Page 121 of Cold Hard Truth

I look up at him. “Are you?”

Neither of us answers, which is answer enough.

Stopping beside Blaze, Sage tips his chin up at him.

“Full house,” Kane comments.

Steel shakes his head. “Minus a few.”

He and Blaze share a look, and Blaze turns to Kane. “We finally got into Bullet’s phone. There were at least three more guys in on it with him. They’re out back.”

“They talking yet?”

“They’re saying more than Bullet, but still not much.” Steel glares, popping his bloody knuckles. “Someone’s after your throne.”

“What else is new?” Kane grits his teeth, and I hate how cocky he is about it.

Just because he’s barely been a father doesn’t mean I want him dead.

“Have you figured out who’s leading this yet?”

“Nope, but it would be helpful.” Helix is the one to answer—someone I’ve seen at a distance and never met.

I know him by name. By his position in the club.

But that voice.

It shakes something loose. It rattles an old memory. Something I didn’t think I buried, but maybe I did. My gaze drops to the ground as my mind drifts.

They shoved Ellie and me in the back of a van with bags over our heads. They knocked us out, and when I came to, my hands were tied behind my back. The sack was loose over my face, so I could see out the bottom. And it was just enough to get a glimpse of everyone’s shoes.

All the men were taking orders from someone—from a voice I never heard again once they brought us to the basement. But I heard it when I was in and out of consciousness. And I saw the symbol on his shoe without having the ability at the time to place it.

A symbol.

A name.

My gaze flicks up and Helix is already staring in my direction. I was too young back when he and Steel would come around the clubhouse, so I never spent much time around him. I don’t know anything about him other than the fact that he’s been a Twisted King as long as my father.

But I swallow hard with absolute certainty he was there that night I was taken. He’s been involved in this all along.

My fingers dig into Sage’s side and my entire body tenses as Helix watches me. At first, he just stares. But then the faintest, deadliest smirk crawls up the corner of his mouth.

“Something wrong?” Sage looks down at me because he must sense it. His intuition is greater than he ever gives himself credit for.

I open my mouth to answer him, but in a split second, everything changes. Helix reaches for something behind him, and the earth explodes.

At least, that’s what it feels like.

The ground shakes as fire and glass spill into the room. An explosion rings out and Sage pulls me to his body. He wraps himself around me.

My ears ring and screaming echoes from all around.

The scales tip.

39

Sage

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