Page 61 of Malachi (Outsiders MC #1)

Candace

The smell of roasted garlic and fresh rosemary still clings to the air, refusing to let the night end.

The table is covered in the kind of mess that comes from real conversation—pie crumbs, wine-streaked napkins, empty plates that no one rushes to clear.

Laughter still echoes faintly, lingering inside the walls.

It feels like the kind of night you want to bottle.

The kind you don’t dare name in case it vanishes.

I help Maggie clear the table, brushing a trail of breadcrumbs into my palm, trying not to look at Malachi.

Of course, he’s looking at me. That quiet, unreadable stare of his.

Not the hard-edged one he wears in public, but the softer version that peels back skin and sees straight through me.

The one that makes me feel exposed and safe at the same time.

I’m starting to crave it, even when I hate that I do.

My stomach twists at the thought. I drop my gaze, focus on the plate in my hand. The ceramic is warm from the food, still faintly sticky with peach cobbler. I scrub harder than necessary, chasing the illusion that I can wash away the weight building under my skin.

James is mid-story, something about East nearly blowing up a carburetor just to prove it can be done.

Malachi laughs, loose and unguarded, the sound of it low and real.

He doesn’t laugh that way often. Here, though—at this table, in this house—he does.

It’s warm here. Safe. Home, I think. I immediately hate how true it feels.

I follow Maggie into the kitchen, our footsteps soft on the worn tile.

She moves with the grace of someone who’s done this a thousand times.

Cleaning up after other people’s chaos, humming a tune that makes the silence easier to bear.

The tune she hums catches something in my chest. A familiar chord I can’t name.

My fingers twitch as if reaching for a pen. I almost ask what it is. Almost.

“You know,” she says, rinsing a plate, “I still remember the day your daddy showed up at the shop.”

My breath catches. I’m not ready. The words hit before I can armor up, and the fork in my hand slips, clattering into the sink.

“You do?” My voice comes out thinner than I mean it to.

Maggie doesn’t notice. “Mmhm. Skinny. Sunburned. Looked worn down, like sleep hadn’t touched him in days. Said he needed work, that he had a little girl depending on him.” She smiles, the memory still alive behind her eyes. “You must’ve been six? Maybe seven?”

That tracks. The memories are soft around the edges, blurred the way a photo fades after too long in the sun, but I remember the oil stains on his jeans. The way he lets me sit on the bikes when no one is looking. How he used to call me kiddo like it meant something. Back when he was still my dad.

Before the bottle. The debts. Before he looked at me and saw a ticket out instead of a reason to stay. My throat burns.

“James didn’t like him at first,” Maggie says, stacking another plate. “But he saw how you looked at the bikes. Every part of you wired for it—gas in your veins, steel in your spine. Said any man raising a girl with that kind of fire couldn’t be all bad.”

I let out a breath that scrapes on the way up. “Yeah. Well. Turns out he was worse than bad.”

Maggie glances over, concern blooming in her eyes. “Honey…”

I shake my head before she can finish. “Sorry. I’m not trying to… ruin anything. It’s just—he’s dead. Some days, I still don’t know if I’m mourning the man I wanted him to be or furious at the one he became.”

Maggie moves toward me, drying her hands on a dish towel. Her voice is gentle. “You can be both.”

“I loved him,” I whisper. “Hated him. I still dream about him sometimes. Sitting at the kitchen table, nothing wrong in the world. Then I wake up and remember he tried to sell me, treated me as though I was nothing. As though I wasn’t even his.”

Maggie’s eyes soften. “I know.”

She doesn’t say I’m sorry. Doesn’t offer cheap words. She just stands there, letting me be broken in front of her. A tear slips down before I can stop it. I wipe it away fast, hoping she doesn’t see. She does.

Maybe that’s why she doesn’t stop herself when she says, like it’s just a passing thought, “I always wonder if she left you… or if she gave you up.”

