Chapter 31
Remi pressed back against the wall as the door eased open, every muscle in her body locked for the first glimpse of a badge, a gun, or the face of a killer.
Everett stepped into the bungalow.
Relief barely had time to reach her before his gaze cut from Remi to the man shielding her, and the gun in his hand came up in one smooth motion.
Her father already had his gun aimed at center mass.
Remi’s breath caught.
Two men. Two guns. Both locked on each other in the middle of the room.
Everett’s voice came low and lethal. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Ace didn’t blink. “Yet here I am.”
“How did you find us?”
Ace said, “Picked up a few things when she called me yesterday.”
Everett’s gaze snapped to her. “You called him?”
The anger in his voice was harder than she expected.
Ace shifted half a step, drawing Everett’s attention back to him. “From a satellite phone. Completely untraceable.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“And I answered what mattered.”
Remi stepped between them before the room got any smaller.
“Okay. First, both of you lower your weapons.”
Neither moved.
She put one palm against Everett’s gun and the other against her father’s, pushing both barrels down with more confidence than she felt.
“Now.”
Everett’s jaw worked once, but he lowered his weapon.
Ace did the same a beat later.
They kept glaring at each other as if the guns had only been a formality.
Remi hated it. Hated that the two men who mattered most to her had never learned how to stand in the same room without turning into threats.
Everett had his reasons. A DEA special agent couldn’t publicly attach himself to a man known throughout the islands as a former PC-5 enforcer, even if no one had ever proven Ace was Mr. Goodnight.
Her father had his reasons, too.
The reasons were exhausting.
“Sit down,” Remi ordered.
Everett looked at her.
She pointed to the bed. “You. There.”
Then she pointed toward the chair near the door. “Dad. There.”
Ace’s eyebrows rose. “You giving orders now?”
“I run the farm, Dad. I know how to make stubborn creatures do what I tell them.”
Everett almost smiled.
Almost.
Both men sat, though neither looked happy about it.
Remi stayed standing between them and folded her arms. “Dad, it’s good that you’re here. We need your help.”
Ace’s expression changed instantly. “Anything you need, baby girl.”
The softness in his voice undid something in her she hadn’t known she was still holding.
For one dangerous second, she wanted to hand him the whole impossible mess and let him become the terrifying, overprotective solution he clearly wanted to be. But she would never sacrifice his freedom for her own.
“First, you need to know something.” Remi glanced at Everett, then back at her father. “I don’t think I killed Bobby.”
“You don’t think you killed him?” Ace’s mouth hardened. “You don’t remember slicing open Bobby’s chest fourteen times? Watching the life drain from him while he bled out on the floor?”
“Dad.”
“I’m not trying to hurt you.” His voice stayed blunt, but not cruel. His gaze moved to Everett.
“No, I don’t remember any of that.” Remi forced herself to breathe. “Knowing what I’d planned to do, I assumed I’d done it and couldn’t remember because I was in some fog of rage.”
“There’s no such thing as a fog of rage,” Dad said. “Taking a life sticks with you, baby girl. If you don’t remember, then it’s because you didn’t do it. Plain and simple.” He leaned back in the chair, looking satisfied with the answer.
“The real killer set Remington up to take the fall for both murders, but we can’t prove it yet,” Everett said.
Remi looked at her father. “Do you think it could be PC-5?”
“Fuck no.”
Her hope deflated so fast it almost made her dizzy.
Everett’s gaze stayed on Ace. “Tell us what you can about how it works.”
Ace looked between them, then seemed to decide how much truth he was willing to spend.
“There’s a vote,” he said. “The heads of the five families have to agree. Once the names are finalized, the official list goes to Vadaj. Ianthe, or someone she trusts, assigns the job. Then the enforcer assigned gets a deadline.”
Remi’s mouth went dry.
There was something obscene about how ordinary he made it sound. A murder could be discussed, approved, assigned, and scheduled with the same dry efficiency as any other job.
“How long?” Everett asked.
“Each step can take a day or two.”
“So it could be a week before someone added to the list is targeted.”
“Could be.”
Remi frowned. “That’s a long time. Couldn’t someone escape before then?”
“There’s no regular schedule for a vote,” Dad said. “No warning. No pattern. The discussions are confidential. Heads of families only. No leaks.”
“There must be leaks,” Remi said. “You found out about Bobby. You warned me. How did that happen?”
He looked away, unwilling to meet her gaze. His silence had the weight of things he probably never wanted her to know about him or his past.
Everett’s voice was careful. “Ianthe Vadaj warned you so you could protect Remington.”
Ace didn’t deny it.
Remi’s throat tightened.
Her father had left the cartel, but leaving had never meant clean separation. Too many old strings still ran between him and people who should have been history. She had never known the full terms of the deal that set him free. Some days, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.
Ace looked back at her. “That was an exception. A rare one. It’s happened only a handful of times, and only when someone at the very top wanted it to.”
“Bottom line,” Everett said, “no PC-5 assassin would have been assigned to Bobby the same night as the vote.”
“Not a chance,” Ace said.
Remi rubbed her arms, trying to make the pieces fit. “The Marengos knew. They came to tell Bobby they weren’t going to intervene and save him like they did the last time.”
Ace’s gaze snapped to hers. “The last time?”
Her heart dropped. Everett’s gray gaze met hers. He knew as well as she did what her father had stumbled upon. A part of her wished Everett would answer for her. Instead, he held back, giving her the space to decide how much truth her father got.
She could tell her dad that Bobby had been the reason she was attacked. The reason she lost the baby. The reason so much of her life had broken in places she was still finding.
But she couldn’t manage his emotions over the truth while juggling hers and Everett’s. Not yet.
“I don’t know the details,” she said, hating the lie as she chose it. “Only that they’d protected him before.”
Ace watched her for a beat too long.
Then he let it go.
For now.
“The only way they could be certain Bobby was being added to the list,” Dad said, “is if they submitted the request to J.D. Terranova themselves.”
Everett’s eyes narrowed. “They turned on him.”
Ace nodded. “Looks like it.”
“But they weren’t supposed to go warn him,” Remi said.
“No,” Ace said. “They were not.”
“Why would they?”
“Because Simeon and Ronnie Marengo have never met a rule they didn’t break.”
Everett’s mouth tightened. “So we can scratch PC-5 off the list as Bobby’s killer.”
Remi hated that answer.
She had wanted the killer to be large and obvious and separate from her life, like the PC-5. Some faceless assassin moving through the dark would have been easier than the truth forming underneath all this.
The real killer had not been some distant cartel ghost. Whoever did this had been close enough to understand the scene, patient enough to let it unfold, and ruthless enough to leave her inside the story he wanted the cops to believe.