Epilogue
It was the sound of someone pounding on the door that woke Dennis.
At first, he thought he was dreaming and remained where he was for a few seconds, staring at the ceiling while his mind slowly worked its way back to reality. The pounding came again, harder this time, and shortly afterwards a voice carried through the door.
“Police. Open the door.”
Dennis sat up. Something was wrong. Not simply because the police were standing outside his door. Colleagues called. They sent messages or made sure someone he knew got in touch with him. They didn’t stand outside pounding on his door at dawn as though they expected resistance.
He reached for his phone on the bedside table and glanced at the screen.
No missed calls. No messages. Nothing from Josh and nothing from Chris. No warning at all.
Only then did the cold begin to spread through his stomach.
Dennis threw back the covers and pulled on a pair of jeans while his mind raced through possible explanations. Someone could have been arrested. Someone could have said more than they should have. But the question was who, and more importantly, how much they actually knew.
The pounding came again before he could come up with an answer.
He walked through the flat and opened the door. The people outside weren’t his colleagues.
He didn’t recognise most of the faces, and that frightened him far more than it would have if he had.
Internal Affairs stood at the front alongside people from the prosecutor’s office, and none of them looked like people who had come to ask a few careful questions.
They looked like people who already had the answers. “Dennis Anderson?”
He nodded automatically. The woman at the front handed him a document. “Get dressed. You’re coming with us.”
Dennis took it and let his eyes move over the first few lines.
It was enough to make the world seem to stop around him.
Abuse of office. Corruption. Unauthorised handling of information.
Assault. Extortion. One accusation after another lined the page, and with every new one, something heavier settled in his chest. A door opened farther down the corridor and Dennis looked up just in time to see Josh being escorted out by two more investigators.
Their eyes met. Neither of them said anything.
They didn’t need to. This wasn’t some internal warning or a superior getting nervous and deciding to make a show of authority.
Someone had talked, and they had given them enough to come for both Dennis and Josh at the same time.
Chris. The thought came so quickly that Dennis’s hand tightened around the paper.
There was no one else who knew enough. While he was still standing in the doorway, the investigators moved past him and into the flat.
They headed purposefully towards the office, towards the computers and hard drives, the cabinets and folders he had collected over the years and kept as his private insurance against anyone who might one day become a problem.
One by one, they began carrying everything out. Boxes filled with documents. Computers. Hard drives. Notes and folders containing information he had been absolutely certain would make him untouchable. Instead, his entire safety net disappeared through the door before his eyes.
He couldn’t call anyone who could stop it.
Couldn’t put pressure on the right person or use some carefully guarded secret to make someone look the other way.
The people he had kept under control with everything he knew about them were probably the same people who would now do whatever they could to save themselves.
For the first time in a very long time, Dennis had no control over what was happening around him.
And this time, there was no one left to blame.
That same morning, Charlie sat on the porch outside the clubhouse with a mug of coffee between her hands, watching as the sun slowly began to warm the yard in front of her.
The night had been considerably shorter than she really needed, but for the first time in a long while, she had slept without waking at every sound. No footsteps in the stairwell had made her bolt upright in bed, and no image of Dennis outside her door had dragged her out of sleep.
Behind her, the door opened. She didn’t need to turn around.
The footsteps were familiar by now, and a few seconds later Reeze lowered himself onto the step beside her.
He didn’t say anything, simply slipped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer, and Charlie leaned into him as naturally as if she had been doing it for years. For a while, they simply sat there.
Farther away, Billy could already be heard arguing with someone about something that, judging by his tone, was absolutely vital and most likely didn’t mean a damn thing.
From the workshop came a crash as something heavy hit the floor, followed almost immediately by a long stream of swearing that could only belong to Tony.
Charlie smiled into her coffee. Wallhalla had survived. Again.
Just as the club always seemed to do, no matter what was thrown at it.
Reeze bent down and brushed his lips against her temple before resting his forehead against her hair. He had received a brief phone call earlier that morning, but all they really knew was that Internal Affairs had moved in and that both Dennis and Josh had been taken into custody.
Charlie hadn’t asked for more. Not yet.
She knew there would be investigations and interviews, and probably a long time before everything Dennis had built around himself was completely unravelled.
But for the first time, she didn’t have to feel as though he were standing somewhere just beyond her sight, waiting for his next opportunity to force his way back into her life.
That realisation was almost the hardest thing to take in.
That she could simply sit here. Drink her coffee.
Listen to the clubhouse waking behind her without wondering whether someone was watching the window or waiting outside the gates.
Charlie closed her eyes and leaned a little more heavily against Reeze.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked after a while.
“Nothing.”
He snorted. “Liar.”
She smiled. “That it’s quiet.”
Reeze glanced towards the workshop just as Tony bellowed another curse and something else crashed to the floor. “Quiet?”
Charlie laughed. “You know what I mean.”
“Mm.” He pulled her closer, and for once she let him have the last word.
There were still things that needed sorting out, and problems didn’t simply disappear because the police had knocked on Dennis’s door that morning.
Sunkholes weren’t suddenly going to become friends with Wallhalla, and the club was hardly going to settle into a peaceful existence simply because this particular storm had passed.
But that was their usual chaos. Not Dennis.
Not fear. Not someone else deciding what her life was allowed to be. Just Wallhalla, the morning sun and the man beside her. Charlie rested her head against Reeze’s shoulder and felt his lips brush her hair. For the first time in a long while, he wasn’t bracing himself for the next blow.
And as he looked out across the yard, with Charlie tucked against his side and the clubhouse slowly waking behind them, Reeze finally allowed himself to believe that this particular battle really was over.