Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
SADIE
T here was nothing but darkness, an all-consuming void that filled my mind. It swallowed me whole, my version of being buried alive in a coffin of silence.
Even time seemed to stretch and dissolve as I lay there, caught between consciousness and the vague echo of a world I was quickly losing my grip on.
Then slowly, new sensations began to creep in, dull and distant at first. I thought I’d imagined them, but as they grew louder, they scraped against the inside of my skull.
The sound of dripping water finally broke through the fog in my head, and my eyes flew open. Cold concrete pressed against my skin, but my brain couldn’t place where I was. My surroundings were a blur, spinning and unfocused.
“Rowan . . .” I murmured, his name barely a whisper.
Perhaps I imagined speaking, but my lips cracked and stung from the slight movement. Panic clawed its way back into me, urging me to fight, but my body was a heavy, useless thing.
I willed my arms to lift, to do something. Twitch a finger, if nothing else. But my muscles wouldn’t obey. Neither would my lungs as I sucked in the air, stale and thick with dust.
Where was I? The question echoed through me, but I couldn’t hold on long enough to make sense of it.
A scream clawed at my throat, raw and panicked. But it barely scraped past my lips, more breath than sound. I drifted in and out, gasping for air I couldn’t quite catch, until finally, my senses began to settle.
Was Rowan already too late? Was I already dead?
Wherever I was, it was nothing but darkness. It was the kind that felt alive, wrapping itself around me, pushing against my skin.
My head pounded in time with my heart rate, relentless and brutal, and I blinked against the void I seemed to have found myself in. If I had to guess how long I’d been out of it, it had to be hours, the sun now long gone.
I shivered, and a low, detached voice echoed through the room.
“Sadie?”
I blinked rapidly, squinting into the darkness. “Dad?”
As the word left my mouth, bile climbed my throat. It wasn’t a dream. It was true—my father had drugged me.
A light flicked on above me, revealing rusted beams and peeling paint on the walls. I threw an arm up to shield my eyes.
“What . . .” My voice caught in my dry throat, and I coughed, more dust and mildew filling my lungs. “What are you going to do to me?”
Dad rushed in, breathless and frantic—like he hadn’t been the one to drug me and dump me in an abandoned warehouse. The light swayed overhead, one single bulb there to witness what was coming. Dust motes floated like ash as the scent of wet stone and old metal filled my nostrils.
Dad stopped in front of me, his expression every bit the concerned father, even though it was his betrayal that had landed me there. “Sades, please,” he murmured, scrubbing a hand down his face. “I didn’t have a choice. You’ll understand . . . once it’s all over.”
I swallowed hard, desperation clawing at my chest as whatever fragile hope I had left in me finally shattered.
My mind scrambled to make sense of it, to reconcile the man in front of me with the one I wanted to hold on to.
I wanted to beg him to be the dad I remembered, the one who made pancakes and cleaned my scraped knees.
But that man was dead. Or maybe he’d never existed.
A choked sob pressed against the silence. “Why would you do this?” I couldn’t hide the raw pain.
Dad placed his hands on his hips in that way he always did when he was about to lecture me. It was supposed to make him seem more authoritative, but all it did now was make him a fraud.
“It’s not what you think,” he said, exasperation leaking out, as though I was the one making things difficult.
“Not what I think?” The heat of the words burned my throat.
My hands fisted the dirt beneath me. It was the only thing keeping me together.
“I don’t believe anything out of your mouth.
Not anymore. Rowan told me what you did, Dad.
What you did to Mum. How could you do that?
How could you kill her?” I needed to say it out loud, needed to hear the betrayal made real.
Dad’s shoulders slumped forward, the fight seeping out of him. “You don’t know,” he said, his voice a low growl, “what she had done.”
“What could have been so bad that it warranted her own husband murdering her?” Tears streamed down my cheeks, hot and unrelenting. “Tell me, Dad. What did she do?” My voice broke, the sound so small and fractured against the cold walls .
He ran a hand through his hair, decades of exhaustion creeping in.
“She was cheating on me, Sadie.” He swallowed hard.
“That man she was with,” he said, words faltering for a moment, “he . . . was part of a rival motorcycle club. She was selling us out so they could take over.” The room tilted.
The cold no longer existed as fire built in my chest. “She wanted the Ridge Riders gone, but only so another club—even worse—could take over.”
