I don't remember crossing the room. Don't remember grabbing him. The chair topples as I slam him against the wall, my forearm crushing his windpipe.
"Say that again," I whisper, pressing harder. "I fucking dare you."
The door bangs open, and Ice Pick is there, pulling me back. "Falcon! We need him breathing!"
I release the trafficker, watching him crumple to the floor, gasping. The rage recedes slowly, leaving me cold and hollow again.
"What?" I snap at Ice Pick.
"The ledger," he says, ignoring my tone. "I've got something."
I follow him upstairs to the tech room, a space that used to be a storage closet before Ice Pick joined the club. Computer screens cast blue light over the cluttered desk where the ledger sits—an unassuming leather-bound book that looks more like an executive's daily planner than a catalog of human misery.
"It's triple encrypted," Ice Pick explains, finger tracing lines of seemingly random characters. "Sophisticated stuff. First layer is a substitution cipher, but it changes every page based on a pattern I haven't cracked yet."
"English," I growl, impatience edging my voice.
"It's a list," he says, pushing a notepad toward me. "From what I've decrypted so far, it's names, dates, locations. The women, where they came from, where they were going. And the buyers—high-profile ones."
I scan his notes, recognizing patterns. "This section, these codes are repeated."
"Client codes, I think." Ice Pick points to a specific entry. "Look here. This symbol appears next to the entry for container 457-B. That's the one we hit."
Something cold settles in my gut. "You're saying someone important ordered that specific shipment?"
"More than that." Ice Pick flips to another page. "The same symbol appears next to entries dating back three years. Always young women, specific physical descriptions."
"Someone's building a collection," I say, disgust thick in my throat.
"Exactly. And based on the pattern, they're connected. Powerful."
I rub my temples, fighting a building headache. "This is valuable, but right now my priority is the women we rescued. Getting them safe, home, whatever they need."
"But Falcon, this could lead us to?—"
"I know what it could lead to," I cut him off. "And we'll get there. But those women have been through hell. They come first."
Ice Pick looks like he wants to argue but nods instead. "I'll keep working on it."
I leave him to his codebreaking, retreating to my room at the back of the clubhouse. The space is spartan—bed, dresser, weapons locker, a single window overlooking the garage. Nothing personal on display. Nothing to suggest who I was before.
I sink onto the edge of the bed, exhaustion settling over me like a shroud. For five years, I've lived with a story I created—that Cara walked away because she didn't love me enough to stay. That story shaped me, hardened me, gave me someone to blame for the empty space in my chest.
Now that story is gone, replaced with a truth too horrific to process. While I was drinking myself numb, she was suffering. While I was cursing her name, she was fighting to survive. While I was building a wall around what was left of my heart, she was living a nightmare.
The morning I realized she was gone. Her side of the bed empty, cold. The closet half-empty. The note on the kitchen counter: "I'm sorry." Just that. Nothing else. No explanation. No goodbye. Just two words that didn't begin to cover the hole she left behind.
I slam my fist into the wall, welcoming the shock of pain that shoots up my arm. The drywall cracks, leaving a dent the shape of my knuckles. Physical pain is easier than this—this guilt, this rage, this helplessness in the face of a past I can't change.
My phone buzzes with a text from Vulture: Reapers on the move. Meet in chapel. 10 min.
Club business. The world keeps turning, regardless of personal apocalypses. I push myself up, straightening my cut, pulling the mask of Vice President back into place. The club needs Falcon the enforcer, not the man drowning in regret.
As I head toward the chapel, voices from the hallway catch my attention. Maggie speaking in hushed tones to Ice Pick.
"—says she knows something about the ledger. Overheard things during her captivity."
My steps falter.
