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I nodded, my throat suddenly tight.

“So, what did your wife tell him?” His eyes glittered, again like he already knew the answer.

“She didn’t tell him a damn thing. Lied about where she was staying too.”

“She told you that?”

I shook my head. “I overheard most of the conversation, but she told me everything when she spotted me.” It had gone a long way to building trust between us, just as I had hoped.

He thought it over and then nodded. “Ivy may not be happy about how she got here, but she sure as shit doesn’t want to go back. That’s something. Anything else?”

“Not yet.” I shook my head, hating that we hadn’t made more progress on looking into Rex. “But whatever truce you and Rex worked up, was just a diversion. He’s building up reserves and taking over territory so he can come at us for real. We need to be ready.”

Hatchet went quiet, which I knew was never a good thing for the subject of those thoughts. “I figured that old fucker was up to something. Switch’s been digging deep into him, so we’ll know exactly how to make it hurt. Bad. What are you thinking?”

I started to answer and then I stopped, really looking at my father. The gray at his temples had spread since last year and now he was more silver than brown. The lines dug deeper into his face. He was still built like a man who kicked ass for a living, but time was catching up with him. He wasn’t dying but he was getting old. Too old for this shit. “You really good?” I needed to look at him when he answered, to convince myself that it was the truth.

He sighed, annoyed that I was worried about him. “For now, yeah, Knox. I’m gettin’ old, that’s it.” He stood with a grunt and nodded toward the door. “You need a plan. A good fucking plan and I’ll back you. Now let’s go, Switch said he has some shit to show us.”

We walked through his office and to the clubhouse, where my gaze moved across the room automatically, the way it always did when I entered a space. This was a safe space ,so my gaze didn’t linger long before it found Ivy.

She sat with Skye near the far end of the bar, talking. Skye said something and Ivy laughed, a real one that made her eyes crinkle at the corners. When she looked up and caught me watching, she gave me a small, easy smile. No performance in it. No calculation. Just a smile like seeing me had brightened her day, just a little.

I smiled back before I could think about it and kept walking.

We slipped through a small doorway behind the bar that looked like a storage closet, but was really Switch’s intricate tech setup. There were multiple screens everywhere, cables neatly ran along the walls while the whole room hummed with computer shit. Switch sat in thousand dollar chair, frowning at two, maybe three, screens at once.

“You wanted to talk?”

“Yeah,” he said and pointed to the middle screen that looked like a bank account. “Found these recurring payments from Rex to an anonymous account. It’s not for services rendered. Not to another club or organization. Don’t even look like a business expense. More like a payoff.”

I leaned in closer to look at the screen. “The money comes from the same account every month to the same account. Same day. Same amount. Definitely a fucking payoff.”

Switch nodded. “It’s buried good too. Whoever set it up knew what they were doing.”

“Any idea who he’s paying off?” We had to find out what he was hiding, had to know all of his secrets so we knew all of his weaknesses.

“Not yet,” Switch sighed, his voice thick with disappointment. “the account is clean on paper, but it’s a shell of a fucking shell. It’ll take more digging to uncover the initial company, but if you come across anything that could help,” he didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t need to.

I got the message loud and clear. If Ivy knew something, anything, a name or a number, a face that came around too often, it could cut down the search. She grew up in that house and had been on the periphery of Rex’s business her whole life, even if she hadn’t been inside it.

She hated Rex, that much was clear. She refused his intel request, lied to him, and she told me about the call. None of that was the behavior of a woman running a double con. But hating him didn’t mean she was ready to hand over weapons to his downfall.

I was her enemy’s enemy, which wasn’t the same thing as being her ally. Now I needed to know which side of that line she fell on.

“I’ll let you know,” I told him.

“Okay,” Switch said and turned back to his screens.

I stood there a moment longer just thinking. There were too many fucking moving pieces, and I needed to start fitting them together before Rex got the jump on me. On my MC.

One problem at a time, I told myself, knowing exactly which puzzle piece I’d start with.

I went to find Ivy.

My wife.

Chapter Twelve