Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
CB took the back roads to the campground, headlights cutting through the dark. Ryder had chosen the meeting spot carefully. Remote. Private. No witnesses for whatever came next.
The campground lodge—he’d known it was a trap. He’d gone anyway.
The image of Regan’s face when he’d refused to let her come haunted him. The hurt in her eyes, shading into anger. The way she’d looked at him like he was a stranger again, after everything they’d shared.
He gripped the steering wheel harder. He’d explain later when he understood what Ryder was holding over his head, when he had a plan. Right now, bringing her anywhere near his cousin would put her in danger.
The campground entrance appeared in his headlights—a weathered wooden sign, its name faded to near illegibility. He turned in and followed the gravel road toward the lodge, his truck bouncing over ruts that hadn’t been smoothed in years.
The building emerged from the tree line like a memory taking shape.
Single story, log construction, a covered porch running the length of the front.
CB hadn’t been here since joining the Army, but he could have found it blindfolded.
He and Ryder had spent summers in this place as kids, racing through the woods, swimming in the creek, and playing hide-and-seek in the storage rooms while their fathers conducted business in the main hall.
Back when business had meant something different.
He parked and killed the engine. Ryder’s motorcycle sat alone in the gravel lot. A single light burned inside the lodge, visible through the front windows.
CB got out and walked toward the porch, his boots crunching on the stones. The night air smelled like pine and wood smoke. Somewhere in the distance, an owl called. Crickets and other nocturnal insects kept up a steady drone.
He fingered his phone in his pocket and pushed open the door.
Ryder stood at the far end of the main room, leaning against the old stone fireplace. No fire burned in the grate, but a camping lantern sat on the mantel, casting harsh shadows across his face.
“You came.” Ryder straightened. “Wasn’t sure you would.”
“Of course I did.” CB stopped just inside the doorway, letting his eyes adjust. The room looked smaller than he remembered. Someone had started decorating for July 4th, a red, white, and blue banner strung along the far wall where the Outlaws emblem marked the place. “I’m listening.”
Ryder moved away from the fireplace, his boots echoing on the wooden floor. He stopped at a card table in the center of the room and pulled out a chair, gesturing for CB to take the one across from him.
CB moved closer but didn’t sit. Kept his hands in his pockets.
Ryder smiled, the expression thin and humorless. “Come on, CB. I won’t bite.”
“It’s late, and I’m tired. Get to the point.”
“Fine.” Ryder dropped into the chair, sprawling back like he owned the place.
Which, CB supposed, he did now. “You’re causing problems. Your presence here, your involvement with the Hill woman—it’s destabilizing the organization.
The men don’t know whose side you’re on.
Some of them still remember you as Wade’s son, the heir-apparent.
Others see you as a traitor who abandoned the family. Either way, you’re a disruption.”
“I’m not here to disrupt anything. I’m here to take care of my father.”
“And play bodyguard for Regan.”
“She’s a client.”
“A client.” Ryder laughed. “Is that what you call her? Because from what I saw at the bar, it seems more personal.”
CB didn’t take the bait. “What do you want, Ryder?”
The laughter faded. Ryder leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I want you to know what you’re protecting. Regan isn’t just running a bar and minding her own business. She’s investigating us. The whole organization. The same way she went after my father.”
CB kept his face neutral, but his mind was racing. How had Ryder found out? Had someone seen Regan’s research? Intercepted her communications?
Nah. He’d bet money that one of her sources ran right to Ryder and informed him.
“She’s a journalist,” CB said. “She investigates things. That’s what she does. Your threats are only making her dig in her heels.”
“Don’t play stupid. This isn’t some general interest piece. She wants to destroy everything the Briggs family built. She’s already taken down my father. Now she’s coming for the rest of us.” Ryder’s eyes hardened. “And you’re helping her do it.”
“You’re hurting people, Ryder. That’s not Regan’s fault.”
“I’m protecting people. At least the ones smart enough to pay for it. That’s how business works.”
“Extortion isn’t business. Neither is sending Denny to beat up a woman and make threats.”
A muscle in Ryder’s jaw flexed. “She brought that on herself,” he said. “I gave her a chance to gain our protection. She didn’t take it.”
“So you escalated to violence and intimidation. And when she still refuses to be manipulated, what’s next? You going to kill her?”
Ryder was quiet for a long moment. The lantern hissed softly on the mantel. “I’m trying to protect this family,” he said finally. “Something you never understood how to do.”
“I understood plenty. That’s why I left.”
Ryder stood abruptly, the chair scraping against the floor.
“You walked away and left me to hold the family business together. Do you have any idea what that was like? Taking over when Wade had his stroke, dealing with the fallout from Ray’s arrest, keeping the whole thing from falling apart while you were off playing soldier? ”
CB met his gaze. “I left because I didn’t want to be what you became.”
“And what are you now?” Ryder stepped closer, his voice low and sharp. “A hired hand. Protecting the woman who burned your uncle. Taking money to stand against your own blood.”
“I’m someone who chose right over comfort.”
Ryder stopped. For a moment, something almost like pain crossed his face. Then it was gone, replaced by the cold mask CB had come to expect. “You always did think you were better than the rest of us.”
CB heard what he really meant. Better than me . The cousin who’d grown up in CB’s shadow, always second in line, always watching while Wade groomed CB for a future he’d never wanted.
“Not better,” CB said quietly. “I wanted something different. That’s all.”
