Chapter 33
The Sacramento skyline appears on the horizon. I adjust my hands around the wheel.
Two hours ago, I was in Rio's house. Two hours ago, I was making a decision that felt abstract and necessary and survivable in the way that decisions feel before you have to execute them.
It doesn't feel abstract anymore.
This drive has been long enough to plan, but also long enough to accept that things don’t always go to plan. Even if I manage to get that manila folder, take Luther out, Rio might hate me for this.
Would he hate me for this?
My gut tells me he meant every word he said to me.
My intuition tells me that we’re meant to be and that I belong not only with him but with his family, in Echo Valley.
I spent my life being managed and manipulated.
I waited patiently to break free, and I’ll be damned if I let my own fear of a man like Luther stop me from grabbing my next chapter by the balls.
I have to control my own destiny, or someone else will.
Rio will understand that.
I repeat my plan with the conviction of a manifestation. I burn the folder. End Luther. When he’s arrested, Rio and I can be together.
But men from my world are unpredictable. What I want to happen and what will, could be two different things.
The freeway signs come up one by one — familiar, ordinary, the same signs I've driven under my whole life — and each one brings me closer to something I can't take back. I’m about to put out a hit on Luther Vaughn.
I tried not to let myself think about Rio on the drive here, but guilt swirls in my stomach along with a gutful of doubt.
You said you trusted me. Let me prove you're right to do that.
I do trust him, but he was honest with me, and I know extracting the women will take more than twenty-four hours.
I run the conversation through my head again, as if he’s here, feeling scared and upset that maybe he won’t forgive me.
I can’t think that way. He said he wanted to be with me.
I want that too, and my vision of us doesn’t include conjugal visits.
It also isn’t us being together as I go to therapy to deal with the certain trauma Luther will put me through.
Rio was right. I can't go back to Luther.
But that’s not a plan.
The plan is to end this. Tonight. All of it.
I take the exit toward Luther's neighborhood. The streets get quieter, bigger. The houses are set back from the road behind gates and mature trees.
Luther's house is at the end of a private road. I've been here enough times for my body to react with a sick feeling as I drive up.
I park two streets away.
Sit in the dark for a moment and breathe. My pulse thunders in my ears. My mouth is dry. I’m terrified.
But I don’t have time to sit here with my fear. I glance at the clock on my dashboard. It’s nearly six. MC presidents don't come home before dark, but Luther could come home any time after.
I take out my cell to put out the hit.
The message has to be perfect. It has to land exactly right to make that monster ready to rush over here and kill Luther.
How can I word this message just right so he rushes over? I need to play to his paranoia and his ego. He needs to charge over in a rage, believing that everything he cares about is being threatened.
Luckily, after so many years around him, I know him better than he thinks I do.
I type out the text and send it. Then I put my phone in my pocket and jog toward Luther’s house, keeping to the shadows.
The house is dark. As I'd hoped, he’s out, probably still at the Black Ridge clubhouse, which is only a couple of blocks from here.
I move around the side of the property, staying close to the hedge line, until I reach the back near his office.
The cellar door is exactly where I remember it, in the backyard, down five steps littered with dead leaves and cobwebs. It leads to the basement.
Luther held our engagement party in his rec room down there. Wood paneled walls, neon lights, and a long table full of men had gathered to celebrate the alliance.
That was the moment it became real.
And my only thought — the one that cut through the champagne and my dad's hand heavy on my shoulder, was that I need to know every way out of this house.
At some point that night, I slipped away to find a soda in a side room off the main party space, and that's when I saw it — this cellar door set into the back wall. A potential escape one day.
Now I’m looking at it from the other side. It’s weathered. The wood around the frame is soft with rot, and I can’t believe I’m using it to go in rather than to get out.
I run my hand along the frame and feel exactly what I noticed then, the wood has been rotted or eaten by something, and it’s locked in place only with a shed lock.
A man like Luther, with all his muscle and his threats and his reputation — I'd bet nobody in this neighborhood or beyond would ever dare try to break into his property. Why would he bother reinforcing a cellar door that nobody would touch?
