The men just stare back at me, brows drawing tight, resentment and disbelief settling over their features.
“We want to search his room, the office, look around in case anything was missed. And then we want to check the barracks, too.” I look at Babydoll and she nods.
“Hedidgo back there a lot,” Pluto confirms. “He had a room he was using.”
“And if you find anything?” Cipher asks. “Then fucking what?”
“Then we use it to bring down Hargrove and destroy his legacy,” I answer. “The O.D. story becomeswe took him down, notwe built him up.”
Cipher stares at me like I’ve slapped him. Pluto’s eyes flick toward the TV again, to Hargrove’s smiling face, to the clean-cut man behind him, and then back to me. I’ve never spoken this directly to either of them before. Heck, I’ve probably just said more words to them than I ever spoke in my eight years with the club.
Babydoll just watches me levelly, hip against the bar, dish towel twisted tight in her hands, like she’s waiting to see how this all plays out.
“It’s your prerogative, boss,” Cipher says to Wyatt. “You can search the whole clubhouse if you want.”
Wyatt nods. “Then let’s do it.”
The stairs creak under my weight the same way they always did. The wood has the same uneven give. The air gets cooler as we climb to the second floor, and the hairs on the back of my neck lift. It’s exactly the way it always was, and yet it’s completely different. I’ve climbed these steps a thousand times, but now I’m walking in the ashes of what was.
Upstairs, the hallway is just a narrow plank overlooking the main floor, doors lined up on one side. We stop at the second last door, the room right before Billy’s—me, Wyatt, Pluto, and Cipher.
The door is already cracked open, which I’ve never seen before. Silas’s door was always locked. Always.
Wyatt pushes the door wider, and inside, Silas’s room looks like someone lost their mind in it. Drawers yanked out and dumped. Mattress slashed open. The closet door hangs crooked on one hinge. A lamp lies shattered on the floor, cord torn out of the wall.
“They turned everything over,” Pluto explains.
Wyatt steps in slowly, careful not to kick debris, and I follow, strangely nervous. I’m walking into the haunted house version of my past. I feel like I’ve come with a camera crew to film a documentary about what happened to the feared motorcycle club, the Order of Disorder.
Wyatt crouches and runs his fingers along the bare floorboards, then straightens and moves to the wall. He reaches up, testing a section of drywall that’s already been disturbed, theedge faintly visible if you know what you’re looking for. He peels it back and looks inside.
Empty.
“Nothing left,” he says. “Let’s check downstairs.”
We leave the wreck behind and head back down. Every step away from Billy’s door loosens something in my chest.
Downstairs, the hangar is louder now with voices and movement. Brandon is sitting at a table in jeans and a hoodie, hair damp. Cricket stands beside him in an oversized t-shirt, arms crossed tight over her chest. Knox and Jade are behind the bar, pouring themselves coffee. They come around with mugs in their hands, Knox yawning, and Jade watching us with narrowed eyes.
“Morning,” Wyatt says, his gaze moving over all of them. “Yeah. I’m back.” He lets that hang for half a beat. “And she’s with me.”
Four sets of eyes flick to me, but no one says anything.
“You’ve probably heard by now why we’re here,” Wyatt continues. “We’re looking for anything of Silas’s those suits missed the other day. That story about Senator Jack Hargrove isn’t just some made-up tale. We have evidence that Silas was turning over all club surveillance to the senator. Now he’s looking to clean up after himself. Billy was involved from the beginning. The senator was funding the entire club as a front for his own illegal operations.”
He gestures toward the ground floor doorway to Silas’s tech room. “We’re going room by room. If you’re here, you’re in the loop. But we’re not asking anything of you.”
Knox raises his hand, like he’s in class. “And then what?” he asks.
“Then we get leverage,” Wyatt answers. “Then we stop waiting for suits to write our ending.” His gaze cuts briefly to Cipher and Pluto, then back to Knox. “Nobody’s getting draggedout in cuffs because Silas wanted insurance. We find what he hid, we use it to bring down Senator Hargrove. This club may have operated as a front for government corruption under Billy, but that’s not the way it’s gonna continue now that he’s gone, is it?”
There’s a shift in the room. Glances exchanged, small nods of the head. A sense of relief. Direction. Someone’s steering the ship again.
Wyatt turns to me and Cipher like it’s settled. “Tech room next,” he says, jerking his chin toward the back.
We start walking again, the four of us—Cipher, Pluto, me and Wyatt. This time Brandon and Knox come too. The old ladies sit together at a table near the bar, watching us as we walk away.
Cipher stops in front of the tech room door. The biometric lock is dead, no lights blinking. The faceplate is slightly crooked, like it was pried off on one side. The door is ajar, too, and like Silas’s bedroom, inside it’s gutted. But this one has been picked clean.
