~RYDER~
The night was quiet — the kind of quiet that felt wrong.
I’d been sitting in the garage for hours, half-awake, half-alive, the smell of oil and rain thick in the air.
My bike was stripped open, engine guts spread across the floor like I’d tried to fix something that wasn’t broken — because I couldn’t fix the thing that actually was.
Tessa.
Every hour without her was another mile of road burning through my head.
Duke was passed out on the couch, empty beer bottle rolling on the floor, when my phone buzzed. Once. Short. A vibration that barely registered — until I saw the screen.
Secure Feed: NEW FILE SYNCED.
My heart kicked hard.
I opened it. One word glowed against the dark:
QUEEN.
For a second, I just stared — not breathing, not thinking. Then everything hit at once.
S
