Chapter 1 #2
A shove turned into a swing, the swing turned into bodies moving, and within seconds, the whole lot was nothing but boots grinding over gravel, fists cracking against bone, and curses ripping through the humid air.
I drove one bastard backward into the rusted side of an old fuel pump hard enough to make the metal groan, then turned into another man coming at me from the left.
Tripp fought beside me with his prospect cut shifting over his shoulders, and blood already smeared across one cheek from a split lip.
I never saw the knife before it went in. One second, I was throwing a punch, and the next, a heavy pressure punched deep into my side, followed by a hot, spreading burn that stole the air from my lungs.
At first, my body didn’t understand what had happened.
Adrenaline kept everything sharp and distant at the same time, turning the noise around me into something muffled while my hand dropped instinctively to my ribs.
When my fingers came away slick and red, reality settled fast. The wound wasn’t fatal yet, but it was deep enough that every beat of my heart pushed more blood through my shirt and into the palm I clamped against my side.
The fight ended not long after that. Whether the other group realized they were losing or decided a dead Redline King would bring more heat than they could survive, I didn’t know or care.
My focus had narrowed to the burn under my ribs, the wet heat spreading beneath my shirt, and the effort it took to stay on my feet while the sun beat down on the back of my neck.
I’d taken injuries before. I knew the difference between something that hurt and something that needed attention before it became a real problem, and this was already sliding into the second category.
Tripp knew it too. He crouched in front of me, his face tight in a way I understood better now than I had then, his gaze dropping to the blood covering my hand before flicking back to my face.
He’d taken a shallow cut along one forearm, nothing that couldn’t have waited until we rode back to the compound, but his eyes were locked on my side with the kind of focus a man got when he was making fast decisions and didn’t like any of them.
Both our phones had been damaged in the scuffle.
Mine had been crushed under somebody’s boot, the screen spiderwebbed and dead, and Tripp’s had hit the pavement hard enough that it wouldn’t turn on when he checked it.
That should’ve been the end of our options until we got back to the bikes and rode like hell, except Tripp reached inside his cut and hesitated for one fraction of a second before pulling out a phone I’d never seen before.
The movement was small enough that most men would’ve missed it, especially while bleeding and leaning against a bike in the middle of a sunbaked lot, but I’d spent too many years watching people for tells not to catch it.
The phone wasn’t a burner, a cheap backup, or anything a prospect should’ve had hidden on him during routine club work.
It was the kind of high-end model I’d seen favored by government types who liked their toys expensive, secure, and nearly impossible to trace without the right access.
Even half-lightheaded from blood loss, I felt something cold settle beneath the pain. Tripp unlocked it with smooth efficiency, his thumb moving over the screen while his jaw hardened. And there was a flicker around his eyes that looked too much like guilt for me to ignore.
He covered it fast, burying whatever had slipped through behind the same calm competence he always wore when shit got bad. Then he called Cage, the club’s doctor, who we relied on instead of emergency services because it saved us a lot of questions, scrutiny, and paperwork bullshit.
Tripp relayed our location, my condition, and the fastest route back in a clipped voice that left no room for panic. At the time, I was too busy keeping pressure on my side and breathing through the burn to ask the questions forming in my head, but I didn’t stop watching him.
Luckily, we weren’t far out of town, and a couple of brothers showed up ten minutes later with an SUV and medical supplies. By the time we made it back to the compound, Cage awaited us in the clinic with his sleeves rolled up and a tray already set out under the bright overhead lights.
I sat on the edge of the exam table while Cage cut away enough of my shirt to get to the wound, his hands skilled as he cleaned the blood from my skin, checked the depth, and started stitching me back together with the calm focus that reminded everyone why he was one of the best trauma surgeons alive.
I barely heard half of what he said. The needle pulled through my skin, the antiseptic burned like a son of a bitch, and every breath tugged at the wound beneath Cage’s hands, but my attention kept drifting to Tripp.
He stood near the counter, his posture easy enough to fool anyone not looking too closely.
His dark shirt was streaked with dust, his lower lip split, his forearm bandaged, and his face unreadable in the harsh clinic light.
What I didn’t see was the phone. Somewhere between the roadside and the clinic, the device had disappeared.
When Cage finished with me, I eased off the table with a muttered curse, pulling my ruined shirt down over the fresh bandage as carefully as I could.
The stitches tugged beneath the dressing, sending a sharp pull through my side that made my jaw clench, but I kept my face clear and turned to Tripp like nothing about the morning had changed how I viewed him.
“Go handle whatever you’ve got left today. I need to talk to Cage for a minute.”
Tripp’s eyes held mine for a second longer than they should’ve. He nodded, gave Cage a quick thanks, and walked out of the clinic with his usual controlled stride, as though he hadn’t just pulled a secret fucking phone out of nowhere while I bled on the side of the road.
