Unfortunately, his father was right: He had no proof, just his suspicions—oh, and the confession of a cold-blooded killer. The lawyer in him knew the evidence he had would never stand up in court—it was his word against his father’s.
“You know what, Aiden? You were always too smart for your own good. Someday”—his father tapped his temple with his index finger—“all those smarts are going to catch up with you if you aren’t careful.”
“Are you threatening me?” It took every last bit of restraint not to leap across the desk and shake some sense into his father before it was too late. But truthfully, the man was too far gone into his hole of self-destruction for Aiden to help him climb out of it now. Someone had to stop him before anyone else got hurt. He just wished it didn’t have to be him.
“Christ, you’re an ungrateful shit, you know that?” Bennett snapped. It was the first true show of emotion, the first crack in his father’s impenetrable armor—and the man was furious. “You could have had it all, you know that? But you threw it all away. And for what?—some cunt and a half-assed fighting career?”
Aiden saw red. Every muscle in his body strung ripcord tight as rage suffused every cell of his body. To keep from saying something he’d regret, he bit the inside of his cheek until the coppery tang of blood touched his tongue. As well placed as those verbal jabs were, Aiden refused to take his father’s bait.
“I can’t believe you did it,” Aiden spat with contempt. “By some miracle Ryann still believes Moralli had her father murdered. What the hell am I going to tell her?”
“You’ll tell her nothing!” his father yelled, slamming his fist onto the desk. “Axel Andrews was a man with a death wish—one that I granted him.”
“Why was he investigating you? Who hired him?”
“No one! The bastard was blackmailing me. He built a case connecting me to Moralli, then demanded a million dollars for his silence. I silenced him, all right. He could have destroyed my career, Aiden. I couldn’t take that chance. He owed Moralli money and everyone knew it. When he turned up dead, everyone just assumed it was a mob hit.”
Oh, my God . . . Aiden stared at the man sitting across from him, realizing for the first time in his life he was in the presence of a monster. What in the hell was he going to do? How was he going to tell Ryann the truth? In that moment, a single thought resonated deep inside him that chilled him more than the knowledge that his father was a cold-blooded murderer.
I’m going to lose her . . .
I’m going to lose him . . .
This was the only thought that played through Ryann’s head as she woke to find herself alone. He was gone again, and there wasn’t anything she could do to stop it. For three days she’d barely seen him. He slipped into bed well after midnight, long after she was supposed to be sleeping, and he was gone again before she woke. Had she erred in giving him the flash drive?—in trusting him? In placing his father’s future in his hands, had she pushed him beyond the breaking point?
Though there seemed to be no love lost between him and his father, still the decision he faced was monumental. Once decided, it wasn’t something he could go back and undo. She refused to ask him about it. When and if he was ready, she hoped he would talk to her about it. But until then, all she could do was support him any way she knew how. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to want comfort from her. He’d withdrawn into himself, falling back into a pattern of coping she suspected had sustained him all these years—physical exhaustion. Even Nikko had tried to talk to him last night, but Aiden had responded by telling him to either spar or get out of his gym. The flurry of activity she heard coming from the gym had gone on well into the night.
“You okay?”
She looked up from her oatmeal, long gone cold, as she stirred random designs in the mush with her spoon. Nikko shuffled past her on the way to the kitchen, wearing nothing but a pair of black sweats with Cage Fighting Association running down the leg. She heard the suction break on the fridge, and a minute later he came walking out with a protein bar in one hand and a tall glass of orange juice in the other.
“I think I should be asking you that,” she said, nodding at the dark purple bruise over his left cheek. “It sounded pretty intense in there last night.”
Nikko shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal. “Disco just needed to blow off some steam.”
“Have you noticed he’s been acting different these past few days?” she pressed.
“Of course I’ve noticed, but you gotta understand, Gingersnap, we’re guys. This isn’t The Vagina Monologues. We don’t talk about our feelings.”
“Well maybe you should.”
“Uh-uh. That’s what you’re here for. I fight with him, you fuck him. That’s just the way it works.”
“Well, it’s not working,” she grumbled under her breath. If he heard her complaining, he didn’t press it. She was just glad Nikko was talking to her again. At least whatever dark place he’d slipped into had been a short-lived trip. He’d pulled himself out and brushed himself off as she suspected he’d done many times before.
“What are we doing today?” he asked, changing the subject.
“I’m finishing the dossier for Aiden on Lucas Machio. You want to watch some MMA videos with me?”
He gave a wicked smile that would someday melt some lucky lady’s panties. “Hell yeah, let’s do this.”
The afternoon passed uneventfully, and by late evening when Aiden had yet to come home, Ryann was starting to get restless.
“You’re pacing.”
“Am I?” She halted midstride and glanced at Nikko, stretched out across the couch in a lazy sprawl, his silvery gaze following her as she trekked back and forth in front of the Manhattan skyline. But tonight she was too anxious to appreciate the view. “How can you sit there and be so calm? It’s almost ten o’clock and Aiden isn’t back yet. He should have been home hours ago, and he’s not answering his phone.”
