Rule Changer (Rules of Engagement)

by Sienna Snow

  “Thomas.” I touched his knee, but he jerked away from my touch. “I should have trusted what we have. Please forgive me. I’ll make it up to you. I want us to be a family.”

  “How can I believe what you’re saying when you’re hell-bent on doing things on your own? If I meant anything, you would have woken me, not have my heart torn out thinking someone kidnapped you when the helicopter landed. Then I had to find out from Arya and Milla what was going on. What did you think would happen if you depended on me for once?”

  “I’m not only doing this for me. I don’t want our boys or Max’s to suffer the way we did with the taint of embezzlement. There are answers behind that picture. I have to find them.”

  “You aren’t the only one who’s lived with that kind of stigma. What do you think happened when my aunt killed your father? The press, our community, even family turned their backs on us. I was the nephew of the woman who cheated on her husband and then murdered her lover, one of the richest men in the country.”

  A lump formed in my throat. I’d never viewed it like that. Thomas had dealt with the same type of shame. I covered my face with my hand as tears seeped down my wrists.

  “I don’t know what else to say, but I’m sorry. Give me another chance.”

  “We’ll have to discuss the future after we get you back to the ranch.” He gathered my clothes and tossed them to me. “Put these on. We’re about to pull through the gates. We have exactly forty-five minutes to get in and out. Max and Arya are supposed to be on a vacations, and we don’t want anything to look suspicious.”

  We quickly put on our clothes and waited for the door to open. Thomas stepped out first, making sure the area was secure, and then I followed.

  The estate was quiet, with the bare minimum of staff around. As I walked up the steps, memories of my childhood hit me. From running down the hallways to sitting in the reception room and Natalie telling me of my mother’s accident, to sitting on the front porch wishing for anyone to come visit me in the grand house.

  I entered the two-hundred-year-old building and realized for the first time since Mom’s death that it wasn’t just a house but a home. There were toys in the foyer, flowers on every tall table, and the smell of cookies and baby powder in the air.

  Arya and Max had turned the cold and museum-like residence into something warm and inviting. No, it was all Arya. Max lived here for years, and it never changed.

  I glanced behind me to find Thomas watching me, not saying a word. He knew how I felt about the mansion.

  “Arya’s turned this place into the home it was before Mom died. It’s not a lonely here anymore.” I set my purse on the entryway table. “Better get this over with, so we can go back.”

  I moved to climb the stairs, but Thomas stopped me with a touch to my arm. “Let me make sure the team has the house secure.” He scanned the room and whispered into the mic at his wrist.

  After a few minutes, he nodded and guided me to the picture. The beautiful painting of the Hamptons house hung against the wall at the top of the stairs. It wasn’t in a place of honor, where everyone would notice it. In fact it was in the middle of a series of landscapes.

  Thomas lifted off the frame, and a crease formed between his brows. “There’s nothing behind there.”

  He stepped back to let me see. It was a smooth, decoratively papered wall. I couldn’t be wrong. There was no way I risked so much and came all the way here for nothing.

  The wallpaper looked untouched with no sign anything was behind it, but I had to be sure. I ran my fingers back and forth over it. “This place has tons of hidden compartments.” I felt around and found what I was looking for, a small divot under the wallpaper. “Arya’s going to have to forgive me for doing this. She has a thing for antique wall paper.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

  I paused for a minute. “I thought you were angry with me. Why are you being so supportive when I know you’d rather I’d stayed on the ranch?”

  “Because you’re mine. No matter how angry I am with you, it won’t change that. Like I said in the limo, I would have eventually come with you.”

  “Yeah, kicking and screaming,” I muttered.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.” I poked my finger into the dent and tore the paper to the side. “I knew there was something here.”

  A flat panel appeared without a handle or any obvious way to open it. I pressed all around until a door pushed open, revealing a safe. There was an electronic keypad with a thumbprint scanner.

  “I’m not going to be able to open it, if the plate is programmed to Dad.”

  “Give it a try. Your bigger problem is figuring out the code.”

  “I know what it is. It’s the code Dad used for everything. My parents’ anniversary.”

  I pressed my finger against the scanner, and a screen appeared, asking for an eight-digit code. I typed in my parents’ anniversary with two digits for date and month, and a four-digit year. Within seconds of entering the last number, the safe opened, revealing a deep sixteen-inch box crammed full of files and hard drives.

  “Hold on. I want to take some pictures before we get anything out. Just as backup.” Thomas pulled out his phone and snapped pictures of the safe. He took off his jacket. “Put everything on here.”

  One by one I took out stacks of files and seven book-sized hard drives. In the back of the safe was a taped envelope with Max and Carmen scrawled in Dad’s handwriting.

  I reached in and retrieved it, sitting down on the stairs.

  My hands shook as I turned the envelope over and over in my hand. Did I really want to read what was inside?

  One way or the other, this is going to give you closure.

  I inhaled deep and tore the seal. I tilted the envelope and out came a letter, my mother’s butterfly pin, and my great-grandfather’s cufflinks.

