Once they’re gone, I stare at the little pink unicorn on the floor for a few seconds before heading back into Briar’s room, finding nothing, and then following Liam back outside.
“So we’re kidnappers now?” Aidan asks when I slide wordlessly into the passenger seat. He’s now in the driver’s seat; Liam is in the back, the girl still asleep in his arms.
“You’re one to talk,” I shoot back, so not in the mood for anyone’s shit right now. I rip off my mask.
“Is it Briar’s?” Liam asks, and I feel his eyes on the back of my head, but I’m too busy scanning the street outside.
“It?” Aidan scolds, turning around in his seat to give our brother a disappointed look.
“The kid’s got to be Lily’s,” I say, with only half a mind on the conversation, too preoccupied thinking about the little dark-haired liar I have in the trunk.
“Are you sure?” Liam presses, looking down at the girl asleep in his lap.
“Briar doesn’t have a kid.”
“But what if…”
“Briar doesn’t have a kid,” I snap, and Liam wisely shuts his mouth.
A minute goes by and nobody speaks, and the car doesn’t move either.
“Drive,” I growl out, and Aidan makes a show of putting the SUV into gear.
“Where?” he asks me.
“The warehouses.” I turn back to Briar’s building, throwing one last glance up at her window. The same one I’ve watched her through too many times now to count. It’s dark inside. “It’s time to get some fucking answers.”
68
LITTLE TRAITOR
KOEN
It’squiet now in the interrogation lockers at the warehouse.
There had been a flurry of activity when we first arrived, our guys unloading the last of the shipment Giovanni and the Volkov had hoped to intercept earlier today—or well, yesterday now, seeing as it’s a little after four in the morning.
Liam and Aidan have the kid we took from Briar’s apartment back in Aidan’s office. The child stayed asleep on the drive out and is now curled up on the couch next to Rory, who Aidan insisted we pick up on our way out of Boston. After what the Volkov tried with Liam, he wasn’t leaving the city without her.
I took over driving from Aidan. Still sleepy-eyed, Rory climbed into the back of the SUV without a word, even when she saw the kid asleep on Liam’s lap. She just gave Aidan a questioning look before falling back asleep on his shoulder before we even hit the highway.
Lily managed to evade Mac and Alex, turning back up at the apartment with a car shortly after we left. She led them on a brief chase through the city before they backed off, not wanting her to get hurt on our account. Mac’s working on trying to track the car, or her phone, as we speak.
I lean my back against the cold cement wall in one of the lockers and wait.My jaw is clenched so tightly it aches.I haven’t left this spot since I brought Briar down here, limp and unconscious in my arms. She hangs from the ceiling by her wrists, just high enough so her toes barely scrape the concrete below.
I want to see her break. I want to see the fear in her eyes when she finally realizes the consequences of her betrayal.
She lied to me.
She’s been working for Giovanni this entire time, and has likely betrayed me in ways I don’t even know about yet. And tonight,she nearly cost me my brother.
My chin lifts as the chains overhead clink softly as Briar stirs.
Her eyes are still closed, and she’s gagged—a thick cloth in her mouth to keep her quiet—but it doesn’t stop the small whimper that escapes as she begins to wake. Briar’s body trembles slightly, a shiver running through her, reacting to the cold before fully coming to.
She’s wearing what she had on when I took her, but it’s not doing her any favors. An old, ripped, cut-off t-shirt that exposes her stomach, with a black sports bra visible underneath, along with a pair of black leggings and leg warmers that have fallen down over a pair of worn sneakers. She must have changed back into her warm-up clothes before fleeing the theater.
I’m still angry with myself, because Ishouldhave stripped her. That’s protocol after all; every person we bring back here for questioning ends up naked, exposed, and humiliated. It serves a purpose: access, control,fear.
