All Chapters of His To Keep; The Lie That Broke Them : Chapter 1 - Chapter 7

Reagan's phone rang at 11:04 p.m., and by the time she reached her mother's shop two minutes later, the whole block had already turned orange. She caught the smell before she saw the flames, that thick, acrid wrongness that had no business existing on a quiet Tuesday night, and her stomach dropped so hard she felt sick before her mind even registered what was happening. She started running without deciding to, past neighbors gathered on their porches in bathrobes, past a dog barking itself hoarse somewhere she couldn't see, straight toward the glow climbing up the front window of the shop her mother had spent fifteen years building from nothing. "Mom!" Her voice split down the middle. "Mom, where is she, is she still inside—" A firefighter caught her by the shoulder before she could get any closer. "Ma'am, you need to stay back. You can't go in there." "That's my mother's shop. She was closing up tonight. She has to still be in there, please, you don't understand, let me—" "

It was an accident, the way she found it. Grant left his jacket over the back of a kitchen chair Sunday morning, keys and wallet on the counter, and went out for coffee before Reagan even had her eyes fully open. She reached for his phone out of habit, meaning to check the time, before remembering hers was sitting right there in her other pocket the whole time. The screen lit up anyway. One line of preview text, there and gone before the lock screen swallowed it again. Package secured. Second location confirmed. — M Nothing about it should have meant anything. People sent cryptic work messages all the time. Grant handled real estate deals that involved code names for properties, confidentiality clauses, all of it dressed up in language that sounded more dramatic than it actually was. She told herself that while she made coffee. She told herself that while she stood at the window and watched the street outside go about its ordinary Sunday morning. She told herself that right up unti

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

"Absolutely not."Wade said it before Silas even finished reading the message a second time, his voice low and hard in the way it only got when he'd already made up his mind about something. "That's not an invitation, Silas. That's bait. You walk out there alone, you're walking into whatever they've got waiting for you.""I know what it is." Silas didn't look up from the phone. "I'm going anyway.""Then I'm going with you.""It says alone, Wade.""I don't care what it says." Wade's jaw set the same stubborn way their father's used to, the one expression neither brother had ever managed to argue their way out of inheriting. "You're not doing this by yourself. Not tonight. Not after what just happened to her building."Reagan hadn't let go of Silas's arm since he'd pulled her into it, and her grip tightened now, hard enough that he felt her nails through his shirt. "If you think for one second I'm standing on this sidewalk while you two drive off to meet whoever sent that, you don't kno