Chapter 94 Time's up
Ryder's POV
The silence after Dante's question stretched out for what felt like an eternity, all three of us frozen in Vincent's office with the weight of everything we'd just learned pressing down on our shoulders. Sage stared at her phone like it was a strange object, her thumb hovering over the screen while Dante waited on the other end of the line for an answer that would determine the rest of her life.
Jaxon quickly wrote on a paper and turned it to her. ‘TELL HIM YOU WANT TO MEET’.
"I want to give you my answer face to face," she said, her voice steady despite the trembling in her hands.
Dante was quiet for a moment, clearly not expecting that response. "Face to face?"
"You gave me your options in person, so I want to return the favour. If you want an answer to your proposal, you'll get it in person." Sage's eyes met mine and I saw the determination there, the refusal to back down even when every instinct screamed that this was dangerous. "Or are you too much of a coward to hear the truth without a phone line between us?"
A low laugh came through the speaker, dark and amused. "You think insulting me is going to make this better for you?"
"I think if you really wanted to marry me, you'd be willing to meet me face to face and hear what I have to say." She gripped the phone tighter. "Unless the federal protection scheme was all you cared about and you don't actually have the spine to look me in the eye when I give you my answer."
The silence that followed was deafening. When Dante spoke again, his voice was cold enough to freeze.
"Fine. You want to do this in person, we'll do it in person." A pause. "There's an abandoned warehouse on the east side of town, corner of Industrial and Fifth. You know the one?"
Sage looked at Jaxon and he nodded, his expression grim.
"I know it."
"Meet me there in thirty minutes. Come alone or the deal is off and I start making phone calls to every MC in the Southwest before sunrise." Dante's voice hardened. "And Sage? Don't try anything stupid. I've been very patient with you, but my patience has limits."
"Thirty minutes," Sage said, and ended the call before he could say anything else.
She set the phone down on Vincent's desk and looked between Jaxon and me, her jaw set in a way that told me she'd already made up her mind about what came next and nothing we said was going to change it.
"You're not going alone," I said before she could open her mouth. "That's not even a question."
"He said—"
"I don't care what he said. You're not meeting that bastard by yourself in an abandoned warehouse after everything we just heard on that tape." I moved closer to her and took her hands in mine. "We go together or we don't go at all."
Jaxon was already pulling out his gun and checking the magazine, his movements efficient and practiced in a way that told me he expects this confrontation to turn violent eventually. "Ryder's right. Dante doesn't get to set the terms anymore, not after what he did to Dad."
"He'll see you coming with me and call the whole thing off," Sage argued, but her voice lacked conviction.
"Then let him. We have the tape recording, we know about the blackmail and we're not letting him back you into a corner anymore." Jaxon slid the gun into his waistband and grabbed his jacket from the back of Vincent's chair. "We end this tonight, one way or another."
The drive to the warehouse took fifteen minutes. Sage sat in the passenger seat beside me with her hands clenched in her lap, staring out the window without really seeing anything. What are the odds that it was the same warehouse she followed Diesel to the other night? Jaxon followed behind us in his own truck, and he stayed close.
When we pulled into the warehouse district, the streets were exactly as deserted as I remembered from the last time we'd been here.
I parked two blocks from the warehouse Dante had specified, far enough away that he wouldn't hear us coming but close enough that we could get there on foot in under a minute. Jaxon pulled up beside us and killed his engine, and we all stood there for a moment in the quiet, each of us processing what we were about to do.
"We go in together," I said, breaking the silence. "Stay close, watch each other's backs, and don't let Dante separate us. If this goes bad—"
"It's already bad," Sage interrupted. "But we have to do this. We have to end it."
She was right. We'd been running in circles for days trying to figure out who killed Vincent and why, following leads that went nowhere and suspects who turned out to be innocent or at least not guilty of murder. But now we had answers, even though not the answers to Vincent's murder, but at least they were answers to other problems we had. Those answers pointed directly at the man waiting for us in that warehouse.
We walked toward the warehouse in silence, our footsteps echoing off the pavement. Jaxon moved slightly ahead of us, his hand resting on the gun at his waist, while I stayed close to Sage with every sense on high alert for any sign of an ambush or trap.
The warehouse looked exactly like it had when Sage had followed Diesel here, a massive dark shape with boarded windows and graffiti covering every visible surface, just the way she described it.
We climbed the loading dock stairs slowly, and the door at the top hung open on broken hinges exactly the way Sage had described it. Inside was dark except for sunlight from the doorway and a single work light set up in the middle of the empty space, creating a circle of harsh white illumination.
Dante stood in the center of that light with his hands in his pockets, looking relaxed and confident in a way that immediately set off every alarm bell in my head. He was wearing a nice looking suit that looked out of place in the abandoned warehouse, and when he smiled at us as we walked in, it didn't reach his eyes.
"Sage. Right on time." His gaze shifted to Jaxon and me, and his smile widened slightly. "And you brought backup. How predictable."
"I'm here to give you my answer," Sage said, walking forward until she was at the edge of the light. I stayed close behind her with Jaxon flanking us on the other side, both of us watching Dante for any sudden movement.
"By all means, let's hear it." Dante pulled his hands from his pockets and crossed his arms, the picture of casual interest. "I'm very curious to know what you've decided after all this time to think about it."