“Who could blame her?” I point out. This is hardly an everyday occurrence.
“Have you tried calling Selina again?” he asks.
“I’m already way ahead of you.” Nick holds his phone to his ear, staring at the floor while he waits. He’s wasting his time. I’ve already tried to call her, but her phone is off. Convenient.
“She didn’t only cut the power,” I remind them on my way to the bedroom to change into something less blood-covered. “She tipped Donovan off about the stairway. That’s the only way they could’ve known about it.” And it makes me sick. How could she? After everything we went through together.
“What could he offer her that she would turn her back on us?”
“Vengeance, I’m guessing.”
“Vengeance for what?” Ethan calls out from the other room. Nick’s muffled voice tells me he’s explaining things. Good. I don’t feel like going through it again.
She betrayed me. She betrayed everything—the years we spent relying on each other, working together, us against the world. In the end, none of it mattered. I always knew she had an unreasonable amount of animosity toward Aurora. I never imagined she would take it this far. Maybe I just didn’t want to.
He might not know it yet, but he’s a dead man living on borrowed time. I’ll rip out his beating heart with my bare hands after what he’s done. I’ll hold it up in front of his face and force him to watch it beat its last. Nobody does this to me and lives to tell about it.
“Hey. Whose phone is this?” Nick’s question makes me step out of the bedroom, halfway through buttoning up a fresh black shirt.
“Where did you find it?” I ask as he comes down the hall, holding the phone in his hand.
“In the closet, just inside the panel.”
I take it and open it—there are no security measures, no PIN or Face ID needed. Only one string of texts exists, the last message being sent almost immediately before the lights went out.
“Fucking Christ.” The truth hits me like a wrecking ball as I skim the messages from today, detailing what he needed from her. “How the fuck did he get her a phone?”
The three of us watch the video clip together. My pulse pounds harder with every second that passes.
“Selina must have recorded the meeting,” Ethan murmurs.
And she sent it to Aurora. Aurora, who had this phone for days and kept it from me. The first message came through the day of the meeting, in fact. Earlier that morning, according to the timestamp. But how?
I can think about that later. The content of the messages Donovan sent her is more than enough to occupy my brain. He manipulated her like the sick bastard he is. “Her mother?” I whisper. “Do we know anything about her?”
“Dominique? Died in childbirth,” Ethan confirms.
“Or so everyone was supposed to think,” Nick muses, skimming the messages along with me.
The big picture is taking shape, and it’s ugly. But it’s nothing beyond what I’ve always known Donovan was capable of. “It doesn’t matter whether she’s alive or not,” I point out. “He made Aurora believe she is, and that’s enough. That, plus the video clip?” His own daughter. There’s no low he won’t sink to.
“And he has her now,” Nick murmurs. We exchange a look that tells me he is as troubled by all of this as I am.
“He has to,” I agree with a sick feeling in my stomach. “He took her, or his men did. He’s fucking dead.” What is he doing to her as we speak?
“How far did we get with the real estate records?” Ethan asks Nick.
“Forget the records.” Handing the phone to Nick, I pull out my own phone. The adrenaline pumping through my veins makes it a challenge to stand still, much less think clearly, but that’s what I need to do now. I have to think clearly. She thought she was doing the only thing she could. Helping him if it meant finding her mom. There’s nothing more fundamental than that, and he fucking knew it.
“You’re going to take this the wrong way,” Ethan sighs. “But is it worth it? Maybe we let this go. She brought this on herself.”
One look from me snaps his mouth shut in a hurry. “Do yourself a favor and never let me hear you say anything like that again, Pretty Boy, or we’ll have to change your nickname. He used her the way he always has. Dangled her mom in front of her. He made sure she knew about the deal with Gabriel.”
I see her in my head as a puppet, with Donovan holding the strings. She only thought she was in control of the moves she made. Just like I’m sure Selina believed she was making her own decision to betray me and the rest of the team and everything we stood for.
It hits me as I pull up the app. I’m willing to forgive one of them, but not the other. She fucking knew better. Every time Selina betrayed me, she made the choice to do it.
“Here.” It takes countless, teeth-grinding moments, but finally a blue light blinks on the map. “Where the fuck is this location?”
