The common room stayed dead silent, waiting on my father's next words like the whole club had stopped breathing at once.
"Say it," I told him. "Whatever it is. Just say it."
Dad's hands gripped the edge of the table so hard his knuckles went white. "Your mother came to me first. Before Bear. Before anyone. She showed me what she'd found in Robert's books, and she asked me to help her expose it."
"And you didn't," I said. It wasn't a question.
"I was scared," he said. "Robert wasn't just running money through both clubs. He had leverage on half the men in this room, favors owed, debts nobody could pay back in anything but silence. If I'd backed Elena publicly, it would have torn the Vipers apart from the inside before we ever had a chance to fight him properly."
"So you chose the club
