Devil: Just thinking about you. Can't wait to see you tonight.
The words that used to make my heart flutter now feel like knives twisting in my chest. How can he text me these sweet things when he's been lying to me this entire time? When everything I thought I knew about him is a complete fabrication?
I pick up one of the documents with shaking hands. It's a duty roster, dated just two weeks ago. Officer D. David scheduled for an off-books meeting with Chief Harrison. A full-time police officer living a double life.
Tommy's words echo in my head, words I'd tried so hard to forget. "Your precious Devil isn't who you think he is, sweetheart. He's been playing you from the beginning."
I'd defended Devil. I'd screamed at Tommy that he was lying, that he was just trying to hurt me. But deep down, in a place I'd refused to acknowledge, I'd known something wasn't right. The way Devil sometimes seemed too clean, too put-together for someone who supposedly lived on the fringes. The way he'd show up at odd hours but never seemed to have club business that kept him away for long stretches. The way he always seemed to know things he shouldn't know.
Another document. A commendation letter. Officer David's dedication to undercover work has been exemplary. His infiltration of the Saint's Outlaws MC has provided invaluable intelligence.
Saint's Outlaws. Devil's club. My club, I'd thought. The family I'd been born into, but Devil had been welcomed into. He was trusted to lead the next generation.. All of it a lie. All of it part of an investigation.
I'm nothing but a case file to him. A way in. A useful girlfriend, then wife, who could get him closer to the club's inner workings.
The betrayal hits me like a physical blow, stealing the air from my lungs. I double over, clutching the papers to my chest, and let out a sound that's part sob, part scream. It echoes off the glass walls of the greenhouse, bouncing back at me like all the accusations I want to throw at him.
How could I have been so stupid? How could I have let myself fall for someone who was investigating the people who make up our family?
I force myself to look at more of the documents, even though each one feels like another nail in the coffin of what I thought we had. Reports filed under his real name. Intelligence gathered from "subject's girlfriend" and "MC associate." Clinical descriptions of higher level club meetings I'd gotten him into back when we first started dating, conversations I'd shared in confidence, moments I'd thought were private between us.
There's a photo of me in here. Me, walking into the clubhouse, completely unaware that I was being watched. Being documented. Being used.
My phone buzzes again.
Devil: Everything okay? You've been quiet.
I stare at the message, and something inside me snaps. The grief and betrayal transform into white-hot rage. I stand up so quickly that the documents scatter to the floor, floating down like the broken up pieces of my heart and soul.
"No!" I scream at the empty greenhouse. "Everything is not okay." My lip juts out, chin quivering.
I grab one of the empty planters and hurl it against the glass wall. It shatters with a satisfying crash, pieces of ceramic and soil exploding across the floor. But it's not enough. Nothing will ever be enough to express the fury burning through me.
"You lying piece of shit!" Another planter, another crash. "How could you do this to me?"
I'm sobbing now, ugly tears streaming down my face as I destroy everything in reach. Plants, tools, bags of soil, nothing is safe from my rage. Each broken thing makes the pain hurt slightly less, as if I'm giving it to them, instead of taking it within myself.
"I trusted you!" The words tear from my throat, raw and broken. "I loved you!"
The word 'loved' hangs in the air, past tense now. Because I wish whatever I felt for Devil, for Derrick, was dead. I wish it died the moment I opened that envelope. That it died with every lie he told me, every kiss that was just part of his cover, every time he held me while secretly filing reports about my life. But I'm in love with him, have been since we first met, and I can't turn it off, not as easily as he seemed to be able to lie to me.
I sink to my knees among the destruction, surrounded by dirt and broken pottery and the scattered remains of the life I thought I was building. The documents are still there, spread across the floor like evidence at a crime scene. Which, I suppose, they are. My body should be the fucking chalk outline.
My phone is buzzing constantly now. I crawl over to where I dropped it, glass crunching under my knees.
Devil: Dani, you're scaring me. What's wrong?
Devil: Please answer me
Devil: I'm coming to the greenhouse
"No," I whisper, then louder, "No!"
The last thing I need is him showing up here, seeing what I've discovered, trying to explain it away with more lies. I need time to think, to process, to figure out what the hell I'm going to do with this information.
But first, I need to let him know that I know. That his perfect little charade is over.
With shaking fingers, I type out a response.
