Bombshell (The Rivals Book 3)

by Geneva Lee

  “Is that a good idea?” Noah asks, but his question isn’t directed at Luca but at us.

  I grimace, not sure how to answer. Noah is the exception to our inner circle. To be honest, I’m not quite clear on how or why he wants to hang out with us. Because Noah is everything we aren’t. If the Midwest had an official mascot, it would be Noah Porter. The corn-fed, farm boy came from a family with six kids, all of which have joined the military in some fashion or another. But Noah, he’s the shining star. The Marine. Soon-to-be special operative. The town probably throws a parade every time he comes home. We should hate him. I should hate him.

  The trouble is that he is one of the nicest human beings on the planet. Sometimes it’s hard to see how the gentle giant wound up here, learning how to track, spy, and kill. But I’ve seen him in training exercises. He’s ride or die, and he means it. I can’t help but worry that he’s going to be the first one of us to spend Christmas as a folded flag on his family’s fireplace mantle.

  I think this is why Luca enjoys baiting him so much. Whereas Jack and I genuinely like Noah, Luca’s affection is as hot and cold as a broken faucet. I think he sees him more as a toy to play with than a living, breathing friend.

  “Look, if you want to sit around and drink tea and fawn over photos of the royal baby, be my guest,” Luca drawls, “but I want a decent meal before we spend the next few weeks picking sand out of our dinner.”

  “”That’s not a bad idea,” Noah says. No doubt he expected something a little more exotic. Honestly, we all did.

  “And then we’re getting tattoos and getting laid,” Luca adds.

  That sounds more like what I expect of him.

  “You’re just going to go out and sleep with some random woman?” Noah says in disbelief.

  “It’s cute how shocking you find that,” Luca says. “But yeah, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I haven’t fucked anyone since officer—”

  “Maybe you should sit this one out,” Jack cuts in gently.

  “Nah.” Noah shakes his head. “I’m not going to stop you guys from having fun. I’d rather not hang out here all night, but I’m not getting a tattoo.”

  “About that,” I begin.

  “Everyone’s getting a tattoo,” Luca orders, leaving no room for argument.

  Noah opens his mouth to protest, but I shake my head. There’s no point debating it. We stand a better chance if we get him drunk enough to forget about it.

  “Where to first?” I ask.

  “Well, there’s this little restaurant in Notting Hill that makes real meatballs.”

  Noah nods his head. Large portions of meat seems to be the one real connection the two have made.

  “And a tattoo parlor just down the street,” Luca adds, flashing a wicked grin.

  It’s going to be one hell of a night.

  “I’m not inking the word hell on my arm.” Noah and Luca have been having the same argument for the last hour. It had continued over dinner, and no pressure Luca exerted could sway him.

  Luca had spent the entire night performing persuasive gymnastics, with Olympic-level focus, while a never ending stream of food arrived at our table courtesy of the house. I guess they knew they had a DeAngelo sitting in their dining room. He’d acted in stark contrast to the behavior I’d seen from the wealthy elite of Valmont. He didn’t demand or condescend. He walked in, gave his name to the maître d’ and the rest took care of itself. I rather appreciated the casual style with which he handled it, but I didn’t quite want to think about why I got my meal for free.

  “He’s not going to drop this,” Jack mutters to me as we leave the warm restaurant to stumble into the chilly darkness.

  “At least, he’s not making us get Santa on our ass,” I say, nodding to the holiday decorations that were strung over every street lamp, shop front and home as far as we could see. Over dinner, we’d even been served a pizza shaped like a reindeer. Apparently, the British took the holidays very seriously.

  I shoved my hands in my jacket against the biting wind. Given that we were headed to Afghanistan for the final phase of our training to run real-world drills, I hadn’t brought along a lot of civilian clothes. I’d be in uniform most of the time. I hadn’t counted on spending time outside the hotel before our early flight out.

  “Not much for Christmas, huh?” Jack asks, hanging back with me while the others continue to fight.

