Chapter 113 Doubts
Sage's POV
His footsteps echoed down the stairs, heavy and fast, and then I heard the front door slam hard enough to rattle the windows. A few seconds later I heard his truck roar to life in the driveway.
I walked to the window and watched him peel out onto the street like his ass was on fire, tires squealing against the pavement. He didn't even look back at the house, he didn't slow down to think about what he was leaving behind.
"What the fuck, Ryder," I muttered, pressing my forehead against the cool glass.
This wasn't like him. Ryder didn't keep secrets from me. He didn't take mysterious phone calls and then disappear without explanation. We had built our relationship on trust, on being honest with each other even when the truth was ugly or complicated, especially because of the nature of our relationship.
So why was he acting like he had something to hide?
I went back to the desk and dropped into the chair, my mind racing through possibilities. Maybe Diesel really was in some kind of trouble. The guy had a gambling problem everyone knew about, owed money to half the bookies in the city. Maybe he'd gotten in over his head and needed help getting out.
But if that was all it was, why wouldn't Ryder just tell me that? Why the secrecy, the hushed phone call, the urgent escape?
Unless it was something worse. Something Ryder didn't want me to know about because it would implicate him in something he couldn't explain away.
I looked back at the computer screen, at those emails from RC with their weird double Y's scattered through every message from RC for the last six months or so and thought about Ryder's full name again. Ryder Christopher Kane.
The initials fit perfectly.
I had pushed that thought away earlier because I trusted him, because the idea of Ryder lying to me about something this big was too painful to even consider. But now he was lying about where he was going and what he was doing, running off to meet Diesel for some urgent matter he refused to explain.
What else was he lying about? What if he wasn't even going to meet with Diesel?
"Stop it," I said out loud, my voice harsh in the empty office. "You're being paranoid."
But was I? Or was I finally paying attention to red flags I'd been ignoring because I didn't want to see them?
I pulled out my phone and almost called him, my thumb hovering over his contact. Part of me wanted to demand answers, to tell him he didn't get to just run off and leave me in the dark. But another part of me knew that if I pushed too hard right now, if I made him feel cornered, he would be just shut down completely.
So I put the phone down and tried to focus on the files in front of me.
My mind kept wandering back to those emails, to that double Y pattern, to the way RC's messages showed intimate knowledge of the club and my dad's personal life. Knowledge that Ryder definitely had after years of being close to my father as his enforcer.
And I thought about the list Dante had given me. Five suspects who could have killed Vincent Romano. Ryder's name had been on that list.
At the time, I had dismissed it without a second thought. Ryder would never hurt my father. Ryder loved me too much to destroy my family like that.
But what if I was wrong?
What if the man I'd been sleeping with, the man I trusted with my life and my heart, was the same person who put three bullets in my father's chest?
"Fuck," I whispered, dropping my head into my hands.
I didn't want to think like this. I didn't want to doubt Ryder or question everything we'd built together. But sitting here alone in my dad's office, surrounded by evidence of lies and betrayal and secrets that went back years, I couldn't help wondering what other lies might be hiding in plain sight.
I forced myself to keep reading the messages, to look for any other clues that might tell me who this person was.
But with every email I read, with every doubled Y I saw, the doubt grew a little bit stronger.
What if it wasn't a coincidence that Ryder had the same initials as RC?
What if the man I loved was the same man who had been working with my father to betray the club, to cooperate with the feds, and to make deals that got people killed? What if there were other reasons he was the enforcer?
And what if, when my father tried to back out, and go public with everything, Ryder had been the one to stop him?
I shook my head, trying to clear away the thoughts that were spiraling darker and darker. This was crazy. I was letting paranoia and stress get the better of me. I was reading too much into a phone call and some dann initials.
But as I sat there in the empty office, waiting for Ryder to come back from whatever mysterious errand he was running, I couldn't quite shake the feeling that something was very, very wrong.