For a while, X had done right by him. And that’s what pissed him off the most—he didn’t know if X had actually cared at one point or if X had been manipulating him the whole time.
They’d been frequent visitors at Grandma Fran’s house in the first few years that he was with X, back before her dementia got bad. At Thanksgiving, she’d set a plate for him right between X’s and hers. No being relegated to a too-small, rickety card table in the living room that served as the kids’ table for all the foster kids. No, he was a valued member of their little group. X even taught him to carve the turkey, and the next year, he had that responsibility all to himself.
At Christmas, Grandma Fran bought him loads of presents, labeling them all “from Santa.” He didn’t have the heart to tell her he hadn’t believed since he was five and that he was too old for most of the crap she’d given him. Despite that, it was the best Christmas he’d ever had. No worrying that his father would get drunk and beat his mom. No fighting with other foster kids over cheap toys that were usually broken by the end of the day.
If X had one redeeming quality, it was his devotion to his mother. X kept her in the dark about and away from his business dealings. In fact, it had taken nearly half a year for X to trust Knox enough to introduce him even though by that time he was already referring to Knox as his son.
Grandma Fran was a good woman. Knox regretted that cutting himself off from X also included her. But she didn’t seem to have a clue what a cocksucker her only son had turned into, and Knox couldn’t pretend anymore. He hadn’t seen her in five years.
“Hey,” Natalie said. “Where are you?”
His eyes focused on her. “Sorry. Just lost in thought.”
“I want to go to the library tomorrow.”
He frowned. “Why?”
“I need to do more research. Find more info on Eleanor. Dig into my family’s files again. I just know I’m missing something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. And it’s driving me crazy.”
He knew the feeling since his trip to X’s office turned up nothing.
He could tell she was discouraged by the lack of information they’d gotten on their trip to the greenhouse. They were zero-for-two when it came to getting information from people who might know her elusive godmother’s whereabouts. Hell, with the way things had been going, they’d be safer in the library than trying to talk to someone else directly. And of all the places X would think to look for him, the library didn’t even make it on the list. He had to imagine it’d be the same with Kent.
“Okay,” he said.
Her eyebrows shot up. “Okay? That’s it? No argument?”
The edges of his lips tilted up and he pressed his lips to her forehead. “Nope.”
If Natalie thought this was the best course of action, then he’d support it. And if it came down to it, he’d be there to protect her.
On the way to the library the next morning, Knox popped into a convenience store for a new burner phone and more food. He didn’t waste any time getting what he needed and rejoining Natalie, who waited outside. Until X and Kent were out of the equation, he didn’t like leaving her unattended for any longer than necessary.
He handed her a banana, and she took it gratefully with a look of pure longing on her face.
“Oh, thank God,” she said, tearing into it. “Fresh fruit.”
He bit into an apple, and as the juices flooded his mouth, he had to admit that he was getting tired of all the junk they’d been forced to eat. Before he’d kept a strict diet of lean proteins to keep his body in top fighting shape, and he was definitely feeling the effects of this new temporary lifestyle.
As Natalie had predicted, the library was nearly empty. They secluded themselves at a pair of computers deep in the reference section. Knox didn’t think he’d ever even stepped foot in this library, much less been this deep into it. From the looks of the dust that had settled on the thick volumes on the shelves, it didn’t seem like many others had, either.
Natalie cracked her knuckles and rolled her neck before attacking the keyboard. Knox smiled, but turned his face away, lest she think he was laughing at her. He supposed there was more than one way to fight. He used his fists, while she used her brain. They made a pretty good team.
Knox scrolled through various news sites, looking for any new articles that mentioned them. Other than a small blurb that stated the investigation into Natalie’s disappearance was ongoing, there was nothing. Right there on the front of the local newspaper’s site, though, was an article about the growing drug problem in the city and the police’s efforts to crack down. Knox almost snorted. Everyone on the south side knew where the drugs came from. Hell, the cops probably knew it, too. But he’d always managed to slip through the police’s fingers. X had laughed about it, calling himself untouchable.
But maybe not anymore. If Amelia was right, then Detective Carmichael was finally making X nervous.
Knox would love to meet with the man and figure out what he had on X.
“I’m almost done,” Natalie whispered in a library-appropriate voice. “I just want to print out a copy of the trust and some other documents.”
A few minutes later, she logged off of the computer and Knox did the same. Then they set off for home.
Home. It was a strange thought, but Knox had come to think of that little abandoned house as their home. He wondered about the state of his apartment. Though he’d lived there for the last seven years, he had no attachment to the place or any of the belongings in it. No doubt it had been ransacked by X, and since he no longer had his phone, there was no way for his landlord to get in touch with him. Of course, given recent events, his landlord might be happy he was gone.
Even when they got this whole mess sorted out, people wouldn’t forget. The “innocent until proven guilty” rule did not apply to reputations or public opinion. All anyone would know about him was that he’d been suspected of abducting an heiress and accused of attacking that rich cocksucker, Harding.
