The Biker's Hidden Heiress novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: What I Took

Rafe's POV

I'd rehearsed it a hundred times on the ride down, and none of the versions worked.

She stood in the steam with my phone in her hand and a towel clutched at her chest.

Her face had gone completely still.

I'd seen that face once before, on the first night, when she gave me a false name.

It hid everything.

"Calla."

"Don't." She held up one hand. "Don't use it."

"Let me say it."

"Say it, then." Her voice was flat. "Say it fast. You've got ten minutes before the bikes."

I stayed in the doorway.

If I walked in, she'd have nowhere to stand.

"Three weeks ago a man came to the bar," I said. "He wasn't one of Dorian's. He was a go-between with a clean shirt and a briefcase."

"What did he want?"

"He said a sick woman might run up this way. A bride. He wanted her car stopped on the Gap before she reached the interstate."

"For money."

"Four hundred thousand. Half up front."

She said nothing.

"The bank wanted its note on the first of the month," I said. "Three hundred eighty thousand, on the mill. I've got twenty men who sleep under that roof."

"So you took it."

"I took it."

"Before you saw me."

"Before I saw you," I said. "I thought it was a rich man's runaway wife. I told myself a few weeks in a locked room was a lot better than losing the mill."

Her jaw moved.

"The first half went on the roof and the note. It's gone. I can't hand it back."

"And the day of the wedding?"

"I put my bike across the road at the bend. I figured you'd stop. You didn't. You swerved, and you went through the rail."

I made myself keep my eyes on hers.

"I dumped the bike to make you swerve. That's the arm. That's the left side of the bike. All of it is the same thing."

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