I get to my feet and pace, knowing Wylder is doing the same on the other side of the wall.
There’s no good answer. I can’t deal with this alone. It can’t wait until morning, either. Umbra is clearly building a dossier on the Buckinghams for a reason. We can’t let whatever they have planned just unfold.
Taking a deep breath, I pick up my laptop. Moments later, I’m slipping into Wylder’s room.
He freezes instantly. “You came.”
There’s such elation in his voice that it takes my breath away. He thinks I’m here to sneak into his bed. Or to perhaps unleash some mayhem.
But what I’m about to unleash is far worse.
“Don’t freak out,” I warn him, “but I found something you need to see.”
His brows shoot up. “You hacked the servers?”
My head bobs. I hold the laptop to my chest. “I found something big.”
“Show me.”
There’s a wildness in his eyes that unsettles me. This isn’t the cool and collected man who took charge last time Umbra appeared. No, this is someone who has been pushed to the brink.
I know there’s a monster lurking under Wylder’s skin, a part of himself that he tries desperately to keep hidden. With my antics over the past few months, it’s closer to the surface than ever before.
I’d thought that by stopping, everything would go back to how it was when I first arrived. But I was wrong. His behavior since our date proves that.
What if what I’m about to show him pushes him over the edge?
If it were just me who’d bear the brunt of it, I wouldn’t care. But this isn’t about me. It’s not even about him. It’s about all of us. The Firm. The Buckinghams. His family.
We’re all at risk. We don’t need a crazy, out-of-control version of Wylder right now. We need the level-headed version, the one who can find us a way out of this shit-pit without losing any of us.
“Show me,” Wylder barks again. His temper is so high it’s almost palpable in the air.
With shaking hands, I hold out the laptop.
He puts it on the desk and opens the lid. The screen is reflected in his glasses, showing me every awful thing that crosses his field of vision.
When he gets to a photo of us on our date, he stops scrolling. His whole body starts to tremble as he zooms in on our joined handsbefore moving up to my face. I’m smiling at him in a way that’s so obvious, I wonder if he can see it.
If he’s suddenly realized the true reason for my distance.
He doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t move. Just stares unblinkingly at my smiling face on the screen.
“Wylder?”
There’s no response.
I repeat his name, moving close and putting my hand on his back, right between his shoulder blades. Despite his stillness, his heart is thundering beneath my palm.
Wylder is not calm.
Far from it.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “Now that we know, we can fix it. That’s what you guys do, right? You’re The Firm. You can fix anything.”
“No, we can’t,” he says hollowly. “If that were true, then these photos wouldn’t exist. I’ve failed. I’ve failed you all.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. These photos don’t prove that.”
