hadn’t changed everything. But they had. For her. For me. For all of us.
I watched her for a second as the morning light leaked around the edges of the blackout curtain. Her hair was a mess. My shirt was slipping off her shoulder. And all I wanted to do was crawl back in beside her and pretend like the world outside didn’t exist.
Instead, I pulled on my cut.
Tempi stirred, her lashes fluttering open.
“You leavin’ already?”
“Yeah,”
I said softly. “Church.”
She pushed up onto her elbows, blinking through the fog of sleep.
“Is it about the brick?”
“Yeah.”
Tempi’s gaze flicked toward the window, and I could see it then, plain as day. She was scared.
Not shaking-in-the-corner scared. But the kind that got into your bones and made your stomach twist. The kind that came from knowing shit was out of your control.
I crossed back to the bed and leaned down to brush her hair back from her face.
“I’ll come back, doll. I always come back.”
She caught my wrist.
“What if they don’t stop, Twister? What if this just keeps getting worse?”
“They’re trying to rattle us,”
I said.
“Push us out. That’s all it is.”
“But they hurt me.”
Her voice was barely a whisper.
My jaw clenched.
“I know. And I should’ve seen it coming.”
“No, you’re not—”
she shook her head.
“You’re not responsible for that. I just... I feel like it’s only going to escalate.”
I bent and kissed her slow, pouring everything into it I didn’t know how to say out loud.
“Plug’s outside,”
I murmured against her lips.
“He’ll hang out ‘til I’m back.”
Tempi let out a soft, frustrated sigh.
“I should be upset that I have to have a babysitter, but I’m not.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t want you getting a brick to the head either.”
That earned a half-smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
I kissed her again, shorter this time, then headed down the stairs. Plug was already parked at the curb like a silent sentinel, his arms crossed, sunglasses on even though the sun was barely up.
“Keep her in your line of sight at all times,”
I told him.
“Always,”
Plug nodded.
I hopped on my bike and rolled out. The cool morning breeze was doing nothing to ease the weight sitting on my chest. The streets were still quiet, and Madison was not quite awake yet. But I could feel it buzzing under the surface. That tension. The kind that told you shit was brewing just out of sight.
When I pulled up to the clubhouse, it was already alive. Bikes lined the lot. Doors open. Voices low and clipped.
The clubhouse was buzzing by the time I walked in. Swift and Wheels were already in church, laptops out, papers spread across the table like a war room. The others trickled in, Gramps, Hodge, Podge, Magnum, Sully, Nugget, Chewy. Cord was still outside, standing watch.
“Everyone here?”
I asked as I took my seat at the head of the table.
“Minus Plug,”
Swift confirmed.
“Good.”
Wheels tapped his keyboard and flicked something to the big TV on the wall. A name appeared in bold: Elias Conover.
“Who the fuck is that?”
Hodge asked, already scowling.
“Ex-politician,”
Swift said.
“Used to run a nonprofit for public safety initiatives. That was the surface layer. Underneath? Shady as hell. Shell companies, tax dodges, off-books donations. Money moved in circles.”
“Where is he now?” I asked.
“No one knows,”
Wheels answered.
“He disappeared five years ago. Didn’t die. Didn’t move. Just… vanished.”
“He’s tied to The Ledger?” I asked.
“We think so,”
Swift said.
“We’ve been digging through every whisper, every name connected to blackmail, coercion, and old city money. Conover’s been linked to three of the names that disappeared from city planning over the last decade.”
“They go missing?”
Magnum asked.
“Two retired early. One died in a car accident that didn’t make sense,”
Swift muttered.
“Airbags were disabled.”
Silence fell across the room like a fucking guillotine.
“So we’re thinking The Ledger is tied to the old money here in Madison,”
I said.
“And this Conover prick might be the brains of it. And those two other fucks.”
“Could be,”
Wheels said.
“But there’s no face to the operation. No one public. Everyone’s acting through layers.”
Podge leaned forward.
“Then we peel the layers.”
“Exactly,”
I nodded.
“We start leaning harder. Tap deeper into our network. We find people who owe us. Scare the ones who don’t.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
Hodge asked.
“Yeah,”
Chewy agreed.
“We don’t have anyone who owes us in Madison.”
“Then we set a trap,”
Swift said darkly.
“Make ‘em come to us.”
“First step,”
I said.
“Find the fucking birdies delivering these messages to Nick and Frank. Someone has to be the middleman.”
Wheels tapped his laptop.
“I’ll start working on it.”
Ledger wasn’t just noise anymore. It was a system, quiet, organized, and deadly. The kind of shit that didn’t blink when it threatened to set a town on fire.
My fists clenched.
They could come at me. They could mess with our businesses. They could even rattle the club.
But if they laid one fucking finger on Tempi again?
There wouldn’t be a Ledger left to hide behind.
Not in this lifetime.