CHAPTER 25 – FINGERMARKS
1070 Words
LAYLA'S POV
Rafe's "goodnight, softie" is still warm in my chest when I meet Gears at 6 AM the next morning and he lays out something that turns the warmth to ice.
"Second layer." He spreads pages across the workbench. "Underneath the rerouted contracts - payments flowing through a shell company. Three intermediary registrations deep." He taps the last page. "The holding entity traces back to Black Viper's legal address."
I stare at the paper trail. Iron Howl money going directly to the rival pack. Not mismanagement. Treason.
"How much?"
"Enough to gut us if it continues another year."
I photograph every page. My hands are steady. My face gives nothing away.
"When you're ready to use it," Gears says, "tell me first. I want to be in the room."
"You will be."
I walk back to the main building with the photographs on my phone and the weight of what's been done to this club pressing against my ribs. They've been at this for years - the poisoning, the financial bleed, the bracelet on my brother's wrist, my father shrinking in a bed while a nurse they hired controls his medication. Patient. Thorough. And they assumed the heir would stay away because they'd arranged for her to have every reason to.
They were wrong.
Garrett arrives mid-afternoon with two Black Viper members flanking him - not aggressive, just present. A reminder. He walks through the clubhouse performing his usual routine, but today I don't sit across from him and smile. I stay in the back of the common room with Harper and watch from a distance, and when he catches my eye, I look through him like he's furniture.
It bothers him. I can see it in the way his jaw shifts, the way his performance gets louder, more animated - compensating for the audience he's not getting from me.
After dinner, I'm in the corridor heading to my room when his hand closes around my wrist.
Same wrist. Same grip. Same deliberate message - I can do this whenever I want.
"We need to talk about the custody arrangement, Layla."
"Talk to my lawyer."
"I'm talking to my wife." His fingers tighten. "Come home. Stop this. Be reasonable."
"Let go of my arm."
"When I'm finished."
"You're finished now."
The lethally calm voice comes from behind Garrett. Rafe. But this time he's not alone, and this time they don't just stand there.
Colt moves first. He steps forward and wraps his hand around Garrett's wrist - the one gripping mine - and squeezes. Not hard enough to break anything. Hard enough that Garrett's fingers loosen involuntarily.
"Hands off, mate." Colt's voice is casual. His grip is not. "I won't ask twice."
Garrett's eyes flash. "This is between me and my-"
"She said let go." That's Eli. He's appeared on my other side, and his hand is on my lower back, guiding me a step away from Garrett's reach. His voice is quiet but there's something underneath it I've never heard before. Something that makes the hair on my arms stand up. "So let go."
Garrett releases my wrist. Colt releases Garrett's. The exchange takes three seconds and the power shift in the hallway is total.
Rafe hasn't moved. He's standing behind Garrett with his arms at his sides and that terrifying stillness - the kind that communicates everything without a single gesture. Garrett turns and looks at him and whatever he sees in Rafe's grey eyes makes him take a step back.
"You three are making a mistake," Garrett says.
"We've made a lot of those." Colt grins. It doesn't reach his eyes. "This isn't one of them."
Garrett smooths his jacket. Walks toward the exit. His Black Viper members fall into step behind him.
The door closes.
Eli's hand is still on my lower back. Colt is still beside me, close enough that his arm brushes mine. Rafe steps forward and stands in front of me and looks down at my wrist where the fingermarks are already forming.
He takes my hand. Turns it over. Runs his thumb across the bruises with a gentleness that makes my throat tight. Then he lifts my wrist to his mouth and presses his lips against the marks - so softly I barely feel it, but the gesture hits me somewhere deep and permanent.
"He won't touch you again," Rafe says against my skin.
"If he does, I'll break his hand," Colt says from beside me. "And I mean that literally. Every bone. I've been researching the anatomy."
"That's disturbing," I say, but my voice is shaking.
"That's devotion, Rowan. Learn the difference."
Eli's thumb traces a small circle on my lower back. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to. The three of them are around me - Rafe's mouth on my wrist, Colt's shoulder against mine, Eli's hand warm and steady on my back - and for a moment I let myself feel all of it without fighting.
Three men who showed up without being asked. Who formed a wall without discussing it. Who touched me in three completely different ways - Rafe with reverence, Colt with possession, Eli with tenderness - and every single one of those touches said the same thing.
Ours.
The word arrives in my head uninvited and I shove it back down immediately because it's too big and too complicated and too much for a hallway on a Tuesday night.
But my body heard it. And my body isn't fighting anymore.
Later, in the bathroom, I photograph the fingermarks on my wrist. Send them to Harper and Thea without a caption. Then I open my voice memo app.
"Entry four. What I'm going to take back."
I start talking - Gears's discovery, the shell company, the Black Viper connection, the financial treason laid out on a workbench at 6 AM by a mechanic who remembers what this club used to be. I document everything - the paper trail, the timeline, what it means for the custody case, what it means for the council challenge.
When I hit stop, I look at my phone. Four entries. Four recordings of a woman building something piece by piece in the dark.
I pull my sleeve down over the bruises and think about Rafe's mouth on my wrist. Colt's shoulder against mine. Eli's hand on my back.
Sixty days. But I'm not counting down anymore.
I'm building up.
- Writer
