“Just my best friend.”And, oh shit.“Is she in danger now? We need to give her a heads-up. And before you ask, yes, I trust her. We’ve been friends for almost nine years.”
Ryder nodded, then requested I give Seraphina Hollis’s phone number. “I’ll handle it. No contact with anyone from here on outside of Trevor, though, got it?” he asked once I’d rattled off her number—one of the few I had memorized.
“Yeah, okay.” I nodded.
“But you really didn’t tell your mom about this?” He peeked at me in the rearview mirror, clearly surprised by that news.
“No. I’m still trying to forgive her for everything.”
My mom knew our father had been married when they’d had an affair. Four months into her pregnancy, she met my dad, who raised me as his own.
“You know I don’t hate her, right? I haven’t met her, but I, uh, don’t blame her for our dad walking out on my mom. He left them both,” Ryder said. Seraphina reached over and rested her hand on his leg in quiet support. “He’d have left us no matter what.”
I had no idea what to say to that. I hadn’t even known I’d been abandoned until this Thanksgiving, but Ryder had spent thirty-plus years living with it.
“I’m still sorry,” was all I could manage, my gaze falling to Chase’s little blinking dot as we kept moving farther and farther apart.
“You owe me no apologies. And, Audrey?” He stopped at a red light and looked back at me. “Does it make me fucked up that I’m gladDad cheated? You wouldn’t exist otherwise, and I wish I’d known you sooner—but at least I know you now.”
And that.
Right there.
Sent me into the deep.
Into the thick of it.
Into an avalanche of hope, believing everything truly happened as it was meant to, which meant everything would work out now. It had to.
Chapter Twenty
Audrey
From inside a private hangar at the Denver airport, my brother turned to face me, a worried expression crossing his face.
The secretary of defense must’ve pulled some strings to discreetly get us in here. No way would we have rolled through security with these guys armed to the teeth.
“Are you sure I can’t convince you to get on this plane with Seraphina?” Ryder asked.
I peeked around him to look at said plane, with the nameCostascrolled in billionaire black on its side, then found his eyes. “I’ve got a list of things I swore I’d never do. Want to guess what’s on it?”
He smirked. And yeah, we could smile right now. Because my son had FaceTimed me from Michael Maddox’s cabin ten minutes ago while we were waiting for this plane to pull into the hangar, and he was fine. We all were.
“I take it you’re going to tell me it has something to do with planes?” Ryder lifted his brows.
“More like private jets. They’re the real reason I never want to get rich. They feel like an obligatory purchase, along with a Birkin bag—two things I can live without.” I smirked. “Jumbo jets are way more my speed. I need something that looks like it could survive an attack.”
“So I shouldn’t let my soon-to-be wife on board, is what you’re saying?” He rested his hand on my shoulder and lightly squeezed. “What if I get you a bigger plane? One of those two-story ones. Will you leave then?”
I rolled my eyes.
“That’s what I thought. You’re not going anywhere until this mess is done. And I suppose size doesn’t really matter. At least, not always.”
“You sure you don’t want to go with us?” Seraphina joined the party in trying to get me to leave, too. “Come to New York with me. Keep me company while they take out the bad guys.” At her request, Ryder let go of me so she could take over, and he rejoined the rest of his team, along with the four men who’d been on the jet.
“What would you do if you were me?” I asked her once everyone was out of earshot.
“Truth?” she whispered.