I almost laugh at the fact that I didn’t check the front door.
He probably leaves it unlocked.
But this is the quietest place to enter.
I head back up the stairs and search for something hard, settling on a rock that makes up the border of his flowerbed, then I find the weakest point in the frame.
The noise of each strike makes me cringe with worry, so I pound like holy hell.
I want this finished quickly, before any neighbors notice.
Once, twice–
With a whack and a sharp clatter, the door gives on the third strike, the rotted wood cracks apart, half of the latch clinks loudly on the cement below, and the door swings open into the dark below.
I freeze.
Wait.
Nothing.
So I go inside.
The darkness is absolute at first. I stand inside and wait some more, listening, or trying to, over the loud whoosh of blood in my ears. All the courage I felt on the drive up drains out of me.
Am I insane?
I wait until my heartbeat settles back into a more normal rhythm and I’m sure that nobody is home.
Then, I take my phone from my pocket and turn the flashlight on low, angling it at the floor so it doesn't throw light up through any gaps.
Running my phone along the walls of the basement, it’s just as I remember. Two walls of storage. There are several fridges for parties, and the disturbingly large chest freezer I chose to blank from my mind. It smells faintly damp and of chemicals.
I move through the space slowly, staying close to the wall, stopping every few steps to pay attention to any sound the house might make.
Nothing. All I hear is my own heartbeat, louder than I'd like it to be. Loud enough to give me away if Luther had a dog, but he admitted to me upon our first meeting that he hates them.
The internal stairs are just outside this room, and when I reach them, I stop at the bottom, looking up at the door at the top. There’s a thin line of light underneath it, a hallway light left on, I hope.
He's not home.
At least he shouldn’t be.
I take the stairs one at a time, testing each one for creaks before I put my weight on it, and ease the door open at the top by inches. I listen closely for even the tick of a clock, but the house is still a deafening silence.
Making my way to his office, I open the door. It’s exactly as I remember it when I snuck in and when I was here with my dad– the heavy desk, the bookshelves. And of course, the fireplace against the far wall that must be for show because it doesn’t get too cold in Sacramento.
Luther’s ostentatious way is what will finish him.
I hurry, crouching down to find the secret space again.
The manila folder is exactly where it was. It’s filled with what Ray spent years compiling — photographs, documents, records of every favor Rio did, every secret he kept and every piece of himself he handed over to stay free.
I swiftly carry it to the fireplace and snatch the matches from the mantelpiece. My hands are steady, which surprises me.
There's a firelighter and a stack of kindling in the wrought iron basket beside the hearth. I get it going, watching the small flame take hold, and for a moment, I crouch there with Rio's past in my hands.
Nearly fifteen years ago, Ray put the first piece of blackmail in this folder.
I try to hold that in my mind, but can't quite manage the weight of it.
This is fifteen years of someone having control over him.
Fifteen years of this hanging above him like a guillotine that could fall at any time.
I wonder how many times Rio woke up thinking today was the day.
How many times had he thought of telling Ray to go fuck himself?
Because I know he wanted to.
I feed the first page to the fire, stoking it with Rio's past.
Page by page, I watch his debt turn to ash. Names. Dates. All the careful, damning detail someone kept like a sharpened knife. Gone. Gone. Gone.
Something is loosening in my chest as I watch it burn. This isn't just his freedom. It's mine too.
It’s ours.
When the last page is curled and blackened, I get a text, and it sucks the wind right out of me.
The hit worked. He’s on his way.
I need Luther here. Now.
I know how Luther thinks. He won't send someone — sending someone means trusting someone, and Luther doesn't trust anyone with anything that matters to him. He'll come himself.
I need smoke.
I grab the box of firelighters and empty all five into the grate.
The fire roars back up immediately, high and hot and producing exactly the kind of thick rolling smoke that travels fast in an enclosed space.
The detector screams.
Just like I planned.
I move to the window, opening it just a sliver so I don’t choke as the smoke billows, even though it’s already dying down.
