Chapter 103 Searching for clues
Sage's POV
I barely slept that night. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Jaxon's face when he said that marrying Diego was for the best and I heard the defensiveness in his voice. Something was wrong with my brother, something he was hiding from me, and I needed to figure out what it was.
Ryder didn't want to stay over and had left last night after making me promise to call him if anything felt wrong. I wondered what important things he had to do in the middle of the night, but I didn't push it.
When morning finally came, I stayed in bed and listened to Jaxon moving around downstairs. The sound of his boots on the hardwood floor as he walked from around the house. Then the sound of his truck starting up in the driveway and pulling away from the house.
I waited another five minutes to make sure he wasn't coming back for something he'd forgotten. Jaxon had a habit of leaving things behind and doubling back for them, and I couldn't risk him catching me doing what I planned to do that morning. My heart pounded in my chest as I counted down the seconds, straining to hear any sound of his truck returning.
Silence. Just the quiet of the house settling around me.
I threw off the covers and walked down the hall to his room, my bare feet silent on the carpet. My hand hesitated on the doorknob for just a second, guilt washing over me at the thought of violating my brother's privacy like this. But he was hiding something from me, something important enough that he wouldn't explain it no matter how many times I asked. And I deserved to know why he was suddenly so determined to push me toward a marriage I didn't want.
I turned the handle and pushed the door open.
I probably hadn't been in this room since I was ten. Jaxon's room looked the same as it always had, exactly the way it had looked since we were kids and he'd insisted on keeping everything in perfect order. Bed made with military precision, the corners tucked so tight you could probably bounce a quarter off the blanket. The desk was clean except for a laptop and a few papers stacked neatly in the corner. The dresser was covered with framed pictures of the club and our family, arranged in a way that probably made sense to Jaxon but looked random to anyone else.
Nothing out of place. Nothing that looked unusual or suspicious.
I stood in the doorway for a moment, trying to figure out where to start. What was I even looking for? Evidence of why he wanted me to marry Diego? Something from the Blood Sisters? Some kind of deal he'd made that I didn't know about? I had no idea what would explain his sudden change in behavior.
I started with the desk, pulling open the drawers one by one and looking through the contents. It was filled with papers, mostly. Club business, invoices, receipts, bills for the house that needed to be paid. Everything organized and labeled, typical Jaxon efficiency. I flipped through each stack carefully, looking for anything that mentioned Diego or the Blood Sisters or marriage, but there was nothing.
The top of the desk was next. I opened the laptop but it was password protected, and I didn't know what Jaxon would use. I tried a few obvious combinations like Dad's birthday and the founding date of the Steel Wolves, but none of them worked. After the third failed attempt, I closed it and moved on, deciding to come back to it later.
The dresser was harder to search because it felt more personal somehow. Going through someone's clothes was different than looking at their paperwork. But I pulled open each drawer anyway, running my hands along the edges and checking under the neatly folded stacks of shirts and jeans. There was nothing hidden, nothing unusual. Just clothes and a few old watches that didn't work anymore but that Jaxon kept anyway because Dad had given them to him.
I moved to the nightstand next, opening the single drawer and finding exactly what you'd expect. Charging cables, a flashlight, some loose change, a pocket knife with the Steel Wolves logo on it. Normal things.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Jaxon wasn't hiding anything and I was just being paranoid because I was scared about the marriage and looking for someone to blame. Maybe his insistence that marrying Diego was for the best came from a place of genuine concern rather than some secret agenda I didn't understand.
But even as I thought it, I knew it wasn't likely true. Something told me there was more to this than brotherly concern.
The closet was my last option. I walked over to it and pulled open the door, staring at the organized space inside. Jaxon kept his closet the same way he kept everything else in his life, with careful precision and attention to detail. Shirts hung in order by color, going from white to black in a gradient that obviously made sense to him. Shoes lined up on the floor like soldiers standing at attention. He was definitely too organized for a biker boy, especially a president. Bikers were usually rough and scattered, but his room was arranged and clean.
I pushed through the hanging clothes, checking pockets as I went. I only found a few receipts, some loose bills, a lighter that Jaxon must have forgotten about. Nothing interesting. Nothing that explained anything.
I was about to give up when I noticed an old shoe box on the top of the shelf inside the closet. The box looked out of place.
It didn't feel like there were a pair of shoes inside when I moved it, and I brought it down, my stomach clenching with anxiety.
I carried it over to the bed and sat down to see what was inside.
It was a shirt. It was supposed to be cream coloured or white, but it had several spots stains covering the fabric. Brown stains that had dried and stiffened the material in places, making it crinkle when I tried to smooth it out. The stains were old and looked like they were there for a very long time.
I looked closer and realized that this was blood.
Why would Jaxon have a blood-stained shirt hidden in the back of his closet? Why not just throw it away or at least wash it? People in the MC got hurt all the time, got into fights that left them bleeding or helping to patch up brothers who had been injured. Blood on clothing wasn't that unusual. But you didn't hide bloody shirts in the back of your closet like evidence you were trying to conceal.
My hands shook as I started to unfold the shirt completely because something else was inside the fabric.
The shirt fell open, and there, wrapped inside the bloody fabric like someone had been trying to hide it, was a gun.
I stared at it, my brain refusing to process what I was seeing. I could see scratches on the barrel like it had been used and not cleaned properly. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears.
Why did Jaxon have a gun wrapped in a bloody shirt hidden in his closet? What had he done that required hiding evidence like this?
I stood there frozen, but nothing made sense. Nothing about this was normal or explainable or anything other than deeply, terribly wrong.