Chapter 5

The clubhouse sat at the edge of town behind a chain-link fence and a row of motorcycles lined up like soldiers at attention, and Silas walked through the front door without knocking, the way he'd walked through it a thousand times before. Tonight it felt different. Tonight the air inside felt charged, heavier than usual, like the building itself knew something was coming before he did.

Wade was waiting for him in the back office, alone, exactly like the message said. He sat behind their father's old desk with a bottle of whiskey open in front of him, untouched, which told Silas more than anything Wade could have said out loud. Wade didn't drink before conversations he wanted to have. He drank before conversations he'd been avoiding for years.

"Shut the door," Wade said.

Silas shut the door.

"You texted me about Dad and Ellery." Silas stayed standing, arms crossed, every muscle in his body braced for something he couldn't name yet. "So talk. What happened fifteen years ago?"

Wade didn't answer right away. He turned the whiskey bottle a quarter turn on the desk, watching it like it might give him the right words if he stared long enough. "You remember the year Dad got sick. Before the cancer took him. You remember how fast everything happened."

"I remember I was nineteen and burying my father." Silas's jaw tightened. "I remember it because it's the same year I ended things with Reagan. Don't make me guess where this is going, Wade. Just say it."

Wade looked up at him, and for the first time in years, Silas saw something in his older brother's face that looked almost like guilt.

"Marcus Ellery came to Dad about six months before you and Reagan broke up," Wade said slowly. "He wanted the northern territory. Dad said no. Ellery didn't take no well, so he found another way to get what he wanted."

"What way."

"He found out about you and Reagan." Wade's voice stayed level, careful, the voice of a man choosing every word like it might detonate if he got one wrong. "Found out how serious it was. And he made Dad an offer. Back off the northern territory, or he'd make sure something happened to Reagan's family. Her mother's shop. Her whole life. He wasn't bluffing, Silas. He'd already done it to two other families that crossed him, and Dad knew it."

The floor seemed to tilt under Silas's feet in a way it hadn't since the night of the fire. "So Dad told me to break it off with her."

"Dad told you it was your choice to make." Wade's eyes didn't leave his. "But he made sure you understood what would happen to her if you didn't make it. He never told you why. He just let you think you were being noble. Protecting her by walking away on your own."

"He lied to me." The words came out low, dangerous, ten years of grief and guilt curdling into something sharper in the space of a single sentence. "I spent a decade thinking I broke her heart to save her from a life inside this club. I thought that was my sacrifice. My choice."

"It was never a choice, Silas." Wade finally reached for the whiskey, poured two fingers but didn't drink it. "Dad made the choice for you the second he decided not to tell you the truth. He thought he was protecting you both. Keeping you from carrying the weight of knowing someone threatened her life because of you."

"And you knew this. All this time, you knew, and you let me carry it like it was mine to carry."

"I found out after Dad died. Found his files, the paper trail with Ellery's people. I didn't know what to do with it, so I did nothing." Wade's voice cracked, just slightly, just enough to show the years he'd spent sitting on the truth like a stone in his chest. "I'm sorry. I should have told you the second I found it."

Silas said nothing. He stood in the middle of the office where he'd stood a thousand times before, and for the first time in his life the walls felt like they were closing in instead of holding him steady.

"Marcus Ellery has a son," he finally said. "Grant Ellery. He's engaged to Reagan."

Something shifted in Wade's expression, fast and sharp. "That's not a coincidence."

"No." Silas's voice had gone quiet, quiet in the way that meant something dangerous was building underneath it. "It's not."

He pulled out his phone and pulled up the picture Reagan had sent him an hour earlier, a photo of the messages on Grant's second phone, the ones signed with a single letter. He set the phone down on the desk in front of Wade.

"My father wants this finished before the vote." Silas watched his brother's face as he read it. "Grant's been feeding his father information about our vote on the northern territory. He's been engaged to Reagan for two years, Wade. Two years, sitting inside her life, close enough to touch everything that mattered to me."

Wade's face had gone pale. "You think Ellery placed him there on purpose. Years ago. Before you even ended things with her."

The realization landed in Silas's chest like a fist. "I think Marcus Ellery didn't just threaten my father into breaking us apart. I think he made sure there'd be someone in place to keep watching her after we split up. Someone to make sure she never came back to me. Someone close enough to control her life while his father finished what he started fifteen years ago."

"Silas." Wade's voice had dropped into something careful, something bracing. "If that's true, then Grant didn't fall in love with her by accident."

"No." Silas's hands had curled into fists at his sides without him noticing. "He was placed."

The office door opened without a knock, and one of the younger members leaned in, out of breath, his face pale in a way that made both brothers go still.

"Silas. You need to see this." He held up his phone, hands shaking slightly. "Someone just posted a video near Reagan's apartment. Cops are already there."

Silas felt every ounce of blood drain out of his chest in a single second.

"What kind of video."

The kid swallowed hard before he answered.

"There's smoke coming from her building."