“Relax. Disco’s a big boy, not to mention a world-class MMA fighter. He can take care of himself.”
Nikko’s negligent attitude gave her no comfort. It did, however, piss her off. “What if something happened to him?” That was the closest she would come to voicing her truest fears. Nikko didn’t know about the flash drive. She and Aiden had agreed that the fewer people who were aware of its existence the better.
“What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know!” She threw up her hands in frustration, never feeling more helpless. “I’m going to go find him,” Ryann declared, marching toward her purse. Nikko was off the couch faster than she thought humanly possible and halting her retreat with a firm grip on her arm.
“Sorry, Gingersnap. I can’t let you do that.”
“Let me? You can’t let me?! I have news for you, Nikko, you do not get to tell me what I can and can’t do. If I want to walk out that door I’m going to, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
His brow rose, the oh, really? an unspoken challenge she wasn’t sure she wanted to test. There was some serious I’m not fucking around determination flashing in those silver-hued eyes. But she’d never been one to back down from a fight, and Ryann was just worried enough about Aiden to test him.
“Let go of me, Nikko.”
They stood there a moment, staring at each other in a wordless standoff. After several tense seconds ticked by, he muttered a foul curse and released her arm. “I’ll go find him,” he grumbled. “As long as you promise to stay put.”
“I promise,” she agreed. At this point she’d say just about anything to know Aiden was all right. Now whether or not she actually did it was another story.
Nikko pulled his cell from his pocket and pushed a few buttons. As he stared at the screen, his generally disgruntled countenance darkened.
“What’s wrong? What are you doing?”
“I’m pinging him on my GPS.
”
Un-fucking-believable . . . “You’ve known where he was this entire time and you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t know, because I don’t check up on him. I’m not his mother, and neither are you. Sometimes people need their space.”
He means from me . . . Maybe Nikko noticed the glassiness in her eyes, or maybe he realized what he’d said, because he muttered another curse and dragged his hand through his close-cropped hair. “I didn’t mean he doesn’t want to be with you. That’s not what I was saying . . .”
Oh, no? Well, it sure as hell sounded like it. She held up her hand when he took a step toward her. “It’s fine.” She turned away to face the window, feigning interest in the skylights. It wasn’t like her to be this emotional, but with all the stress of the last few days, and Aiden’s growing distance . . . “Just please go and make sure he’s all right. I think I’d like a little space myself.”
Nikko didn’t say anything else as he shrugged on his coat and left. Something was wrong. Ryann had good instincts, and the persistent niggling of unease told her Aiden was keeping something from her. She just wished she knew what and why.
Note to self: Be careful what you wish for.
CHAPTER
40
What in the hell are you doing here?”
Aiden didn’t need to turn and look at the man taking the seat next to him to know he was fucked. Dammit, he hated lying to his friend almost as much as he hated lying to Ryann. Could he feel like a more miserable prick? Apparently so, because the condemning daggers Del Toro was glaring at him right now made him want to crawl underneath a fucking rock.
“You haven’t changed, have you?”
The accusing growl spoken above the bump-and-grind bass coming from the center stage lit the very short fuse of Aiden’s even-shorter temper. Never mind that his back was to the topless dancers. Of course Del Toro would believe the worst. It was a believable front for Disco Stick Kruze, and exactly why he’d chosen this place to meet Ike for the last two weeks. Still, it would have been nice if his friend had given him the benefit of the doubt for even one fucking second.
Today had been hell. After confronting his father about Ryann’s dad, he’d come here to meet Ike and the federal agent he’d been working with to hand over the recording of his father’s confession and Ryann’s flash drive. For the last eight hours, Aiden had been sequestered in the back room where he had told his story, confessed to a lot of shit that would more than likely get him disbarred, and probably would have bought him some jail time if not for the immunity deal Ike had negotiated for him beforehand. He’d answered all their questions and helped build an airtight case against his father and Vincent Moralli. By the time they were done, he was tired as hell, but the lead agent was confident they had enough to make their arrests.
He told Aiden it would take roughly twenty-four hours to file the indictments and obtain their warrants. They planned to pick up his father tomorrow as he left the office after work, but since locating Moralli and getting past his security was a concern, the feds planned to move on him after Aiden’s fight. With any luck, after tomorrow this nightmare would all be behind them, but until the arrests had been made, Aiden couldn’t say shit about what he’d been doing here.
“What in the hell is wrong with you, man? You’ve been a goddamn ghost for days and this is what you’re doing? This is where I find you? Do you have any idea what it would do to Ryann if she knew you were here?”
Aiden snapped, and he was just drunk enough to cast caution to the wind. Spinning on his friend, he grabbed Del Toro, twisting his fist in his shirt and jerking him close. “She better not hear it from you,” he growled.
“If you don’t get your hands off me right now, I’m going to plant my fist in your face and then drag your stupid ass back home and let you explain to Ryann why I knocked you the fuck out.”