Then, I wait with my heart in my throat. Luther should be here first before the second monster comes to take him out. Thank God it doesn’t take long for the rumble of his motorcycle to fill the driveway.
I crack the window more, enough for some air, not enough for him to miss exactly where to find me.
God, I hope my plan works.
The thought of facing Luther now, not knowing what comes next, sends terror up my spine.
His front door opens and closes. Heavy boots stomp down the hall — hurried, straight for me.
The office door opens.
Luther stops dead in his tracks when he sees me. The painful, high-pitched scream of the fire alarm sounds out around him, making him look like the arrival of the grim reaper himself.
But the fire dies down and soon, the alarm stops, leaving a sharp silence that’s just as terrifying as the lethal glow in his eyes.
For one moment, I think he’s going to come straight for me, but he just clenches his fist at his side. A fist I’m certain is intended for me.
"Delilah." His voice is ugly. "I didn't expect you til tomorrow.”
He crosses the room. I have to hold myself together not to flinch or step away.
When Luther finds out what I’ve done, he won’t play nice.
"Rio sent you back," he says, as if I’m just some property being passed back and forth.
He moves to his desk. Sets his keys down. And then his eyes shift to the fireplace. The ash is still glowing in the grate. He looks back at me. He hisses. “What did you burn?”
“You know what I burned,” I stick my chin up, defiantly.
The pleasantness drains from his face entirely. He moves toward me, and I still hold my ground because I will not let this man intimidate me.
There’s venom in his gaze. “You’ve been fucking Rio Mendez.”
He stares me down, the blue in his eyes is like ice. His body is coiled tight, and just when I think he’s going to hit me–
He laughs. His chuckle is unhinged and amused in a way that is far more unsettling than anger.
“You think that will stop me from ruining a man if I want to, Delilah?” He taps his head. “It’s all up here.” He widens his arms, gesturing to his empire. “And there are still patched members that will remember him when reminded to.”
I bite back. “But nobody will think a thing about Rio without you tipping the dominoes, will they, Luther?” I throw him my most lethal expression. “Right now, the only man at Black Ridge, or Iron Covenant, who thinks Jackal isn’t a distant memory is you.”
“Exactly. I go down, Rio goes down.”
This time, I release laughter into the space, mocking, unintimidated laughter, before forcing myself to speak flatly. “See, I don’t think it has to work that way.”
His eyes narrow to slits. He stalks toward me, anger simmering under the surface of his clenched forearms. I can’t help but take a step against the back wall. It’s a protective instinct. He’s going to hit me.
But when I flatten against the wall, I catch sight of something in the window behind Luther.
Rio.
My heart runs wildly, he’s here.
But he’s too soon.
Slowly, soundlessly, Rio slips the barrel of a gun through the crack I made in the window.
No. He can’t. Rio can’t be exposed.
Every instinct I have wants to look at him directly and scream with my eyes to stand down. But I can’t give him away. He can’t be seen.
I train my gaze on Luther and hope Rio can read what I need him to do from across a room without me being able to tell him.
Luther approaches, and with the next step, against my own will, I flinch.
If he hits me, Rio might shoot. I side-step, into the line of fire so Rio doesn’t have a clean shot.
"Luther." I keep my voice steady, even though nothing else in me is. "Your power in the alliance is gone. Destroyed. Burned to ashes with your very own match."
Luther doesn’t like people talking back. His neck flares red, and he speaks through gritted teeth. "And what are you going to do about me? How are you going to erase everything I know?”
He leans in and I can smell the whiskey on his breath.
“And do you really think I’m ever letting you out of here again? Your little boyfriend has no clue that the folder is gone. I’ll just start another with our next job.”
He backs me up against the wall.
Presses himself against me.
At his touch, I snap beyond my control, and I lift my knee into his balls as hard as I can.
“Arghhhh– bitch!” He doubles over with a sound that isn't quite human, grabbing himself, staggering back.
I stand against the wall, breathing hard.
Where the fuck is my dad?