We discuss this while hidden in a closet with no CCTV camera tracking the door, sharing sweet kisses and soft touches.
“If you leave, he’ll kill you,” Aerin murmurs against my lips. “I couldn’t cope with that.”
“If I stay, I’ll be without you and I can’t cope with that.”
She runs her fingers down my cheek and leans back, studying my face. “I could insist you come with me?”
“How long until the Irish get sick of me?” I pull her closer, and our noses brush gently together. “We could run away together.”
“A life on the run.” Her face tilts and her lips brush against the tip of my nose. “That’s not a life either of us deserve. No…I think I have a plan?”
I jerk back, worry coiling in my gut. “A plan?”
She laughs softly, caressing my cheek once more. “Don’t worry, it’s not anything terrible. I’m just…” Her breath trembles past her lips. “I’m going to be honest with my father and put my foot down. I understand the importance of this deal, especially with how sick he’s been lately, but I’m not a piece of meat to be carted around and given away like some festive ham.”
A snort of amusement escapes me. “A cute festive ham.”
“Shut up,” Aerin whines, pressing her other hand into my ribs. “I’m serious.”
“I know. I know you are.” The woman I met all those months ago who threw a tantrum at my presence is gone. The one who stands before me now is stronger, carved by her survival and everything she’s been through since we met. She knows her worth, and it’s damn sexy.
“I just…need to find a way to make him listen.” She sighs deeply and leans up, pecking my lips. “I better go. Mom’s got a bunch of hair stylists here today to practice on my head.” Her eyes roll, and she swiftly kisses me again before vanishing from the closet.
I close my eyes and focus on the sound of her retreating footsteps, tracking each one until there’s only silence left. With my coat in hand, I exit with an excuse on my tongue for anyone who catches me, but luckily there’s no one there.
While a circus of hairstylists, makeup artists, and musicians swarm Aerin for the next couple of days, the fact that she remains in the estate gives me time to reach out to Rex and Bullet, having left their messages properly unanswered for at least a week. I send both coded messages from my personal phone and wait for their responses.
Two days later, a little before dinner, Rex texts me back.
911.
Excusing myself from the dining room after escorting Aerin inside, I hurry out into the garden and don’t stop walking until I’m beside the pouring fountain that will hide my words from any prying ears. Then I call him.
“Falco?” Rex’s voice drifts over the phone with a stifled yawn.
“Who else?”
“You dropped off the face of the earth for a few days. We worried you’d been taken out.”
“No. I was…” My thoughts drift back to that night with Aerin. “Processing.”
“You good?”
“Honestly?”
“Sure.”
“No. But the sooner I get the fucker doing this, the better.”
“We have something. It took a lot of digging through Pidge’s laptop because whoever wiped it did a really good job, but we were able to find a hidden file tucked in a pixel of the desktop.”
I’m already lost. Tech like this is beyond me.
“In it, we found everything we think he wanted to tell you. Two of the men from the cabin were from the same street gang. They’d been members at different times before each branched out to mercenary work, but they kept in touch.”
“Explains how they ended up working together,” I murmur. “What else?”
“After tracking down the gang, we found that all the remaining members had been killed.”
