Chapter 9
Sadie
The kitchen suddenly feels cold. The sunlight still streams warm through the windows. Owen is still thundering around upstairs. Coffee steams gently from the mug in my hand, the smell comforting and familiar, but all I can see are the words on the paper in Kane’s hand.
YOU’RE MINE. ANYONE WHO TOUCHES YOU DIES.
A sick, twisting feeling crawls through my stomach. “What…” My voice comes out thin. “What the fuck?”
Kane goes completely still beside the door.
Every trace of softness from breakfast disappears instantly.
The playful warmth. The lazy smiles. The easy teasing.
Gone. Now he just looks dangerous. His jaw tightens so hard that I see the muscles in his neck jump beneath the tattooed skin.
His eyes move slowly across the note again, his expression flattening into something cold and ugly.
Fear spikes sharply through me. Not of him, not quite, but the world suddenly feels alien and wrong. “That isn’t funny,” I whisper.
Kane looks at me sharply. “Who’s got a key?”
“What?”
“To the house.”
“I—” I frown. “Just my friend Dani, and Ethan does.”
His expression darkens immediately. Of course it does. Who can blame him after what he saw last night? Plus, it’s investigation 101, the husband is the first person the cops would look at. Yet still…
A horrible knot forms in my stomach. “No,” I say quickly. “No, Ethan wouldn’t—”
“Bullshit.” The sharpness of the word makes me flinch slightly. Kane notices and exhales hard through his nose, dragging a hand across his jaw. When he speaks again, his voice is still rough, but I can tell he’s trying to remain calm. “Sadie. Your ex showed up drunk last night, screaming at you.”
“He wasn’t screaming.”
“He pushed you over.”
I open my mouth. Close it again. Because, technically, he did, but it still feels wrong to hear someone else say it out loud.
“It wasn’t like that. It was an accident.
He was upset.” The excuse sounds weak even to me.
The kind of thing abused wives say about their mean, violent husbands all the time.
Kane stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Yeah,” he says flatly. “Clearly.”
I hate how defensive I suddenly feel. Not because Ethan deserves my support, he doesn’t, but because hearing Kane talk about my marriage like that feels invasive somehow.
Like he’s ripping open things I’ve spent years trying to smooth over, minimize, and make sound normal.
“He wouldn’t threaten me,” I say stubbornly.
Kane holds the note up slightly. “Then who the fuck did this?”
I don’t have an answer. The silence stretches too long.
Upstairs, Owen yells, “I found it!”
The normality of Owen chattering away, oblivious, makes this feel even more surreal somehow. Kane looks toward the staircase instinctively before lowering his voice again. “Has he ever hit you?”
The question slams into me so hard I actually recoil slightly. “What? No!”
“Grabbed you?”
“No.”
“Threatened you?”
“No,” I stress the word as much as I can. I can’t believe I’m even having this conversation right now.
Kane watches my face carefully. Too carefully. It feels like he’s measuring every hesitation, every breath. Kane pays attention in this intense, overwhelming way that makes me feel exposed; he sees more than I want him to.
“He’s an asshole sometimes,” I admit quietly.
“But Ethan isn’t violent.” I struggle to find the words.
“He’s not that kind of guy,” I offer weakly.
It feels insufficient somehow, especially given the violence of his anger last night.
I know Kane is probably thinking that just because he hasn’t physically hurt me, it doesn’t mean he isn’t violent.
Kane says nothing for a second. “Men don’t usually start with violence.”
The calm certainty in his voice makes my stomach tighten. I hate that part of me that immediately thinks, ‘How would you know?’ Like somehow, the tattoos, the motorcycle, and the cut make him more dangerous than Ethan in a button-down shirt, which isn’t fair.
Judging by Kane’s expression, he knows exactly what I’m thinking. His eyes narrow slightly. “You think because I ride a bike and your ex wears a fucking Rolex, I’m automatically the bad guy?”
Heat floods my face. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
I open my mouth again, frustrated because the worst part is—he’s right.
Ethan spent years making comments about the nearby biker club.
He called them criminals, trash,violent drunks.
Standing here now, I realize some part of me absorbed it.
That realization makes guilt twist uncomfortably in my chest. Even though I slept with Kane, even though he’s been nothing but a perfect gentleman, some part of me wonders if he could be behind the note.
Some cruel, ignorant part of me thinks that there’s no way Ethan could be to blame instead, despite all of the evidence to suggest otherwise.
It’s easier to paint Kane as the dangerous one.
Kane laughs once softly, but there’s no humor in it. “Jesus Christ.”
“I don’t think you’re bad,” I say quickly.
“No?” He gestures vaguely toward himself. “Because you’re looking at me like I’m one step from burglarizing your house.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No,” he agrees flatly. “It isn’t.”
Silence settles heavily between us. The kitchen suddenly feels much smaller, more tense, claustrophobic, too intimate.
He carefully folds the note once, jaw still tight. “You shouldn’t stay here alone. The Wild Riders can offer our protection, keep an eye on you until we figure out who’s behind this and what they want.” It’s clear from his tone that he’s already confident he knows exactly who’s behind it.
I respond before even hearing him out. “No.”
His eyes flash. “Sadie—”
“I’m not getting involved in…” I gesture vaguely. “Club stuff.”
“Club stuff?”
“You know what I mean.”
