Chapter 3 Out here chasing ghosts

AUGUST

“You told her you were married?”

Jett’s voice scraped through the space between the office door and the concrete frame, hitting the threshold hard enough to risk bleeding through to the other side.

My hand shot out, catching the leather of his vest, and I hauled him backward into the shadows before he could launch another syllable.

His boots grated over grit and loose dust, but he caught his balance instantly, his gaze narrowing into a sharp, disbelieving stare.

“Keep your voice down,” I murmured, the low register flat and absolute.

He glanced toward the door, then whipped his head back, his eyebrows climbing toward his hairline. “You cannot be serious, August. You looked a broken woman in the eyes, and told her she belonged to you. Now you’ve smuggled her straight into the compound and locked her in your private office. What the hell do you think happens when the rest of the chapter finds out she’s breathing the same air as us? What happens when she starts remembering things?”

I tightened my fingers over the collar of his cut, sinking my knuckles into the fabric until I felt the solid muscle beneath.

Jett had ridden with me long enough to recognize the edge of a blade, but the sheer risk of my improvised play seemed to have stripped away his self-preservation. I shoved him down the hall, away from the wood paneling, and let go.

“Not here.”

His eyes flicked past my shoulder toward the closed office door. Inside, behind soundproofed walls and double-paned glass, Anya sat motionless in my desk chair.

She couldn’t see through the solid barrier or hear a single sound of what was happening outside. She was completely oblivious to the chaos brewing on the other side of the door.

But keeping her here was a risk. I never took risks. This was the first time I had, and I was afraid it wouldn’t be the last.

Jett lowered his voice, though the skepticism carving lines into his face only deepened. “Nobody out there knows you have her, August. The guys think you’ve been out hunting leads on our old man’s death. They know the surgeon’s name, but most of them wouldn’t recognize her on sight. If anyone realizes you’ve brought her here, though, they won’t ask questions. They’ll pull her out of that chair and string her up.”

“Which is precisely why nobody can find out,” I clipped, checking the corridor. “I needed her somewhere I could watch her every breath.”

“And a ring-bound fantasy was your only play?”

“It kept her quiet, and it gives me a reason to keep her isolated.”

Jett dragged a palm down his stubbled jaw, expelling a dry, hollow breath. “You’re walking a razor’s edge, brother.”

I stepped into his space until he had nowhere else to retreat. “She doesn’t even know her own name, Jett. She doesn’t know where she sleeps, or who’s currently scouring the city to finish what started in that alley. Half of this club believes she stopped the old man’s heart with her own hands, and Crowe is actively itching for a witch hunt. If they find out I brought her here, it won’t just be her blood on the floor. It’ll spark a civil war inside these walls.”

His mouth clamped shut, the anger hardening into a grim, cold reality. He understood the stakes. The club had no idea the disgraced surgeon was sitting ten feet away, and keeping it that way was the only thing keeping her alive.

Before Jett could bite back, the low, concussive rumble of motorcycle exhausts vibrated through the compound yard.

One by one, the engines cut out, followed immediately by the slam of the outer entrance echoing down the corridor.

I spun toward the noise.

The afternoon had been deliberately dead, just me, Jett, Cole, and the woman locked behind my desk. The emptiness wasn’t an accident. I’d needed silence to dissect what Anya knew, what her bruised mind had buried, and why the sudden collapse of our president’s health had left the club perched on a razor’s edge.

Peace, it seemed, had an expiration date.

Boots hammered against the concrete floor of the main hall, moving with an aggressive purpose. Then Darius Crowe rounded the corner at the far end of the corridor, flanked by half a dozen riders wearing malice like cheap cologne.

Crowe had been circling the president’s chair for years, waiting out the old man’s failing lungs like a vulture perched on a fence post.

He commanded the loyalty of the impatient, the violent, and the small-minded. What he lacked, what he had always lacked, was the steady authority I’d bled for while keeping the Vultures intact through wars that should have wiped us out.

He stopped ten paces away, his mouth curling into a grin that stayed entirely dead in his pale eyes. A thick, wet purr coated his vowels, an old-world drawl from the delta down south that he liked to sharpen whenever he wanted to remind people he was a predator.

“Well, well, look what the hounds dug up,” Crowe drawled, his voice sliding over the concrete like grease. “Been trailin’ all over this concrete jungle lookin’ for you, brother. And here you are, holed up like a dog with a fresh bone.”

He didn’t wait for permission to close the distance. I stepped hard into his path, blocking the line of sight to my office door. Cole instantly drifted to my left, his broad shoulders shifting to the wall off the entrance, while Jett locked down the right flank without a word.

Crowe’s gaze dropped to the blockade we formed, his smile stretching thin. “Step aside, August. We got business that don’t wait for your parlor games.”

“Then take it outside,” I replied, my voice dropping an octave.

Crowe let out a sharp, mocking bark of laughter that didn’t reach his eyes. “Our president’s been cold in the ground, or close enough to it, for five days. Five days, August. No proper send-off, no ruling on the surgeon who put him there, and zero word on who takes the cut at the head of the table. You expect the whole damn chapter to sit on their hands while you lock yourself away playing detective?”

The muscles along my jaw locked tight, but I forced my tone to remain flat. “The burial will be handled. The chair will be filled when the bylaws dictate. And until we find that doctor, nobody makes a move.”

