Then it’s Nicholas who speaks first. He leans in toward me, keeping his voice low.
“It would have been far too risky to clue you in to Frank’s involvement ahead of time,” Nicholas says. “Plus, I needed to see if you bought it. So I could judge whether Quinn and Teddy bought it too.”
They did buy it—I am sure. Quinn wasn’t focused on what her father knew. She was focused on her own safety. Her safety, and her family’s safety. She was subsumed by it. She and Teddy both were now.
It’s nice to not be alone in that—to not be alone in the rest of iteither. We will be okay now. Bailey and I both will. We will be okay, if we are careful.
“I just… I’m trying to understand…” I pause, trying to move myself closer to what’s getting to me. “Why would Frank move against his own family?”
“He doesn’t see it like that,” Nicholas says. “He’s shoring them up for the loopholes they seem to keep missing. The bad decisions they keep making. And he trusts that I’m not going to hurt his family, not without provocation. I’ve organized my life to avoid it. He’s just giving me the leverage to make sure they don’t hurt mine.”
I nod because I understand that part. I understand how he could convince himself he’s doing something else. But the part I don’t understand is what I feel in my gut—Quinn’s words pushing around in my head like a current. In my heart.
There’s always a cost.
“But what about you?” I say. “What happens to you now?”
“We’ve been through this,” he says. “You know what happens now.”
“That wasn’t my question. You heard my question. What happens toyounow, Nicholas?”
I turn and watch him, waiting for him to speak. If the answer is that he is coming with us, he would readily volunteer it. If it is that he is going back to Austin, he’d offer that up too. But he says nothing. He says nothing and keeps his eyes straight ahead as we turn into the parking lot, the car coming into view. Our car and the small police station and the road that will lead me out of here. That will lead me to Bailey. To Owen. The pounding in my jaw is worse though. Worse when it should be better.
“You don’t get out of this, do you?”
He doesn’t answer me. But I do the math anyway. I do the math on what is happening back at that party. Frank is walking his familythrough our delivery—the tablet, the documents—as if they need to walk through it. They all know that they don’t have a choice, not anymore. All of Nicholas’s family gets left alone, forever now—or Quinn and Teddy will seal their own fate as well.
Except for this. When they demand a price for this level of betrayal, Frank will echo that demand. He will demand Nicholas. And they’ll start going about it, all the ways they can try to get to him.
“I wouldn’t have agreed to this,” I say. “Not if I had known you’d be in danger.”
“Why do you think I didn’t tell you?”
He is trying to be light, but I don’t feel light. I feel heavy.
And I see it—the blood soaking through his shirt, the bandage beneath it, sticking to his neck and his skin.
“I’m serious, Nicholas.”
“Then be serious about the right part,” he says. “I walked out of there tonight because you insisted on coming with me. I owe you a thank-you for that.”
I put my hand on his arm, gently. I put my hand below the wound. “You shouldn’t be walking anywhere,” I say. “You need a doctor.”
Nicholas pulls the car keys out of his pocket, and hands them to me.
“What I need is for you to drive us,” he says. “Away from here.”
“What do you want me to tell Bailey?” I say.
We’re driving down the Moyenne Corniche, the winding road that will lead us toward Antibes. The world around us is stunning and quiet: the precipitous cliffs winding us past the historic Hotel Cap Estel, the Silva Maris Port—the Mediterranean Sea glistening as we move closer to where we’re going.
“She thinks you’re coming back to her…” I say. “She’s counting on you coming back to her.”
“So tell her I will be back,” he says. “One way or another.”
I turn and look at him. “I won’t lie to her…”
“Then tell her the truth.”
