Page 45 of Contracted to the Bikers

Sloane meets my eyes, and I’m surprised to see sympathy in hers. “You kept this to yourself this whole time.” She shakes her head slightly. “Such a burden. I can’t imagine Briggs took it well,” she says with a quirk of her lips and a slight huff of laughter.

I smile back at that. “He did not.”

The silence stretches between us as she absorbs everything I’ve said, and the things left unsaid, too. I think the silence will finally break into a row. I expected it to break the second she walked in. I keep waiting for the anger and disappointment to burst forward. Instead, she exhales slowly, and her posture softens slightly. “You didn’t betray them,” she says.

The words catch me off guard. I blink. “That’s not what I said.”

“No,” she replies. “But it’s what you’re thinking.”

She steps closer, moving around the desk into my space. She places her hands over my shoulders, looking me in the eye. I snake my arms around her waist, holding onto her like a life raft. “You considered an option,” she continues. “You didn’t take it.”

“I didn’t tell them.” I won’t let myself off that easily. “They had a right to know, to decide what’s best for the club.”

“Maybe,” she agrees. “But you didn’t sell them out. I know you would have told them eventually, if it came to it, if selling seemed like the best move.” She says this with such conviction, I want to believe her. I’m touched by her faith in me.

I watch her, feeling wary, as if this might be a trap. Trying to understand what I’m seeing. Not anger or disappointment. Just understanding, acceptance. Just when I think I know Sloane, she finds new ways to surprise me. “How are you not pissed right now?” I ask.

Her mouth curves slightly. “Because I’ve made worse calls than that. I’ve pushed evidence harder than I should have,” she says. “Followed instincts that weren’t clean. Sat on things because they complicated the case.” Her eyes hold mine. “We both live in gray areas.”

She’s right there. I’d always thought of Sloane as so good, so honorable and just, it had never occurred to me that she’s also working outside of the lines.

“These files, this information, it changes everything.”

I lean back slightly, wondering if this is the moment where she pulls the rug out from under me, where she says she understands but cannot forgive me.

“How?”

She moves away, and I feel the distance like a knife. But then she steps to the side of the desk, pulls the map toward her, and spreads it out. She tucks her hair behind her ear, brow furrowed as she focuses on the map. “Briggs wasn’t reacting to me,” she says. “I wasn’t the target. The land was.”

I feel like an idiot for not realizing it sooner.

She taps the map. “This is the last piece Briggs needs to complete the pipeline. Everything else is already in place.”

I look at it, following the lines Sloane traces with her fingers. Like a light switch turning on, suddenly I can see the pattern, the structure, Briggs’ true intention. “He wasn’t hunting you,” I say.

“No,” she agrees. “I was a loose end. Briggs didn’t want me investigating Escar further, didn’t want me finding out his connection, his plans. But I wasn’t the goal.”

“You didn’t bring this to us,” I say slowly, realization dawning that Sloane came to us for protection and instead walked into the eye of the storm. “You walked into something that was already happening.”

“Yeah.” Her expression is a muddle of emotions.

I can see in her eyes that she knows that if she had chosen to run, to go into WITSEC, or simply leave town, she and Jessy would have been safe. No one would have followed them. Briggs just wanted her gone. By coming here, she put herself right in his crosshairs.

“By coming here, I put myself right in his sights,” Sloane says. “But I also gave you the one thing he didn’t account for.”

“What’s that?”

“A lawyer who knows exactly how he operates.”

I study her, the woman who walked into my clubhouse with a kid, fearing for her life but still fiery as hell, the woman who didn’t blink to sign a contract to protect her, no matter what. Sloane should be angry right now, should be filled with regret, but she isn’t.

“You’re not walking away,” I say. It’s not a question, even though I can hardly believe it. Sloane could still leave and stand a chance of escaping Briggs. It’s Iron Vale he wants.

Her expression softens slightly. “No.”

I reach out without thinking, my hand finding hers where it rests on the desk. “You should be mad at me,” I say softly.

“Probably,” she replies with a small smile.