Chapter 38 False alarm, real danger
Sage's POV
The security breach turned out to be a deer.
A fucking deer that triggered the motion sensors on the east fence and sent everyone into tactical mode over nothing.
I watched brothers lower their weapons and shake their heads, muttering about needing to adjust the sensor sensitivity. But the adrenaline didn't fade as quickly as it should have. Everyone stayed tense, jumpy, looking at each other like they weren't quite sure who to trust.
The false alarm revealed something worse than an actual threat. It showed how paranoid we'd all become.
Over the next few days, I noticed people having whispered conversations that stopped abruptly when I walked by. Brothers who used to greet me warmly now just nodded and looked away. I couldn't tell if they were talking about the marriage contract, the traitor in our midst, my relationship with Ryder, or all three.
The club felt like it was fracturing from the inside out.
On Wednesday afternoon, Jaxon asked me to help with actual club business. Not security concerns or investigation work, just regular boring tasks that needed doing.
"I need someone to review the vendor contracts for the bar and garage," he said. "Make sure we're not getting ripped off on prices and that everything's up to code for the audit."
It was mundane work. Tedious even. But it gave me a sense of purpose beyond being the threatened princess everyone had to protect.
I sat in our dad's office with stacks of contracts and invoices spread across the desk. Most of it was straightforward. Beer distributors, auto parts suppliers, cleaning services. All the boring details of running legitimate businesses.
Then I found something odd.
Payments to a consulting firm called RC Enterprises. They went back five years, regular monthly installments of varying amounts. The last payment was dated eight months ago, right around the time my dad started acting strange according to the brothers.
RC. Robert Cordova's initials.
My hands shook as I pulled out my phone and photographed every page that mentioned RC Enterprises. The address listed was just a P.O. box in a town thirty miles away. No phone number, no website, nothing that indicated it was a real company.
I texted Ryder immediately. I found something. RC Enterprises in club vendor files. Need you to look into it.
His response came back fast. On it. Where are you?
Jaxon's office.
Stay there. I'll be there in ten.
He showed up in eight minutes with Tommy trailing behind him. I showed them the contracts and watched Ryder's facial expression change as he read.
"This isn't a real company," he said after a few minutes. "The address is a P.O. box and there's no business registration under this name in any county records."
"So it's fake," I said.
"It's a shell corporation. Something Vincent set up to move money without leaving an obvious trail." Ryder spread the invoices out on the desk. "But for what purpose?"
"Paying someone off maybe," Tommy suggested. "Or hiding income from the IRS."
I pulled out my phone and opened the photos I'd taken of Dad's secret ledger. I'd been staring at them for days but now I studied them with fresh eyes, looking for patterns instead of just initials and amounts.
"Look at the dates," I said, laying my phone next to the RC Enterprises invoices. "The large payments to RC in the ledger always came right before major club decisions."
Ryder leaned closer. "What kind of decisions?"
"Everything. The territory expansion three years ago. The decision to open the second garage location. The partnership with the Vasquez family." I traced the timeline with my finger. "Someone was feeding Dad information or influence, and he was paying them for it through this shell company."
"Who?" Tommy asked.
"I don't know. But whoever it was, they had access to information my dad couldn't get on his own." I looked up at Ryder. "What if Robert Cordova wasn't the one receiving these payments? What if someone else took over using his name after he died?"
"That would explain why the payments continued after Robert's death," Ryder said.
We spent another hour going through the documents but couldn't find any more clues. Whoever was behind RC Enterprises had covered their tracks well.
By the time I got home that night, exhaustion had settled into my bones. But my mind wouldn't shut off. I kept thinking about my dad's letter, the words he'd written before he died.
Protecting you from something worse.
What could be worse than forcing me into an arranged marriage in the 21st century? What threat was big enough that he thought selling me to the Vasquez family was the only solution?
I pulled up the photos of his secret ledger on my phone and studied them until my eyes hurt and I had a headache. The initials, the amounts, the dates. There had to be a pattern I was missing. A connection that would make everything make sense.
Then I saw it.
Not just the timing of the payments, but the amounts. They increased steadily over three years, like Dad was paying more and more for the same information. Or like someone was blackmailing him and raising their price.
The payments stopped eight months ago. Right around the time Dad signed the marriage contract with Diego.
What if the contract wasn't just about protecting me? What if it was Dad's way of getting out from under whoever had been bleeding him dry for years?
A sound outside my window made me freeze.
Not a loud sound. Just the soft crunch of footsteps on gravel. Someone moving carefully, trying not to be heard.
I put my phone down slowly and moved to the window. The curtains were drawn but there was a gap where they didn't quite meet.
I peered through and fear gripped me instantly.
A figure stood in the yard below, looking up at my bedroom window.