I freeze. The words are soft. Almost accidental. “I know she’s alive.”

Maggie pauses, eyes flicking to mine. “Your dad told you.”

I nod. “Said she walked out. That she wanted nothing to do with me. That she chose power over family. Malachi told me Donovan works with her. What they do to people. What they tried to do to me.”

Maggie hesitates, then sets the towel down. “Then I guess you might already know the rest.”

My pulse stutters. “What rest?”

A pause. “Alice Brighton.”

The name still slices. It always will. My mother. The one I buried in stories. The one I cried for when I was a child.

“You knew her?” I ask, voice small.

“Not well,” she says. “She wasn’t the warm kind. But she came around sometimes. Tall. Straight blonde hair. Eyes cold enough to frost glass. Watched everything. Especially you.” A memory flickers. Sharp nails. Bitter perfume. Cold hands on my shoulders. Don’t embarrass me, Candace.

“She left when you were little,” Maggie adds. “No goodbye. Just gone. We were told she died.”

I swallow and dry my hands on the towel Maggie just used. “That’s what I was told, too. Until my dad finally admitted the truth.”

Maggie’s face folds with sympathy. “That’s what most people believed. Some still do. But James… he heard things. Rumors.”

I back up a step, trying to outrun what she’s about to say because if it’s not what I already know I don’t think I could take it. “What kind of rumors?”

Her voice drops, steady and low. “A society. Old money. Power that lives in shadows. We heard whispers that they make their members give up their daughters. Firstborn girls. A price for loyalty. But your mama vanished. Your dad fell apart. And you—” She looks at me with a grief that runs deep. “James kept you close for a reason.”

I stare at her, throat burning. “Then why didn’t you ever tell me?”

Maggie slowly exhales a heavy breath. “Because you were just a little girl. Already carrying more pain than you should’ve. If we were wrong, we would’ve shattered you for no reason.”

“You should’ve told me,” I say, voice low but steady. “Not everything. Not if you weren’t sure. But the rumors. The possibility.”

Her eyes flick down, then rise again, guilt shimmering behind them. “James said if the truth ever came out, it needed to come from you. When you were strong enough to hold it. So we waited. And we loved you. And we hoped we were wrong. Clearly we weren’t wrong.”

“I grieved her,” I whisper. “For years. And now I don’t even know if I was mourning the right thing.”

Maggie steps forward, eyes bright with unshed tears. “We didn’t want to take that from you if it wasn’t true. We hoped it wasn’t. We prayed it wasn’t.”

My breath catches. There’s a hollow ache in my chest where certainty used to be.

“I understand why you didn’t tell me,” I say finally, voice cracking. “I do. And I don’t hate you for it.”

Maggie exhales, the breath shaky and long, as if it’s been caged inside her for years.

“But it still hurts,” I add. “Knowing you were carrying something I didn’t even know.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

My heart splinters; not from anger, but from the ache of knowing they were only trying to shield me. I see it now. Not malice. Not betrayal. Just two people clinging to hope. To the lie that maybe the truth would never come knocking.

I press a hand to the counter, grounding myself. “When my dad confirmed what Malachi told me, I thought that was the worst of it. But I didn’t think about it this way.”

Maggie stays silent.

“But this…” My throat tightens. “This is worse. Because what if she did care? What if she cared enough to keep me alive, but not enough to keep me safe?”

The silence stretches, brittle and sharp.

A memory surges, unbidden and violent; the one I still try not to replay too often. The night I ran. The night my father tried to trade me the way someone moves a pawn across a board.

“She’s asleep in the hallway.”

“We’ll give you twenty percent once she’s sold.”

Then that voice. That oily, foreign voice asking, “Will anyone miss her?” And another one, cold, commanding. “She wants the girl unharmed.”

My stomach churns. I used to think they meant him. That my father was calling the shots. Selling me off like scrap.

But what if they weren’t talking about him at all?

What if she was the one they answered to?