The moment the door shut behind him, Cage glanced up from cleaning instruments, his dark brows drawing together as he studied me. “What do you need?”
I shook my head, already moving carefully across the room as a hunch dug deep under my skin. “Something I need to discuss with Kane first.”
Cage watched me for a beat, then nodded and went back to his work. He didn’t push. We all knew when to ask questions and when implicit trust was needed. Especially if it involved talking to the prez first.
I crossed to the hazardous disposal bin slowly, each step pulling at the wound in my side while my pulse beat too hard beneath the bandage.
The container sat tucked where it always was, white plastic marked with warning labels.
I put on gloves, then opened it carefully and shifted through what I could without making a mess, already knowing what I was going to find before I saw it.
The phone sat beneath discarded gauze and torn packaging—a secret Tripp had tried to bury in a hurry.
Prospects with nothing to hide didn’t ditch expensive encrypted devices in medical waste and walk out pretending nothing had happened. I wiped the phone down, turned it over in my hand, and studied every inch of it. The more I looked, the worse it got.
The security features weren’t standard, the operating system wasn’t standard, and even the lock screen layout looked different from anything sold commercially. My instincts had already given me the answer, but I needed proof.
So I took it to Jax.
Screens glowed across the walls, casting blue-white light over his face when he looked up from his desk and adjusted his black-rimmed glasses.
He took one look at the phone in my hand, and whatever smart-ass comment had been sitting on his tongue died before it made it out. That alone told me plenty.
He didn’t ask unnecessary questions, just took the device when I held it out and plugged it into one of his systems. Then he went to work with the focused silence he got when something interested him and pissed him off at the same time.
I stood behind him with one hand braced against the back of one of the chairs in front of his desk, feeling the pull in my side and the steady throb beneath the bandage while lines of code and security prompts moved across his multiple screens too fast for anyone but Jax to follow.
His fingers flew over the keyboard, his mouth flattening more with every layer he peeled back.
Less than an hour later, he confirmed every fear I’d been trying not to entertain. The device carried federal encryption, software, and hardware identifiers buried deep enough that most people would never have known where to look. Jax found them anyway.
By the time he leaned back in his chair and looked at me, his expression had gone grim in a way I didn’t see often. “It’s FBI-issued.”
The words hit me harder than the damn blade to my side.
Not only because Tripp was a fed. That was enough on its own.
But for me, the badge behind the lie was only part of what twisted the knife.
What really gutted me was the rest of it—the friendship we’d built, the trust I’d handed him, and every memory that suddenly felt poisoned in my head.
All the nights after races when we’d leaned against bikes with beers in our hands, talking shit and laughing until our throats got rough.
All the times he’d shown up when asked, watched our backs, and taken orders without complaint.
All the moments that had looked like loyalty until the truth changed the angle.
That was the part I couldn’t reconcile. Tripp had cared. I knew he had, which only made the betrayal uglier.
Looking back, there were too many examples not to see it.
The raid. The warnings. The situations where he’d nudged us away from trouble instead of toward it.
Time after time, he’d acted like a man trying to minimize damage rather than maximize it.
Seemed like he was investigating the club while doing everything he could to keep collateral damage from landing on men he’d started to think of as family.
Maybe that should’ve mattered. It might even make a difference for Kane or my other brothers.
Not to me.
Because none of it changed what he’d done.
While we’d been calling him brother, he’d been standing inside our walls with federal equipment in his pocket and a lie behind his eyes.
He’d laughed with us, worked beside us, bled with us, and still planned to help build a case when the time came.
Whether he’d drawn lines for himself or convinced himself he was protecting us from worse didn’t erase the fact that every moment of trust had been built on a foundation he knew was rotten.
The anger was bad enough, but the guilt dug deeper.
As secretary, prospects were part of my responsibility.
I was supposed to protect the Kings from exactly this kind of fuckup, and instead, I’d been the one who brought Tripp into our world.
I’d vouched for him and helped open the door he’d walked through with a lie tucked under his cut.
The confirmed truth burning through every suspicion I’d tried to hold at a distance. The clubhouse felt different around me now, every familiar sound heightened by the weight of what I knew. But all of it seemed distant beneath the roar of anger in my blood.
I pulled out my phone and sent a text to Kane.
Me
Need to talk. ASAP.
The reply came a few seconds later.
Prez
Office.
I shoved the phone back into my pocket and started down the hallway, my side aching with every step and my jaw locked tight enough to make my teeth hurt.
I didn’t know what would happen once I put the phone on Kane’s desk and told him exactly what Jax had found, but I knew one thing for damn sure.
Tripp’s days were numbered. He might not lose his life, but I’d make damn fucking sure he regretted every moment of his lie.