Page 8 of Tank's Temptation

TESSA

The cloud folder waits behind the password box while Tank stands on the other side of the bed, close enough to reach the laptop but making no move toward it. The room still feels full of him. His shirt against my skin, his mouth on mine, the hard heat of his thigh between my legs before he tore himself away.

The door remains locked, but I keep seeing the moment he stopped because that lock gave him power over me and he wasn’t going to use it that way.

“Once I open this, you have everything Harlan wants. I’m trusting the man who dragged me here not to hand it over.”

“You have my word.”

It shouldn’t matter. He’s a criminal biker keeping me here because another criminal paid his club. I enter the password with slightly shaking hands.

The previews load row by row. Daniel Morrow stands in the stripped Rivermark ballroom with a leather folder beneath one arm while Harlan faces him mid-argument. In the next frame, Harlan reaches beneath his jacket. Then the gun appears, his arm rises and the muzzle flashes. Morrow folds at the knees. Thesequence ends with Harlan looking toward the gallery while one of his men points directly at me.

There is no blur and no doubt. Harlan’s face, the gun, the shot, the timestamp and location are all there.

Tank’s expression empties. “What does Harlan know about the upload?”

“Nothing, just that I had a camera and he probably realizes I saw the whole thing.” I take the camera from my bag. “The full-resolution files are on here too.”

He takes the memory card and tries very hard not to touch me as he does it. Somehow, the care makes me more aware of him than contact would.

His phone rings, Harlan’s name filling the screen. Tank meets my eyes, answers and taps the speaker icon so I can hear everything. “Talk.”

“Kane told me you have her and the camera. Do you have the password?” Harlan asks.

Tank’s gaze remains on the murder sequence. “I have the photographs.”

Silence stretches down the line. “Photographs?” he replies, convincing no one of his surprise.

“You told Kane she and Morrow stole financial records. These photographs here show you shooting him.”

Harlan recovers quickly. “They show the end of an argument you know nothing about. Morrow was stealing from me. He threatened my life, and I defended myself.”

Tank looks at the frame before the gun appears. Morrow’s hands are visible, one gripping the folder and the other empty. “He wasn’t armed. The sequence starts before you draw.”

“I didn’t hire Kingdom Come to judge my business. I hired you to recover and hold the woman who took it.”

“She wasn’t working with Morrow, and her demand for money was fabricated by you.”

Harlan’s voice hardens. “King, your old president understood how this worked. He took the money, finished the job and didn’t go digging through whatever a client wanted buried.”

“King is dead.”

“And Kane’s turning the club weak. I was told you hadn’t changed with him, that you were still one of King’s men.” Tank says nothing, but Harlan takes the silence for agreement. “Wipe the card, the laptop and every cloud copy. Then kill her and dispose of the body somewhere it won’t wash up.”

Hearing my death reduced to a final instruction is different from imagining it. Tank looks at me, and something in his expression shifts. Not softer or safer, but more dangerous than anything I’ve seen from him.

“The agreement was a hold,” he says.

“The agreement changed. She’s a confirmed witness now. Handle it, Tank, unless Kane has cut your balls off with the rest of the club.”

Tank ends the call, crosses to the door and turns the lock. Music and low voices spill into the room as he opens it wide, then returns my camera and memory card before stepping away from both.

“You’re not my captive anymore.”

I stare at the open doorway. “That’s it? You believed him less than ten minutes ago.”

“I was wrong. He lied to us.”