Ride Me Into Ruin: Iron Reapers MC

Before Everything Fell Apart

48 Hours Earlier

LEXIE

I used to think I was smart about people, not in an arrogant way, just in the way that comes from paying attention.

Growing up the way I did, you learned fast how to read a room, read a face, figure out who was safe and who wasn't. It was survival more than skill, and for a long time, it worked.

*Turns out I was really good at reading people… except when they were wearing a perfect smile and an engagement ring.*

Then I met Drake Calloway and spent two years of my life loving a man I never actually knew, so maybe I wasn't as smart as I thought.

Drake was the kind of man who made you feel chosen, that was the best way I could describe him. When his attention was on you, really on you, it felt like standing in sunlight.

He was charming and generous and said all the right things at all the right times, and when he asked me to move in I said yes without thinking twice, and when he got down on one knee eight months after that I cried because I thought I was the luckiest woman alive.

*I should’ve known better. Nobody puts that much effort in unless they’re hiding something ugly underneath.*

I wasn't lucky, I was just next.

I found out the way you find out things that were never meant for you... by accident, on a random Wednesday afternoon when he left his phone on the kitchen counter and a message came through that made no sense until it made every kind of sense.

I didn't mean to read it. I just did, and then I kept reading, scrolling back through weeks of conversations, and with every message my hands got colder and my stomach dropped further and by the time I put the phone back down exactly where I found it, I wasn't the same person who had picked it up.

*Congratulations, Lexie. You just discovered your perfect fiancé runs with the kind of monsters that make true crime documentaries look tame.*

What Drake was into wasn't something I could explain away or pretend I'd misunderstood. It was dirty and it was serious and it carried the kind of consequences that put people away for the rest of their lives.

I don't know how long he'd been running it. I don't know how many people knew. What I did know was that I was living in his apartment, wearing his ring, and sleeping next to him every night, which meant that whatever he was, I was attached to it.

I lay next to him that night and stared at the ceiling and didn't sleep once.

*Because nothing says romance like cuddling up next to a criminal mastermind who might kill you if he finds out you know.*

Running was the first thing that crossed my mind, but running without a plan just meant he'd find me, and Drake finding me without anything holding him accountable was a death sentence dressed up as a chase.

So I did something that felt brave at the time... I reached out to the police, not the local department, I wasn't stupid enough for that. I found a contact through a friend, someone who operated quietly and carefully, and a few days later I was sitting across from Officer Ray Daniels in a diner three towns over with my hands wrapped around a mug of coffee I never touched.

Ray was solid, calm in a way that felt earned rather than performed. He listened to everything I said without interrupting once, and when I finished he looked at me and said, "You understand what you're signing up for here, right? If he finds out before we're ready to move, there's no safety net."

"I know," I said.

"I mean it, Lexie. Men like him don't give warnings."

"I know that too." I met his eyes so he could see I wasn't saying it just to say it. "I'm not doing this because I'm not scared. I'm doing it because I'm more scared of doing nothing."

*Because staying would’ve slowly killed me anyway. At least this way I had a fighting chance.*

He studied me for a moment and then nodded and slid a number across the table. "You call that line the second anything feels off. Anything at all."

I put it straight into the burner phone I'd bought that morning and we went over the plan and I drove home and made Drake dinner and smiled across the table at him and he had no idea, and that felt like power even if it was a terrifying kind.

*Playing the perfect fiancée while secretly plotting his downfall. Oscar-worthy performance, really.*

We met four more times over the following weeks, always different places, always careful. Ray told me we were close, that what I was giving him was building into something solid, that a couple more weeks and they'd have enough to act.

I remember sitting across from him that last evening and feeling something loosen in my chest for the first time in months. I should have known better than to feel that.

I got home that night after work and I was barely at my door when I heard the stairwell door open behind me and turned around and Drake was standing there, my whole body went still.

He wasn't supposed to be back until the following day, he was supposed to be in the city. He was supposed to be anywhere but here, right now, at this exact moment.

"Hey." I kept my voice even. "I thought you weren't back till tomorrow."

"Finished early." His eyes went past my shoulder and something shifted in them. "Who was that just leaving?"

I turned. Ray was at the top of the stairs, just for a second, just long enough, and then the door swung shut behind him. He had been here because during our meeting I agreed that he should help me fix some recording devices in the house.

The air in my lungs turned solid. "No idea," I said, and I held Drake's gaze and kept my face completely still. "He knocked earlier, said he had a couple of questions, I told him it wasn't a good time and he left. Never seen him before in my life."

*Please believe me. Please, for once, be as stupid as I need you to be.*

Drake looked at me, his face didn't move, not a flicker, not a twitch, nothing. Just those eyes sitting on mine for a moment that felt much longer than it was, and then he said "okay" and kissed my cheek and walked past me into the apartment.

I stood in the hallway and let out a slow breath and told myself it was fine, then I heard him go back to the door.

By the time I got to the window he was already crossing the parking lot below, walking fast and deliberate, and I watched him reach Ray before Ray reached his car and I pressed both hands over my mouth and made no sound at all while everything I had been carefully building came apart in the span of sixty seconds.

Ray never made it to his car, because Drake put him down.

Drake came back across the lot alone, straightening his jacket like he'd just stepped out for air, and when he walked back through the door his eyes went straight to mine and I knew. He knew, and there was nowhere left to go.

I won't go through everything that happened after that, not because I can't, but because some things you survive by not reliving them in detail.

What I'll say is that I woke up in his apartment the next day with a headache that went bone deep and no phone, no bag, nothing. He sat across from me and waited patiently in his terrifying stillness, until I told him what he wanted to hear.

I promised I wouldn't say a word. He believed me, or he pretended to. Either way he let me go back to my apartment for a while and life went back to something that looked normal from the outside and was anything but.

He started drinking more after that, and Drake had heavy hands and a short fuse and I learned quickly to watch for the signs.. the way his jaw tightened when he was close to the edge, the way he'd go quiet before he went loud. Some nights I read it right, some nights I didn't read it fast enough.

*Turns out love doesn’t just hurt. Sometimes it leaves marks you hide with long sleeves and lies.*

I stopped counting bruises. It was easier that way. The night I decided to leave wasn't even the worst night. That's what surprised me most. It wasn't after the worst of it.

It was just a quiet night, and I caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror and stood there looking at this woman I barely recognized anymore.

I went to the bedroom, pulled my bag from under the bed, and started packing quickly, only what I needed. I didn't look around the apartment on the way out. I didn't leave a note. I just closed the door behind me, wheeled my bike out of the lot, and rode.

I didn't have a plan or a destination. I just knew that whatever was ahead of me on that road was better than what I was leaving behind.

At least that's what I kept telling myself, right up until the engine died and the darkness closed in and the sound of motorcycles came rolling around the bend like something the night had been saving up especially for me.