Page 34 of The Monster’s Weakness

She wrapped her arms around him and reached past him to turn off the oven. She figured it hadn’t been a good day for him, so she hugged him back. It felt so good. Even though there was a contract on her head, she felt safe with him. It was a huge relief to have all of this in the open. Everything, even her MS. There were no secrets between them now.

Caleb sighed, and then gave her the space to finish preparing her meal, and she got it ready for them. He wouldn’t allow her to take the plates to the table, as he carried them. She grabbed them glasses of water, because Caleb said he didn’t want to drink until all of this was over. He wanted to have a clear head.

They sat in silence, and she saw that Caleb was thinking. She didn’t want to distract him, so she cut into a piece of succulent chicken, and it tasted so good.

She wondered if there was anything she could do to help the man she loved.

****

Caleb wasn’t happy.

All afternoon he’d been making calls and inquiries as to who took the hit out at Pembroke, and what he found sent him cold. Whoever paid the contract did so through an offshore account associated with Pembroke. The same account that, according to other sources, had been taking money from the main Pembroke corporation. None of this made sense to him, as he also learned that Pembroke himself had no access to this offshore account.

After discovering the embezzlement of money, Pembroke’s lack of access to the account, and the fact the man was dead, it raised questions about what had gone wrong. He currently had a guy going through Pembroke’s old emails, which someone had attempted to delete, but thankfully Caleb had taken a copy of all the files for himself, to ensure that kind of evidence would not just go missing.

This no longer felt like Pembroke was who they’d portrayed him to be.

Gemma’s innocent questions ate away at him. He didn’t ask questions. Never cared to. It was something Bastian and Evander had told him would bite him in the ass one day. He figured if someone was willing to get to the point of taking out a hit, then that made the target a bad guy.

When he was a kid, Big Pharma failed his mother. He’d always told himself, if he’d had the money, he could have saved her. So, he’d been killing for money ever since, but all the money in the world still didn’t fill the void.

Not once had he ever considered he might be killing the good guys. He didn’t like this feeling. It was better when he didn’t give a shit.

The chicken parmesan was delicious, and he excused himself to his office as he started to look through some of his old contracts. He kept details because that was important in the event of someone coming after him. He liked to be prepared. Running a hand down his face, he never got sloppy, and on black and white, this seemed like a reasonable contract.

Pembroke looked like a dirty, greedy businessman. The story kept bringing him back to his fucked-up childhood when he lost his mother due to the greed of pharmaceutical companies like Pembroke. It felt right to smoke the guy. Like personal revenge, like vengeance for his mother and everyone else screwed over by the system. He didn’t like to think there could be more to this story.

At the sound of Gemma in the kitchen, he got to his feet and left his office. The camera screens were all on display, and he did a quick sweep of them. No alarm had gone off, but Evander had called him to warn that the contract had been extended to outside sources. That meant someone was going to accept the job to take Gemma from him. He wasn’t going to let that happen. Not on his watch. So, he had the alarms activated as well.

Gemma was standing at the kitchen sink, glass of water in hand.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s been a lot.”

He moved in closer, wrapping his arms around her waist. “I’ve got you, you know that, right? This will blow over and things will be good again.”

“I know. It’s hard, you know. I’m here and everything is a mess right now.” She started to laugh. “Usually, my medicine and my health are what cause me the most trouble in my life. For the first time, my health is good. My medicine is working. It’s everything else.”

He rubbed her arms. There was nothing he could say to make this better.

“Do you know anything behind the scenes at Pembroke?”

She shook her head. “No, he was always private. I mean, he was always nice as well. I don’t know. The last few months it was like he changed, and it kind of fits with what people are saying, that he was embezzling the money and trying to run the company into the ground.” She shrugged.

“You don’t believe that,” he said.

“I don’t know what I believe, honestly. It’s hard. I know he was a good man, at least in the beginning, but I guess money made him do bad things.” She blew out a breath. “I don’t get it.”

“It’s late and you’re tired. Come on. It’s time I got you into bed, and you got some rest.” He took her hand, taking the glass of water from her, and walking her back through to their bedroom. Even though it was a safe house in the basement of an abandoned warehouse, it was the height of luxury. Caleb didn’t want there to be anything less than perfection. He liked the luxuries in life, and having lived through hardships, he refused to give them up for anyone.

Helping Gemma into bed, he stripped out of his clothes and settled into bed behind her. She was stressed and he wanted to take her troubles away. He held her close and kissed her temple.

“Will it be okay?” she asked.

He was just about to respond when all too soon, one of his outside alarms went off, and he immediately let her go and rushed toward the security cameras. Three of his cameras were offline.

“Shit,” he said.