Chapter 6
Ava
I searched his eyes, trying to look for some trick or other alternative motive within those green and yellow depths, but I found none.
With trepidation, I took his hand when he offered it, sliding my fingertips across his.
The feeling of his skin against mine was like a breath of fresh air and I sighed softly in relief.
It felt safe.
Maybe it was. Maybe I should take that last leap of faith and give him my heart.
Gently, he lifted me off of his lap and set me down on my feet.
With a guiding hand on my lower back, he led me around the desk so that I could sit down in Nicolai’s chair.
He leaned against the desk next to me, watching as my trembling fingers reached for the mouse and keyboard.
I was still very much aware that I was naked from the waist down, but I didn’t let it slow me down.
I clicked and the screen lit up. I was surprised to see it open straight to the desktop.
There was a pretty Italian landscape set as the background, but other than that, it was pretty much as you would expect a normal office computer to look like rather than one owned by the head of a notorious vampire crime family.
It was really quite striking in its normalcy.
I expected a password window, but there wasn’t one. In fact, there really wasn’t any sort of protection whatsoever. Maybe Nicolai had been arrogant enough to think that his enemies would never make it past his security guards and as a result, his files were just all out in the open.
I still felt emotionally raw, but his cockiness elicited the smallest chuckle from my lips.
Stupid bastard.
“I don’t even have to hack it to get in,” I grinned.
“Apparently, he hadn’t thought to protect himself from the likes of you,” Lawson muttered, his amused laugh bouncing all around me.
“There’s a firewall meant to keep everyone outside this building out of their network, but it doesn’t do any good for those of us already inside,” I observed, smirking a bit at the Venuti’s cockiness.
I opened a few folders, glancing over the records of the building, the hotel revenue, the wait staff that serviced the lower levels. It was all pretty much run of the mill, at least until I stumbled on a Venuti Clan family tree.
They were so much bigger than I imagined.
There were names listed from the 1400s and some that dated even earlier than that.
There were a few men and women so old that the date wasn’t even recorded, and someone had simply written down an estimated range instead.
I chewed my lip and I zoomed out a bit more so that I could see the whole thing.
It was a lot bigger than I expected.
A cold chill passed over me. The number I’d killed here in this building barely even dented their ranks. Hell, there were so much more on this list than I could have ever imagined.
I swallowed heavily and zoomed back in until I found Nicolai’s name somewhere in the middle.
“Nicolai isn’t particularly high on this family tree,” I whispered cautiously.
“No. He isn’t,” Lawson replied.
“You knew that already?”
“Nicolai is the reigning face of the Venuti family, but I’ve always suspected that there would be someone behind him pulling the strings,” he replied, searching the tree himself. “I recognize a great many names… Constantine, Barnabus, Demetri, among others.”
Toboe rounded the desk and stood beside me. He plugged a USB drive into the computer tower and typed in a few keystrokes, initiating a full backup.
“I don’t see us getting interrupted, but I think it would be useful to take all of this information to go,” he offered.
“For sure,” I echoed. I glanced down and pressed my thighs together, feeling myself flush with heat at the realization that he could see that I was still bare from the waist down.
I shifted in my seat as the burn from Lawson’s belt intensified for a second.
I chewed my lip, feeling the residual soreness in my bottom hole too.
To Toboe’s credit, he didn’t even glance down to look at me, but the knowledge that he could potentially see Lawson’s seed drying on my thighs made me blush even deeper with shame.
I swallowed hard and tried to focus back on the screen.
I opened a few more folders, seeing nothing of interest until I stumbled across one that was simply named Winters.
I double clicked on it as fast as I could.
The first thing that popped up was an image of my father’s face.
For a moment, I just sat there and stared into the kindness in his eyes.
I wished I could reach out and touch him.
I just wanted to tell him that I loved him, one last time.
The Venuti had taken that from me.
