“Code?”
“Code,” he snarls. “So when I ask if youpumpkin’dAnthony Agosti, you know I’m actually asking if you slit that pumpkin’s pumpkin and set him up tolooklike he pumpkin’d himself.”
Felix releases a soft, vibrating chuckle. “Pumpkin’d. I like it. Especially since we typically carve those.”
“When I ask if you and your ballerina bestie 2.0 didsomethingduring your secret excursion on Saturday night, you’re going to tell me the truth. But you’ll say words likeyes, Archer, Soph and I snuck out to dance. And I didn’t tell you, because I know dancing and carving pumpkins is illegal.”
I glance past him to Aubree and search her bright blue eyes.
“You touched the file and told him?”
Archer grabs my jaw, lightning fast and just rough enough to hurt. “Pretty sure she figured it out the second she walked through our door. She hugged me, since we haven’t seen each other since her wedding. It’s possible I’ve been wrestling with thispumpkinsituation all fuckin’ day, knowing in my gut I was right, but hoping with everything in my heart I was wrong. You heard what she said a while back; she speaks fluent Malone. So…” He loosens his grip on my face, but that does nothing for the roll of muscle in his jaw. The fire in his eyes, and the pulse thundering against his neck. “We can talk right here, with an audience. Or you can walk with me through our pretty gardens while you tell me, in fine detail, why the hell you put yourself in a situation where carving a pumpkin was necessary.”
So we’re moving past the ‘removed my own stitches’ thing, then?
“I don’t like pumpkin,” Mia whisper-hisses, wrapping her arm over Cato’s shoulders. “It’s not very nice, is it?”
Fury beats in my veins, propelling me forward with surprising speed and allowing me a chance to tear the folder from Archer’s grip before he can think of stopping me. “You’re good with discussing my business in front of our guests now, huh? You’re fine with that?”
“Don’t put this on me,” he growls. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
“So you’re seriously going to stand there and ask mewhy?” I flip the folder open and snag whatever is at the top. Whoever. I turn the page and show him the ugly, rage-inducing, smarmy smile of a man three times my age. “He purchased a human being, Archer.”
“Minka—”
I slap his page down and grab another. “He purchasedtwoof them. The youngest is eight, and the oldest is thirteen. What could he possibly want with a child, if not to harm her? Why two? And why the age difference?”
“You don’t get to?—”
“Was the older one fornow, and the younger one for molding? For training? Would the thirteen-year-old face atrocities and inhumanity at this man’s hands, but also be expected to raise the other until she was whatever he wanted her to be?”
“The fact that youhavequestions is a problem! You pumpkin’d a man without collecting all the information!”
“I had the same information you now have.” I slap that guy’s page down and take another. “Sophia and I saved these girls from absolute horrors. We stepped in when the law would not.”
“How do you know the law wouldn’t? You didn’t even give it a chance! You didn’t bring this to me?—”
“Anthony was a powerful middle-aged man with friends the law won’t touch and a history proving this wasnothis first time transporting girls. He’s been investigated countless times over the last threedecades, coming close to prosecution onseveraloccasions, but with cops in his pockets and apparent immunity, he remains a free man. Lucky us,” I spit out. “He was so free, he could attendyourbrother’s wedding, and dragged his wife along like some kind of trophy to show off. She’s twenty-one, by the way. A baby. Worse,” I jam my finger against his chest and sneer as my rage bubbles over. As it grows and swells. Because I’ve kept this trapped inside my heart for days already. “You knew.”
“I knew what?”
“You knew what he was! You knew what he did. You knew, Archer! Which is why you did everything in your power to keep us away from each other. I’m not wrong,” I snarl. “And Sophia is not wrong. But the world is better off now that he’s gone.”
“Kinda badass,” Felix smirks. “Except for the part where you almost got us all pumpkin’d by Cordoza and his merry men. Oh, and the bit where Archer almost swam with the fish. Didn’t think that far ahead, Doc?”
“Archer stood beside CordozawhileAgosti’s veins emptied. He couldn’t have had a better alibi if he had stood in Times Square with two dozen federal judges and danced on live television.” I bring my fiery gaze back to Archer. “You were always safe, and I was always in control of the situation. I steered this exactly where I wanted it to go.”
“You think I care aboutmysafety?” So much for code. Archer throws his hand toward the sky. “You think I don’t have a hundred different escape routes already set up for us? I don’t care aboutme, Minka, and I don’t care about our names or our jobs or whatever other bullshit you think I should give a shit about. You walked into his hotel room! In the middle of the fuckin’ night. You had a knife and self-righteous vigilantism spurring you on. You’re lucky he didn’t snatch that blade and gut you instead.”
“Oh, please?—”
“You think you’re invincible! Like you can team up with your little dancing friend and nothing bad will ever happen. The fuck am I supposed to do when you go after someone else, but he’s faster than you? Stronger?Better! So instead of hearing abouthisdeath, I get the department shrink sitting me down andgentlytelling me my wife is swimming in her own blood and never coming home?”
“So the alternative is to do nothing?!” I tear another face out of the folder. “This guy is seventy years old, Archer! Explain it to me like I’m five, how the hell anyone can justify what he’s doing?”
“No one is justifying this! But you can’t be everyone’s hero.”
“No, but those seventeen girls we saved this week? I can be theirs.”
