“In the office with Briggs.” She sighs. “As soon as word came in, they freaked and practically shoved me out.”
“I’ll talk to them.” I glance over her shoulder and give a subtle nod to her security. They close in around her before she can protest.
“Tread lightly.” She warns. “River looked ready to kill someone.”
I take the stairs two at a time. The music fades into a low pulse behind me. Upstairs, the office door is open. River is pacing back and forth, tension etched into every step. And Briggs, our right hand man and childhood bestfriend, is leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, looking lost in thought.
I step in and shut the door behind me.
“Where the fuck have you been?” River asks, his dark eyes skimming over the fresh cuts on my face. “And why the hell haven’t you been answering your phone?”
“I was occupied.”
River’s eyes narrow. “You don’t happen to know anything about the bodies we found outside, do you?”
I shrug, crossing the room and dropping onto the leather couch. “Should I?”
River stops pacing and turns to face me, his eyes cutting through the dim light of the office.
“Don’t play dumb, Echo. You go missing, and thirty minutes later, four of Casello’s men are dead. You expect me to believe that’s a coincidence?”
I meet his gaze, my expression neutral. “Coincidences happen.”
Briggs pushes off the wall, walks to the bar, and pours himself a drink. “Where were you tonight?”
“Out.” I reply cooly, leaning back and stretching my arms over my head. “I needed some air.”
The room falls silent save for the sound of the ice clinking in Briggs’s glass.
Neither of them believe me. That much is obvious.
“You know how delicate the ceasefire is.” Briggs warns. “If Casello finds out we had something to do with his men’s disappearance?—”
“He won’t.”
River curses under his breath as he pinches the bridge of his nose. “What the hell were you thinking? What if someone saw you out there?”
Someone did.
But he doesn’t need to know that.
“Did we sweep for surveillance?” River asks, directing the question to Briggs.
“Yeah.” Briggs replies, taking a slow sip of his bourbon. “No cameras on that stretch. We cleared what little footage existed of the area.”
“Then there’s nothing to worry about.” I say.
River glares at me. “You still haven’t told us what the hell happened. Why did you go after them?”
Neither of them knows what happened to Athena tonight. If they did, this conversation would look very different, and we’d have an all-out war on our hands. Both of them are even more protective of her than I am.
“I needed to blow off some steam.” I say. “And things escalated.”
River looks at me the same way he always does. Like he’s trying to find the piece of me he can fix and keeps coming up empty. I’ve told him that what happened when we were kids wasn’t his fault. That I was raised to be the weapon, he was raised to be the hand that wields it, and neither of us had a say in the matter. Still, I can tell it haunts him every time he looks at me.
River lets out a tired sigh and waves his hand.
“Let’s just focus on cleaning this up before Casello starts sniffing around.”
