Steele’s Redemption

Chapter 5

Emma

Three weeks at Steele Custom Bikes, and I had a routine.

I woke in my rented room before my alarm, made coffee on the little hot plate Jake insisted I take from the shop's break room, and walked the four blocks to work while the city was still quiet. I paid Jake back forty dollars every check. He never mentioned it, never made it a thing, which somehow made it easier to keep doing.

I was good at the filing. Good at the ordering system, the invoices, the small mountain of paperwork Jake had let pile up for months before I got there. Raven called me "the fixer" now, like it was a nickname I'd earned instead of a job I was terrified of losing.

For the first time since I'd left Derek, I wasn't just surviving. I was building something.

That morning, I was elbow-deep in vendor invoices when the bell above the shop door chimed.

I didn't look up right away. Customers came and went all morning.

But something in the rhythm of the footsteps made me glance toward the front.

The man wasn't dressed like a customer. Pressed suit, polished shoes, hair too styled for a shop that smelled like motor oil and metal shavings. He scanned the floor once, methodically, like he was matching a face to a description someone had given him.

Then his eyes landed on me and stopped.

"Emma," he said, like he was confirming something rather than asking. "Emma Blackwell."

My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

---

I told myself to breathe. Told myself to think.

He hadn't known where I worked yesterday. He knew now—somebody had told him about a shop off Fifth, a woman matching my description, maybe even my name. That was enough. It didn't take magic. It took one person willing to talk.

I stood, deliberately, and stepped around the desk instead of behind it—putting the open shop floor between us instead of a corner. Raven had told me once, half-joking, *if anyone ever gives you a bad feeling, get where people can see you.* I hadn't understood why she'd said it so seriously until right now.

"Can I help you?" I asked, my voice steadier than I felt.

"I hope so." Smooth, unhurried. "I'm a friend of your husband's. Derek's worried sick. A man worries about his wife."

The word *wife* hit like a slap. I kept moving, angling toward the open bay doors where two of the guys were working, where sound carried, where I wasn't alone in a room with him.

"I don't know who you're talking about," I said.

"There's a reward for anyone who can point him in the right direction." He didn't raise his voice, didn't rush toward me. He didn't need to. "No trouble for anybody. Just information."

"Raven," I called, louder than I meant to, my voice cracking on her name.

She looked up instantly, wrench still in her hand.

The man's smile flickered—just barely—like he hadn't expected me to have backup this fast.

---

Raven crossed the floor in three strides, wiping grease off her palms, planting herself half a step in front of me without making it obvious that's what she was doing. "Help you with something?"

"Just having a conversation," the man said.

"Looked more like you were cornering my coworker." Raven's voice was pleasant. Her eyes weren't. "This a customer visit, or should I be calling somebody?"

Nash appeared from the back office almost immediately, unhurried, arms loose at his sides in a way that still somehow filled the doorway. "Everything good out here?"

"He's looking for someone who doesn't work here," I said, and I heard how much steadier my voice sounded now that Raven was beside me and Nash was in the doorway. "I've told him twice."

"Then I think we're done," Nash said.

The man held his hands up, all pleasant surrender. "No trouble. Just doing a job. Derek Blackwell pays well for information, that's all this is." His eyes flicked to me one last time. "Ten thousand dollars is a lot of money. You might want to think about that. Before somebody less polite comes asking."

The threat was quiet. Almost friendly. That was somehow worse than shouting would have been.

"Get out," I said.

---

That's when Jake's voice cut through the shop, low and even. "You heard her."

I hadn't seen him come out of the back. He crossed the floor without hurrying, six-foot-four of quiet, controlled weight, and the man actually took a half-step back before catching himself.

"I'm not looking for trouble," the man said.

"Then you found the wrong shop." Jake stopped an arm's length away, close enough to be a presence, not close enough to be a threat all by itself. "This is a place of business. You don't get to walk in here and pressure my staff for a payout."

"Derek's just worried—"

"Derek can call the front desk like everybody else. Instead he sends you to corner a woman who told you no twice." Jake's tone didn't rise. It didn't need to. "That's the last version of this conversation you get."

The man looked between the three of us—me, Raven, Nash—and something in the math clearly didn't add up in his favor anymore.

"I'll let him know I struck out," he said, and walked toward the door, unhurried, like he wanted it to look like his idea.

The bell chimed behind him.

---

The silence after felt loud.

Nash was already moving. "I'm pulling the security footage, getting his plate off the lot camera. I'll call the guy about the door locks today, and we're adding a check-in log for anyone who comes asking for staff by name."

"Do it," Jake said, without looking away from me.

Raven's hand found my shoulder, brief and grounding. "You did good, calling me. That's exactly what you're supposed to do." She squeezed once, then headed back toward Nash, giving us space without making a show of it.

Jake didn't reach for me right away. He just stood there, giving me room to breathe, his eyes steady on mine.

"What do you need right now?" he asked. "Talk, quiet, space—tell me."

"No," I admitted. My hands were still shaking. "But I didn't fall apart. I got to Raven. I didn't freeze."

"No, you didn't." Something like pride moved across his face. "Can I—" He gestured slightly, an offer, not a demand. "Is a hug something you want right now, or do you need space?"

I thought about it, actually thought about it, instead of just reacting the way I would have with Derek.

"Hug," I said.

He stepped in slowly, arms open until I closed the distance myself, and when they came around me, they were careful. Solid. Not caging.

"He knows my name. He knows roughly where I am now," I said into his shoulder. "That's not nothing."

"No, it's not," Jake said honestly. "But you handled it. You didn't have to wait for me to walk out here."

I pulled back enough to look at him. "I'm still scared."

"Good. Scared means you're paying attention." His jaw was tight, but his voice stayed even. "We'll tighten things up. Cameras, the check-in log, a plan for if it happens again. Whatever you decide you want to do about this, you're not doing it blind."

It wasn't a promise that nothing would ever touch me again. It wasn't *you're safe now, I've got you* wrapped around me like a cage.

It was something better. A plan. A next step. My choice, in it.

"Okay," I said.

I wiped my face, squared my shoulders, and walked back toward my desk—not because Jake told me to, but because the invoices weren't going to file themselves, and Derek Blackwell didn't get to take my afternoon along with everything else.

He'd found one thread. That was all. I was still here.