Chapter 139 Confronting my brother
Sage's POV
Jaxon was standing by the window when I came out of the bathroom, looking out at the backyard where the wedding setup waited. He turned when he heard the door open.
"Feeling better?" he asked.
"No." I walked toward him, my phone still clutched in my hand. "Actually, I'm feeling a lot worse."
"Sage, if you're having second thoughts about the wedding—"
"It's not about the wedding." I held up my phone, showing him the text message he had sent. "It's about this. Your text about the memorial ride."
Jaxon's expression shifted to confusion. "What about it?"
"Read it again. Read it carefully." I watched his face. "Notice anything unusual about how you type?"
He took the phone from me, his brows furrowing as he read through the message. "I don't understand what you're asking."
"The Y's, Jaxon. Look at all the Y's in your message." My voice was shaking now. "You double every single one."
"So?" He handed the phone back. "My phone has a quirk and it doubles every Y I type. I never got around to fixing it. What does that have to do with anything?"
"It has everything to do with everything." I pulled up the photos of RC's emails that I took from Dad's computer. "Because RC does the exact same thing. Every single Y in their emails is doubled. The exact same pattern as in your text."
Jaxon went very still. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes, you do." I moved closer, anger replacing the shock. "RC. Romano Carlos. Your middle name and last name, Jaxon. You're RC. You've been RC this whole time. Since the day I discovered that ledger in dad's office."
"That's ridiculous—"
"Is it? Because I saw the email archive Dad kept. Every message from RC to Vincent Romano about all manner of things. There were emails about making deals with the feds, about protecting yourselves by throwing other clubs under the bus." My voice rose. "And every single one of those emails dating back six months ago has the same doubled Y pattern that's in your text message right now."
Jaxon's face went pale. For a long moment he just stood there, not saying anything, his jaw working like he was trying to figure out how to respond.
Then something in his expression hardened. "You were snooping in Dad's office. Even after I told you several times not to do so?"
"Yes, I was snooping. Because my father was murdered and I wanted to find out who killed him." I didn't back down. "And what I found was evidence that you were working with him to cooperate with federal agents. That you were betraying the club just like he was."
"You don't understand what you're talking about." Jaxon's voice was tight with barely controlled anger. "You don't know the whole story."
"Then tell me the whole story!" I shouted. "Tell me what you did that required federal protection. Tell me why you've been pushing me toward this marriage so hard when it was never about protecting me at all."
"Of course it was about protecting you—"
"Bullshit!" The word exploded out of me. "This was about protecting yourself. You need Diego's backing when the truth comes out about you being a snitch. You need the Blood Sisters to shield you from the other MCs who'll come for you once they know you're a leak."
Jaxon's expression flickered with something that might have been guilt before it hardened again. "I clearly warned you to steer clear of Dad's office. But you couldn't do that, could you? You had to go digging through things that don't concern you."
"Don't concern me? My father was murdered! How does that not concern me?" I was shaking with rage now. "You've been lying to me for months. Manipulating me, using me to save yourself."
"I've been trying to protect you from the truth because I knew it would destroy you." Jaxon's voice rose to match mine. "I knew that if you found out about the cooperation, about what Dad did, about what we had to do to survive, it would break you."
"What you had to do to survive," I repeated. "So you admit it. You were working with Dad. You were RC."
Jaxon didn't answer. He just stood there glaring at me, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.
"And that's not even the worst part," I continued, my voice dropping lower. "Because I also went snooping somewhere else. Somewhere you definitely didn't want me looking."
His eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about?"
"Your closet, Jaxon." I watched his face carefully. "I found something interesting in there. A bloody shirt and a gun. Hidden inside an old shoe box where you thought nobody would find them."
All the color drained from Jaxon's face. "You went through my room?"
"Answer the question. Why do you have a bloody shirt and a gun hidden in your closet?" I took a step closer. "What happened to make that shirt bloody? Whose blood is on it?"
"You had no right—" Jaxon's voice was dangerous now, furious in a way I'd never heard before. "You had no right to go through my personal belongings. That's a violation of privacy, Sage. That's—"
"Don't you dare try to make this about me violating your privacy when you're hiding evidence of God knows what in your closet!" I shouted. "That shirt is covered in blood. That gun could be evidence of a crime. So tell me why you have them. Tell me what you did."
"It's none of your business—"
"The hell it isn't! Not when my father is dead and you're hiding bloody evidence and typing with the same pattern as the person who was working with him to betray the club!" My voice broke. "Not when everything points to you having a motive to want Dad dead."
Jaxon went completely still at that. "What did you just say?"
"Dad's last email." I pulled it up on my phone with shaking hands. "He was going to stop my marriage agreement. He was going to go public and come clean. And that same night, he ended up dead with three bullets in his chest."
"You think I killed him." Jaxon's voice was flat, emotionless. "You think I murdered our father."
"Did you?" The question came out as barely a whisper. "Did you kill Dad to stop him from exposing the cooperation? To stop him from voiding the contract that you needed me to go through with so Diego would protect you?"
For a long moment, Jaxon didn't say anything. He just stood there staring at me with an expression I couldn't read.
"Why do you have a bloody shirt and gun in your closet?" I asked again, my voice steadier now. "Whose blood is that, Jaxon?"
He looked at me with something that might have been pain or might have been anger or might have been both. His mouth opened like he was going to answer.
And that's when the bedroom door burst open.