by BL Mute
Carter shakes his head. “Whatever you say, babe. My issue isn’t with her, it’s with him.” He points to Cyrus.
“Stop being such a little bitch, Carter,” I finally interject.
After hearing the full story of how shit went down and why Cyrus did the things he did, I understand. If it was me, I probably wouldn’t have come back either, and hearing Carter speak to him like he’s trash pisses me off.
Maybe it’s all of those bottled-up feelings finally spilling out, but I find myself wanting to stand up for Cyrus. He did what he thought was best, just like Lydia did what she thought was best by fucking Malcolm, and Carter did what he thought was best by fucking killing him. We all make mistakes, and we all fuck up, but you can’t expect someone to pay for it their entire lives.
“We get it. He left and made you face your dad alone, but you got through it. Did you ever stop to think about the shit he’s been through while he was gone?” When he stays silent, I continue. “I understand him being back is a fucking shock, but right now, if we don’t do something, there is a possibility you’ll never get the chance to fix shit with him. So, either offer some fucking help, or shut the fuck up.”
Carter lets out a laugh. “Damn, Carmen. I really forgot how much of a bitch you are.” With that, he turns on his heel and leaves the room.
When I turn back to Cyrus and Lydia, their eyes are glued to me with shock. “What? No one else was going to say it, so I did. Hate me later because right now, there is more important shit to worry about.”
They both stay silent for a beat, like they’re scared to say the wrong thing. Finally, Cyrus pries his stare from me and looks at Lydia. “Can you keep Tiny for a while?”
Lydia scrunches her face, then turns to him. “What do you expect me to do with a horse?”
“Yes or no, Lydia?” I deadpan.
I get she’s trying to lighten the mood the only way she knows how, with stupid fucking jokes, but now isn’t the time.
“Sorry.” She holds up her hands. “Yeah, I’ll keep him, I guess. But I expect you to come back for him when everything is said and done.”
Cyrus nods. “I’ll be back for more than Tiny. I’m going to fix this shit with Carter too.”
Lydia doesn’t look so sure. She bites her lip and wraps her arms around her. “I’m not sure things can be fixed.”
“Everything can always be fixed,” I reply.
Her eyes move to mine, and I can see all of the questions she won’t ask swimming in them. “Be careful, okay?”
I give her the most genuine smile I can just to ease her worry. “I’m always careful.”
And it’s true. I am, or I was… until I wasn’t.
“911 if you need me, okay?”
Nodding, I give her a quick hug. “Love you, bitch.”
“Love you.”
I let go of her and make my way back to the door and grab the key to my Bentley, hoping like hell this all works out. When her dad died and an entire year passed without me seeing her, I was gutted. I don’t even want to imagine how she would feel if something happened to me.
Shaking the thoughts away, I pull open the door. I can feel Cyrus behind me, and that brings me a shred of hope. Before, I feared death, but right now, he walks beside me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CYRUS
I slow the SUV to a crawl at the end of Carmen’s driveway, giving her a moment to take everything in. Although she won’t admit it, I know she’s worried. Finding out your dad really isn’t your dad and how he hired someone to murder your mom isn’t something anyone could take lightly. Add in the jacked-up circumstances, and I know she’s ready to detonate.
“Are you ready for this?” I know I already asked her, but I don’t know what else to say.
My life has always consisted of giving no fucks and taking lives, but this is different. I’ve never cared for someone other than Carter, but Carmen managed to demolish all the walls I put in place around me and sit herself in the rubble. She was determined to make herself a permanent fixture in my life, and I let her. And now I regret it. I could have saved her—been the knight in shining armor she didn’t ask for—but instead, I kept her around for my own selfish reasons.
“I’ll never be ready, but I don’t have much of a choice right now.”
I put the car in park and turn in my seat. As she looks out the window, staring at her house, I begin to talk. “You could run and never look back. I’m the only one Ghost wants.”
A statement has never been more honest coming from my lips. At this point, I brought her into this mess, so I will fix it too. All she had to do was ask because she’s the type of woman to take no orders from any man.
As she turns to me, I see a tear rolling down her cheek. “We both know why I won’t do that, and you’re not the only one on his radar now.”
I shake my head. I know she’s determined, but this is more than that. This is life or death. If she walks in those doors, there will be no turning back. I thought I was okay with that at first—letting her do as she pleased—but now I’m not so sure.
“Hey,” she says, reaching over the console and grabbing my hand. “Don’t look so glum. I’m the one who gets to confront the man who lied to me all my life and killed my mom.”
She’s right. My life is child’s play compared to all the bullshit she’s had to endure within the last week, me included. “I’m sorry” is all I can manage to say.
“For what? Showing me I’m not alone? Or making me feel validated in my fucked-up feelings?”
I let out a breath and reach for her face. Gripping her cheeks in my hands, I pull her lips to mine.
So soft. So sweet. I never want to forget them.
I break our kiss and press my forehead against hers. “I was going to say for dragging you into this.”