Ryder stared at him. The silence stretched between them, filled with decades of history neither of them could undo.
Then Ryder smiled. Cold and certain, like a man holding a winning hand.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he said.
“You’re going to find a way to stop Regan from publishing that story.
Then, you’re going to walk away from her.
You’re going to forget you ever heard her name.
And if you don’t—” He paused, letting the moment hang.
“If you don’t, I’m going to make sure your father takes the fall for everything. ”
CB went still. “What are you talking about?”
“The illegal operations. The money laundering. The deals that went bad.” Ryder spread his hands.
“All of it traces back to Wade. His name is on the paperwork. His signature on the accounts. Witnesses who’ll testify they were following his orders.
Everything I’ve built over the past few years—if it goes south, your father is the one holding the bag. ”
CB’s stomach plummeted.
This had been Ryder’s plan all along, from the moment Wade had his stroke, maybe even before.
He’d positioned himself as the caring replacement while using Wade as the figurehead, the legacy, the respected founder to cover his own illegal activities.
He’d been building a paper trail. Insurance.
If Regan’s investigation brought down the Outlaws, Ryder would walk away, and Wade would die in prison.
“You used him.” CB’s voice came out rough. “Your own uncle. You’ve set him up.”
“I protected myself. That’s what survivors do.” Ryder shrugged. “Wade was never going to lead again. Might as well make him useful.”
CB remembered his father in that hospital bed.
The right side of his body paralyzed, his speech reduced to fragments, his sharp mind trapped behind eyes that couldn’t convey what he was thinking.
He’d come back from it enough to live on his own again with help.
And all that time, he’d been a pawn for Ryder’s plan.
Wade Briggs had been a hard man, a complicated man, a man CB had spent years trying to escape. But he was still his father. And he didn’t deserve to be Ryder’s sacrificial lamb.
“He can’t even defend himself,” CB said.
“No. He can’t.” Ryder’s smile widened. “Which makes this a pretty simple choice for you. Walk away from Regan, and Wade lives out his days in peace. Keep protecting her, and I’ll make sure that if she goes public with her investigation, your father will take the fall.”
CB forced himself to breathe. Ryder thought he had the upper hand.
Let him keep thinking that.
Outside, he heard the roar of bikes. A dozen of them, at least. “I won’t let you frame him,” CB said, his phone secure in his hand inside his pocket.
Ryder studied him for a long moment. Then he laughed—a short, dismissive sound. “You don’t have a choice.”
He walked past CB toward the door, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. At the threshold, he paused. “You’ve got twenty-four hours to decide. After that, the offer expires.”
Then he was gone, his boots echoing across the porch and down the steps.
CB stood alone in the empty lodge, the lantern light flickering across the walls. The room felt colder now, the memories of childhood erased by what had just happened.
Ryder would kill Regan if he had to. CB had seen it in his eyes—the calculation, the willingness to do whatever it took to protect what he’d built.
And if CB backed off, if he abandoned her to protect his father, Regan would be alone against all of it.
He couldn’t do that. Not to her. Not to himself.
CB walked to the door and stepped onto the porch. There, he stopped.
The gravel lot that had been empty except for his truck was now full. Motorcycles lined the perimeter. Men stood in loose clusters, their faces lit by the glow of cigarettes and phone screens.
CB recognized some. Collin “Red” Hartman, who’d taken on his first ride into the mountains when he was twelve. Holton Ostrander, who’d been at every Briggs family barbecue for as long as CB could remember. Ned Beechum, whose daughter had gone to school with CB.
The rest were strangers. Younger, harder-looking, with the wary eyes of people who’d joined the organization after its transformation. Ryder’s recruits. Ryder’s loyalists.
None of them spoke. They just watched as CB walked down the steps and crossed the lot to his truck. Watched as he climbed in and started the engine. Watched as he backed out and drove away, their eyes tracking him the whole way.
The message was clear: Follow orders or else.
CB drove the dark roads back toward the bar. Ryder thought he held all the cards. Wade as leverage. The Outlaws as muscle. The threat of exposure hanging over CB’s head.
But Ryder didn’t know about Claire. Didn’t know about the FBI case, the cease and desist that would arrive tomorrow and prove Regan wasn’t backing down.
Didn’t know about the recording on CB’s phone. He pulled it out, checked that he’d gotten the whole conversation.
Ryder didn’t realize that CB had his own loyalists among the Outlaws. Men who remembered what the organization used to stand for, before Ryder twisted it into something meaner and darker. Men who’d stand with CB when the time came.
This wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
CB thought about his father. Wade’s hands, once so strong, now unable to button his shirt. His voice, once commanding, now reduced some days to slurred syllables and frustrated silence.
Wade had made mistakes—plenty of them. But he’d also preserved most of what his father had built. He didn’t deserve to be Ryder’s fall guy. And CB wasn’t going to let that happen.
He owed Regan an explanation. He owed her the truth.
Tomorrow. He’d tell her everything tomorrow. And then they’d figure out the next step together.
Family loyalty didn’t mean protecting someone from the consequences of their choices. It didn’t mean covering up crimes or looking the other way while people got hurt. And it sure as hell didn’t mean letting Ryder Briggs tear down everything CB cared about just to save his own skin.
Ryder was family by blood. But blood didn’t make someone worth protecting.
CB was going to take him down.
Whatever it cost, however long it took—Ryder was going to answer for what he’d done. To Wade. To Regan. All of it.
That was a promise.