  “It’s complicated.” Last year this time I was with Adair, making love to her in a tiny, squeaky dorm room bed before spending the holidays with her in New York. It isn’t that I miss her. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’d just been another shiny new object that lost its luster for the rich bitch. I will, however, miss Francie, who I still haven’t seen since I enlisted. We’d spoken on Thanksgiving and she’d been sending care packages to North Carolina, but I have no idea if I’ll get a chance to talk to her on Christmas. There are a lot of Marines with real families back home to call, guys like Jack.

  “Isn’t it always?” Jack drops it. He’s good like that, always knowing when I don’t want to talk anymore.

  A troop of carolers pass us, beginning a chorus of Gloria in Excelsis-Deo as they do. They smile cheerfully, and I have to resist the urge to heckle them. Maybe the holidays are a peaceful time of year for some people, but I can count on one hand how many happy Christmases I’ve had. A memory of the holiday party at Windfall taps at my brain, but I slam the door on it.

  But the song must have given Jack an idea, because he calls up to Luca. “Hey, what about Latin?”

  “Latin what?” he asks.

  “For the tattoo. Instead of Hell’s Bastards, we do the Latin translation.”

  It’s Luca’s idea that we need to permanently cement our brotherhood with inked forearms.

  “Great,” Luca agrees. “Who knows Latin?”

  “I do.”

  We all turn to Jack in surprise.

  “What?” he asks with a wide grin. “I’m not just a pretty face.”

  “Still blasphemous,” Noah says.

  “Why don’t you sit this one out? Or get something else?” Jack suggests, not unkindly.

  Noah turns to me obviously looking for support, and that’s when I spot the fear behind his eyes. “You really going to do this?”

  I’m about to ask him if he’s afraid of needles when a Bentley pulls by, parking just across the street. I can’t help admiring its classic, elegant lines. There’s something so British about it. A driver pops out, opens an umbrella against the falling snow, and hurries around to open the door for the back passenger. A long black cane appears first and catches my attention, and I stop. I have no idea why until the man emerges, standing with bitter resolve. He pushes away the umbrella like it’s offensive to him, and as he does, I catch a glimpse of his face under the streetlamp. I’m a thousand miles away from Valmont, but somehow it’s caught up with me.

  I don’t notice that the others have continued until Luca’s voice slices through the night. “Ford!”

  It happens in an instant. Angus MacLaine’s dark head turns toward the sound, his gaze sweeping across the street and landing on me. He pauses as our eyes lock.

  I take one step off the sidewalk, my hand curling into a fist, before my brain has caught up with me. Before I take another, a strong hand closes over my shoulder.

  “You coming?” Noah asks in a low voice.

  We’ve been training for moments like this. I’ve spent the last few months studying how to react when caught off-guard and what to do when you face the threat of a deadly enemy. MacLaine’s driver turns, surveilling me in a way that tells me he’s here to provide more than car service. But he’s old, and I doubt he’s got as little as I do to lose. It would be so easy to cross that street and take them both down. I could probably count on Luca to join me. He doesn’t need a reason to start a fight.

  And then Angus MacLaine makes the decision for me. He places one hand on his bodyguard’s arm and turns away, walking with a limp toward th
e gated building behind him without so much as one final glance.

  “Come on,” Noah urges.

  I shake it off, or I try to, but adrenaline hums through me from the encounter. We catch up with Luca and Jack, who’d stopped fifty paces away. Luca’s eyes glint with whatever wicked thoughts are currently dominating his brain, but Jack’s are furrowed with concern.

  “What was that about?” he asks.

  I may as well be honest, because I finally know what I need to do—and I’m going to need them to help me figure out how to do it. “That’s the man who ruined my life,” I tell them, “and someday I’m going to destroy him.”

  “That’s when you came up with your plan,” she says softly as the memory fades.

  “I was so consumed with hating him, I never stopped to consider…”

  “If I was in the building…” trails Adair.

