My phone sits on the nightstand, the screen dark. I haven’t checked it since this afternoon, and I haven’t responded to Moretti’s texts asking for an update. What the hell would I even say?Hey, turns out the bikers aren’t the bad guys. One of our own captains murdered my brother and covered it up. Oh, and I’m sleeping in their clubhouse now because I don’t trust anyone at the precinct.
Yeah, that would go overrealwell.
The revelations from the Chapel replay on an endless loop through my mind. Captain Victor Rourke. The trafficking ring. The Hidden Hand Alliance. Marcus gathering evidence, trying to do the right thing. Rourke shooting him and planting drugs to cover it up.
My brother died trying to expose corruption, and the club, the same club I was sent to investigate, has been fighting for justice ever since. The irony would be funny if it didn’t make me want to scream.
I roll onto my side and punch the pillow into a different shape, trying to find a position that doesn’t make my body achewith tension. But it’s useless. My mind won’t shut off. Questions spiral through my thoughts like vultures circling flesh.
How high does the corruption go?
Who else in the department can’t be trusted?
Does Moretti know about Rourke?
Is she part of it too?
And the biggest question, the one that sits like acid in my throat…
What the hell am I supposed to do now?
I’m a cop.
I took an oath.
But that oath was to protect and serve, not to enable murderers and human traffickers. Not to cover up the execution of my own brother by someone who was supposed to uphold the law.
The club trusted me with their truth. They handed me information that could destroy them, believing I’d keep it safe. Believing in me. While I’ve been lying to them this entire time.
The guilt is a physical weight crushing my chest, making it hard to breathe.
I should tell them.
I should walk into that main room right now and confess everything—that I’m Victoria Delaney, Marcus’s sister, the cop sent to infiltrate them.
But I can’t.
Because the moment I do, everything changes. They’ll feel betrayed. They’ll shut me out. And I’ll lose any chance I have of actually helping them take down Rourke and the Hidden Hand Alliance.
I’ll lose Sin.
That thought sends a sharp pain through my chest, which has nothing to do with guilt and everything to do with the way his hands felt on my body, the way his voice sounds when he callsme wildcat, the way those mismatched eyes see through every defense I’ve ever built.
I throw off the covers, suddenly too hot, too confined, too trapped inside my own skin. The T-shirt Gia loaned me clings to my body, damp with sweat. Even the cool air hitting my bare legs doesn’t help ease the tension.
I need air.
Space.
Something to quiet the chaos in my mind.
The digital clock on the nightstand reads 2:17 a.m. The clubhouse should be quiet this time of night. Most of the brothers are either asleep or have headed home to their own places. I can slip out, grab some water, maybe find a quiet corner to just breathe without feeling like I’m suffocating.
I pad barefoot to the door, ease it open slowly to avoid any creaks. The hallway is dark, illuminated only by the dim emergency lighting near the exits. My bare feet make no sound on the cool floor as I make my way toward the kitchen.
The clubhouse at night is a different place. Without the noise of bikes and brotherhood, without music and laughter filling the space, it feels almost sacred. Intimate. Like I’m seeing something I’m not supposed to see—the quiet moments between the chaos.
I round the corner into the kitchen and freeze.
