Steele’s Redemption

Chapter 17

Emma

The clubhouse wasn't what I expected, even after weeks of hearing it mentioned like a second home. It was a converted warehouse on the edge of the industrial district, corrugated steel outside, warm light spilling from inside like something alive. Motorcycles lined the garage in neat rows—chrome catching the overhead lights, leather seats worn soft from use, each one somebody's, the way a car never quite is.

Jake walked me through the side door with his hand low on my back, not steering, just there. Inside smelled like motor oil, cigarette smoke that had soaked into the walls years ago, and coffee brewing somewhere past the bar. A dozen men in leather cuts looked up when we came in. I felt the weight of that attention like heat.

"She's under my protection," Jake said, to no one in particular and everyone at once. "Anybody's got a problem with that, we'll talk after church."

Nobody had a problem with it. A few nodded. One older man with a gray beard and patches that looked decades earned lifted his coffee cup toward me like a toast. Raven appeared from somewhere near the pool tables and looped her arm through mine before I could feel too exposed.

"Church" turned out to be a room off the main floor with a long table, a president's chair at its head with the club's patch stitched into the leather behind it, and enough scarred wood to tell me decisions had been made here for a long time. Jake didn't sit in the chair right away. He stood at the head of the table while men filed in—Nash, two others I recognized from the shop, one I didn't.

"Fast version," Nash said, once the door shut. "Guy at the shop was running surveillance for a third party, feeding information back for money. Found a message on his phone. Client wanted proof Emma was still—" he paused, glancing at me, choosing the word with more care than I expected from him— "still in the picture. Still pregnant."

The room went quiet in a way that had weight to it.

"He know who hired him?" one of the men asked.

"Says no. Burner number, cash drops. But the number traces to a law office two blocks from Derek's building."

I sat forward. "Wait. Say that again."

"Law office," Nash repeated. "Not confirmed it's connected to Derek directly. But it's not a coincidence I'd bet against."

Jake's jaw worked once before he spoke. "We go talk to him. Controlled. Not a war."

"I want to know what that means," I said, before anyone else could answer for me.

Every head turned. I felt my pulse in my throat, but I didn't look away from Jake.

"It means five of us ride over, make it clear the surveillance stops, and get him talking about who's paying him," Jake said. "Nobody gets hurt unless they make that necessary."

"You're not deciding this without me in the room," I said. "This is my life you're riding out to protect. I get to know what's happening before it happens, not after."

Something moved behind his eyes—not annoyance, something closer to respect—and he nodded once. "You're right. You do."

Nash looked between us like he was recalculating something. Raven, beside me, didn't hide her small smile.

"I want to come," I said.

"No." Jake didn't raise his voice, but the word had no give in it. "Not because I don't trust you. Because if this goes sideways, you and the baby are the last thing I need anywhere near it."

I hated that he was right. I hated it and understood it at the same time, the way I'd learned to hold two true things without them canceling each other out.

"Then I stay here," I said. "Not because you told me to. Because I'm choosing it."

"Noted," Jake said, and something in his voice told me he'd remember that distinction longer than the moment required.

---

I watched them leave from the garage doorway, Raven's shoulder against mine. Five bikes rolled out in loose formation, engines a low thunder that settled into my chest like something both comforting and unbearable. Jake rode at the front, cut zipped, shoulders set in a way that made him look carved rather than dressed. I noticed the width of his back, the ease with which he controlled two thousand pounds of machine with barely a shift of weight, and hated that some small ember in me noticed it at all while he was riding toward danger on my account.

"They'll be fine," Raven said, reading my face. "Jake doesn't lose control. That's the whole point of him."

"That's what worries me a little," I admitted. "How much control he has."

"That's what should reassure you," she said. "Man like that, calm is more dangerous than mad. And it's never once turned toward someone who didn't deserve it."

---

They were gone longer than I wanted, long enough for the coffee to go cold twice and for Raven to teach me the rules of a dice game nobody else in the room would play with me for money. When the engines came back, I was at the door before I decided to be.

Jake swung off his bike, and even from the doorway I could see it in the set of his mouth before he said a word. Whatever they'd learned wasn't small.

He didn't tell me in front of the others. He walked me back to the little office off the main floor, closed the door, and sat across from me instead of beside me, which somehow told me more than anything he'd said yet.

"The client's a private investigator," Jake said. "Working for Derek's lawyer. Not officially connected to Derek—separation there's deliberate, so it doesn't trace back clean."

"What did he want the proof for?"

Jake's jaw tightened. "Derek's filing for emergency guardianship over the pregnancy. Claims you're unstable, unsafe, involved with criminal elements—" his mouth twisted on the word— "and that the baby's welfare requires intervention before birth."

The floor seemed to tilt slightly under the chair.

"He can't do that," I said. "It's not his. He—"

"He's trying anyway," Jake said. "Lawyer's already drafting the petition. Investigator confirmed it's meant to file within the week."

I pressed a hand against my stomach, an instinct I hadn't fully claimed yet but couldn't stop myself from doing.

"He doesn't want me," I said, quiet, more to myself. "He wants what I'm carrying. Something he can still control."

"He's not getting either," Jake said, and there was no performance in it, just certainty carved down to the bone. "But I need you to know all of it. Not the soft version. You said you wanted the truth before things happen."

"I did."

"Then here it is," he said. "This isn't over. It's just changed shape."

Nash knocked once and stepped in without waiting, phone already extended.

"You need to see this," he said. "Derek's attorney just filed something. Ten minutes ago."