  Realizing how close we came to finding each other—on a different continent and without knowing we were in the same city—just makes it more painful for her.

  For both of us.

  “I could have done something. I could have checked. Before you had to go through everything you did. But all I could see was revenge.” I realize my hands are still fisted and force myself to relax them. “But looking back—it was like I could feel you were there somehow. Like I knew Angus MacLaine would get out of the Bentley. My body stopped to wait before my eyes understood what I was seeing. Probably sounds crazy.”

  “If you didn’t know I was there, what could you have done?” Adair says, apparently determined not to pass the buck of self-loathing.

  “I don’t want to keep dragging us back into the past. I want us to move on, but I have to know why,” I say.

  “Why?” she repeats.

  I choose my words carefully. After everything she went through without me, I won’t pile on another accusation, but why did she choose to go through it alone? “You didn’t have to do this alone. I wouldn’t have left you. Why…” A horrible realization dawns on me, and I bury my head in my hands. “The drinking. The fighting. I’m sitting here acting like I was some prize catch instead of a damaged sperm donor.”

  “Don’t,” she says in a wounded voice. “Ellie’s amazing because you’re her father.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” The question explodes out of me.

  “I didn’t know where you were!” she fires back. “You just took off without a word.”

  “I came back. I looked for you.” You didn’t come. I manage to swallow the last bit before it gets out.

  “My friends thought it was better not to tell me,” she mumbles. “Poppy only got the guts up to say something a few weeks ago.”

  “I sent you a note.”

  “I didn’t get it,” she says in a small voice. “Did you get mine?”

  “You sent me one, too?” I ask, shocked.

  “Before you left. I think. Honestly, I’m not sure how long it took them to come clean that you’d gone. I wasn’t coping well after the video.”

  “Video?” I echo the word, trying to make sense of it.

  She takes a deep breath, her face as pale as the glowing moon outside, and I brace myself for whatever she’s about to tell me.

  “The video of us having sex,” she says in a rush.

  “The what?” I’m back on my feet, needing to dissipate the surge of adrenaline her words sent shooting through me.

  “You didn’t know.” Her eyes close and she sighs in relief.

  “That there’s a video of us having sex? No, and I have a few questions now.”

  “I don’t have any answers,” she says with a shake of her head. “It had to have been my dad. He had private investigators looking into you.”

  “I remember,” I say in disgust. I’d never forget having my sins dredged up by Angus MacLaine. I’d also never forgive him for it.

  “He told me there was a blackmail note and he gave me an address in Queens and—”

  “You thought I would do that to you?” I ask in a quiet voice.

  “No,” she says honestly. “At first, I was too shocked to think. I just hid like I could make it disappear. I wouldn’t talk to anyone. By the time, I was ready to face it…”

  “I was gone.” Anger vibrates through me, but as I turn to pace the opposite direction, I catch sight of her face and I realize that this didn’t just happen to me. It happened to us. For years, I’ve suffered under the delusion, I got the raw end of the deal. Now I know she went through things I couldn’t imagine. “You know, Shakespeare could make a great play out of this.”

  Her answering laugh is hollow like a fading bell. “That’s the truth. Can you forgive me for thinking the worst of you?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive, Lucky. I might be angry—furious, even—but it’s only because I wasn’t there to protect you from being hurt.” I’m angry at her father and her friends, and, mostly, myself.

  “You’re here now,” she says.

  “And I’m all in,” I promise her. “We’re going to make this right. All of this right.”

  “I’m not sure we can. They’re never going to let her go,” she says. “I don’t know if I’ll ever…”

  “We’re going to get her back, Lucky.” I say it like an oath, because it is.

  She turns tired eyes on me and gives me a numb smile. “It’s not going to be easy. They made sure of that.”

  “Did they actually adopt her? Because that paper was a decree of guardianship.” My mind is already turning things over, making a list of people to call and favors I’m owed.