His expression hardens further. “Actually, no. Explain it to me.”
I cross my arms defensively. “People talk.”
“People always talk.”
I hesitate. Because honestly? I don’t even know specifically what I mean.
My mind is full of the rumors I’ve heard about the Wild Riders, stories, and the kind of vague warnings women get told growing up.
Don’t get mixed up with bikers. Don’t owe men like that favors.
Don’t trust motorcycle clubs. “I need to think about Owen, what’s best for him.
I’m not sure that getting involved with the Wild Riders would be a good idea.
Motorcycle clubs aren’t exactly child-friendly places. ”
Kane stares at me for a long second before shaking his head slightly. “That’s your ex talking.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “It is.” The certainty in his voice irritates me.
“You don’t know Ethan,” I stubbornly insist.
“And you don’t know us.” The words land harder than I expect.
Kane steps closer slowly. Not threatening, but intense.
“Chief owns three businesses and donates a portion of all his profits to a dog sanctuary,” he says calmly.
“Dash volunteers at youth boxing programs. Shadow spends half his time fixing old veterans’ bikes for free, and once a week he reads to the people at the local hospice. ”
I blink. None of that matches the image in my head.
Kane notices. “Exactly.”
My face heats slightly. “I didn’t say—”
“You didn’t have to. It’s obvious what you assumed. The same bullshit everyone assumes without actually bothering to do even the smallest amount of research.”
The bluntness stings because, again, he’s right.
He exhales hard, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck before speaking more quietly.
“Look, sweetheart. You don’t gotta trust me right now.
Fine.” His eyes flick toward the note in his hand.
“But somebody put this under your fucking door, and it sure as shit wasn’t me.
For one, I’ve been with you the whole time, so there’s no way I could have done this.
Maybe this is just meant to scare you, some petty revenge from your ex, but until proven otherwise, we have to assume that whoever left this means you harm. ”
Fear twists sharply through me again. Hearing it said out loud makes it real in a way it wasn’t before.
Kane’s expression softens slightly when he sees my face. Not much, but enough. “You and Owen shouldn’t be here alone until we figure out who did it.”
We. The word settles strangely in my chest, as if somewhere in Kane’s mind, he’s already decided he’s responsible for us now, which is insane.
Completely insane. And yet part of me feels safer standing here with him than I did with Ethan in the last year of my marriage. That realization unsettles me.
“I don’t want to owe anybody anything,” I admit quietly.
Kane’s expression shifts. Hurt. Offended. It flashes across his face so quickly I almost miss it. “You think helping you means we’re trying to collect something? To trap you into owing us?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“No,” he says sharply. “You did.”
Guilt crawls up my throat immediately. I hear how ugly it sounds once he says it out loud.
Kane steps back slightly, jaw tight. “Jesus Christ, Sadie. You slept with me last night, and you still think I’m sitting here trying to manipulate you into some debt?”
Heat floods my face. “No—”
“You’re listening to bullshit people say instead of actually looking at us.”
The words hit home. He’s right, and I hate that he’s right.
Kane runs a frustrated hand through his hair before speaking again. “Come to the clubhouse.”
I blink. “What?”
“Come meet everybody properly.” His voice lowers slightly. “See for yourself before you decide what kind of people we are.”
I hesitate. Every instinct says no, absolutely not.
But another quieter voice keeps remembering the way Kane laughed with Owen, the softness beneath all his rough edges.
He’s given me no reason not to trust him.
Quite the opposite, in fact. He deserves at least a chance from me, without unfair judgment.
Still, I hesitate; it was one thing to hook up with him last night on impulse, but it’s a whole other thing to let him into my life.
Before I can answer, footsteps thunder down the stairs. Owen appears, triumphantly clutching his garbage truck. He freezes. “Clubhouse?”
Kane mutters under his breath, “Ah, shit.”
Owen gasps loudly. “The thunderbike club?”
I close my eyes briefly.
Kane looks deeply amused now despite himself. “Maybe.”
Owen bounces excitedly in place. “With lots of motorcycles?”
“Yes,” Kane says carefully.
“And leather jackets?”
“Yes.”
“And tattoos?”
Kane says solemnly, “So many tattoos.”
Owen looks one second away from ascending directly into heaven. “Mommy, please.”
I stare at my child in confusion. “You don’t even know what a clubhouse is.”
“It’s where thunderbike men live.” Okay, so maybe he does know. God damn it. I’d been hoping to get at least Dani to watch Owen while I went there. I still don’t think it’s a place for kids, but there’s no way he’s going to take no for an answer. I’ll never hear the end of it.
“I don’t know… I don’t think children are allowed…”
One look at Kane’s face tells me that’s not true at all, but he stays silent.
Owen grabs my hand dramatically. “Pleeeeease.”
Kane watches me quietly now. Waiting. He’s not pushing this time; he’s giving me space to decide, which somehow makes it worse.
I look between my wildly excited son, the threatening note still sitting on the counter, and Kane standing in my kitchen looking at us like he’s already halfway responsible for both our lives. This is a terrible idea. Absolutely terrible.
“I’m not promising anything,” I say finally.
Owen cheers instantly.
“But…” I add quickly, pointing at Kane, “We’re just visiting. I’m not agreeing to anything.”
Kane’s mouth curves slowly at one corner. “Sure, sweetheart.” He says it like he already knows I’m going to change my mind.