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The line went dead.
I bent over my knees, pushing tense fingers through my hair to grip it tightly at my scalp. Downstairs the front door opened, and I heard Ava Jade and the guys rush inside, locked in heated conversation.
“Corvus,” Sparrow crowed up the stairs. “Are you up there?”
Fuck.
I’d been so careful with this secret.
More than any other.
There were no leaks. None save Ava Jade and Becca fucking Hart.
Then again, the fucker had sealed documents from Maxine’s office. Maybe it was her who’d sold me out. Though that didn’t seem likely either since the mystery of The Bone Man was half the fucking allure. No mystery, no cold hard cash in her wallet. Or mine. Not anymore.
My door swept open, and Ava Jade stood there, framed on both sides by my brothers.
“We can fix this,” Ava Jade said, the promise gleaming like hard stone in her eyes. “We just have to—”
“It’s too late,” I replied, detached from the words. “Diesel knows. It’s over.”
My Sparrow shook her head, gaze snagging on the monitor still protruding from my wall. “It doesn’t have to be. Why shouldn’t you be able to have both? It’s fucking stupid. Being The Bone Man never stopped you from fulfilling your duties to your family before, why should it now?”
“Dies won’t see it that way.” Grey grimaced, his face pale and ashen like it was his secret that’d been put on stage for the whole world to see. It was a mite too close to looking like pity for my fucking taste.
I got to my feet and snatched my leather jacket from the floor. “Dies is expecting me. I have to go.”
Ava Jade stepped out of my doorway for me to pass, reaching out to me before thinking better of it to claw her hand back to her side. Smart girl.
“Grey,” I said, pausing in the hall. “The fucker who leaked the intel—I think it’s the same bastard who’s been messing with Ava Jade. I doubt you’ll be able to trace him since we haven’t had a break with anything leading up to now, but it’s worth a shot. Max has the details you’ll need to try the trace.”
He nodded solemnly.
“Are you sure it’s him?” Sparrow asked, horror plain on her paling face. “It could be—”
“I’m not sure,” I told her, mostly because I didn’t want her to blame herself for this. I didn’t know why, but I was sure. I knew it was him. Either it was that fucker or it was the Ace Becca had been dating. He might’ve gleaned enough information from her to piece it together before Becca broke things off.
“Regardless,” I added. “We need to find out who it is. Either it’s a nobody who got lucky with a guess, or it’s someone with a vendetta that needs to be crushed to fucking dust.”
“I’m on it,” Grey promised, turning to stalk toward his bedroom.
“Wait,” Ava Jade called after me. “Maybe I could come with you? I could help Diesel understand—”
“You being there won’t help, Sparrow. If anything, it’ll just make it worse.”
I couldn’t bear to see how that comment hit, grinding my teeth as I stormed down the stairs. It was the truth. And sometimes, the truth wasn’t kind.
The blacktop vanished beneath the tires of my Ducati as I sped across town, ignoring every road sign and light along the way. I tried to come up with a way to explain this shit to my father without breaking the fragile bond still healing from the cracks formed over the past weeks during Ava Jade’s trials.
I’d own my shit. I always did. But a part of me wanted to chew his fucking head off. Tell him that I didn’t have a choice but to lie about it. He never would have supported it, and I wouldn’t have had the outlet I needed to keep myself his perfect soldier all this time.
My engine barked as I revved around the corner leading to his street, slowing to a static purr.
Diesel’s car sat parked up in the drive of the house where I lived with him up until two years ago.
A modest charcoal gray house with a double car garage. Two-stories. A rose garden Dies’ wife started before we came into the picture bloomed with crimson flowers beneath the tall windows next to the door. Pristine. He would settle for no less.
I bowed my head, stepping off the bike. My thirty minutes were nearly up.
