Chapter 35
Quinn
Ican’t believe I have a desk. I’m with Maddie and Lily in an office on the opposite side of the corridor from the one Reid shares with his brothers. We arrived late after Reid took extra special care of me in the shower, and we have to leave in an hour for my doctor’s appointment.
I’m sitting at a small meeting table, small enough for Maddie to reach over and give my hand a squeeze. “Are you worried about the ultrasound?” she asks when she catches me checking my watch.
“No. I mean, yeah. Obviously, I want to know that the baby hasn’t been affected by everything that happened,” I explain. I’d been checked over after returning from the compound, but I don’t take anything for granted. “It’s just that I’ve been at home for weeks, and I feel guilty about turning up here, only to disappear again.”
“A bit like the last time you were here,” Lily says with a smirk that gets wiped off her face when Maddie glares at her. “What? Too soon?”
“I think you’ve been around Mace too long,” Maddie says.
“That man is a bad influence on me,” Lily agrees, then turns to me. “Sorry.”
I surprise myself by laughing. “If you’re able to joke about what I did, it actually makes me feel better.”
Maddie shrugs. “It was some trick you pulled, and I thought I was the only crazy one. I suppose we’ve all got to be a little bit crazy to marry a Griffin.”
Lily clears her throat and points with her eyes to me. I laugh again. “We haven’t talked about marriage yet, but I think I’d prefer to wait until after the baby’s born.”
I smooth my hand over the desk, touching wood. So many assumptions wrapped up in one sentence. I might be healing, but I’m still reluctant to look too far into the future. I’m content to survive one day at a time.
“Back to business,” I say, aware I have to leave soon. “My specialty is project management, so if you have work for me, I’m in.” I flick through some of the files Maddie’s been showing me. “How many women are you trying to help?”
“Eighteen from the raid on Ilya’s compound alone,” Maddie says.
“And there’s notryingto help,” Lily adds. “We give all the women who get referred to us the means to rebuild their lives. We’re also creating a support network so there’s continued aftercare, such as treatment for addictions, trauma therapy, that sort of thing.”
“The things my sister would have needed. I just wasn’t enough to save her on my own.”
Lily twists her coffee cup in her hand. “When I lost my brother, I saw it as my failing too, but he was an adult, and so was Blake. We’re not responsible for their deaths, just like we weren’t responsible for every decision they ever made.”
“I know you’re right,” I reply, wishing it were that easy to let go of my guilt. “And I’m sorry about your brother. I didn’t know.”
“I lost my brother too,” Maddie adds. She clears her throat. “In fairness, he didn’t die soon enough, but that’s another story.”
“And one we don’t need to get into now,” Lily says as she looks through the offices to where Reid and his brothers have been gathered around their conference table. “I think something’s wrong.”
My chest constricts when I see Reid’s stricken features. His hand covers his mouth as he stands. Ash gets up to put a brotherly hand on his shoulder, but Reid’s already moving in my direction. I race out to the corridor to meet him.
I’ve witnessed enough horrors to know that whatever has drained the color from Reid’s face is going to be bad. “Just tell me.”
“You should sit down,” he says, taking my elbow. “We’ll find an empty office.”
I shrug him off. “Tell me now.”
His Adam’s apple bobs up and down. “The feds recovered a lot of bodies in and around Ilya’s compound, and not just the men who died that night,” he begins. “The explosions exposed a number of graves.”
“They found Blake.” I say it as a statement of fact. Why else would Reid need me to sit down?
He puts his hands on my hips, holding me steady as I fight to stay upright. Blake’s dead. She’s not coming back.
I realize in that moment that I’d been clinging to one last, desperate hope that Ilya’s last move was another mindfuck – that maybe he’d sold her like he did so many others, and he didn’t want me distracted with another endless search.
“It’ll be a while before they can identify her officially,” Reid says. “They’re relying on DNA records and they won’t have yours on file to make the link.”
“But you do?”