She gives me one more peck. “Shut up.” She pulls away, putting the fake mask of confidence she wears so well back into place, but I know her now. I know what lurks beneath the surface. “Let’s do this.” She exits the car without another glance in my direction.
I grab my gun from under the seat, then step out and follow her up the drive. The light drizzle from before is getting heavier, sending fat raindrops down from the sky like missiles. I try to ignore the shiver each one sends down my spine as they hit me and focus on the soft tapping of her steps on the concrete instead. It’s something I’ve grown accustomed to. Listening to heartbeats, waiting for them to end, or any other steady rhythmic sound. It helps control my adrenaline and steady my hands.
Before she makes it to the door, she pauses for a split second, like she’s trying to gather her bearings too. After a deep breath and a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure I’m still there, she goes up the steps and opens the door.
I follow closely behind her, keeping my hand gripped around my gun and my finger on the trigger. Everything is eerily silent when we enter, and no one is in sight. It doesn’t feel right to me, but then again, I don’t even know what’s normal.
She looks around the same way I do as we stand in the entryway. For her, she’s probably just looking for things that seem out of place, something to give away where everyone is. But for me, I’m on high alert, taking mental notes of everything I see. Only there isn’t much to see. The entire place is immaculate, but I do see a few cameras positioned in each corner.
“Does he watch you?” I ask, pointing to the one closest to us.
She nods. “Yep. They’re everywhere. The only place without them is my room and the greenhouse.”
“So he probably knows we’re here by now.” It’s a statement, not a question. She nods and starts moving again, but I stop her. “Let me go in front of you. Just tell me where to go.”
“Straight.” As we walk, she tells me where everything is right before we get to it. “On the left is the dining room. We only use it when he’s here.”
I peek through the threshold, keeping my gun raised just in case. There is a huge table in the center, but nothi
ng else. I take a step back and continue down the hall.
“On the right is the kitchen. Through there is the garage.”
I look around, noting the knife blocks on the counter but nothing else. Nothing even seems out of place. “What about upstairs?”
“I have the second floor, and Alexander has the third. William has an apartment on the other side of the house.” She points her thumb behind her.
“Does anything seem weird?” ’Cause it does to me, but I don’t say that.
She shakes her head. “Everything seems exactly how it always is. Quiet and empty.”
I inhale deeply through my nose, then let it out. How fucking sad is it to have something so nice but virtually no one to share it with.
“We can check the third floor. Maybe there is something there to tell us where he is.”
I raise a brow. “That’s exactly what someone would say in a horror movie.”
“Well, you’re the fucking expert here, Cyrus, so lead the way.” She turns and gestures in front of her. “I’ve never had to look for clues like the fucking Scooby gang.”
I keep my mouth clamped shut. She’s clearly on edge, and my commentary isn’t helping. Stepping around her, I take the lead again and walk back to where we started, but this time, we start up the stairs.
I don’t bother stopping at the second floor and move straight to the third. When we make it to the landing, I turn back to her. “You need to look for anything out of place. I’ve never been here, so it’s hard for me to tell.”
“That makes two of us. I don’t come up here.”
Great. This makes things harder. Normally, I have time to watch my targets, learn their patterns and behavior, but this isn’t a normal job. Alexander has connections to Ghost, and I’m worried Ghost has already tipped him off that Carmen knows. And doing what I do, I know exactly how far people will go to keep their secrets. I’m sure Alexander is no different.
“Okay. Just stay behind me, then.”
I don’t wait for her to answer before I start walking again. As we make it to the first door, I reach for the handle, but it doesn’t twist. “What’s in there?”
“His office.”
I can feel the warning in my gut, but I don’t know what it is. Something isn’t right. Trying the handle one last time, I give up. First, I push on the door to see just how secure it is. It gives slightly, which is a good sign to me.
“Step back,” I tell Carmen, pushing her away gently.
Once she’s out of the doorway, I take a few steps back, then use every ounce of energy I have to ram the door. With the first hit, my shoulder screams, but I’ve felt worse. I hit it again, and pain vibrates to my back, but I don’t stop. On the third hit, it flies open, flinging into the wall behind it with a thud.
At first, everything seems normal for an office. There is a desk, a shelf with a few knickknacks, and a lamp set up in the corner. But when I look back to Carmen, I know something isn’t right. She stares at the backdrop positioned behind his desk with her mouth slightly agape.
“What is it?”
“That.” She points to it.
I can’t figure out why it’s so important. To me, it’s nothing but a fake bookcase, probably used to make his background look better on zoom meetings or whatever else he does online. “What’s wrong?”
“Ghost had that same background behind him when he talked to me on the laptop.”
Immediately, the wheels start turning in my head, but I have to be logical. “It’s probably a generic one from online. Could purely be a coincidence.”
“Coincidence? Do you really think any of this is a coincidence? You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it too, Cyrus,” she says seriously.
Honestly, I haven’t. I’ve been too preoccupied with other shit, but her words get my mind wandering.
“Maybe our meeting was a coincidence, but you getting assigned a job in Bexley? You’ve been doing this for how long, and how many jobs have you had here?” she adds.
“None.”
