Chapter 2 - The Weight of the Silver Wolf

The clubhouse smelled of bleach and copper the next morning. The men had cleaned up Roach’s blood, but the tension in the air remained thick. Leo sat in the center of the bar, a large map spread out across the pool table. She was placing small wooden markers on the map, mapping out Silas Reed’s known safe houses and drug routes.

Vance stood beside her, a heavy mug of black coffee in his hand. He was looking at the little girl with a growing sense of reverence. In just twenty-four hours, she had drained Silas Reed’s offshore accounts, securing millions of dollars for the Silver Wolves and plunging the Iron Jackals into financial chaos. The men in the clubhouse weren't just following her because of the ring anymore; they were following her because she was brilliant.

But Leo wasn't smiling. She was staring intensely at the map, her small eyebrows furrowed in deep concentration.

"Something is wrong," she murmured.

"What do you mean, boss?" Vance asked. "We've got the upper hand. Silas is panicking. His cartel connections are already making threatening phone calls. We hold the cards."

Leo shook her head. "My father was a master of evasion. He rode a custom-built stealth bike. He never took the same route twice. The day he was killed, he was supposed to be going to a secret parley location that only he and three other people knew about."

She looked up at Vance, her hazel eyes piercing right through him. "Silas Reed didn't just guess where my father was going to be. He didn't stumble upon him by accident. Someone gave him the route. Someone planted the C4. Someone inside this club is a traitor."

The word hung in the air like a poisoned cloud. Vance’s face darkened, the scars on his cheeks turning a violent shade of purple. "Nobody in this room would betray Marcus. We bled for him."

"Men bleed for money just as easily as they bleed for loyalty," Leo stated clinically. "We need to find the rat, Vance. Before we make our final move against Silas, we have to cut the rot out of our own house."

Vance set his coffee down. "How? I know every man here. I've fought back-to-back with them for a decade."

"Exactly. You are too close to them. You see brotherhood; I see variables," Leo said, turning back to the map. "Bring me the duty logs from the week my father died. I want to know who was working the garage, who had access to the armory, and who was off the grid."

For the next four hours, Leo cross-referenced the clubhouse’s internal logs with the black notebook her father had left her. She looked for anomalies: missing inventory, unexplained absences, sudden influxes of cash.

By mid-afternoon, she stopped. She tapped her finger on a single page of the mechanic's log.

"Here," she said softly.

Vance leaned in. "Deacon. He’s our lead mechanic. He handles all the bike maintenance."

"Look at the armory logs," Leo instructed. "Two blocks of C4 went missing a week before the assassination. Deacon signed them out, claiming he needed to clear a rockslide on the northern smuggling route. But the northern route hasn't been used in months."

Vance’s fists clenched. "Deacon was the one who prepped Marcus's bike the morning he died."

"He planted the bomb," Leo concluded. "And he sold the route to Silas Reed."

"I'll kill him," Vance growled, turning toward the door. "I'll tear him apart with my bare hands."

"No," Leo commanded sharply. "If you kill him now, Silas will know we found the leak. We need to use Deacon against him."

She climbed down from her stool and walked over to Vance, looking up at the massive man. "We are going to feed Deacon a lie. We are going to tell the men that we have found my father's hidden weapons cache—a bunker filled with enough heavy artillery to wipe the Iron Jackals off the map. We will announce that we are riding out tonight to secure it."

Vance slowly began to understand. "Deacon will panic. He’ll try to warn Silas."

"Exactly," Leo smiled, a chilling expression on a child’s face. "He will send Silas the coordinates of the bunker to set up an ambush. But the coordinates won't lead to a bunker, Vance. They will lead to an old, abandoned steel mill. We will turn their ambush into a slaughter."