Page 129 of Hidden

Instead, it felt like the slow, inevitable closing of a door I had no right to have opened in the first place.

Every step carried me further from Vienna and deeper into something colder, something heavier, something that pressed down on my chest until breathing felt like effort rather than instinct. My body hadn’t caught up yet. It was still too aware, too alive, every nerve lit in a way that made the night air feel sharper against my skin.

The memory of his hands lingering against my skin, the way his voice made every part of me tingle, the feelings he made me feel… it was all I could think about.

And the jacket.

God, the jacket.

My fingers kept tightening against the front of it, holding it closed like that might somehow dull the significance of what I was wearing, like I could reduce it to something practical instead of what it actually was.

He had given me his cut. He could be kicked out of the club for that. He couldn’t attend Church without it. And yet he had given it to me.

And that claimed me in a way nothing else ever had.

That thought had circled endlessly on the walk back, growing louder the closer I got to the Riders’ compound. I should have folded it carefully and left it on his bed, or draped it over the chair, or shoved it at him and walked out before I could weaken. But I hadn’t been able to do it. Leaving it behind would have meant leaving him properly, and I didn’t think I had it in me to do that and still make it back here in one piece.

So I had kept it.

Besides, I’m sure this was his spare. Every biker had a spare, just in case. He would have another somewhere.

My mind was so occupied as I walked back, that I didn’t even register the cameras. I barely noticed anything. I was so focused on getting back unseen by the human eye, that it failed to register that humans had more than one way of looking, seeing, and gathering their information.

The back door closed softly behind me, and I barely had time to turn before the room exploded into light.

“Here she comes. The street walker. What the fuck are you wearing?” Nico was already on his feet. The bottle in his hand shattered against the wall as he crossed the room, glass breaking in a sharp, violent burst that echoed too loudly in the silence. The smell of alcohol hit the air, sharp and bitter, but it barely registered over the sudden, suffocating weight of his attention locking onto me.

My heart slammed into my throat. “I—”

“Don’t,” he snapped, closing the distance between us before I could take a step back. “Don’t open that stupid fucking mouth and insult me with a lie.”

His hand caught the front of the jacket and wrenched me forward hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs, my body jolting with the force of it as I stumbled into him. The leather twisted between his fingers, the Devils patch dragging under his grip, and something in his expression darkened further at the sight of it on me.

“Whose is it?”

All he had to do was turn the jacket over and look at the patch. The Vice President patch that told him exactly where I had been and who I had been with.

I wasn’t going to open my mouth and make this easier for him. I just had to hope his rage was strong enough that he would discard the jacket and focus on me.

Not the owner.

Because all I had ever done was try to keep Vienna safe. Every sacrifice I made was to ensure he lived. And one stupid decision might have undone years of pain and longing in one second.

The slap came without warning, cracking across my face with enough force to send me sideways into the table. Pain burst hot and immediate, my vision blurring at the edges as the impact jarred through me, but before I could even process it, he was there again, dragging me upright by the collar of the jacket.

“Don’t fucking insult me,” he said, his voice lower now, more controlled—but infinitely more dangerous for it. “You think I don’t know what this is?”

My cheek throbbed. My ears rang.

Still, I said nothing.

“You think I don’t recognise a Devil’s cut?” he continued, his gaze raking over me with something that bordered on disgust. “You think I don’t know exactly who this belongs to?”

His eyes dragged over me again, slower this time, more deliberate. Taking in the state of me. The way I was breathing.The way I was standing. The way the jacket sat on my body like it belonged there.

“You’ve looked different,” he said. “For days,” he added, quieter now, as though he were piecing it together out loud. “Ever since that night.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.