Page 49 of Sinner’s Torment

My throat closed up completely. I tried to speak, but nothing came out except a choked sound that might have been a sob. Might have been my heart breaking all over again.

His jaw tightened. I watched the muscle jump beneath the stubble on his cheek.

“I was living in Diamond Creek, Nebraska,” I whispered finally, the words barely audible. I had to force them out past the lump in my throat. “There’s a Silver Shadows’ clubhouse there.”

The silence that followed was deafening. Oppressive. Like the air itself had turned to concrete.

He didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Just stared at me like I’d just told him I’d been living on the moon. Like I’d just confessed to murder or treason or some other unforgivable sin.

Then he leaned back in the chair, rubbing both hands down his face in a gesture I recognized from childhood—the one he made when he was trying very hard not to lose his temper. When he was counting to ten in his head and reminding himself that yelling never solved anything.

“You seeing a club brother?” His voice was carefully controlled now. Too controlled. The kind of control that came from barely restrained fury. From keeping yourself in check when every instinct screamed at you to rage and shout and break things.

I looked down at my hands again, my vision blurring with unshed tears. “No. Not in the way you think.”

The words hung in the air between us, heavy with implication. Heavy with shame and regret and all the things I couldn’t take back.

I didn’t say club whore. I didn’t have to.

He understood.

I could see it in the way his shoulders tensed, in the way his entire body went rigid. In the way his hands curled into fists before he forced them to relax, his knuckles cracking softly in the darkness.

“Baby girl,” he said quietly, and the endearment made my chest tighten painfully. Made my heart twist and my throat close up all over again. He hadn’t called me that in years. Not since before I left. “You don’t know what I’m thinking right now.”

I didn’t respond. Couldn’t. If I opened my mouth, I was going to start crying, and if I started crying, I might never stop.

“Who’s the club president?” he asked. His voice had changed again. Gone flat and cold. Dangerous. “Of this Diamond Creek Chapter.”

I stiffened, confusion cutting through the fear. “Why?”

He didn’t answer. Just stood up slowly, his movements deliberate and controlled as he walked to my bedroom door. Each step measured and precise. Like he was moving through water. Like he was fighting against some invisible force trying to hold him back.

My heart started pounding harder. Faster. A drum beat of panic in my ears.

“Dad—”

He turned back to look at me, one hand on the doorknob. The hallway light behind him cast his face in shadow, making him look like a stranger. Making him look dangerous. “Either you tell me, or I’ll find out on my own, baby girl.”

There was no room for negotiation in his tone. No room for debate. This wasn’t a request.

I sat up straighter, my spine going rigid. Defensive. “What are you going to do?”

His expression didn’t change. But something in his eyes did. Something cold and hard and utterly uncompromising. Something that looked like the man he might have been before I was born. Before he became the patient, loving father I’d always known.

“What I should have done years ago.”

Then he opened the door and stepped through it, closing it quietly behind him with a soft click that sounded like a gunshot in the silence. Like a door slamming shut on one chapter of my life and opening onto another.

I sat there in the darkness, staring at the closed door, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard I thought it might break through. My hands were shaking. My whole body was shaking.

What I should have done years ago.

What did that mean? What was he talking about? What secrets had he been keeping all this time?

What was he going to do?

I thought about King. About the Silver Shadows. About the way the brothers treated me. I knew what I’d been signing up for. I’d done it willingly. No one forced me, no one hurt me. The Diamond Creek Chapter was filled with good men.