Her father pays for her safety.
And tonight, my silence weighs on my chest.
That’s the price Imustpay.
But I’d pay anything for Millie, even if it means I lose a little of my sanity in the process.
Chapter Eight
MILLIE
Two Days Later
Two Weeks Until Patching
The number sits inside my chest, heavy as a stone, one I keep turning over, feeling its edges, getting familiar with its weight.Two Weeksuntil Will stands in the clubhouse and comes out the other side with his full patch, his full colors, his roadname sewn permanent into the leather.
Two weeksuntil the thing that has been hovering between us like a question neither of us has been brave enough to say out loud either resolves itself or it doesn’t.
I am trying not to count.
But I amabsolutelycounting.
I’m sitting at the kitchen table with my coffee going cold in front of me, watching my father in his armchair through the archway, when Will’s phone rings from where he’s left it face-up on the counter. He comes out of the hallway, still pulling his shirt down over his ribs.
Jesus Christ,the guy has abs on abs.Did I just drool a little?Pull yourself together, Millie!
The corner of his lips turns up infinitesimally as he glances from me to the screen, and something in his expression shifts. It’s subtle enough that most people would miss it, but I have spent two years learning the language of Will Beckett’s face without meaning to, and I know a shift when I see one.
He picks up on the fifth ring. “Pres?”
I don’t move, or pretend to be absorbed in something else either, because there is no point. Whatever is being said on the other end of that call is already rearranging the air in the room.
Will listens. His jaw works once, like he’s chewing through something difficult. “When?” A pause. “How many?” His eyes come to me briefly, checking, and then slide away before I can read what’s in them. “Understood. I’ll be there within the hour.” He ends the call and sets the phone on the counter with more care than the action requires, which is its own kind of tell.
“Tell me,” I say.
He looks at me for a moment, measuring, and I hold his gaze steadily because I am not a woman who folds under a look, not evenhislook, which is saying something.
“Three men at the mine perimeter this morning,” he says, his voice is careful and even, the way it gets when he is choosing words instead of just using them. “Broad daylight. No attempt to conceal themselves. Ghost’s surveillance picked them up.”
The cold coffee in front of me suddenly feels irrelevant.
“They weren’t trying to be invisible,” I say.
“No.” He picks up his cut from the back of the chair where he left it, and settles it over his shoulders with a practiced ease. “They were trying to be seen. That’s the point.”
It was a message.
The mine, my father’s land, the thing my father built from his grief, his love, and his sheer stubborn refusal to let loss have the final word.
The anger that moves through me is cold and much more dangerous than the hot kind.
“Sin’s doubling security,” Will says.
“And you’re effectively moving in,” I reply, because I have eyes and I’ve been paying attention.
The ghost of something moves across his face, something that isn’t quite amusement and isn’t quite discomfort. “Effectively,” he agrees.
