Chapter 9
Hunting the King
Five years had changed everything.
Except the way Ryder Cross looked at her.
Sienna Blake parked her motorcycle two blocks from the convention center and removed her helmet.
Thousands of people filled the streets for the annual International Motorcycle Expo.
Riders from across the country gathered beneath banners, chrome gleamed beneath the afternoon sun, and engines thundered like distant storms.
To everyone else, it was another weekend celebration.
To her...
It was a hunting ground.
She hadn't come to admire motorcycles.
She had come to find the man who had destroyed her life.
Her gaze drifted toward the center stage.
There he stood.
Ryder Cross.
Still wearing the Black Venom patch.
Still carrying himself like the world rested on his shoulders.
His hair was slightly longer now.
The lines around his eyes had deepened.
He looked older.
Harder.
Lonelier.
He looked exactly like the man she had spent five years trying to forget.
Her heart betrayed her first.
It remembered him before her mind allowed itself to hate him.
Across the exhibition hall, Ryder suddenly stopped mid-conversation.
Roman noticed immediately.
"What?"
Ryder slowly turned.
"I don't know."
He scanned the crowd.
Hundreds of unfamiliar faces.
Families.
Riders.
Journalists.
Then...
A woman in a black leather jacket lowered her sunglasses.
Gray eyes met green.
The world disappeared.
Sophia.
No.
Impossible.
His heartbeat slammed against his ribs.
She was alive.
Standing less than fifty yards away.
She hadn't changed.
Not really.
She still carried herself with quiet confidence.
Still tucked loose strands of hair behind one ear when she was nervous.
Still looked at him as though she could see straight through every lie he had ever told himself.
Only one thing was different.
The warmth in her eyes was gone.
Sienna turned before he could reach her.
She disappeared into the crowd with practiced precision.
Ryder moved without thinking.
"Sophia!"
Heads turned.
She didn't.
Roman caught up beside him.
"Was that—"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"I lost her."
For the first time in years, Ryder ran.
Not because someone was chasing him.
Because someone he loved was running away.
Sienna slipped through the crowded exhibition floor before exiting into a narrow alley behind the convention center.
She leaned against a brick wall, breathing hard.
Five years.
Five years of preparing for this moment.
She imagined anger.
Coldness.
Triumph.
Instead...
Her hands wouldn't stop shaking.
"You always were terrible at hiding."
She closed her eyes.
His voice.
The same calm voice that had once whispered forever against her skin.
She slowly turned.
Ryder stood several feet away.
Neither moved.
Neither trusted themselves to.
"You changed your hair," he said quietly.
She laughed bitterly.
"That's what you noticed?"
"No."
His voice softened.
"It's the first thing I could safely say."
Silence stretched between them.
Finally she spoke.
"You found me."
"I never stopped looking."
"You should have tried harder."
The words struck like a punch.
He accepted them without protest.
"I deserved that."
"You deserve worse."
"I know."
She stepped closer.
"So why are you here?"
"I wanted to see you."
"You already did."
She moved to leave.
He gently caught her wrist.
The instant their skin touched, five years vanished.
Memory flooded both of them.
Midnight rides.
Laughter.
Stolen kisses.
Promises.
Then came the shipyard.
The accusations.
The fire.
The goodbye.
She pulled free immediately.
"Don't."
"I'm sorry."
"No."
Her eyes filled with tears she refused to let fall.
"You don't get to touch me anymore."
That evening, Sienna sat alone inside her hotel room staring at the flash drive that had changed everything.
The footage proved she had been framed.
It proved someone manipulated evidence.
It proved Ryder had never stopped searching.
None of it erased what happened.
None of it erased the moment he stepped back instead of standing beside her.
A soft knock interrupted her thoughts.
She opened the door.
An envelope rested on the floor.
No name.
Inside lay only one photograph.
Ryder standing outside her abandoned garage every anniversary of her disappearance.
Five different years.
Five different photographs.
Five years of waiting.
Across the back someone had written:
Some men never stop loving.
She closed the envelope.
"I hate you."
The tears finally came.
Because hatred had suddenly become much harder to hold onto.
Elsewhere, hidden inside a black SUV, someone watched Ryder leave the hotel.
A voice crackled through an earpiece.
"They've seen each other."
"And?"
"They're already remembering."
The reply came almost instantly.
"Good."
"Memory is far more dangerous than revenge."