  “Oh God.” I picked up the pin, ignoring everything else. “I thought he buried her with it.”

  Tears streamed down my face as I looked at Thomas. He reached over and thumbed the wetness from my cheeks. “Read the letter, baby. We don’t have a lot of time.”

  I unfolded the letter, and a new wave of tears started. It was dated two days before his murder.

  To Maxwell and Carmen,

  If you’re reading this, you know what I’ve done and used the clues I left to find the safe. The two of you were always so bright and clever beyond your years.

  When this all started, it wasn’t supposed to go this way. I’d made a few bad investments and hoped to recover. I was arrogant and thought to take the easy way, a way that wasn’t how a gentleman conducts business. I joined a group of investors who laundered money they’d accumulated through various means. What I didn’t realize at the time was that once I entered this assembly of men and women, there wasn’t any way out.

  When you read this, whether I’m sitting in jail or dead, I want you to know I was trying to make things right. If it weren’t for my fear of what would happen to the both of you, I would have turned myself in long ago. They took your mother from me. I couldn’t lose you, too.

  The files in this box reveal every scheme I took part in as well as those I wasn’t involved in but knew about.

  On the hard drive, you will find everything you need to piece together the program I used to hide the funds from detection, and as with everything, you know the code to activate the software.

  Do what I couldn’t do and make this right with all the people I hurt.

  Lastly, I hurt a woman I grew to love. She was young and desperate to leave a suffocating marriage. She didn’t deserve what I did to her. I seduced her and took her money, but in the end, I was the one who fell in love. Not since your mother have I felt this way. Find her and give her back her inheritance; we have plenty of money.

  You both are paying for my mistakes, and I understand why you’ve cut ties with me. I can’t imagine what either of you is going through. I can only hope one day you’ll forgive me. />
  Dad

  My hands shook as I lowered the letter. My brain felt overwhelmed by what I’d read. He was guilty like Arya said, but he wanted to make things right.

  There was so much he never said to us. He had loved us. God, I’d hated him for so long, and it turned out he kept doing it to protect us. A hiccup escaped my lips, followed by a whimper. The next thing I knew, I was sobbing.

  Thomas lifted me into his arms, rocking me until I had no more tears left.

  “Mi cielito, we have to go. It isn’t safe here, especially with what we’ve discovered. Go freshen up. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  Thomas helped me stand. He closed the safe, then returned the painting back to the wall. No one would know anything was out of the ordinary when looking at the landscape.

  “Thomas, will you send Max a picture of the letter? He needs to see it.”

  “Consider it done. Go, we have to get these files to a safe location.”

  “Give me five minutes.” I went up to the second-floor powder room to wash my face.

  I had barely turned off the faucet when a knock came from the door.

  “That was quick. I still have another two minutes,” I said, glancing at my watch.

  As I exited the bathroom, a hand grabbed me from behind as another closed over my nose, and everything went dark.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  My stomach turned as a horrible scent invaded my senses. I tried to push the nausea down, but it intensified. I waved my hand, hoping the scent would disappear.

  “She’s waking, sir.” A man spoke with a slight English accent.

  “Good. Make sure she’s unharmed.”

  I jolted up as I recognized the owner of that voice, but the headache throbbing to life had me lying back down.

  “Not too fast, myshka.”

  I blinked, trying to clear the haze from my vision. “Christof,” I whispered.

  “At your service, Ms. Dane.”

  The last thing I remembered was going to the bathroom. “How did you…I don’t understand. I was in my family home. Where’s Thomas?”

  My heart sunk. What if something happened to him?

  Please God, don’t let anything have happened to him.

  “Slowly, pchelka. Drink this. It will allow the chloroform to exit your system faster.”

  “No, tell me what you did to Thomas.” I tried to push the glass way, but Christof forced me to drink it.

  “He is as you left him, waiting for you. We didn’t want to call attention to ourselves, unlike your escape earlier today. When you decided to visit your family estate, the opportunity to acquire you presented itself and we seized it. Take a few more sips.”

  I followed his direction, and a few minutes later, both my mind and my stomach settled. As I tried to sit up, I realized I’d been lying on a bed in what appeared to be a brownstone.

  Fuck. My predicament was getting worse by the second.

  “Where am I?” I asked, but he didn’t respond.

  I blinked a few more times, and then slowly Christof came into focus. He sat on the bed next to me, his handsome face giving the impression of concern.

  “Why am I here?”

  His lips curved into a deceptively beautiful smile. “We both know the answer to that. Your fiancé wasn’t going to let you out of his sight. Needless to say, I had to make sure you are available for an appointment I’ve scheduled.”

  He reached over, pushed my hair to the side, and ran a thumb across the bruise on the side of my face. He turned, looking at the man. “Mr. Ellsworth. When I said bring her to me unharmed, that meant I don’t want a mark on her body.”

  “Sorry, sir. Ms. Dane woke during transport, and my men became a bit overenthusiastic.”

  I turned in the direction of the voice. In the corner of the room stood a tall, golden-skinned, impeccably dressed man. He wore a tailored suit, which I knew without a doubt was custom made for him.

