I cast a look askance at him. “Are you offering to be my guard?”
Beau shook his head. “Nothing so honorable. I hate having to clean up blood before training in the morning.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
KEY
Ethan expected us because he’d been told to expect us. Also, Helia’s fucking little art buddy was high the night we killed him. Which took away from the experience, really., and not at all in a good way.
Kash sat next to me across a desk from Helia’s father. To anyone else it might look as though we were simply having a conversation with the sire of the woman we were dating. In a way, we were. This man had been watching us for much longer than we’d seen him. The only difference in this scenario to the former were the guns pressed to the backs of our heads.
I understood why Helia’s art buddy behaved the way he did. I even understood more about Helia, and that I'd been wrong to treat her so harshly. My own fault; I’d seen a stalker where there both was one and also no threat at all. Helia did love us and was ours. If we had a Helia to return to. If our lives were our own after this night.
While I might not be able to forgive another man, I hoped that she would be able to forgive me for how I had treated her. For how we both had.
“Do you understand that the Laurent family fortune was simply never meant to go to a pair of what were then pimply teens?” The man before us laughed. A horrible laugh that I wanted to locate and stuff down his throat until he choked on his own organs and made new sounds. Pleasing ones as breath left his body.
I smiled and leaned forward. “Do you understand that your daughter has the genes of a natural killer?”
That earned me a solid thud across the back of my head with the handgun that had dug a hole into the back of my skull for the past twenty minutes. I shook my head as my vision blurred and spat blood onto the desk before me.
“Don’t talk ill of those not here right now,” Helia’s father spat at me. “She doesn’t want to be with either of you. It was my idea to set her in your path. My idea to ensure that you wanted her. My idea?—”
“She’s been ours for much longer than you’ve been playing games, old man.” Kash ducked the first swipe with the gun but collected the second across the top of his head. He slumped forward with a groan.
“Fuck you, asshole.” I launched forward, intent on ending the man’s life before mine was snuffed out.
An alarmed noise came from his mouth but the order never arrived.
“Down, boys.” A new, smooth voice echoed across the office area inside the warehouse. “Leave us for a few, would you? Do feel free to come back and check on him.” Helia strode into her father’s office holding a blade.
The blade was strapped to her throat last night.
“How did you get free?”Who do I need to kill?
Her eyes met mine. “Mr Bennett helped me out. He was most useful in cutting me free without touching my skin, or my bodyin any way.” Her lips curled upward. “He’s outside now, securing the ground area.”
She could call it the perimeter but we’d work on that later.
“Good girl,” I murmured. “I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you, Key,” she murmured and I swore sheglowed.
“What are you doing here? You should be at Rippton,” her father blustered.
“Where you pay me to go so I don't have to think or look at the family business too hard?” Helia lifted a hand that held a handgun of her own. “Are you being serious? I stop watching for a few minutes and everything goes to hell. Why kill my friends?"
“He wasn’t your friend.” Kash levered himself up. “Your art buddy was a plant from your father. Paid to follow you around. I think he wanted you to date him. Paid him in tech and cash. I have trails. I never could understand the why and stay here if you were making that much but sure, whatever, anyway when I broke into his room,. He didn't object. I tortured him and he barely moved. Never screamed. Said he expected two of us. We expected. He knew there would be two, Helia.”
She nodded. “Okay, so what do we do? What now? We know that he sent someone to die. You two kill people all the time. Should I care?”
I watched her, smiling. “Perhaps not. Are we forgiven?”
She tipped her head back. Are you forgiving of me?”
My heart propounded in my chest. I might be able to work on that.”
Her check pressed to my chest was the perfect answer. “Alright. Let’s go?—”
