Page 49 of Emmy's Ride

I looked at Star. “What do you want?”

She blinked. “What do you mean?”

“If you could do anything—leave, stay, change something—what would it be?”

She looked away, stirring her coffee again. “I don’t want to leave. I have everything I need here, and none of the shit I’ve had to put up with in my life before the club.”

I turned to the brunette. “What about you?”

The woman swallowed hard. “I used to want to be a nurse.”

Something tightened in my chest.

Candy sighed. “Emmy, don’t start. These girls know what they signed up for.”

I met her eyes. “That doesn’t mean they don’t deserve more.”

Silence settled over the kitchen until Star spoke, her voice barely above a whisper. “You may not think this is much of a life, but I’ll tell you this. Before being a club whore, I worked three jobs, and my parents used me as a damn punching bag if I didn’t fuck their drug supplier on demand. Besides, I don’t think I’d know how to leave, even if I wanted to.”

Candy’s expression softened, but I felt the weight of those words. I had walked away from this life once. I knew how hard it was.

And now, sitting in this kitchen, listening to the quiet pain in their voices, I realized something.

Maybe it was time for a change.

Austin

I sat in the dimly lit war room of the clubhouse. The Kings’ inner circle gathered around the heavy wooden table, the weight of recent events squeezing like a vise. Tank, Riot, Jax, and a handful of my most trusted brothers were present, their faces carved from stone.

Laid out before us were stacks of documents, burner phones, and a laptop filled with encrypted messages Jax had been working to crack. Every piece of information we had on Luke, The Ghost, and the recent attacks was in front of us. But the picture it painted was murky—frustratingly so.

“Alright, let’s piece this shit together,” I said, raking a hand through my hair.

Jax leaned forward, fingers flying across his laptop keyboard. The tech expert—ex-military, paranoid as hell, and always five steps ahead—had been digging deeper than I thought possible. Now, he had something.

“Got into Luke’s old burner,” Jax muttered, eyes locked on the screen. “Messages are encrypted, but not unbreakable. This guy wasn’t exactly a hacker.”

I clenched my jaw. Luke had always been reckless, but not an idiot. If he left something behind, it wasn’t because he didn’t know how to erase it. It was because he wanted it to be found.

Jax cracked the encryption, and the messages flooded the screen. The room fell silent as we read through them.

Unknown Sender:You don’t have a choice. Either you do what I say, or your sister pays the price.

Luke:Leave her out of this. I’ll get it done.

Unknown Sender:You have 48 hours. Don’t fuck this up.

My blood ran cold.

“Son of a bitch,” I growled, gripping the table so hard my knuckles hurt from the strain.

Tank let out a slow exhale. “Looks like he wasn’t working for The Ghost willingly.”

I was struggling to process the information. My brother—my blood—had been blackmailed. And judging by the messages, Luke wasn’t just covering his own ass.

Why Was Luke being blackmailed?

“Keep digging,” I ordered, my voice tight. “I need to know exactly what they had on him.”

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