Chapter 28: Blood Doesn’t Forget
Chapter 28
Reaper was already moving, radio pressed to his mouth, voice hard as flint.
"All units, north service gate, now. I want that truck found before it hits the highway."
"He’s got a twelve-minute head start," Ghost warned, jogging to keep pace as they sprinted for the bikes. "If he’s smart, he’s already off the main roads."
"He’s a Kane," Reaper said grimly, swinging his leg over his Road King. "Smart’s the one thing I never doubted about him."
Rowe mounted her own bike, adrenaline burning through the exhaustion that had settled deep in her bones over the past twenty-four sleepless hours.
Piper appeared at her side, still in the borrowed jacket, wrists reddened from the zip ties Lila had used, but her eyes were sharp now, calculating.
"I know where he’s going," Piper said.
Reaper’s head snapped toward her.
"How."
"Because if I were him—if I’d spent twenty years building a perfect cover, and it just got blown apart in a single morning—I wouldn’t run toward the highway where every camera and cop in three counties could clock a fleeing vehicle."
Piper’s jaw tightened.
"I’d run toward the one place that still belongs to my family by legal right, whether anyone else in this club has ever acknowledged it or not."
"The homestead," Rowe breathed. "But it’s already burned."
"The land isn’t," Piper said. "If Doc really is Elias’s son, that deed we found in the cellar doesn’t just implicate your father, Jax. It’s his inheritance, too. Maybe more legitimately than either of you, since he’s a direct son instead of a grandson through a hidden line. If he’s got the original ledgers now, and he goes to file some kind of legal claim before anyone can stop him—"
"He doesn’t need the club anymore," Reaper finished, understanding crashing over his face like cold water. "He’s not running from us. He’s running to a lawyer, or a courthouse, or anyone with the authority to make his claim over this land official before we can contest it."
"Which means he’s not planning on hiding at all," Rowe said. "He’s planning on winning. Publicly. Legally. In a way that makes shooting him or dragging him back here look exactly like what it would be—the Iron Reapers silencing a legitimate heir to protect stolen land."
The full shape of the trap became horribly clear all at once.
"He’s smarter than Lila. Smarter than Coyote," Reaper said. "He’s been playing the longest game of anyone in this entire mess, and he just made his final move while we were busy chasing traitors he probably fed to us on purpose, to keep us distracted."
"Then we get ahead of him," Rowe said. "Not with guns. With paper. If there’s a lawyer in this county who can file a claim, there’s a lawyer who can also tell us if there’s a way to contest it, delay it, or negotiate before it ever reaches a judge."
Reaper was already reaching for his phone, dialing the retired attorney he’d mentioned hours earlier at the gas station lot, the one who’d done work for the club decades back.
The call connected on the second ring, gruff and sleep-roughened on the other end.
"Frank. It’s Kane. I need you awake and in your office in twenty minutes. Bring everything you know about land grants, trust law, and how fast a man can file an emergency claim on disputed property."
A pause.
"Yeah. It’s exactly as bad as it sounds."
They split into two teams.
Ghost and Viper rode hard for the county courthouse to watch for any filing the moment the building opened.
Reaper and Rowe headed for Frank’s small office on the edge of town, with Piper riding close behind, the three of them racing the sunrise and a forty-year-old lie all at once.
Frank turned out to be a stooped, sharp-eyed man in his seventies, sharp despite the early hour, who listened to the frantic, tangled explanation of Kane brothers and hidden deeds and murdered patriarchs with the weary patience of a man who’d clearly heard worse from this particular club over the decades.
"If this deed’s authentic," Frank said finally, studying the photographed pages Rowe had captured on her phone before they’d left the cellar, "and if there’s no subsequent legal transfer on record, then yes—technically, legally, the land reverts to Elias Kane’s direct descendants."
He looked up.
"Doesn’t matter how many decades the club’s operated on it. Possession isn’t the same as a clear title, and courts care about title."
"So he could win," Reaper said hollowly.
"He could win big," Frank confirmed. "Especially if he’s got documentation nobody else can produce. Especially if he files claiming the club’s leadership knew about the fraudulent title and covered it up anyway."
He folded his hands.
"That’s not just a property dispute at that point. That’s fraud, conspiracy, maybe worse, depending on how the murder ties in."
"Then we need proof of our own," Rowe said.
"Proof that Cal Callahan was also Elias’s son. Proof that there’s more than one legitimate heir here, which means Doc doesn’t get to walk in and claim everything alone."
Frank’s eyebrows rose.
"You have documentation of that?"
Rowe glanced at Reaper, then at Piper.
"The genealogy chart. In the ledger Piper showed us. And a DNA test confirming Raven and I are sisters, which means if we can also test against Elias’s line—"
"If Doc really is Elias’s son," Piper said slowly, "his DNA is sitting in Doc’s own medical files. Every member of this club who’s ever had bloodwork done through the compound clinic has a sample on record. Including him."
"That’s not admissible without a warrant," Frank warned. "But it might be enough to at least slow things down. Force a paternity dispute instead of a clean claim."
He nodded once.
"Buy you time to negotiate instead of losing everything in a single ruling."
Reaper’s phone buzzed sharply against the desk.
He answered immediately.
Ghost’s voice was tight and urgent on the other end.
"Prez. He’s here. Doc’s here at the courthouse. Just walked in with a briefcase and a lawyer of his own."
A pause.
Heavy with dread.
"Prez, he’s not filing a property claim."
"Then what the hell is he doing?" Reaper demanded.
Ghost’s voice dropped lower, grim.
"He’s filing for guardianship. Emergency custody petition."
"Prez, he’s claiming Elena’s incompetent to make medical decisions for herself right now, and that as her only living relative through the Kane bloodline—since apparently that makes him family to Rowe too, somehow, if the paternity claim holds—he’s petitioning the court to be granted authority over her care."
Rowe’s blood turned to ice.
"He’s not after the land," she said slowly, horror dawning with sickening clarity.
"Not first, anyway."
"He’s going after my mother."
"If he gets guardianship, he gets access. Control. The ability to move her, medicate her, silence her testimony entirely under the guise of medical authority—"
"And nobody can stop him," Reaper finished grimly, "because on paper, thanks to a lie forty years in the making, he might actually have the legal right to try."
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