PrologueTrade
This moment has been a long time coming.
I’m not sure why it has taken me three years to propose to Ariel. I knew she was mine the second I saw her, but after a drunken night out when she said she wants to have a baby with me, our first together, I realized that I need to get my shit together. We already have four kids, three mine and one hers, but to us they are all of ours. I take my role as a father very seriously, and I love Mila just like she is my own blood. Her biological father, Merve, is an absolute deadbeat and Mila doesn’t even know him. She knows me, and me only, as her dad.
And as for Ariel?
Call me Prince Eric, because that woman was born to be mine.
When I told her we were going out for our anniversary and I had asked my brother, Temper, to babysit, Ariel decided she wanted to look her best and booked an appointment at a beauty salon. My woman deserves to be pampered, and it’s so rare that the two of us get to be kid-free. Little does she know, though, that tonight is going to be much more than an anniversary dinner.
I just hope she says yes. I mean, wanting to add to our brood is pretty much saying she wants me forever, right? And we have discussed marriage before, so I don’t know why I feel so nervous right now.
I shift on my feet uneasily and check the time once more. She was supposed to be back about forty-five minutes ago, so I call her. When she doesn’t answer, I leave a message.
“Hey, beautiful, it’s me. You almost done? Call me back. Love you.”
Taking a seat at our dining table, I scroll through pictures on my phone to pass the time. Pictures of us posing with the kids, pictures of just me and Ariel smiling happily, arms wrapped around each other. There’s even a sexier one of the two of us, me lying behind her in bed, my hands cupping her breasts possessively.
When another thirty minutes pass, I call her again. She still doesn’t answer, so I call the salon, only to be told she had left over an hour ago.
An uncomfortable feeling fills my stomach. Where the hell could she be? She might have made another stop somewhere, but it’s not like her to be late or to ignore her phone. I hit her sister’s number and bring the phone to my ear.
“Hey,” Izzy says. “Aren’t you supposed to be at dinner?”
I pause. “So Ariel isn’t with you then?”
“What do you mean?” she asks, sounding confused. “She messaged me when she was leaving the salon, which was about an hour ago. She said she was going right home.”
It’s seven o’clock now and she knows our reservation is for seven thirty. She reminded me this morning. “She never got here. I’m still waiting for her.”
Izzy goes silent for a second. “She should have been home by now,” she says, tone taking a serious edge. “Where else could she have gone?”
“I don’t know. And she’s not picking up her phone,” I explain, standing up and looking outside the front window. “Something’s not right.” I can feel it in my bones. “I’m going to go and look for her.”
“No, let me,” Izzy says, and I hear scuffling in the background. “Renny is here—he’s going to call Temper and everyone else.” Renny, short for Renegade, is Izzy’s husband and a member of the Knights of Fury MC, of which Temper is president.
“The kids are with Temper—I don’t want to upset them until we find her.”
“I know. We will be discreet, and Abbie can watch them if we need Temper, don’t worry. We’ll all go look for her. I’m going to start at the salon; they might have surveillance cameras there. You wait there in case she comes home.”
“Okay,” I say with a nod, and then hang up.
I start to pace. I don’t want to be sitting here doing nothing while everyone is out trying to find her, so I leave a note for Ariel on the table, telling her to call me immediately, and then I call Temper, who left the kids with his wife, Abbie, and is retracing Ariel’s steps in his car. I meet up with him and we spend the next two hours looking for her in the area, and calling all of her friends and family, but she is nowhere to be found. I go to the police, but they say they can’t do anything until she has been missing for more than twenty-four hours.
We all meet back at my house, and my stomach clenches when Ariel isn’t there waiting for me, like I hoped she would be.
Izzy starts crying as she sits down on our couch, and she looks just how I feel. I want to break down right now and fucking scream. I want to rage and set this whole fucking city on fire.
But that’s not going to help right now. I just need to find her.
I’m standing in our living room, looking at the home we made together, and feel utterly helpless. “I don’t know what to do,” I say to Temper, taking a deep, slow breath. “She has to be okay. I’m going to lose it if something happened to her.”
Temper comes over to me, grabs onto my shoulders and looks me in the eye. “No, you’re not. Because we don’t know if anything happened to her. She could’ve forgotten to run an errand or...”
We don’t know if we’ve lost her.