What if the woman I buried with bedtime prayers and stories of heaven wasn’t taken from me… but gave me away?

My breath catches, a jagged thing. My knees threaten to give.

“She didn’t die,” I whisper. “She was watching. She knew.”

Maggie steps closer, her voice thick. “We never knew for sure. But something was always off. Always wrong.”

I nod, barely. Because deep down, a part of me has always known, too. I just didn’t want to look at it too long.

Didn’t want to believe the monster might’ve worn my mother’s face.

The ride back is silent. Malachi’s hand stays on my thigh the whole time, thumb tracing the same slow circle over my jeans, each motion grounding me in place.

His palm is warm. Steady. I memorize the rhythm.

Three beats, pause. Three beats, pause. It’s a song only he knows the tempo to.

He doesn’t ask. Doesn’t press. He just rides, fully aware I need the wind more than the words.

By the time we reach the clubhouse, the bar is dark, the bikes still.

Upstairs, our room feels too quiet. Every shadow holds its breath.

I curl into his T-shirt, pull the blankets up, and try to let the silence swallow me.

It doesn’t. My mind keeps racing. She isn’t dead.

I knew that already. But Maggie did, too.

Not everything; just enough. Just enough to make them watch me closer.

To make James keep me near, as though he sensed something coming for me from the dark.

Around two in the morning, I give up. I slip out of bed, pad downstairs in bare feet, and curl into the corner of the big leather couch. One of the lamps is still on by the pool table, casting a soft golden glow across the room. The silence here feels different. It doesn’t judge. It listens.

My thumb finds the edge of the blanket and begins tapping; four soft beats, each one knocking against memory.

A rhythm I haven’t played since I was twelve.

The one I used to hum when the yelling got too loud.

I have no clue how long I sit there, but eventually I hear the stairs creak.

I don’t even look. I know it’s him. Malachi drops onto the couch beside me, warm and quiet, his presence wrapping around me in something close to armor.

“You okay?” he asks, voice thick with sleep.

I shake my head. “No.” He doesn’t push. Just waits. “Maggie said something tonight,” I say, wrapping my arms around my knees. “Something I can’t get out of my head.”

His body shifts toward me, sharper now. Awake.

I pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders. “Maggie admitted they’d heard rumors. Not facts, not proof. Just enough to be afraid. Enough that James kept me close. Like they were waiting for someone to come claim what wasn’t theirs.”

Malachi’s expression darkens. “The auctions and the old society.”

I swallow. “I think when my dad spiraled, when he tried to sell me, it wasn’t just desperation. It was a structure. A system. He didn’t invent it. He was following it.”

Malachi leans forward, voice low and hard.

“I’ve been going through Cornelius’ files.

Donovan Castiel’s name keeps showing up.

Always clean. Always protected. I think he’s at the core.

Especially if people keep reporting seeing a woman around him recently.

The night my siblings vanished, Cornelius was trying to pass off intel.

One of the names on the list was smudged.

Almost unreadable. But I think it said Brighton. ”

My pulse stutters. “You think she was there?”

“I think she’s woven into all of it.”

I stare at the cracked leather on the armrest, voice barely a whisper. “Maggie and James didn’t tell me because they didn’t know for sure. But they suspected. For years.”

I close my eyes. The memory flashes uninvited. She’s asleep in the hallway. We’ll give you twenty percent once she’s sold. Will anyone miss her? She wants the girl unharmed.

I thought they meant my father. That he was the one in control. But what if he wasn’t? What if he was just the middleman?

“I used to think she died.” My voice shakes. “Then I thought she left. And now I think… she watched. She waited. She let it happen.”

Malachi doesn’t offer comfort. He offers truth. He pulls me into him, wraps his arms around me, and lets the storm hit. His fingers slip into my hair, grounding me as my body trembles against his.

“We’ll find the truth,” he says quietly. “And when we do? We burn it all down.”

For the first time, I don’t just want justice. I want ashes.