Chapter Two
Helios
Ares watched Nix take off on the tender. “He’s up to something.”
I changed our heading to due east. “How long have you known that asshole?” It was a rhetorical question.
Nix “Phoenix” Erikson, formerly William “Bravo” Nilsen, was a goddamn machine.
Bred for warfighting, groomed for covert ops, hyperintelligent, detached, and merciless—he was a ruthless motherfucker with a constant agenda.
“He’s always up to something. He got off the damn boat and walked the fucking dock at our last refuel. ”
Nix never left his floating armory. Not without a damn good reason, and never for a refuel.
Then the fucker had stood there like he was asking to get his ass caught on security feeds.
Not that he couldn’t hack into anything anywhere and erase that shit in a few keystrokes with the amount of surveillance tech, servers, and sat coms he either owned or had access to.
Fucker was more tricked-out than our military.
“This is different.” Ares grabbed the binos. “He’s not heading toward the villa’s dock.”
I snorted. “Why the fuck do you think he bought the property on the other side of the point?” It sure as hell wasn’t for a crash pad for me and Ares on the one day a year he pulled this bullshit.
Contrary to his usual aversion to all things conversation related, Ares ticked off a laundry list of reasons. “To control the only access road, have a hundred and eighty degrees of security coverage, eliminate the prospect of an immediate neighbor, and own the one boathouse in the area.”
“You could’ve saved your breath and just said boathouse.” I increased our speed to twenty knots. “That floating fucking garage for his tender is the only reason he bought the place. That and the concealed path that accesses the rear of his property.” Nix didn’t do front doors.
Ares dumped the binos on the bridge. “What’s our heading?”
“Out.” Where we weren’t visible from shore. Then I could cut the engines, drift, and not give a fuck about this damn boat while I made a call.
Ares glanced at his watch. Then he read me like a book. “You talk to her yet today?”
“Texted this morning.” Like I did every morning I wasn’t there.
“How is she?”
“How the fuck do you think?” She hadn’t replied to my text, which meant she was either pissed or crawling around in her own head. Pissed, I wouldn’t give a shit about. I could handle her anger—when it surfaced, which was fucking rare these days.
Ares looked back toward shore. “She doesn’t like it when we’re both gone.”
“No shit.” Neither did I. I didn’t like to be away from her, period. And this grind was getting old. Or I was. Fuck.
“What’d she say this morning?”
“Nothing.” My jaw ticked, and I read him in like this was a goddamn mission instead of the fucked-up situation it was. “She didn’t answer.”
“Was she awake?”
“Don’t know.” She’d turned off the geo location on her cell last night, then switched the house’s security system to air gap. If she was moving around, I wasn’t seeing it.
“You check the feeds?”
I threw my brother a warning glance. “What the fuck is with the twenty questions?”
Ares picked up the binos again. “Just because my concern for her isn’t the same shade as yours doesn’t mean I lack it.”
“Who the fuck are you, and what happened to Master Sergeant Grayson?” Same as me, Ares had been Delta Force. “Your pussy ass is talking about shades of concern now?”
“Would you rather I explicitly state the nature of your relationship with her?” He scanned the shoreline through the binos.
“She’s our sister,” I ground out. “I don’t have a fucking relationship with her, explicit or otherwise.”
“Stepsister,” the fucker corrected. “And yes, you do. We both do. She’s a relation. We all stay in the same house. We interact. There’s no ambiguity in that. Thus, there’s a relationship.”
The second he said he had a relationship with her, irrational anger flared. “You picked today of all days to become fucking talkative?” When I had to spend the next four and a half days stewing over what he’d said?
“No. Stating facts, and we have a problem.” He angled around me. “There’s movement on the lowest terrace near the dock. Turn the Paragon around.”
“Fuck no.” And fuck waiting til we were far enough out. I cut the throttles back to twelve knots. “Nix can handle himself.” I had a call to make.
“Could be trouble,” Ares warned.
“It’s always fucking trouble with that SEAL.” Why the hell did Ares think we were here instead of the boat’s usual crew? “Don’t care.” I only cared about two people, and one of them was my asshole brother who’d just told me he had a relationship with our sister.
Stepsister.
Fuck.
Engaging the damn autopilot, I glanced at Ares. “I’m making a call.” Pushing out the portside door, already dialing, I stepped off the bridge and onto the side deck with my cell to my ear.