Crowe’s grin vanished, replaced by a dark heat in his eyes. “Find her? She’s probably halfway out of the state by now while you drag your feet! A man walked into her theater breathin’ sweet air and walked out in a pine box, and you want us to sit around waiting for police reports? When we locate that bitch, we don’t bring her to court, August. We handle her in-house.”

I maintained my wide stance, completely concealing the doorway behind me. Safe inside, Anya remained entirely oblivious to the men standing outside, unaware that a pack of riders was actively plotting her death just feet away from where she sat.

“We need facts, Crowe,” I bit out. “The procedure was complex. Complications happen. Surgeons lose tables every day. Until I verify what actually went down during those hours, nobody turns a manhunt into an execution.”

Crowe leaned in, his southern drawl dripping with sarcasm. “Sure sounds like you’re barkin’ awfully loud to protect a ghost, August. Almost makes a man wonder if you’re hiding something.”

A low murmur rippled through the men flanking him. I watched their knuckles tighten, measuring the exact second frustration would curdle into violence.

“I’m protecting this club from tearing its own throat out,” I countered, my voice cold enough to drop the temperature in the corridor. “If she was a pawn for an outside rival, we trace the strings. If someone paid her to stop his heart, we drag them into the light. But if you execute her the second we lay hands on her, you might be throwing away the only key we have to the truth.”

That argument hit a nerve. It didn’t pacify them, but it stalled the momentum. Crowe’s eyes narrowed into slits as his brain calculated how to twist my words into a weapon for his own ambitions.

“And just how many suns are we supposed to waste while you hunt for ghosts?” he sneered.

“Forty-eight hours,” I fired back, seizing the number before he could demand less. “Give me two days to pull every file, shake every contact, and tear apart whatever doesn’t add up. We’ll schedule the burial vote per the charter rules. Until that clock runs out, nobody takes matters into their own hands.”

Crowe stared me down, his chest rising beneath his leather cut. He had no idea the exact answer to his manhunt was sitting less than five feet behind my back. I gave nothing back, refusing to let him smell blood in the water.

Finally, he bobbed his chin in a slow, mocking nod. “Forty-eight hours, August. You come up empty-handed when that clock strikes, and we’ll hunt her down my way.”

He wheeled around, making a display of waving his men back down the corridor. Their boots hammered a retreating rhythm against the floor until the outer entrance slammed shut behind them, cutting off the low rumble of their idling bikes.

I didn’t move until the echoes died out completely.

Jett waited until the sound of the motorcycles had faded before stepping closer. Cole moved away from the door, though he kept his eyes on the corridor until he was satisfied nobody had returned.

“What are you going to do about her?” Jett asked.

I looked at the office door. “Find out what happened to the president.”

“I meant Anya.”

“I know what you meant.”

I pushed the door open just far enough to check on her. She was still seated behind my desk, her fingers resting on the edge of a photograph she had pulled closer. The picture showed me standing beside our president at a club gathering several years earlier. Anya stared at it with a faint crease between her brows, as if some part of her recognised the importance of the men in the frame even if their faces meant nothing to her.

When she noticed me watching, she lifted her gaze. There was fear in it, but there was something else too: suspicion, quiet and watchful.

I closed the door gently. “She stays here until I know who attacked her and whether anyone is still looking for her.”

Jett studied me. “And after that?”

“After that, I decide.”

It was a cold answer, and we both knew it. The truth was less tidy. I did not trust Anya, but I did not believe the story everyone had built around her either. I remembered seeing her on television, standing before a bank of microphones while reporters shouted questions about the man who had died under her care.

She had looked exhausted, furious, and frightened, but she had not looked like a woman who could kill the president of the largest club in the world.

I had seen her once before that, in a supermarket, quietly helping an elderly man pick up the groceries he had dropped. It was a small thing, hardly worth remembering, yet I had remembered it.

That did not make her innocent. It only made me unwilling to accept the convenient version of her guilt.

Jett leaned against the wall, watching me with the wary patience of a man who had known me too long to mistake silence for indecision. “And the president’s seat? Are you still going to take it?”

I did not answer. Through the office door, I could hear the faint scrape of Anya’s chair against the floor. Outside, the clubhouse had fallen quiet again, but the silence carried none of the peace it had earlier.

Darius Crowe wanted the seat, and he would use the president’s death, the woman in my office, and every unanswered question to make himself look like the only man willing to act.

If he took control, the first thing he would do was turn suspicion into bloodshed.

I knew what our president had thought of him. I knew what he had warned me about. Most of all, I remembered the final conversation we had shared, when he had been too weak to stand without help but still possessed enough fire in his voice to make me listen.

‘Do not give Crowe my seat, August. I don’t care what happens after I’m gone, and I don’t care if you have no interest in wearing the crown yourself. Just don’t let that man lead this club. He’ll turn everything we’ve built into his personal kingdom, and every brother who stands in his way will pay for it.’

I had promised him I would not let that happen. I had not promised to become president myself.

There was a difference, and I had held on to it because the thought of taking his place felt too much like admitting he was never coming back.

Jett waited for an answer I could not yet give him.

I looked toward the door where Anya sat with a dead man’s photograph in her hands and a false name in her head.

Forty-eight hours to uncover the truth. A club on the verge of tearing itself apart. A woman who might be innocent, guilty, or something far more dangerous than either. And a promise to a dead president that was about to force me into the one position I had spent years refusing to claim.