Page 156 of Hidden

Gabby still didn’t answer. She didn’t move. She didn’t respond to my touch. She just stood silently, holding my gaze with tears in her eyes.

And then we all heard it.

Engines. The unmistakable sounds of motorbike engines sounding close, far too close—close enough to be on our property, and creeping closer still with every split second.

Dante was beside me in an instant, his presence solid, grounding. “Vienna…” he murmured, low enough that only I could hear it. “The Riders are here. All of them.”

I didn’t take my eyes off her. I didn’t need to. Because deep in my gut, in a place I didn’t want to admit was true, I already knew.

The door opened again, just as her eyes closed, shutting me out. When they opened again, they were hardened, the tears gone.

Rough Riders poured in like they owned the place, like they weren’t walking into a rival clubhouse but into something that already belonged to them. One after the other, filling the space, their cuts catching the light, their expressions far too calm for what this should have been.

The room didn’t fall silent all at once, not in any dramatic, sweeping way, but there was a noticeable shift in the atmosphere that crept in like a draft under a door—subtle at first, and then impossible to ignore. Conversations didn’t stop so much as falter, laughter trailing off into uncertainty as men began to register what they were looking at, who had just walked through their doors, and more importantly, the fact that they had done so without hesitation.

Chairs scraped against the floor as bodies adjusted, some rising slightly from their seats, others leaning forward, elbows braced against tables, all of them caught somewhere between instinct and restraint. No one reached for a weapon outright, not yet, but I could see it in the tension of their shoulders, the way hands hovered just a fraction too close to belts and pockets, ready to move if needed.

I didn’t look at any of them.

I couldn’t.

Because my focus had locked onto her the second she stepped inside, and it refused to shift now, no matter how much the situation around us changed. The rest of the room could have gone up in flames and I still would have been stood there, watching her, trying to make sense of something that didn’t quite add up.

“Gabriella,” her father’s voice cut through the thickening tension with an ease that made my stomach twist, smooth and controlled, like he wasn’t standing in the middle of a rival clubhouse but hosting a polite fucking gathering. “You’ve kept them waiting.”

“I knew you’d want to be here for this,” she replied, her tone level, stripped of anything that made it hers. There was no bite to it, no humour tucked beneath the surface, no hint of the girl who would usually twist a simple word into something sharper just for the sake of it. It was just… empty.

My jaw tightened, the unease that had been simmering since that text settling into something colder, something far less easy to ignore. “What the fuck is this?” I asked, the question coming out lower than I intended, rough around the edges in a way I couldn’t quite control.

No one rushed to answer me.

If anything, that seemed to amuse them.

Her father’s gaze slid over me slowly, deliberately, like he were taking his time committing every detail to memory, and there was something in the curve of his mouth that told me he was enjoying this far more than he should have been.

“Vienna,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Dante shifted beside me, a silent warning that he was already on edge, already reading the situation for what it was.

“Say what you came to say, or get the fuck out before this turns into something you won’t walk away from.”

Crash pushed through the crowd, standing in front of me and Dante, and facing down the rival president.

“Harley,” he said. “You’ve had your fun, but you’re about five seconds away from something that can’t be recovered. And you’re already ten seconds past your welcome.”

A couple of the Riders let out low chuckles at that, the sound carrying just enough to grate against the already strained atmosphere, and it hit me then that they weren’t worried. Not even slightly. There was no hesitation in them, no uncertainty about how this might play out.

They were too comfortable.

And that should have been my first real clue.

“Go on, princess,” her father continued, his attention returning to her as though Dante and Crash hadn’t spoken at all, as though none of us were anything more than background noise. He nodded toward me, casual and almost expectant. “Show them what you’ve been working on.”

Something in my chest tightened at that, not sharp enough to be pain, but close enough that it made it harder to breathe.

“Gabby,” I said, the name coming out instinctively, grounding, like if I just said it the right way, she’d snap out of whatever the fuck this was. “What’s going on?”

Her eyes met mine then, properly met them, and for a fraction of a second I thought—stupidly, desperately—that I’d see something there. Some flicker of recognition, some sign that this was all a misunderstanding waiting to be cleared up.