All Chapters of Our Dirty Little Secret : Chapter 141 - Chapter 150

Hazel’s knuckles hit the door twice, sharp enough that I felt it in my own hand. I stood close behind her on the narrow walkway, close enough to see the tight set of her shoulders. The door opened.Alfred filled the gap in a rolled-sleeve shirt. A smile started on his face when he saw her. It died the second his eyes landed on me. His fingers tightened on the edge of the door until the knuckles stood out. He looked at me a moment too long, as if measuring how much weight I might add to whatever he already carried. “Hazel,” he mumbled, still staring at me. “This is my friend,” Hazel cut in, already pushing past his chest so he had to step back. “She is with me.” She put her shoulder into him and kept walking. He had to move or go down in his own doorway. I came in on her heels. The door swung and caught the back of my shoe before he grabbed it. When he turned the lock his fingers slipped once and had to start again. He stayed facing the door a second longer, breathing through his

The Portland room looked the same as when we'd left it that morning. Curtains still drawn against a strip of grey daylight. The extra food still sitting untouched on the table. The whole place held its breath, the way a rented room does when nobody's told it what happens next. Hazel dropped her bag on the bed and eased herself down beside it, one hand pressed against her side, careful in a way she probably didn't know she was being careful. I locked the door behind us and stood there a second too long with the phone still in my hand, not sure where else to put the weight of the night.Everything Alfred had told us had followed us home. The meat. The days of weakness that were supposed to come after. The bodyguards who never left his side, not even to sleep, according to Alfred. The rings he never took off, not for showers, not for anything. The man who had written it all down somewhere and then simply stopped coming to work, like he'd walked off the edge of the world. None of it had h

Ryder “We didn’t leave,” Dallas's words made me still, I stood there in the middle of the room holding the phone like it might explain itself if I waited long enough. Portland. Hazel was with her. She needed to see me.I didn’t say anything for a second. My other hand had found the edge of the table without me telling it to, and when I looked down I was pressing hard enough that the wood had left a line across my palm.I thought about calling Jax. I got as far as pulling the second line up on the screen, thumb hovering over his name, before I put the phone down flat on the table instead and picked up my keys.The bag I’d half packed three days ago was still by the door. I don’t remember deciding to grab it. I was in the SUV with the engine running before I’d worked out what I was actually going to say to either of them when I got there.Three hours if the traffic behaved. I didn’t plan on giving it the chance not to.I kept the windows shut and the heat low the whole drive, the cold

The club sat in a part of the city that worked hard at looking cleaner than it actually was, all polished brass fixtures and a velvet rope out front managed by a man built like a doorway himself, deciding who got to spend their money inside tonight. I had a cap pulled low over my eyes and a dark jacket zipped to the throat, a mask covering the lower half of my face, enough that no one glancing my way would look twice, enough that if Don happened to look toward the shadows along the wall, there'd be nothing there worth recognizing.Inside, the air hit like a wall, thick with perfume and sweat and the particular metallic smell of too much money changing hands too fast.The main floor wrapped around a long runway that split the room in half. Male dancers worked it like they'd been born owning the space, moving with the kind of confidence that made the watching feel like a privilege instead of a transaction. One knelt at the edge of the stage rolling his hips in slow, deliberate circles w

He ended the call and set the phone down like it might bite.“Bruce first.” Carlos mumbled, rolling his shoulders once as if settling the weight of the order. “Then the safe. That’s the order.”I nodded because my mouth did not have anything useful in it.They had Bruce waiting when we landed the second time, closer to the hills than the water. The house that had held him was already quiet in the wrong way. Carlos’s people had done what they were told. Bodies in a line along the inner wall, neat, like someone had been proud of the work. The air smelled like cordite and wet stone.Bruce was on his knees in the foyer with a bag over his head and his wrists bound behind him. When they yanked the bag off, his face was the color of old paper. Sweat stood on his upper lip. His eyes found Don’s slack body being carried in behind us and a sound tore out of him that was not quite a word. His shoulders jerked like he wanted to stand and his knees would not let him.“The safe.” Carlos snarled, a