As if he could feel the tension inside me, Lawson pressed his palm firmly against my shoulder and squeezed it tight.
“Together,” he whispered softly.
I reached up and took his fingers in mine, holding them tightly and I took that one last leap of faith. I decided to trust him in this.
“Together,” I echoed, and he squeezed me tighter.
I opened the next picture and sucked in a shaky breath.
It was the two of us, together in a park.
I remembered that day like it was yesterday.
It was taken on my eighteenth birthday. I could still feel the cold chill of the mint chocolate chip ice cream running down my wrist, the crisp taste of the frosty treat on my tongue and the warm embrace of the sun on my face as it broke free of the clouds above us.
The hustle and bustle of the quarter rushed all around us, the clopping of the horse-drawn carriages, the laughter of the tourists that were already drunk at noon on a Saturday, and the delicious scent of fried seafood swirling all around us, the beep of a car horn somewhere in the distance.
I could still hear my father’s laugh as I rushed to eat that ice cream cone before it totally melted in my hands.
“You miss him,” Lawson whispered gently.
“I do,” I answered hoarsely.
“We’re going to clear his name,” he vowed, and his voice shook just the tiniest bit with emotion.
“Why would you want to help me? You’ve seen what he’s done. You don’t even know him,” I said softly.
“I know it saddens you, sweet girl, and I want to take that away. I want to see you smile. I want to see you happy,” he murmured. His fingers squeezed even tighter on my shoulder, and I knew he was speaking the truth. I didn’t know what to say so I just tightened my fingers on his.
My heart faltered just a bit as he guided my hand back toward the mouse. He opened another file, and we began to read together.
As a team.
I took a shallow breath and scanned over the first document. It was just his resume, a summary of various projects that he’d worked on, his job history, everything he could list publicly at least. I clicked on another after that, and the real information started to come out.
There’d been a contract that had been written up between him and the vampires of the quarter.
And it had only been signed by one party. Nicolai Venuti.
Beneath a blank signature line, my father’s full name had been typed out. I sat back and stared at it for a long time.
I scrolled back up and devoured the details of that document.
I’d known that the Venuti had wanted him to work with them, but I hadn’t known the details as to what that was. At least, not until now.
They wanted him to create weapons for them. A lot of weapons.
They didn’t want just guns or bombs or the usual things that would be used in the normal world.
They had demanded that my father create weapons that could be used against the shifter families, things like silver-tipped bullets, a weaponized aeration of wolfsbane that could be used to take down an entire shifter pack, and so much more.
They wanted weapons that were much higher tech than what was available now, easier to produce and stable in long-term storage.
The more I read, the more uneasy I felt until I finished the whole thing and sat back.
I licked my lips, reluctant to say anything for a long time.
Finally, I cleared my throat.
“The Venuti were preparing for war,” I breathed as I turned toward Lawson. “They’ve been readying themselves for war against you.”
I opened more files, finding blueprints of the silver-tipped bullets my father had already created and research articles that pointed to the aeration of the one plant that made shifters weak, wolfsbane.
There were more that suggested potential research avenues that I could only assume would result in exposing a weakness in the wolves, but all of it had been gathered in preparation of my father’s assumed cooperation.
There were letters demanding his compliance, including threatening notes of blackmail that were directed at his financial well-being and a few that even threatened my life.
He had refused. All of it.
Three days before the massacre, my father had come here and met with Nicolai.
He hadn’t left the building that day, nor had he left the day after.
The morning of his release, my father had walked right into the French Quarter, what I now knew was shifter territory, and killed a number of tourists and locals in a bloody massacre that resulted in his death.
I opened the last file in the folder, which described the events of the day he’d come here all the way to the termination of my father’s life at the hands of the Venuti men. It not only confirmed that the vampires had been the one to kill him, but it listed them all by name.
Lawson cleared his throat.
“You know of vampires, Ava, but do you know about the different abilities the vampire families have?” he asked softly.
“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I answered.