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“Not sure yet. But something doesn’t add up.”
“She’s been working her ass off.”
“I know. That’s what makes me nervous.”
He didn’t argue. Just gave me a nod and got to work.
By morning, he came back with more than I expected.
“You’re not gonna believe this,” Diesel said, dropping a file folder onto the table in the war room. “She’s not just some drifter.”
I flipped it open. Newspaper clippings, a scanned missing persons report, and a photo of Riley in a satin cocktail dress standing next to a blond man in a suit. Caleb Whitmore III. Trust fund sleaze with a Harvard grin and a snake’s soul.
“That her ex?”
“Yup. She was engaged to him. Family's loaded. Old Southern money outta Charleston.”
“And they reported her missing?”
“Officially? Yeah. Went cold a few days later, probably to avoid scandal. But there were whispers. Abuse. Control. Some say she bolted before the wedding. Took cash and a car, and vanished.”
I stared at the glossy photo of her. She looked like a porcelain doll—flawless, stiff, and miserable.
Not the Riley I knew. Not the one who cleaned blood off bar floors and didn’t blink when fights broke out around her.
“She left that world,” I muttered. “Why?”
“Maybe she had a reason.”
I closed the folder and shoved it away.
Didn’t matter why—not yet.
What mattered was whether or not her past was coming for her.
Because if it was, it wouldn’t just be her in the line of fire—it’d be all of us.
And that was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.
But I wasn’t going to confront her about it—not yet. If she was going to come clean, I needed to know I could trust her to do it on her own.
Until then, I’d watch. Listen. Wait.
And pray that whatever she was running from didn’t come knocking on our door.
7
RILEY
I’d just slid a tray of clean shot glasses onto the shelf when the door swung open and every conversation in Fire Skulls choked off mid-word.
She didn’t glide in—she arrived, like a parade float made of blond hair, pink lipstick, and designer denim so tight it should have come with a warning label. Diamond hoops gleamed under the bar lights; stilettos clicked on the scuffed wood like a metronome of self-importance.
And the aura? Pure I-own-the-room royalty.
The crowd parted for her without a single shove. Men stared. Women stared harder. She soaked it up, chin tilted, lips parted in a practiced pout that said admire me.
Who the hell?—