RIDE OR RUIN

WHAT'S INSIDE

Jaxon's hand hovered over the envelope.

"Don't," Rosa said, low. "Could be rigged."

"It's not rigged." Jaxon's voice was flat, certain. "Victor doesn't blow up messages. He wants me to read them."

He peeled the tape back carefully anyway, using two fingers, and slid a single photograph out into the floodlight. Lena's breath caught before she even saw it clearly.

It was Noah. Asleep in his own bed, blanket kicked halfway off, the stuffed dog he refused to sleep without tucked under one arm.

Taken through his bedroom window.

"That's my apartment," Lena whispered. "That's inside my apartment."

"No." Jaxon turned the photo over, checking the back, jaw working. "That's outside your apartment. Through the window. But close enough to see the room."

"How is that possible? I'm on the third floor."

"There's a fire escape two buildings over with a clear sightline if you've got the right lens." Colt's voice was grim. "I checked when we were setting up the perimeter last month. Didn't think anybody but us would ever think to use it."

"Last month." Lena's knees went weak. "You're telling me somebody's been watching my son sleep for a month?"

Nobody answered, which was answer enough.

She turned on Jaxon, fury cutting clean through the fear. "You knew about this fire escape a month ago and you didn't warn me?"

"I didn't know you existed a month ago, Lena. I didn't know he existed. I was checking sightlines for club business, not for a son I didn't know I had."

The truth of that landed harder than she wanted it to. She pressed both hands over her mouth, willing herself not to be sick right there in the yard.

"There's something written on the back," Colt said quietly.

Jaxon flipped the photo again. Block letters, same handwriting as the envelope.

*You should have brought him to me sooner. Now I get to decide what happens next.*

"That's Victor," Jaxon said, voice gone dangerously soft. "That's exactly the kind of thing he'd write."

"What does it mean?" Lena's voice cracked. "What does he want?"

"Leverage. Recognition. A war he can win without firing the first shot, because I'll be too busy protecting a five year old to fight back the way I normally would." Jaxon's hands curled into fists at his sides. "He's not threatening Noah yet. This is a warning shot. He wants me scared before he wants me dead."

"Well, congratulations to him." Lena's voice shook. "It's working."

Jaxon turned to her fully then, something in his expression softening despite the fury still simmering underneath. "It's not going to work. I promise you that."

"You keep saying that word. Promise. Like it means something."

"It does mean something. It's the only thing I've got left to offer you." His eyes held hers, steady despite everything. "I can't give you back five years. I can't undo whatever you went through raising him alone. But I can promise you this. Nobody touches that boy while I'm breathing."

Rosa cleared her throat. "Not to interrupt the moment, but we've got a room full of members waiting to hear what's going on, and a leak somewhere inside these walls we still haven't identified."

"Right." Jaxon pocketed the photograph, jaw tightening again as command settled back over him like armor. "Get everyone in the common room. All of them. Nobody sits this one out."

"On it." Rosa jogged back toward the building, radio already crackling to life in her hand.

Lena wrapped her arms around herself, staring at the spot on the fence where the envelope had hung. "How did he get that close without anyone seeing him?"

"Because somebody told him when the cameras would be down for maintenance." Jaxon's eyes went distant, calculating. "That's not luck. That's inside information."

"So whoever's leaking isn't just talking. They're actively helping him plan."

"Looks that way."

Colt shifted uncomfortably. "Jax, you want my honest opinion?"

"Always."

"I think you need to consider that whoever this is might not even know what they've helped set in motion. Could be somebody who thinks they're just passing along schedules for a payoff. Might not know it's about a kid at all."

"Doesn't matter what they knew." Jaxon's voice went cold. "They still did it."

Lena watched something shift in him, the grief from earlier hardening into something sharper, more dangerous, and for the first time she understood exactly what kind of man Noah's father actually was. Not just protective. Ruthless when it counted.

"Jaxon." She caught his sleeve before he could walk away. "Whatever you're about to do in there, I need Noah nowhere near it."

"He won't be. Rosa's niece has him in the back with the coloring books. He won't hear any of this."

"Good." She hesitated, then made herself say the rest. "And Jaxon. Thank you. For getting him here safe."

Something flickered across his face, surprise maybe, or something gentler underneath the hardness. "You don't have to thank me for doing what any father would do."

"Most fathers don't have rival motorcycle clubs sending them threats through a fence."

A ghost of a smile, gone as fast as it came. "Fair point."

He turned toward the clubhouse, and Lena fell into step beside him without quite deciding to, the two of them moving together through the floodlit yard like something had shifted between them in the last hour, some old current finally waking back up despite everything working against it.

Inside, the common room had gone silent, every member's eyes on the door as they walked in together.

Jaxon didn't waste time.

"Somebody in this room," he said, voice carrying to every corner, "has been feeding information to Victor Kane long enough to know about my son before I did."

A ripple moved through the crowd, murmurs, uneasy glances exchanged between people who'd trusted each other for years.

"I want a name," Jaxon said. "Tonight."

Nobody spoke.

Then, from the back of the room, a chair scraped hard against the floor, and every head turned at once.