Which technically, he had. But not before the bastard pulled a gun on them. He—and his driver—had deserved what they’d gotten.
But getting his life back wasn’t enough anymore, because things had been taken from him that he could never reclaim. And X would have to pay for that. He just needed to figure out how. It was there, right under his nose. He could feel it, but he just wasn’t seeing it.
“Did you find anything useful?” he asked Natalie once they were out of earshot of other pedestrians.
Her eyes brightened. “Yes, actually. So I figured out that Eleanor stopped attending events roughly ten years ago, shortly after her husband died. And you’ll never guess which date is coming up later this week.”
He looked at her blankly.
“The anniversary of her husband’s death!” The smile faded from her face and was replaced by a pained expression. “Ugh. It sounds terrible that I’m excited about that. But anyway, I’m ninety percent sure she’ll visit his grave that day.”
“And we’ll find her there.”
Natalie grimaced. “Yes. I feel awful disturbing her there, but I’ve got no other ideas. That woman is a ghost.”
Once back in the house, Natalie sat cross-legged on her sleeping bag with her printed papers in front of her, and Knox lay on his back on his, but he was too restless. He’d never gone this long without working out. He missed the monotony of his morning runs, where the only thing he had to worry about was not getting run down by cyclists. And he craved the calmness that overtook him when he lifted weights. So he flipped to his stomach and started a series of push-ups.
His mind immediately felt more peaceful as his muscles easily handled the exertion. He closed his eyes, welcoming the feeling. If only the house were bigger, he’d run laps inside.
He was halfway through his second set when he felt Natalie staring at him. He cut his eyes over to find her chewing on the end of her pen, her eyes tracking his every movement.
&nb
sp; The heat in her eyes sent his blood rushing south. He lost count of his reps, not able to hold any thought in his mind other than the memory of how her body felt under his. How she tasted and how her body seized when she came.
Fuck.
No woman had ever had this effect on him before. And somehow he doubted anyone else ever would.
“Are you trying to distract me?”
Natalie had been itching to get her fingers on these printouts the whole walk home from the library, but now watching Knox do push-ups, she had an itch to get her fingers on something else.
His back was straight and rigid, and the muscles in his arms were taut, flexing with every move. Biceps, triceps—he had all the ceps covered. And that ass . . . it was tight, solid muscle.
He was totally focused on the movement, and his eyes had that utter concentration that she’d witnessed when they’d been together. Only then, that intensity was focused solely on her pleasure.
Heat built within her at the memory.
“Is it working?” Knox asked.
She blushed and looked away, astonished that he still had this effect on her. They were lovers, but he still could make her blush with just a look or a handful of words.
Heck, he didn’t even have to do anything. She could just look at him and feel her cheeks flush. Of course, that might have more to do with the thoughts running through her mind.
She met his eyes. He was sitting with his arms resting on his knees and looking at her with that intense gaze of his.
Everything about him was intense.
And she loved that about him.
“I wasn’t trying to distract you,” he said. “I know how important this is. I can go in the other room if you want.”
She hesitated. She’d like nothing more than to spend the afternoon naked with him, but she needed to be prepared.
“No, that’s okay.”
She tore her gaze away from him and forced herself to focus on the papers in front of her. She was a mature adult. She could totally handle being in the same room with Knox and all his sexiness and still be productive.
Maybe. She hoped.
She returned her attention to the trust documents and underlined parts that were the most relevant to her situation. In just a few days’ time, she would be face-to-face with the woman who could change her future.
Eleanor would be there later in the week. She had to be. Natalie refused to believe otherwise. She was ready to take control of her future.
Two weeks ago, she had been fine with hiding. Four years had seemed like a reasonable price to pay for her freedom. But now she had Knox. This lifestyle didn’t suit him. Even now, he looked like a caged animal, all penned in. She couldn’t ask him to put his life on hold that long, not when he’d already given up so much to protect her. He could’ve skipped town and started a new life. Now that he’d broken ties with X, there was nothing keeping him here.
Instead, he stayed. And he was wanted by the police for questioning, at the very least. There might even be a warrant out for his arrest.
Not to mention X had it out for him. If Knox hadn’t paired up with her, he would have been free of all this.
So much depended on this meeting. She’d better not screw it up.
When she found she was gleaning no more useful information from the trust documents, she took a break and stretched her arms toward the ceiling, twisting to work out the kinks in her back.
She wished she could’ve stayed and worked at the library at a proper table with a chair, but Knox had been antsy as it was. And he was probably right. They needed to keep their profiles as low as possible, which meant staying out of sight.
She stood and continued stretching. Knox watched her carefully, so she did her best not to favor her shoulder or her hip, but both were throbbing. And neither one was pretty to look at. She’d never known so many shades of purple could exist.
She turned her attention to the other documents she’d printed out, the records for the Anna Farrington Foundation, which benefited local women and children in need. It had been formed after her mother’s death. She’d planned to look at these at Amelia’s, but her time there had been cut short. She wasn’t usually involved in the foundation, but all her recent thoughts of her mother made her curious about it.
