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 had given me, and walked the four blocks to work while the city was still quiet. Every payday, I handed Jake forty dollars toward what I owed him for the room.

He never reminded me.

I never forgot.

I was good at the job too. Good at invoices, ordering, and the mountain of paperwork Jake had ignored for months. Raven called me “the fixer” now, and Marcus had finally stopped putting receipts in the coffee can labeled Important Crap.

For the first time since leaving Derek, I wasn’t just surviving.

I was building something.

That morning, I was sorting vendor invoices when the bell above the front door chimed.

I didn’t look up immediately. Customers came and went all day.

Then something made me glance toward the front.

The man didn’t belong.

Pressed suit. Polished shoes. Expensive watch. His gaze moved slowly around the shop like he wasn’t looking at motorcycles.

He was looking for someone.

Then his eyes landed on me.

“Emma Blackwell.”

My stomach dropped.

For half a second, I couldn’t move.

Three weeks.

I’d had three weeks.

Apparently, that was all Derek was willing to give me.

The man started toward my desk.

I stood.

Raven had told me once, If somebody gives you a bad feeling, don’t let them trap you behind that desk. Get where people can see you.

At the time, I’d thought she was being dramatic.

Now I understood.

I stepped onto the open shop floor.

“Can I help you?”

“I hope so.” His smile was easy. Friendly, even. “I’m a friend of your husband’s. Derek’s worried sick.”

My skin crawled.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do.”

I kept moving, angling toward the open service bays where Marcus and another mechanic were working.

“A man worries when his wife disappears.”

“I’m not interested in talking to you.”

“There’s ten thousand dollars for anyone who can point him in the right direction.”

I stopped.

Ten thousand dollars.

Derek wasn’t just looking for me.

He was paying people to look.

“No trouble,” the man continued. “He wants his wife home.”

“Raven.”

Her name came out louder than I’d intended.

She looked up immediately.

The man’s smile changed.

Just slightly.

But I saw it.

Raven crossed the floor, wiping her hands on a rag. “Problem?”

“Just having a conversation.”

“Didn’t sound mutual.”

She stopped beside me—not in front of me, I noticed. Beside me.

The man gave her another polished smile. “Family matter.”

“Then have it with your own family.”

Nash appeared from the back office.

“Everything good?”

“He was leaving,” I said.

My voice shook.

But I said it.

The man’s eyes returned to me. “Ten thousand dollars is a lot of money, Emma. Somebody’s going to take it eventually.”

A chill moved down my spine.

“Before somebody less polite comes asking,” he added.

“Get out.”

The words came from me.

Not Raven.

Not Nash.

Me.

His eyebrows rose.

Then Jake’s voice came from behind us.

“You heard her.”

⸻

Jake crossed the shop without hurrying.

He didn’t shove the man or threaten him. He simply stopped close enough that the difference in their size became impossible to ignore.

“I’m not looking for trouble,” the man said.

“Then you picked a strange way to spend your morning.”

“Derek’s worried about his wife.”

“She told you to leave.”

Jake’s voice stayed quiet.

The man looked around.

Raven beside me.

Nash near the office.

Marcus watching from the service bay.

The math clearly wasn’t working in his favor.

“I’ll tell Derek I struck out.”

He started toward the door, then looked back at me.

“He isn’t going to stop looking.”

The bell chimed behind him.

For several seconds, nobody spoke.

Then my knees started shaking.

⸻

Nash moved first.

“I’m pulling the security footage. Lot camera should’ve caught his plate.”

“Do it,” Jake said. “Save everything.”

“I’ll get Marcus to check the exterior cameras too.”

Raven touched my shoulder. “You did good.”

“I almost froze.”

“But you didn’t.”

She squeezed once before following Nash, leaving Jake and me standing there.

Jake didn’t touch me.

“What do you need?” he asked. “Quiet? Space? Want Raven?”

A laugh escaped me, shaky and ridiculous. “I don’t know.”

“That’s an acceptable answer.”

“I didn’t fall apart.”

“No.”

“I called Raven. I told him to leave.”

“You did.”

Something in his expression looked almost like pride.

My throat tightened.

“Can I hug you?” he asked.

That nearly broke me more than the stranger had.

Not because I needed permission.

Because Jake thought I did.

I considered it.

Actually considered what I wanted.

“Yes.”

He opened his arms and waited for me to close the distance.

I stepped into them.

His arms came around me carefully, solid without trapping me.

“He knows where I work,” I whispered.

“Yeah.”

“And he’s paying people.”

“Yeah.”

Jake didn’t lie and tell me everything was fine.

I appreciated that.

“People will take ten thousand dollars.”

“Some will.”

I pulled back. “So what happens now?”

“We figure out how he found you. Nash gets the plate. We tighten security here. Then we talk about your room because you’re only four blocks away, and if somebody connected you to the shop, they could connect you to that building.”

Fear twisted through me again.

But underneath it was something else.

Anger.

Derek had already taken my home, my money, my family, my choices.

I wasn’t giving him this too.

“I’m not quitting.”

Jake’s eyebrows lifted.

“The job. I’m not leaving because he sent somebody in here.”

“I wasn’t going to ask you to.”

“Good.”

That earned the smallest smile.

I wiped my face and turned toward my desk.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to work.”

“Emma—”

“Derek doesn’t get my afternoon too.”

Jake stared at me for a second.

Then he nodded.

“Fair enough.”

I sat down and pulled the invoices toward me.

My hands still shook.

I was still scared.

But I picked up my pen anyway.

Derek had found one thread.

That didn’t mean he got to unravel everything I’d started building.