CHAPTER THIRTEEN — The Leak

LENA'S POV

Nobody talked about what happened at the east wall directly.

That was something I had learned about the Iron Grave MC. The things that happened at night stayed in the night. You felt the aftermath of them in the way the compound moved the next morning, quieter, more deliberate, eyes that had seen something processing it in their own time without discussion.

I did not ask questions.

I ate my breakfast and watched and learned what I could from the spaces between things.

Ghost called the inner circle together after breakfast. Not the full club this time. Just the four of them and two senior members whose names I had learned were Patch and Colt. I was not invited but Ghost did not tell me to disappear either so I sat in the common room within earshot and listened to what came through the door.

What came through was not much. Low voices. Serious. Then a longer silence. Then Ghost's voice saying something short and final the way he always ended things that were decided.

When they came out Ghost looked at me across the common room and said "come with me."

I followed him to the kitchen.

He sat down across from me and put something on the table between us. A small black device. Smaller than my thumb. I looked at it and then at him.

"Tracking device," he said. "Found it inside the compound this morning. Hidden in the east corridor near the storage room."

My stomach went cold. "Someone brought that in."

"Yes," he said.

"Someone inside."

"Yes," he said again. His voice was completely flat. The kind of flat that meant something dangerous was moving underneath it very quietly.

I looked at the device on the table. "That is how they knew where to breach," I said. "Last night. They knew exactly which wall."

"Yes."

I sat back in my chair. "Ghost."

"I know," he said.

"How long has it been there."

"We do not know," he said. "Long enough." He looked at me steadily. "I need you to keep this between us for now. Not Axel. Not Rook. Just you and me until I know more."

I looked at him. "You trust me with this before you trust them."

"I trust all three of you completely," he said. "But you are the one with the most to lose if this goes wrong. You have the right to know first."

Something about that landed differently than I expected. Not just the information. The order of it. The fact that he had thought about who deserved to know first and had chosen her.

"Okay," I said. "What do you need from me."

"Nothing yet," he said. "Just keep your eyes open and tell me if you notice anything that feels wrong."

"How will I know what feels wrong in a place I have only been in for a few weeks," I said.

"You will know," he said. "You noticed things about this compound from the first night that most people miss after months. I have been watching you do it."

I looked at him across the table. At the certainty in that. At the fact that he had been watching me the way I had been watching everything else.

"You have been watching me," I said.

"Since the bridge," he said simply. "Axel radioed ahead. I watched you come through the gate on the camera. I have been watching since."

I did not know whether to find that unsettling or not. I decided not. Because the watching had not been predatory. It had been the watching of someone trying to understand something they did not yet have a name for.

"Find your leak," I said. "I will keep my eyes open."

He nodded once. Stood up. Picked up the device.

"Ghost," I said.

He stopped.

"Be careful," I said. "Whoever brought that in is still inside these walls."

He looked at me for a moment. Something moved through his expression that was warm and brief and real. "I know," he said. "So are you. Which is why I told you first."

He walked out.

I told Axel anyway.

Not because I did not trust Ghost's reasoning. But because Axel was the one who had almost run me over on a bridge and brought me here and I felt like he had the right to know his compound had a leak in it.

I found him in the garage in the afternoon, lying under a bike with only his legs visible, and I crouched down and said "someone put a tracking device in the east corridor."

The legs went still.

Then Axel slid out from under the bike and sat up and looked at me with oil on his hands and something very serious happening behind his eyes. "Ghost told you."

"Yes."

"He told you before he told me," Axel said. Not angry. Just noting it.

"He said he trusts you completely," I said. "He told me first because I have the most to lose."

Axel was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded slowly. "He is right," he said. "You and those babies." He looked at my stomach and then back at my face. "Nobody is going to let anything happen to you. You understand that."

"I know," I said.

"Do you actually know it," he said. "Or are you just saying it."

I looked at him. At the oil stained hands and the serious eyes and all that warmth underneath the rough of him. "I actually know it," I said.

He held my gaze for a moment longer than necessary. Then he reached out and put one hand briefly on top of mine where it rested on my knee. Warm and certain and there.

"Good," he said.

He slid back under the bike.

I stayed crouched there for a moment longer than I needed to.

Then I stood up and went back inside and kept my eyes open the way Ghost had asked.

That night Ghost found the source of the leak.

He did not tell me how. He came to my door late and knocked quietly and when I opened it he said "it is handled" and looked at me with those grey green eyes and I understood that handled meant something specific in the language of the Iron Grave MC and I did not ask for the details.

"Is it over," I said.

"That part is," he said.

"And the other parts."

He looked at me steadily. "We are working on them."

I nodded.

He started to turn away.

"Ghost," I said.

He looked back.

"Thank you for telling me first," I said.

He held my gaze for a moment. Then he said "get some sleep" in the voice that meant he felt more than he was saying and walked back down the corridor.

I closed the door and stood in the dark and pressed my hand to my stomach.

The leak was handled.

But Edmund was still out there.

And the four million dollars was still sitting on my head like a weight that had not shifted yet.