Abbie, Temper’s wife, approaches and gives me a big hug. “We’ll find her.”
I nod, thanking her with my eyes. I’m going to need all the support I can get right now.
“I’m heading back out,” I announce.
A woman doesn’t just go missing into thin air.
Something has happened, and I’m not going to rest until I find out what that is.
Chapter OneOne Year Later
Nadia
“He didn’t do it, Nadia. You know him. I know him. Come on, you have to believe me,” Marisol says, big brown eyes pleading with me.
I grew up with her son, Damon, and it’s true, he’s the last person I’d ever think would murder someone. He had always been the gentle sort, and he was always kind to everyone around him. People change, though.
“Money isn’t an issue,” she continues, lower lip trembling. It’s hard for me to see her like this. Marisol was one of my mom’s closest friends, and she was always there for me growing up. When I lost my mom, she stepped in and made sure she came to all of my school events, like my basketball games. For the finals one year, she even made her own sign with my name on it, lifting it up and cheering me on as I scored the winning point. She was basically like the aunt I never had, and most of my childhood memories include her. Seeing her sitting here now, I realize that I’ve let too much time go by without seeing her.
“I just want you to look into it and see what you can find. I know he didn’t do it. And you have nothing to lose. I’ll pay you and if you don’t find any proof that he’s innocent, then so be it. But I know you will.”
“Why now? Why didn’t you come to me earlier, before he was convicted?” I ask the question, but no matter what the answer is, I’m glad she didn’t. There would have been too many issues if I had been involved during the height of the investigation.
I sigh and scrub my hands down my face, probably smudging the liner around my brown eyes. Surprisingly, my hesitance to take on this case has nothing to do with money. Sure, for a while my business was struggling. I had to let go of my employee and closest friend, Bronte, because I could no longer afford to pay her. But it has started to pick up again after I helped an attorney exonerate a murder suspect even though all evidence pointed to his guilt. More and more clients have been engaging my services—from people trying to catch their spouses having an affair, to businesses trying to see if their employees are leaving for their competitors, to defense lawyers looking for help with their murder investigations—with word of mouth spreading.
Despite things improving in the business, I still am just one person and can only take a few cases at a time, so it is a slow improvement. But no matter how much I could use the money, I wouldn’t even charge Marisol. I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking her money. There’s a whole other reason I don’t want to take this on, and it’s much more complicated than she may think.
“I don’t know. I thought it’d be obvious he didn’t do it. I didn’t think they’d find him guilty.” She wipes a tear from her face. She looks like she’s aged at least ten years since I last saw her, before Damon was arrested.
“Marisol, I knew Ariel, and her whole family, too. They are my friends. Can you imagine what kind of position that’s going to put me in?” I ask, closing my eyes and exhaling.
After my father died five years ago, I retreated into work and lost touch with Marisol. My best friend, Bronte, is pretty much my only family now, and as a result her family became my family. After she left my private investigation firm, she started working at Fast & Fury Custom Motorcycles, which is owned by a local motorcycle club, the Knights of Fury. She ended up falling in love with her boss, Crow, who is a member. The minute she became his old lady, she had an instant family in the MC. Luckily she didn’t leave me behind and pretty much forced me into the MC fold.
I met Ariel a few years ago and we bonded instantly since we were outsiders to the MC. Included, but not exactly part of the inner circle. Neither of us knew what was going on with the MC all the time, but we knew we could count on them. Ariel was the partner of Trade, who is the president of the MC’s younger brother, but not an official member anymore. In addition, her younger sister, Izzy, is married to Renny, another MC member. So we would hang out when the other women from the MC were doing MC-only things. I wouldn’t say we were best friends, but we were definitely more than acquaintances.
She was found a day or two after going missing, in her car at the bottom of the lake right near Damon’s house. I still remember the moment I heard about it—the shock and pain of her body being found, and the surprise that Damon was being tied to it. She had a young daughter, Mila, who is five years old now. As someone who grew up without a mother, I know that little girl is going to have a tough time, especially given how Ariel died.
When it was revealed she was murdered, it hit me hard. She was loved by everyone, and losing her brought so much pain for them all.
I know Marisol doesn’t realize what she’s asking of me—she’s just a desperate mother begging for help. Of course she would reach out to me. It’s just such a hard position for me to be put into.