“What?” I shook my head, my brain fighting to keep up. “What about the Mayor? The people who died in that house fire? Mum was investigating them. She wanted to bring them down.”
Even as the words left my mouth, I couldn’t fight the truth simmering just beneath the surface. My entire body tensed.
What if Dad was right? What if Mum had been using those deaths—the mayor—as a front for something else?
Dad exhaled sharply as he paced in front of me.
The frustration was evident in every step, his movements on edge and twitchy.
“It was a fucking mess.” He shook his head.
“Such a goddamn mess. Not only did she put everything I’d done to help Barrenridge in jeopardy, but she also put your life in danger.
Your life, Sadie.” His words rushed out all at once, spilling into the room.
“She didn’t realise what she was doing. Not at first. The people she used to get what she wanted weren’t going to let her get away with it.
” Dad’s eyes welled up with unshed tears as he stared at me in the most haunted way.
“She didn’t care, Sades. Didn’t care who she hurt in the process.
She didn’t care who got killed because of her.
She fell in love with someone worse than me, and she couldn’t see past that. ”
A part of me wanted to scream he was lying.
But what if he wasn’t? What if I’d judged the wrong parent my whole life?
I couldn’t deny the way he looked at me, like he was being torn apart from the inside.
There was something there. A hint of the desperation—of the truth—he wanted so badly for me to understand.
Still, that didn’t change the fact he’d killed my mother. Even if she was cheating on him, or if she was as guilty as he said.
Dad took a step closer, his eyes softening, his voice low and urgent as he knelt in front of me.
“Sades, I know I’ve hurt you,” he said, the raw edge in his words cutting deeper than anything else.
“God, I’ve hurt you so much. But I’m going to make this right, I swear.
” He reached into his pocket, and I flinched away.
For a heart-stopping moment, I thought he was reaching for a weapon. But what he pulled out was small and worn. His hand hovered in midair for a second too long, then pressed something into my palm.
“This was your mother’s,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. “Everything you need to know, it’s all in there. The truth about Logan, about what she promised him if he helped her. The whole ugly truth.”
My fingers trembled as I gripped the tattered leather diary. The edges were worn, and the leather cracked like a wound that had never healed.
“Logan?” I frowned. “No, he was working for the club. Rowan even said so himself. Logan sent messages to Troy just before he died. He was working for the club, Dad.” I repeated those last words, more of an attempt to convince myself that my mum wouldn’t have put Logan in danger.
Surely, she wouldn’t have destroyed him for some twisted purge she thought was right.
Dad’s eyes softened. “No. He was working for your mother. She promised him, Sades. Promised to get Troy out if he helped her take the Riders down. He believed her. Logan’s death wasn’t the club’s fault, sweetheart—it was your mother’s.”
My bottom lip trembled as I stared at my father. Everything I thought I knew was wrong.
“No. That’s not—no. That can’t be right. You’re lying.” More tears fell, and I rocked back and forth the way I used to as a kid when the nightmares wouldn’t stop.
But this one was real. This one didn’t end.
Dad sighed. “It’s the truth, whether or not you want to believe me.”
Was there anyone who hadn’t lied to me? Anyone left who hadn’t twisted love into something I couldn’t even recognise?
“Why? Why would she do that? Logan was everything to me, Dad. And she . . . no! No! She took him away from me.” I screamed into the void, my throat shredded raw. My nails dug into the floor, the pain grounding me just enough to keep breathing. “Logan,” I sobbed. “Oh god . . . Logan.”
Footsteps from outside approached, and I scrambled backwards, my spine hitting a wall behind me. My skin itched from the dust clinging to it. Fear tangled with desperation as I searched for something, any sign that this wasn’t how it ended for me.
Two shadows hovered in the darkness by the doorway, then the first stepped inside, his boots heavy on the concrete. Dust kicked up as he came into view.
Snake.
All the air rushed from my lungs. “Dad?” I choked out. “What—what have you done?”
Snake lunged forward without warning, his eyes dead and mouth curled into something close to disgust. “Times up,” he said, his voice dripping with irritation.
He turned to the man behind him—Nicky—and nodded in my direction.
“Take care of her. And make sure nobody will recognise that pretty face.” Those words were my death sentence, hanging heavy between us.