  Is it a rule or something that the bad guys have to look like they walked off the pages of a fashion magazine?

  I shook the thought from my head and refocused on Christof.

  His gaze went to my wrists, and I rubbed them without thought. “Was this done to Ms. Dane before or after you took her?”

  “They were on her when we left the estate,” Ellsworth answered.

  “Interesting.”

  I didn’t want him to linger on my relationship with Thomas. Christof was a known sadist who had a reputation of pushing limits beyond what was acceptable. “Why am I here?” I asked again. “If this is about Arcane, then you might give up now. I have no access to any aspect of it.”

  “Ms. Dane. Arcane isn’t the program I need your help with.”

  Oh shit. He thinks I can access the software Dad used.

  Okay, Carmen, pretend ignorance.

  “Mr. Christof, I have no idea to what you’re referring. I think you’re wasting both our time.”

  Christof moved closer to me, and before I knew it, he had his hands clenched in my hair and my head arched back.

  I gritted my teeth against the pain and glared at him. “Let me go.”

  “I have tried to be a gentleman, but it seems that method doesn’t work with you. Let me put it this way. Eric Dane hid the money he owed my father. It is my duty to collect. You are the key to activating the program he used to swindle us.”

  His hold tightened, making my eyes water.

  “You’re hurting me.”

  He released me, making me wince as the circulation returned to my scalp.

  “Apologies. Abuse to women is not my style.”

  Telling him he was full of shit was on the tip of my tongue, but I held it back. He’d allowed Milla’s torture at the hands of one of his men and then used images of her abduction to torment her. He may not get his hands dirty in the traditional sense, but he wouldn’t think twice about hurting me to get what he wanted.

  “Eric was a very smart man. So smart, he fooled me into allowing him complete access to the cloaking software. He hid what belonged to my family and then thought to use his access to the program as a bargaining chip. He should have known. I don’t bargain.”

  “You were behind his indictment.”

  “Very good. It wasn’t me directly but my family. It was a shame Eric’s lover killed him before we were able to procure the passwords needed to reactivate the software.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment, this new information overloading my still-fuzzy brain. Christof wasn’t the mastermind behind all the crimes he’d committed as everyone assumed. He was just the mouthpiece.

  I tried to remember what I’d learned during the MI6 operation. All information we’d found said Christof’s father and brothers, with the exception of Abram, were killed when he was a teenager. I never could understand how an orphan had the means and education to create the empire Christof had built. I recalled questioning the agents about this, and they blew it off as meeting the right people at the right time.

  Now it all made sense. Christof was the front man for his family’s activities.

  “All these years, you terrorized Arya, Milla, and me, saying it was because of the MI6 project, and it turns out that had nothing to do with it the whole time.”

  Christof tilted my chin up. “Your involvement with the MI6 project was just a small inconvenience for our operations, but it gave the perfect excuse for my interest in the three of you.”

  I glared at him, trying to move my face out of his hold. “All the crap you put Arya and Milla through for Arcane was a ruse as well?”

  “No, my interest was genuine. I planned to reprogram Arcane for my purposes. The auction for the government aspect of the application was an added bonus. Since Arcane is now out of the question, we are revisiting previous options.”

  “I still don’t understand how I can help you.”

  “I believe you’re the key to activating the software your father used to cloak the transactions he made on our b
ehalf.”

  “I’m not the computer genius of the group. You’ve got the wrong girl.”

  Shit, I shouldn’t have said that. If Christof went after Ari again, I’d never forgive myself.

  “I know all about you, Ms. Dane. One of your master’s degrees is in computer science and you were integral in the MI6 project. Your specialty is code breaking. According to one of my sources, you were the clandestine tester for Arcane.”

  Only a handful of people knew about that. Fuck.

  I scooted to the end of the bed and stood, making me almost eye level with Christof. I wasn’t comfortable having him tower over me anymore. “What incentive do I have to help you?”

  A disingenuous smile touched his face. “I know where your children are, Ms. Dane. Remember when I said you’d have to choose between your reputation and the safety of your family? With one phone call, I can have the children apprehended in the same way you made your escape from your fiancé’s ranch.”

  Oh God, the helicopter tipped him off. I was such a moron. If I survived this, Thomas was never going to let me out of his sight. I couldn’t blame him, either.

  “I’ve spent a considerable amount of time and energy arranging access to your father’s modified software. Now it’s your turn to do your part. And don’t think I haven’t learned from your friend’s tricks. This time I have Arya Rey Dane’s European counterpart monitoring you. There’ll be no corrupting my system again.”

  I cringed inside. That was exactly the thought that had flashed in my mind. I wasn’t a pro like Arya, but I was proficient enough to create a few glitches here and there.

  When Christof had kidnapped Arya, she’d installed a tainted version of the Arcane software. The moment she activated the program, Christof’s whole system went down. It resulted in exposing all aspects of his operations, from arms deals and drugs to human trafficking.

  I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to rub the tension in my muscle when my fingers connected with my necklace. My heartbeat accelerated.