Chapter 10

The First Lie.

I read the note again. Then twice more. Same six words. Ink pressed hard into the paper, almost torn through in one spot.

Checked the locks again. Balcony doors. Latch still thrown, right where I’d left it. No scratches. No pry marks. Nothing to explain how somebody got in and out without a trace besides mud and a warning.

Didn’t call for anyone.

I got a cloth. Knelt down. Worked at the footprints myself, slow, watching every stroke in case there was something else buried in that mud.

Found it near the last print by the bed. Small piece of black leather. No bigger than my thumbnail. Torn at one edge, like it caught on something and ripped loose.

Turned it over between two fingers. Stitching along the side. Tight. Deliberate. Not factory work. Somebody’s hand.

Pocketed it. Told nobody.

The compound looked different by morning.

They were extra riders circling the perimeter, engines low, steady, the kind of pattern that doesn’t happen by accident. Watchtowers mostly empty before, now holding figures round the clock, visible even from the yard. More bikes stationed at every gate than my first day here.

Ryker gave orders quiet, same as always. No speeches. No panic. Short instructions to whoever stood closest, and every person moved the second he finished talking.

I watched it for a while, coffee going cold in my hand near the garage.

He stood there untouched by all of it.

Every extra patrol, every added watch, every shift in rotation curved back toward me. My room. My movements. Whole compound quietly rearranging itself around keeping one person alive, and that person wasn’t their Alpha.

The feeling settled cold in my stomach. I didn’t like what it meant.

Sat across from him at breakfast on purpose. Set the note flat on the table between us and said nothing else.

He read it his face barely moved.

Folded it along the crease. Reached for the candle burning near the table’s center, held the corner to the flame.

“What are you doing,” I said, half out of my seat already.

He watched the paper burn all the way through before saying a word.

“You just destroyed the only evidence,” I said, sharp, loud enough a couple heads turned nearby.

“No.”

“That was proof somebody got into my room.”

“I destroyed the message.” He looked at me straight. “The evidence was never the paper.”

“What’s that supposed to mean.”

He stood up. Didn’t answer and walked off toward whatever waited for him that morning, leaving me with a pile of ash and one more sentence I couldn’t do a thing with.

I went to the garage after, needing to do something with my hands. Found the older mechanic alone, the one who’d told me the Alpha fixed my bike himself and didn’t smile while saying it.

Pulled the leather scrap out. Held it up. No explanation.

“Recognize this stitching?”

He took it from me. Turned it in the light. Something crossed his face fast. Recognition. Then worry.

Opened his mouth.

Door swung open before a word came out. A younger member, came for a tool off the bench.

“Fuel pump’s acting up on the transport truck,” the mechanic said instead. Too loud. Handed the scrap back fast, turned toward the truck like that was the conversation the whole time.

The younger member grabbed his tool. Left without much notice.

Looked at the mechanic. Wouldn’t meet my eyes anymore.

Somebody was listening. Didn’t know who knew enough now to watch what I said.

I wandered the compound after that. Restless. Couldn’t sit still with everything piling up unanswered.

Found a door tucked in a corridor I hadn’t seen before. Half hidden behind a support beam. Old enough the wood had gone dark.

Unlocked. Just stiff on the hinges.

I pushed it open. Shelves floor to ceiling. Journals. Ledgers. Rolled maps. Handwritten records stacked in order like someone had kept it up for decades.

A library. Buried inside a biker compound like nobody talked about it.

I reached for the nearest leather-bound book. Curiosity beating caution for once.

“Some histories become dangerous when they’re incomplete.”

I turned fast. Ryker in the doorway. Arms loose. Watching with that same unreadable calm.

“Going to stop me?”

He crossed the room instead. Took the book from my hands, gentle about it. Locked it back inside a glass cabinet I hadn’t noticed against the far wall.

“When you’re ready to understand it,” he said, “I will hand it to you myself.”

He walked out before I said another word. Left me alone in a room full of answers I wasn’t allowed to go near.

I called my father that evening. Needed something familiar, even with the ground shifting under everything else.

The conversation started easy. How the compound was fairing after the attack, whether the border road was clear and safe.

Then, before I lost my nerve, “Did you know Ryker before this marriage?”

A pause. Too long. He waited just long enough to make me doubt him before he said no.

“No,” he said finally.

I knew he was lying. Not because of the word itself. But the pause before it. Same hesitation from when I was six, asking where my mother had gone those three days nobody explained, getting an answer a beat too late to be true.

I ended the call politely. Told him I loved him. Meant it, even now.

Everything shifted anyway. First time in my life, knew with utmost certainty my father had lied straight to my face.

I found a small wooden box on my desk when I got back I had never seen it before. No note on the lid. Nothing giving a hint about who left it.

I opened it slowly.

Brass key inside. It felt old, the edges softened from being held so many times. Beneath it, a folded scrap of paper.

Three words, handwritten, nothing else.

Midnight. Come alone.