After the investigation, Damon was picked up, interrogated, arrested and tried all in a span of six months. He was found guilty of second-degree murder and is doing a minimum of twenty-five years. I’m ashamed to admit I avoided the case because I was embarrassed that I knew him and his family. To be honest, I think I distanced myself from the whole thing because I knew both of them. It hurt to hear about what happened to Ariel that night, and the fact that a guy who grew up like a cousin to me could have been behind it.
This is actually the first time I’ve talked about Damon’s arrest with Marisol. My feelings are all over the place about it, but people do change. It’s not like I had spent much time with him over the past few years.
“How does finding her real killer put you in a bad position?” she asks, lifting her chin, her stubborn brown eyes begging to be heard. “It’s justice. Wouldn’t they want the real person who did this behind bars? I’m telling you, it wasn’t Damon. And I’d bet my life on that.”
I lean back in my worn leather chair and study her. She looks one hundred percent sure that her son did not commit this crime. Marisol has always had an eerie ability to suss out whether someone is lying or not. I was caught in too many lies by her when I was younger. As much as I want to write off her confidence as a mother trying to protect her son, there is something in the back of my mind asking if she’s right.
“If the roles were reversed, Damon or myself would do this for you,” she adds, and I sigh, because she’s right on that account. They are that kind of people. “I was with my son that night, from six to ten o’clock. I was with him! How could he have done this?”
“They didn’t just find him guilty over nothing,” I say. “There had to be evidence to put him away, Marisol.”
“They pinned it on him because it was easy,” she fires back, scowling. “They did not have enough evidence to prove he did this. They locked him up anyway, because of reasonable doubt. Did you look into the case when it had gone to trial?”
“I didn’t look into all the details properly, no,” I admit. “I know what everyone else knows.” What I heard from others, and what I saw on the news.
“Well, see, I’m just asking that you look into it. That’s all,” she says, eyes pleading with mine. “Go over the details and see for yourself what I’m trying to tell you.” When I don’t say anything right away, she grabs my hand. “Nadia, I swear to you, Damon had nothing to do with this. I just know it.”
I consider her words. Yes, me looking into this would ruffle a few feathers; in fact, I can’t imagine how upset it would make Trade, who is probably trying to move on and find some peace after losing his love. But the MC doesn’t have to know what I’m doing. Like Marisol said, it’s just a little bit of research to see if all the dots connect.
If I find something, then I will share it with them.
What can it hurt? If she’s right, then I can help Damon. And if she’s wrong and this is just a case of blind love?
Well, I tried.
I don’t know what to believe anymore, but there’s something in her eyes that I can’t say no to. It wouldn’t hurt to look into this, for Marisol.
“Okay,” I say, sighing. “I’ll see what I can do. But you have to promise me complete honesty. If I ask you something, regardless of what the answer may be, you have to answer me truthfully. Do I have your word?”
“Yes, absolutely, Nadia. I would never lie to you.”
I can’t believe I’m about to do this. “I can’t make any promises, though, okay? And if I don’t find anything—”
“Then I’ll drop it.” She nods eagerly, tears forming in her eyes. “I just need you to take this chance, Nadia. Thank you so much for helping me. No one else will listen. They all just think because he was found guilty, he did it. But innocent people are found guilty all the time. No one wants to consider the option that a mistake was made against my son.”
I mean, she’s not wrong. Mistakes are made in the justice system.
The problem lies with everyone thinking their loved ones are innocent.
I pull out my notebook. “All right, let’s do it then. Tell me everything in detail. I want to know why you don’t think your son did this.”
She starts speaking, and I start making some notes.
I just hope I don’t regret this.
Stepping into the Fast & Fury Custom Motorcycles shop, I ask myself not for the first time if I’m making the right choice. The last thing that I want to do is bring more pain to the people I care about, and one of the people I love most is right under this roof.
“Nadia?” the woman in question calls out as she sees me, a big smile on her face. “I didn’t know you were dropping in today!”
Bronte gives me a big, warm hug, her floral-scented perfume hitting my nose. I know I said I was going to keep this whole investigation on the down low, but there’s no way I can’t tell my best friend about what I’m up to.
“It was spontaneous,” I admit, looking around for Trade. “Can we have a quick chat?”
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