Chapter 345: Payment Due

Lucas opened his eyes slowly.

Morning light cut softly across the room. For a second he only registered warmth, bare skin, and the quiet of a house that no longer felt like it was under attack. Then he turned his head and found Rechelle already awake beside him.

She was trying very hard not to look directly at him.

The moment their eyes almost met, she glanced away, cheeks already warming. Lucas watched the shift with quiet amusement, still half-sunk into the pillow.

"Good morning," he said.

The sound of his voice made it worse.

Rechelle’s face went a deeper red. She sat up quickly, clutching at nothing in particular, as if movement itself could save her from the memory of the night before.

"Good morning," she answered, already swinging her legs off the bed.

She stood up naked.

No robe. No sheet. Just soft skin and the full, heavy shape of her body in daylight. Lucas’s gaze dropped without effort as she walked toward the door. Her ass moved with every step ~ thick, smooth, swaying left and right in a slow natural rhythm that made the exit look far more deliberate than she intended. She opened the door and slipped out, clearly trying to escape the room before her embarrassment finished killing her.

Lucas stayed on the bed a moment longer, still smiling to himself.

Outside, Rechelle was in full retreat mode.

She could not stand being near him yet. Not after the way she had opened up for him the night before ~ loud, desperate, shameless. Every memory landed hotter than the last. The riding. The way she had clung to him. The mess she had made on the floor. Heat climbed her neck all over again just from thinking about it.

So she did the only useful thing her nerves would allow.

She cooked.

By the time Lucas finished freshening up and opened the bedroom door, the smell of food had already filled the hallway. He stepped out ~ and stopped.

Rechelle stood there with a tray in both hands.

Bacon. Eggs. Hash browns. Still warm. She had clearly been standing there for a short while, working up the courage to knock or enter, only to get caught the second the door opened.

For a second she just stared at him, frozen.

Lucas looked from her face to the tray, mildly surprised.

"You cooked?"

Rechelle’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again.

"...Yes."

That was all she managed.

Lucas’s expression softened. He stepped forward and took the tray from her hands before she could drop it out of pure nerves.

"Come on," he said. "We’ll eat."

They went back to the bed.

Rechelle sat carefully, still only half-dressed at best, still avoiding full eye contact while Lucas set the food between them. The first few bites happened in near silence. The awkwardness was thick, but not ugly ~ just charged, warm, full of everything they had done and not yet talked about.

Lucas ate calmly.

Rechelle picked at her food like a woman performing normal behavior under pressure.

She had one question sitting heavy on her tongue.

She wanted to ask it.

She just could not make her mouth cooperate yet.

Rechelle finally forced the question out.

"Are you planning on leaving Westhaven soon?"

The words left her carefully, but not carefully enough to hide what sat underneath them. Lucas heard the fear immediately. It was not small talk. It was the sound of a woman measuring how long safety would last.

He looked at her and smiled.

"Do you want me to stay?"

Rechelle’s face tightened at once. She recognized the mild tease in his tone and tried to recover her composure before it slipped completely.

"I mean... if you want to stay, you can stay."

It was a weak cover and they both knew it.

Lucas was about to answer when she spoke again, faster this time, like the real thought had broken free before she could dress it up.

"I don’t feel safe in this mansion alone. I need someone to protect me."

The honesty landed between them with more weight than the food on the tray. For a moment Rechelle kept her eyes on her plate, as if looking directly at him would make the admission worse. The night before had stripped her body bare. This stripped something else.

Lucas’s expression settled into something calmer and more serious.

"I’m still here," he said. "And before I leave, I’ll take care of that ex of yours."

Rechelle’s shoulders eased almost at once.

The relief was quiet but visible. She nodded once, grateful in a way she did not fully put into words, and the tension around the breakfast tray softened. They continued eating, the earlier awkwardness still present, but no longer sharp enough to keep her silent. For the first time since waking, she looked like she could breathe properly again.

---

Meanwhile, Aaron had not slept since the night before.

The calls started early and never really stopped. First one number. Then another. Then the same voices cycling through different phones, each less patient than the last. The gangs he owed were done waiting. What made it worse was the truth he kept trying not to face: this had not been his first attempt on Rechelle.

There had been others.

Wrong locations. Bad timing. Near misses that turned into complete failures. Once or twice she had simply not been where his people expected her to be. And then there was the last disaster ~ the one where some unknown bastard stepped in and tore the whole plan apart. Every failure had cost money. Every failure had deepened the debt. Some of the men he borrowed from were people he could still name. Others had already blurred together in his memory, just voices and threats and amounts that kept growing.

They did not want stories anymore.

They wanted payment.

Aaron’s new obsession sat under all of it: find the man who saved Rechelle. Track him. Break him. Use him if possible. Make someone else bleed for the mess. Through the night he drank, paced, muttered to himself, and let the phone keep ringing until the sound became background noise. Eventually he put the device on Do Not Disturb and collapsed into a half-drunk sleep while, across the city, Rechelle spent the same hours safe and tangled up with the very man he wanted to destroy.

Morning did not bring relief.

By then the Dirty Saints had already made up their minds. They had called. They had waited. They had given him enough chances for a man in his position. From where they stood, Aaron was no longer struggling to pay. He was playing them.

He was still asleep when the first impact hit the door.

BOOM.

Aaron jerked halfway up, mind thick with alcohol and exhaustion.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

The whole frame shook. Somewhere in his brain the truth arrived late and useless: they had tracked him to the Airbnb.

Then the final hit came harder than the rest.

CRACK.

The door gave way.