"He didn't come to me," I said. I kept my voice level. Kept my eyes on my father. He was the only one who mattered. We didn't look away. "I went to him. You raised me to look people in theeye and tell the truth even when it costs everything. So here I am. Looking you in the eye. Telling you the truth. It's going to cost me everything I have, and I'm doing it anyway, because that's what you taught me to do."
My father's face changed. Those words landed somewhere underneath the president. In the place where the father lived. The one who'd sat on the edge of my bed when I was nine and promised me we were enough.
The room was deathly still. All of men, none of them breathing, all of them watching their president process the worst news a man like Stone could receive. His daughter pregnant with the enemy. His legacy compromised. His authority challenged. Not by a rival. By the one person in the world whose betrayal he'd never planned for. He'd never imagined it was possible.
I saw him look at my stomach. Just for a second. His gaze dropped from my face to my midsection and then back up, and in that fraction of a second I saw the calculation happen. The grandchild. His grandchild. Growing inside me, half Jackal, half Angel, a living embodiment of everything he'd spent thirty years keeping separate.
His jaw worked. His hands pressed harder against the table. I could see him fighting through it, processing, the pragmatist and the father and the president all pulling in different directions.
He opened his mouth.
The front door opened.
Every head turned. Every body tensed. Hands went to waistbands, to belts, to the places where weapons lived. The door of the Jackals' clubhouse didn't just open uninvited.
Ghost walked in.
Alone.
SIX
GHOST
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I was in the common room, coffee in my hand, waiting for Lola to get back from her apartment. Simple errand. Twenty minutes each way, ten to pack a bag. She'd been gone forty minutes. Not late yet, but I'd been counting.
The message was three words.Jackals have me. Clubhouse.
I read it twice. The coffee cup hit the table harder than I intended and the liquid slopped over the rim. It hit immediate. Total. A cold clarity that cut through everything else. I'd spent my career assessing situations, reading the moment a scenario shifted from manageable to critical.
This was critical.
Razor was on the couch in the common room. He looked up when I stood.
"Lola's been picked up by the Jackals. They've taken her to the Jackals clubhouse."
He read my face. Put down his beer. "How do you know?"
"She texted me."
"I'll get the brothers. Full ride."
"No. Just me."
His expression shifted. "Ghost. You can't walk into the Jackals' clubhouse alone. That's suicide."
"I'm not rolling up to Stone's front door with twenty bikes. That's a declaration of war and Lola's in the middle of it."
"Going alone is how you end up in the ground brother."
"She sent me that text because she trusts me to handle this. I'm not showing up with an army. Tell Angel where I went. If I'm not back in two hours, it's his call."
I rode out of the Jackals compound. The highway opened ahead of me, mountains on both sides, the road cutting through the valley. I rode at speed and let the engine noise fill the space where thinking would have slowed me down. The highway was empty. Late afternoon, the sun sitting low behind the mountains, throwing long shadows across the road. The light made everything look sharper. The trees, the rock face, the mile markers counting down the distance between the life I'd built and the one I was about to risk it for.
I thought about Angel. What he'd say if he could see me now. Probably nothing. He'd just look at me with that expression that meant he understood because he'd been here himself, standing on the edge of a decision that could cost everything, choosing to jump because the woman on the other side was worth the fall.
I thought about Lola's face when she'd told me about the pregnancy. The defensive set of her jaw. The crack in her voice when she'd said alone. Three weeks she'd carried it. Three weeks of isolation in a world that would have destroyed her if it had known the truth. She'd walked through that with her spine straight, her eyes clear. She'd driven an hour to hand me the truth like a grenade with the pin pulled, knowing I might drop it.
