Page 124 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies

I plug it into the repeater we bolted to the subfloor during a winter no one here likes to discuss.

Something has been off for weeks.

Not just notes tucked where sugar should be or footprints flirting with our fence line.

Money moving the way water moves when a man loosens the valve a quarter turn.

Deliveries almost right.

Names that pass the eye and fail the ledger.

I hate almost.

It breaks structures.

I gave the folderWINTERto Rowan, but I review it again anyway, hoping to find just a sliver of more information.

My blood rages that Marisa was a target at the competition, and our vengeance will be swift once we solve all the pieces.

So much of the evidence points at Nico, mistreating our girl to her face then stealing her money in secret.

But we need to verify again and make sure no loose ends exist before we deal with the bastard.

He keeps getting past her guard.

He is not clever, but he is close to her.

He knows the shape of her days.

He knows what she will ignore to keep moving.

He knows which words make her patient and which make her tired.

The last unresolved riddle is the one that has sat in my throat for a month.

We keep thinking it is one of ours.

Nico may have been in that picture I sent Rowan, from two years ago, but he’s not ours.

There has to be someone else.

Our cameras slip for three minutes exactly.

Our south hinge sings in the same register as boots we trained.

We catch a silver button in a hallway seam, crosshatched shank, custom casting.

That stitch pattern is not common.

It belongs to a small run we commissioned seven years ago for patched brothers who earned the winter badge.

After the fracture, we retired the design.

I pull the physical evidence bag from the drawer.

The button winks dull. I take a macro photo and upload it to a dark board where old men who refuse to learn new sins still trade in the old ones.

I do not post the public shot.