Or worse.
“If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know,” I offered.
“I will.”
“I mean it, Henry. You’re not alone anymore. You don’t need to carry the weight of this on your own.”
“I won’t.” He lifted my hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to my knuckles. “I promise.”
The gesture was tender. But something about his tone felt…forced.
Or maybe I was just letting Victor get in my head again.
Henry had never been anything but honest with me. He may not have told me everything from the beginning, like how he’d planned to abduct me for revenge but then saw another man take me so he intervened. But he eventually came clean. Told me the truth, regardless of how I might respond. He’d earned my trust.
And my love.
So why was there this gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach?
Was it merely a result of Victor’s conditioning?
Or something worse?
Chapter Twelve
Henry
“You texted,” I said as I let myself into the pool house on my property, the smell of stale coffee greeting me.
A week ago, Blake had been lying in a hospital bed, covered with cuts and bruises.
Now he sat hunched over his laptop, looking more like himself than he had since I left him at that fishing cabin to die. He still hadn’t returned to his usual attire of an all-black suit, but his sweatpants and t-shirt were black.
The scar running along his brow was healing, the burns on his arms had begun to scab over, and the bruising around his jaw had faded to yellow.
Judging by the empty coffee cups littering every available surface, he was slowly returning to his normal, restless self.
“I did,” Blake responded without looking up as his fingers flew across the keyboard.
“What did you find?” I asked. “Anything useful?”
A grin spread across his face. “I’d say so.”
I crossed the room and stopped beside the kitchen table where he’d set up his temporary workstation.
“For shits and giggles, I decided to revisit the night Alexei Volkov was killed. Mikhail’s father. The former Pakhan.”
“I know who he is,” I assured him. “I’ve done my research on the major players in the Bratva so I know who I’m dealing with.”
“Then you’re probably also aware that the official story says Los Reyes del Puerto took him out. Some sort of feud over their drug distribution agreement, which prompted Alexei’s brother, Nikolai, to launch a bloody campaign of retaliation and take out anyone even remotely connected to Los Reyes.”
“I’m familiar with everything that went down,” I replied.
“I pulled surveillance footage from the port on the night Alexei died.”
“And?”
“It was corrupted.”
