Chapter 138 Realization
Sage's POV
"I need to use the bathroom," I said suddenly, my voice coming out strangled.
Jaxon looked at me with concern. "Are you sure you're okay? You look like you're about to be sick."
"I'm fine. Just need a minute." I moved toward the bathroom attached to my bedroom, my legs feeling unsteady beneath me. "Pre-wedding nerves. I'll be right back."
I closed the bathroom door behind me and locked it, then leaned against the sink and stared at my reflection in the mirror. The bride looking back at me was pale beneath all the makeup, her eyes wide with shock.
I took my phone along with me, and I looked down at the text message again, reading it slowly this time, processing each doubled Y like it was a clue I had been too blind to see before.
It was the same pattern. Exactly the same pattern as in all those emails from RC.
I pulled up the photos I had taken of the emails on my dad's computer, scrolling through them with shaking hands. There it was. Over and over again. RC's distinctive typing quirk that made him double every single Y.
And now Jaxon's text showed the exact same pattern.
How had I missed it? My brother's full name was Jaxon Carlos Romano. Which meant RC stood for Romano Carlos. His middle name and last name. Despite all his funny attitudes. Why didn't I suspect him?
I sat down on the closed toilet lid, my wedding dress pooling around me, and tried to breathe through the panic that was rising in my chest.
If Jaxon was RC, then everything I thought I knew was wrong.
The emails made it clear that they were in together snitching to the feds. Jaxon had been the one convincing our dad to give information, to make deals, to betray the club. Which meant my brother had been a snitch too.
But why? Why would Jaxon do something so stupid? What had he done that required giving information about others to the feds to avoid being prosecuted? What secrets was he keeping that were worth betraying the Steel Wolves?
I thought about the bloody shirt and gun I had found in his closet days ago. That was evidence he had hidden for reasons best known to him. Evidence I hadn't thought about whether it was smart to confront him about yet.
What did that evidence mean? Had Jaxon been cooperating with Dad to kill people? Had they been working together on something darker than I had imagined?
Or was the bloody shirt evidence of something else entirely? Something that would explain why Jaxon needed federal protection so desperately that he would betray his own club?
My mind raced through everything I had learned over the past few months, connecting dots I should have seen weeks ago.
Jaxon pushed me toward marrying Diego insisting it was for everyone's protection, not just mine. He was very relieved when I finally agreed to go through with it.
Of course he pushed for it, because he needs Diego's protection too. If I married into the Blood Sisters, Elena and Diego would help shield Jaxon from the fallout when the truth about the federal cooperation came out. Other MCs would come for him once they knew he had been snitching alongside Dad. But if he had the Blood Sisters backing him up and protecting him, he had a chance of survival.
This wasn't about protecting me at all. This was about Jaxon protecting himself.
And he was willing to sacrifice my entire future to do it.
I felt sick at the realization that my brother had been using me this whole time. That every conversation about doing the right thing, about protecting the family had all been lies designed to manipulate me into saving his ass.
But that wasn't even the worst part.
The worst part was Dad's last email. The last message where he had written about voiding my marriage agreement and ending the federal cooperation. He was going to do that, even if it meant destroying his own reputation.
And that same night, he ended up dead with three bullets in his chest.
The timeline was impossible to ignore.
Did Jaxon kill our father?
The question made my stomach turn. I didn't want to believe it and I couldn't let myself believe it.
Oh God.
I pressed my hand to my mouth, trying not to throw up all over my wedding dress.
I thought about all the times Jaxon had comforted me after our dad's death. All the times he'd held me while I cried, promised me we'd find the killer, and swore he'd protect me no matter what.
Had any of that been real? Or had it all been an act to keep me from looking too closely at him? No wonder he always asked me to stay away from our dad's home office. He was trying to make sure I never got close enough to the truth to figure out what he had done.
And I'd trusted him completely. Never questioned his motives. Never suspected that my own brother could be capable of something so bad.
Who was Jaxon Carlos Romano really? Because the brother I thought I knew would never betray the club. He would never cooperate with the feds.
But the evidence said otherwise.
It all pointed to one terrible conclusion; my brother was not the person I thought he was. He was a liar and a manipulator and possibly a murderer.
I looked at myself in the mirror again, at the bride in her white dress who was supposed to walk downstairs and get married in less than an hour.
But how could I do that now? How could I go through with this wedding knowing what I knew about Jaxon?
I couldn't. I couldn't marry Diego and leave for Arizona while letting Jaxon get away with deceiving me.
I stood up, smoothing down my wedding dress with hands that wouldn't stop shaking. I looked at my reflection one more time, at the scared woman staring back at me, and made a decision.
I had to confront him. I had to make him tell me the truth. I had to hear him admit what he had done. I was going to ask Jaxon about the text. About the double Y pattern. About being RC.
I unlocked the bathroom door and stepped back into my bedroom, ready to confront the brother I thought I knew.
Ready to hear the truth about who he really was and what he had done.