I laugh under my breath.“High praise.”
Silence stretches between us, but this one is different from the silences of war.Not sharp, not brittle, just loaded.Because there’s something I should have asked weeks ago.Something I didn’t ask because survival came first.
Now survival isn’t in the forefront anymore.Now there’s nowhere left to hide from the question that’s been in the back of my mind since I saw her walk through those gates.
“Raven.”
She looks at me immediately.Always direct.Always ready.
“What?”She’s not being defensive.
“What did they think you had?”
The air around us changes, thickening.A stranger would miss it, but I feel it, the subtle tightening, the microscopic shift in her breathing, the way her fingers curl slightly against the metal fence.
That’s memory.Not fear.
“Savage...”
“Don’t soften it.And don’t lie to me.”
Her gaze sharpens before she exhales slowly.“They thought I had leverage.”
My spine stiffens.“Over who?”
“Everyone.”
I turn fully toward her.
“You need to explain some more.”
Her jaw tightens slightly, not with resistance, but the discomfort of dragging something buried into daylight.
“Years ago,” she says quietly, “before I left Vegas ...you trusted me.”My pulse spikes, not with jealousy but with calculation.“They assumed,” she continues, “that trust came with information.”
The word is quiet, but it hits like impact.“What kind of information?”
“Everything about the club.Other chapters, members, how you earned and who you got supplied by.”
Jesus Christ.My jaw tightens reflexively.
“And they believed you still had access?”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
I study her face, searching for hesitation, for gaps, for anything that smells like omission, but I find none.
“What you had,” I say slowly, “was history.”
“Yes.”
“And they started a war over ghosts.”
“Yes.”