From what she could tell, the foundation was thriving. If her father was good at one thing, it was convincing others to part with their money.
A faint feeling flurried in her heart. Hope. Maybe her father wasn’t the complete monster she’d come to find out about these past few days. Maybe her mother’s accidental death was just that—an accident. True, her father was a prick. There was nothing that could take that away from him, but until she’d dug into these records, she hadn’t realized that a small part of her still hoped that the man who had fathered her was a decent human being.
She didn’t want to be the offspring of a monster.
She flipped to the next page and frowned. The dates were the same. It looked like she’d accidentally printed two copies of the same report. Just before she balled the paper up in her fist, a word at the top of the column caught her eye—transfer.
The flurry of hope turned into a stabbing in her gut.
She examined the two papers side-by-side. Same dates, different monetary amounts.
“He’s embezzling,” she whispered.
“Did you say something?” Knox asked.
She pushed the papers away from her in disgust. “My father has solicited tens of thousands of dollars for the foundation, and he’s stealing it. He’s been embezzling from the foundation that bears my mother’s name. Goddammit.”
Knox didn’t look surprised, but what did she expect? She was a fool for being disheartened every time she learned about another horrible deed her father had committed. This foundation was the only good thing that resulted from her mother’s death, and it hurt that her father had sullied it. It somehow seemed worse than his trying to take over the family’s money. He was disrespecting her memory and everything she stood for.
“How long has it been going on?” Knox asked.
“I don’t know. I’d have to look deeper into the files, but I need a computer for that. Fuck! I could be wrong, but somehow I don’t think so. There’s no reason for there to be two sets of records for the same date.” It made her sick to her stomach that this had been going on right under her nose, and she’d been too powerless—and clueless—to stop it.
“What do you want to do?”
She rubbed her temples. “For now? Nothing. Eventually, I’ll turn this information over to the authorities, but for right now, it can wait. Another week won’t make much of a difference if this has already been going on for years.”
“Maybe it will help your case with the board.”
“That’s a good point. If I can prove he’s embezzling from a charitable foundation, then surely they’ll believe I’m better suited to handling my own inheritance. If nothing else, they can give the monthly allowance directly to me instead of it going through him.” She sighed. “God, I just hate this. I just hate that my father is such a scumbag.”
Knox nodded, his expression tired, and she suddenly remembered what he’d told her about his father. Guilt slammed into her. Here she was complaining about her situation when his upbringing had been much, much worse. Despite everything, she’d had a privileged childhood.
“What was it like?” she asked. “Living in foster care?”
His eyes immediately hardened, and he shrugged.
She hated that he was shutting her out. Of course, he did confide in her about his mother, and she could tell by the pain in his eyes that it had cost him. But she didn’t want any walls between them.
Sometimes she felt she knew him better than anyone else. Other times, she felt like she didn’t know him at all.
This was one of those times, and she hated it.
“I understand if you don’t want to talk about it.”
“No . . .” Knox’s mouth drew int
o a hard line. “I just don’t have much to say about it. I got clothes, food, and a place to sleep.”
“That must have been a tough way to grow up.”
“Not much different from you,” he said, and she paused. In a way it was true. The love she thought she’d had from her father was a lie, but at the time, she didn’t know it. She just thought he was being hard on her.
She hadn’t realized the extent of his ruthlessness. She wondered how different her childhood would have been if she’d known then what she knew now. It was probably better that she’d been blind to his ways until she was ready to actually do something about it.
She just wished she’d gotten to this point sooner.
“I wasn’t the best kid. I was angry,” Knox said quietly. “I was just so angry. I wanted to kill my father. Turns out someone else did, too. He was killed in prison. I had a vendetta against the world, and I didn’t care who knew it. I got in a lot of fights. Eventually, my foster parents kicked me out. That’s when I hooked up with X. He’d seen me fight. Apparently I’m a natural.” He laughed bitterly.
“You are,” Natalie said. “That’s not a bad thing.”
“X trained me himself. In his day, he was quite the fighter. I lived with him at first. The scary thing is he was more of a father to me than my own had ever been. It took me a while to realize what I’d gotten myself into. By then, I was stuck. I was a high school dropout with no skills.” He ground his teeth and looked away. “Still am.”
“But you don’t have to be. It’s not too late to change.”
“Isn’t it?”
Natalie crawled over to him and laid her head on his shoulder. “No. It’s never too late.”
“I’ve spent my whole life fighting. First, my father. Then, anyone and everyone. And now . . . well, up until a week ago, I fought anyone I got paid to. It suited me. Looking down at an opponent after I knocked him out . . . it was the best feeling. I craved it. It was the only time I felt alive.” He let out a shaky breath. “Until now.”
Chapter 17
Natalie traced the features of Knox’s face with her fingertip, smiling when her fingers caught over his stubble.
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