  “There’s more to it,” she says. “It’s complicated.”

  “Isn’t it always complicated with us?” I ask, leaning to brush my thumb across her lip. “But this? This isn’t complicated. I’ve seen them with her. It was everything I could do not to carry her out of that nightmare when I went to see her.”

  “You went?” she asks in a strained voice.

  “I assumed you knew.”

  “I guessed, but...it doesn’t matter.” She sighs deeply. “Did anyone see you?”

  “Felix. He brought her down to talk to me,” I say and hesitate before adding, “and Ginny.”

  “Shit. That’s not good.”

  But there’s something I can’t ignore any longer. “No one knew I was her father? Malcolm? Ginny?”

  I don’t know why it stings. She owes me nothing. Not after I left her to carry this weight alone. Maybe that’s not what bothers me, though. I’d counted on Adair’s family being surprised at my change in circumstances when I returned. I’d even used her brother’s narcissism-fueled obliviousness to my advantage.

  “Felix and Ginny both suspected. Ginny’s been acting crazier than usual since you showed up in town. Felix never bought my lie that I didn’t know who the father was,” she says.

  “And your father?”

  “He never bought it either, but Angus MacLaine could always be counted on to avoid difficult conversations if he had an out.”

  “Why?” I ask. It’s the one question I need an answer to for my own sanity. “Why not tell anyone? If people had known, word might have reached me.”

  “And let my father continue to wreck your life? I thought you left, and, even if you weren’t the one who made that video, I was so hurt and alone and scared.”

  She’d acted on instinct. I can’t fault her for that. I can only spend the rest of my life making this up to her.

  “And I stayed,” she continues, “even after...I stayed and I loved her when they didn’t. I stayed, and I protected her from all of them. I stayed and filled the cracks they left in her with all of my love, because they made certain I was powerless to do more. I stayed and watched them play house with her, because getting to be near her was better than losing her altogether.”

  Kneeling in front of her, I take her hand. “I swear to you, no one is going to hurt our daughter anymore. I won’t allow it.”

  “They have lawyers and money and contracts on their side,” she says, “and
they made sure that I had no way to fight them when I realized the mistake I made. We can’t just walk in there and take her back.”

  “I know.” It’s what stopped me from doing it earlier. “You needed resources. They kept them from you. I know some people who can handle things like this. I’m going to get a meeting with them as soon as possible.”

  “Sterling, this whole town belongs to my family,” she reminds me in a brittle voice.

  When I’d come back to Valmont, I’d found a different woman waiting for me in the place of the girl I left behind. I’d caught glimpses over the last few weeks here. The more we spent together, the more I saw her and that fiery personality I’d fallen for years ago. Now I understand what happened. Now I know why she stayed while they slowly chipped away at her. She’s come to life again slowly the more time we spent together, and now I see the mysterious piece of the story that explains everything. And I know what I need to do.

  “It doesn’t belong to them anymore.” Truth burns in my words, because nothing will stop me. Not anymore. “This is our town now.”

  “But—”

  “There are things you need to know,” I stop her. It’s time I come clean, too. “Things that are going to scare you.”

  She knits her fingers through mine more tightly. “No, it won’t.

  For once, I hope she’s as stubborn as she sounds. I plunge into my other problems, realizing how insignificant they feel now. Judging from Adair’s pale face when I finish telling her about the Bratva, she doesn’t share that sentiment.

  “I don’t just have problems,” I finish, “I have rivals. I have enemies.”

  “No.” She shakes her head, but her hand doesn’t leave mine. “We have rivals. We have enemies.”

  “Adair, I’m not sure you know what you’re getting in to,” I start.

  “I’m starting then I look,” she says dryly, squeezing my hand. “And I’m all in.”

  The law offices of Laird & Wharton are understated and serious, but also vaguely tense. The young, ambitious lawyers here would shove their mothers out of the way to get ahead, and you can feel it in the air, like a warning.