By the determination in Del Toro’s steely glare, he knew his friend wasn’t fronting. Aiden might be lit, but he wasn’t wasted enough to miss the edge of protectiveness that iced into Nikko’s voice when he mentioned Ryann’s name. He didn’t appreciate having it directed at him, either, and he was tempted to tell the guy to fuck off and mind his own business. Del Toro had no idea what he was doing here, what he was going through, and he’d be damned if he was about to sit here and explain himself to someone who was supposed to be his friend and sure as hell should have a little faith in him.
Sure, he’d stayed here longer than he needed to, and he’d had a lot more whiskey than he should have, but dammit, he needed to decompress after one hell of a bad day. Right or wrong, part of him was desperate to purge the guilt from his conscience. For just a little while he wanted to escape the weight of condemnation pressing down on him. Was that so fucking horrible? Looking at Del Toro’s forbidding countenance right now, the answer to that question was most assuredly yes.
After a long pause, he released his friend with a fuck off shove and turned back to the bar, draining his glass of whiskey before waving the bartender over for a refill.
“How many of those have you had?”
“Not enough,” he growled.
“Too fucking many, by the looks of it. You know, she’s not stupid, man. Ryann knows something’s up. Do you really want to throw it all away for bad booze and some used-up pussy? Ryann deserves better than this. I thought you’d changed.”
Dammit, he had changed. And there it was again, that unmistakable icy shard spiking him in the back. “Perhaps you should take care with your concern, friend, that I don’t misunderstand your intentions.”
“If you’re going to fuck around on her, perhaps you haven’t.”
Well, what do you know . . . the cherry on top of the goddamn cake. Just when he didn’t think this day could get any worse. Aiden sat there, statue still, gripping his glass and putting its durability to the test. He kept his gaze locked on the ice cubes floating in his whiskey. He should have seen this fucking coming. “Does Ryann know how you feel about her?” It took every ounce of strength to temper his voice and not smash this glass upside the bastard’s head.
“Nope, and neither would you if you weren’t such an asshole.”
Rage exploded inside him. In all of two seconds, Aiden was out of his chair and in Del Toro’s face. “I’m the asshole? I’m not the prick getting hard for my friend’s girl. Let’s get something straight here. I am not cheating on Ryann. Nor am I about to stand here and explain myself to you. It may not look like it, but I am fighting like hell for her, fighting for a future with her, and if that’s going to be a conflict of interest for you, then I think it’s time you go back to Vegas, amigo.”
“The only problem I have,” Del Toro growled, “is seeing how fucking miserable that woman is, worrying about you while you’re MIA. I’m sick of her asking me if I know what’s going on with you, or why you’re avoiding her. Which I don’t and you obviously are.” He shoved Aiden a step back. “Or is this not a strip club I just found you getting lit at while Ryann’s crying at home, rife with fear that something has happened to you? I know how often you come here. GPS doesn’t lie, asshole. Maybe you should shut your tracking off.”
“Fuck, is she really crying?” The power of Nikko’s words hit him in the gut like a sucker punch. He exhaled a defeated sigh and dragged his hand through his hair as he dropped back in his chair. “God, I’m going to lose her,” he muttered to himself, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes until spots dotted his vision.
Seconds passed while Del Toro stared at him as if trying to puzzle out what he’d just said, then chuffed a masculine snort. “What the fuck are you talking about, man? That girl is crazy about you.”
“I’ve been lying to her. And when she finds out the truth . . .”
Nikko’s steely glare darkened. “What are you lying to her about?”
Fuck it, he might as well practice the truth on his friend. If he couldn’t s
ay it to him, how in the hell was he going to tell Ryann? “My father had Axel Andrews killed.” The words tasted like bitter acid on his tongue, and getting them out failed to cleanse his soul of the consuming guilt.
“Ho-ly shit . . .”
Del Toro stared at him like the universe had just imploded. Well, Aiden’s was certainly on the cusp of doing just that, because Ryann was the center of his and there wasn’t any scenario, short of lying to her for the rest of his life, where he saw this working out for them. Who in the hell stays with the guy whose dad is responsible for killing theirs?
“Oh, fuck . . .”
“Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Not terribly helpful, though, but thanks for that.”
“Why? Why would a senator want to risk being caught for murder?”
“Ryann’s father had a lot of gambling debts. He was into Moralli for seventy-five grand, and apparently he thought the best way out of that was to blackmail my father. He began investigating him and dug up some pretty unsavory shit.”
“This is crazy.”
“Tell me about it.”
“How long have you known?”
“I’ve suspected it for a few days. I hoped I was wrong, but when I confronted my dad about it, the bastard didn’t even try to deny it.”
“Oh, wow, man, this is really bad. Poor Ryann . . .”
Aiden shot him an irritated scowl. “You think?”
Del Toro’s glare darkened, reminding him of a CFA weigh-in. That protective glint was back in his eyes, sparking Aiden’s already raw nerves.
Passing His Guard (Against the Cage #2) Page 32