Page 96 of Monk

His jaw tightened hard enough to show the strain in his face. But he didn’t argue. Didn’t deny it. Didn’t even look away.

He just nodded once.

That was worse.

I knocked on the door. A uniformed officer opened it, and I stepped out into the fluorescent chill of the hallway. The door shut behind me with a heavy metallic thud that sounded too final, too much like something sealing closed.

I stood there for a moment without moving, my briefcase clutched in one hand, my pulse beating hard enough to make my fingers tremble.

A body.

What the club did with a body.

The words coiled through me like smoke, dark and choking. I didn’t know exactly what they meant yet, but I knew enough to understand this much: whatever truth sat underneath them was bad. Bad enough that John had buried it behind silence. Badenough that even now, with his freedom hanging by a thread, he still wouldn’t hand it over.

And I had just tied myself to him anyway.

To a man with dangerous secrets.

To a man who was the father of my daughter.

To a man I still loved despite every reason in the world not to.

And if I was going to protect him—protect Tatum, protect what was left of my family—I needed to know exactly what kind of darkness I was stepping into.

Even if the truth gutted me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Monk

The Comanche County Courthouse steps were bleached white beneath the noon sun, all glare and hard edges. Heat rolled off the concrete in visible waves, carrying the stink of exhaust, hot tar, and scorched pavement. I squinted into it as I came down the steps, my wrists still aching where the cuffs had bitten into my skin during processing, the ghost of steel lingering there like an insult. The air hit me, hot and sharp.

And underneath it all, there was freedom.

Temporary freedom, anyway.

The kind they handed you with one eye still on your back. The kind that felt less like release and more like a delay.

I scanned the parking lot and found them immediately.

Blackjack leaned against his bike with his arms crossed, broad and still as a monument. Whisper stood beside him, sunglasses on, his expression hidden and unreadable in a way that somehow made him look more dangerous. Shadow lingered near the curb with his hands shoved into his pockets, posture loose, eyes anything but. And there, right in the middle of them, was my bike.

My Harley.

Black and chrome and beautiful, catching the sun like a blade.

For one thin, fragile second, something in my chest loosened.

My brothers. My machine. A way out.

I started down the courthouse steps, boots striking the concrete with a dull, heavy rhythm, and then I saw her.

Lina.

She stood off to the side near the street, one hand wrapped around her briefcase, the other hanging still at her side. Her blazer was perfectly pressed, not a wrinkle on it, like the last twelve hours hadn’t happened at all. Like she hadn’t sat across from me in an interrogation room while my whole life cracked open. Her hair was twisted into that severe bun she wore when she locked herself behind the lawyer mask—clean, polished, untouchable.

She wasn’t looking at me.