“It’s like this entire thing was a setup, and I don’t just mean the recent shit with Ghost. You may think he didn’t know you, but nothing is ever erased completely.”
I see what she’s saying crystal fucking clear, but why me? I did my job, I never complained, and I made sure things never came back to bite me or Ghost in the ass. “But why me?”
“I don’t know, but we can find out.”
Both of us start going through the papers on his desk. There are bank statements, payroll invoices, and other unimportant shit from his hotel. Nothing other than the backdrop seems odd, which brings me back to my earlier thoughts. It’s a coincidence. Everything else may not be, but this is.
Carmen opens the laptop sitting in the center and turns it on. Once it powers up, a space to type in a password pops up. She stares at it, biting her lip.
“Most passwords are important dates or places. Try your birthday.”
She shakes her head lightly. “He doesn’t even know my birthday, so it wouldn’t be that.”
She says it so nonchalantly, like it doesn’t bother her, but I know better. He may not be her dad, but he’s raised her for her entire life for a reason. She holds some sort of importance to him, but I’m not sure what.
“Maybe…” I trail off, not sure how to say the words I want without them coming out wrong. “Maybe try the day your mother died.”
She looks at me like I’m stupid. “Again, my birthday.”
“No. If Ghost did it like he said, I’m assuming it was after, considering you’re still here.”
She starts to type the numbers, but I stop her. “No, type out the month.”
She nods and deletes everything, then starts again. Once it’s inputted, her finger hovers over the Enter button. “I’m scared,” she whispers.
I step closer and lay my gun on the desk. “There is nothing to be scared of. You know the worst of it, right?”
She looks up at me, her lip starting to wobble. “I don’t know. What if there is more? What if he’s hiding more secrets?”
I want to reassure her and tell her that isn’t the case, but I can’t. Knowing he hid something this big for so long, there is probably more.
I try to think of something to say, something to ease her mind, even if it’s small, but my phone rings, breaking my concentration. When I pull it from my pocket, it’s a number I don’t recognize, but the area code is Bexley Falls. I flip it to Carmen. “Bradley?”
She looks at the number, then nods. “Maybe he’s found something already.”
“Maybe.” I slide the answer bar, then bring it to my ear. “Hello?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CARMEN
Cyrus moves the phone from his face and puts it on speaker so I can hear.
“We have a problem.” Bradley’s voice pours from the speaker. “I pinged the address you gave me and made sure a satellite I could access would pick up its activity so I could keep an eye on it while I tried to dig for other shit, and it just lit the fuck up.”
“Break it down, Bradley. This isn’t our forte,” I comment.
“Basically, that place is nothing but a hive. This Ghost guy has a routing system in place so all his emails, calls, texts, everything goes through that location, making him virtually untraceable anywhere else, but I found a hole. A few minutes ago, another system that was connected to the hive system popped online, and I was able to hack into it to see the actual location of where everything is being rerouted from. I haven’t gotten through the firewalls in place to see files, but I can see their IP address.”
“And?” Cyrus asks, thinking exactly what I am. There has to be more.
“And it’s your house, Carmen.”
I feel the blood drain from my face, and my limbs turn to stone. My voice is nonexistent as my mouth opens to say words I can’t even formulate.
“Bradley, shut everything down. We don’t need anything else.”
“I can keep digging an—”<
br />
“I said shut it down,” Cyrus booms. “And make sure to cover your tracks. This was stupid and reckless, and I’m sorry you got dragged into it.” He ends the call and shoves his phone back into his pocket.
Picking his gun back up, he grabs me by the arm and starts to drag me from the office. “We need to get out of here.”
I plant my heels on the floor and jerk from his hold. “No. We can’t just leave when we’re so close to figuring it all out.”
He turns to me. “Carmen, this is something we weren’t expecting. It’s not as simple as getting the money and finding Ghost now.”
“Yes it is,” I argue, my voice coming back louder than before. “We didn’t just go through all this bullshit to drop it now because it won’t end unless we put an end to it. What are we going to do, run forever? He’ll find us, and you know it. Right now, Alexander has information we need, and I intend to get it.”
“At what cost? Your life? Because if shit is coming from here, that means Alexander is a lot closer to Ghost than we think. He’s probably already told him we’re here, which means he’ll know the chip is gone.”
“We can’t just walk away. If this is what I have to do to get answers and live a normal life where I don’t have to look over my shoulder, then I’m doing it. This shit ends tonight.”
He shakes his head and opens his mouth but doesn’t get the chance to reply. His phone rings again, cutting off whatever he was going to say. “I’m not going to argue with you, Bradley. Do as I said!” His face softens as whoever on the other end replies. “Hatcher?”
I step closer, hoping I can hear something from the other side of the conversation, but I’m not so lucky. Cyrus holds up his finger, stopping me.
“Just clean it up and get back here.” He ends the call.
“What happened?” If Hatcher is calling, it’s something bad, right? Because he’s supposed to be long gone by now, keeping Ghost off our trail.
“Michael found him. Ghost knows the tracker isn’t on you. Maybe that’s why he sent your dad to Lydia’s.”