Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 46098 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46098 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
“Air-gapped ladder. The top keys are worthless without the bottom salts. The salts are noise without the phrase. And the phrase is useless without the timing sequence.” He looked at Kane, then me. “I wrote it so I couldn’t be coerced into breaking it. Bellatrix assumed she could hurt me, and it would open. She made one mistake.” His mouth tugged, not joy, not pride—something harder. “She thought fear was the only lever.”
“Damn,” I mumbled. “Jax and Deviant are gonna want to kiss us for this.”
“Who?” Elias asked suspiciously.
“Our tech guys,” Nitro explained. “They’ve been untangling your ladder, but it’s slow as fuck because of all your tripwires.”
“They what?” he asked, jaw slack.
“You’re good, Leek. But they’re so much fucking better,” I replied.
I texted Jax as Elias gave me a few more instructions for the key.
Me
Leek alive. Cooperative. Codes incoming.
Jax
Tell him I love him, but if he embedded a watchdog in the ladder, I’m going to feel pretty fucking trigger-happy when it trips.
“Jax says hi,” I deadpanned.
Edge huffed something almost like a laugh.
Leek sagged onto the office chair like the weight of the telling had bled out of his calves.
Kane tipped his chin at Nitro. “Get him to a safe house.” Then he looked at Elias. “We’ll finish what you started and erase you. Two stops. New shoes, new shirt, different air to breathe. We’ll bring you back if Jax needs you—if we decide that’s the plan. Right now, you’re one body in a bunker none of us own, and the wrong eyes already know how to drive here.”
Elias hesitated, and I understood why. Some men mistook their cage for control.
I stepped closer, let him read my face for whatever he was hunting.
“She’s alive,” I reminded him, because sometimes the sentence you repeated was the only one that mattered. “You did your part. Now let us do ours.”
His gaze cut to the lanyard, back to me, then over my shoulder toward the stairwell like he could see all the way to my clubhouse and the woman sleeping in my bed in my shirt with her hand tucked under her cheek and my kid nestled in her belly.
“Okay.” The word was barely audible, but we heard it.
Edge jerked a thumb at a canvas duffel under the milk crate. “That yours?”
Elias nodded and picked it up.
“Slow,” I instructed Nitro, “and off-grid. You take the phosphate plant road. If you see a tail by the county line, double back, put him in the maintenance yard at The Pit for an hour, and let the dust settle.”
He nodded.
Back up the stairs, the night met us with a wash of warm air and the smell of pine sap and old dust. The moon had shifted. Nitro got Elias on his bike and slotted in behind him in case he slid. Elias held on with a grip that made me think of a drowning man who’d just reached the lifeboat.
Nitro saluted with two fingers before he kicked his bike to life with a soft thud. Elias looked small between the big machine and the even bigger biker as they slipped down the dirt lane, then bled into the dark.
Kane straddled his hog and looked at me. “You good?”
“Fine.”
It wasn’t a lie, but it also wasn’t the whole truth. When I got home, I’d put my palm on Ashlynn’s belly and know I was touching something I couldn’t fix with a wrench if someone broke it. And because of that, I wanted the world quieter than it had ever been. I wanted Bellatrix Creed dismantled until nothing was left. I wanted to take The Ledger and light it in a field and watch it burn so the world wasn’t torched by it.
17
ASHLYNN
Isurfaced from sleep at the dip of the mattress, twisting to look up at Mason as he slid under the covers beside me. He pulled my back against his chest and settled his arm over my waist, the weight solid and familiar. He didn’t say anything right away, only molded his body to mine like we’d been sleeping together for years instead of weeks.
“You’re back,” I murmured into the dark. My voice was still thick with sleep, but my brain was already wide awake, chasing answers to questions I hadn’t asked yet.
“Yeah.”
I rested my hand on top of his forearm, noticing how tight his muscles felt. “What happened?”
“Jax is on it.” His low voice almost blended with the steady thump of his heartbeat against my ear. “Go back to sleep, angel.”
It wasn’t an answer. Not really.
The part of me that hated being left out wanted to press, to roll over and catch his eyes and make him give me more. But the warmth of his hand on my stomach and the way his thumb dragged idly against my skin through the fabric of my borrowed shirt made it harder to keep my grip on that stubborn edge.