10. Kyle
10
KYLE
Her face grows pale, her eyes larger than ever. She doesn’t belong in this world. I knew it when I first met her, but I understand it far more clearly now. Which is why I want to take her away from the city, away from the family, and start over somewhere new. We could be different people in Ireland. Maybe then we’d have a chance to make this work.
“No.” She shakes her head. “There must be some mistake.”
“I wish I was wrong, Sienna. My father is serving a life sentence in jail; the last thing I want to do is rake up the past when it’s best left buried. But whatever Nick is up to, it’s connected to my family.”
“But I’ve known him for years.”
I want so badly to fold her into my arms and make this all go away, but I’m acutely conscious that one wrong move will send her fleeing. And I need to keep her close.
“Sienna, did he ever ask you on a date before?” I try to keep my tone devoid of emotion. She already believes that this is a rivalry between me and Nick Morris, and I’m not adding fuel to that blazing fire.
“No, never. He never … looked at me that way before.”
“Ask yourself: why now?”
She’s picking at the skin around her thumbs without even realizing what she’s doing. “What do you mean?” Her voice is tiny. Vulnerable.
I clench my fists to stop myself from taking her hands in mine and kissing the pulpy flesh around her thumbnails.
“Why did he never ask you on a date before? Why didn’t he ask you last week, or last month, or last year?”
Her eyebrows lower and her bewilderment morphs into narrow-eyed mistrust. “You think he only wants me because of you?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying.”
“What are you saying then, Kyle?” Her voice has become brittle.
“I’m saying that he waited till now for a reason.”
“And the reason is you?” Her eyes are all over the place. “I’ve been busy with the gallery in case you forgot. Maybe Nick was waiting for the gallery to open before he asked me on a date. He’s been a perfect gentleman. Unlike you.”
“I’m not going to argue with you about this, Sienna. I’ll make sure you’re safe, but I’ll keep my word. No pressure. This is not some fucked up ploy to trap you.”
“Fine.” She squares her shoulders, but her breathing is a dead giveaway of the turmoil going on inside. “I’m leaving then.”
She turns around and crosses my office to the private elevator.
“No, wait, Sienna.” I reach the door before she can open it and cover the control panel with my hand.
“Move your hand, Kyle.”
“I can’t let you go back to your apartment.”
“I’m going to work. Some of us don’t have the luxury of knowing the billions in our bank accounts will keep a roof over our heads.” Her gaze is steady.
“Are you always this stubborn?” I try to lighten the mood, but my timing is clearly way off-target.
“Only when it involves making my own decisions.”
I lower my hand. “Seamus will take you. But you’re coming back to the Wraith tonight when the gallery closes. I’ll leave the key to your suite with the concierge.”
“I don’t work for you, Kyle. You can’t tell me what to do.”
I nod. “Please will you come back here tonight?”
The elevator door opens, and she steps inside. When she turns around to face me, her expression has softened a little, the haunted look that appeared in her eyes when I told her about my father having been smoothed away.
“Okay.”
“Thank you.”
I watch the door close, taking her away from me as the numbers on the control panel start counting down.
I unlock my phone and call Seamus. “She’s on her way down. Don’t let her out of your sight.”
She doesn’t want my protection, but I’m hoping she has at least accepted that it’s what’s best for her.
I go to my desk and call Lauren. “Can you allocate a suite to Sienna Walker and leave the key with the exec concierge?”
“Sienna Walker? Is that the?—”
I cut the call. Seamus is ringing my mobile.
“I lost her.”
My gut clenches. “What do you mean, you lost her? She was in the elevator.”
“She ran before I could stop her. Sorry, boss.”
“Find her. I’ll cover the gallery and her apartment.”
I call Terry and explain the situation. “I’m calling a family meeting. How soon can you get here?”
By the time Terry, Cash, and Bash are seated on the couches in my office, Seamus and two members of Terry’s security team have tracked Sienna to an apartment building in Queens. When she left the Wraith, it seems she ran straight into the arms of her father as he stumbled out of the casino after pulling an all-nighter.
I let her go. My men are under strict orders to notify me the moment she leaves the building.
What I really want to do is go straight there, bang on every apartment door until I find her, and bring her back here with me, but I promised I wasn’t trying to trap her, and at least she isn’t alone. I’m not sure how proactive her father will be in keeping her safe, but I’m consoling myself that while she’s with him, Nick can’t get to her.
The lesser of two evils.
“You must promise me that what I’m about to tell you doesn’t reach Mom.” I kickstart the meeting with a bang.
Bash knocks back a whiskey shot. “You have to tell us what it is before we can agree to that.”
“Bash is right,” Cash joins in. “I mean, if you’re about to tell us that Holly isn’t Caleb’s daughter, well…” He shrugs. “I’m not withholding that kind of information. Mom will string us up by our bollocks and leave us to?—”
“Lads, I think we get the picture,” Terry interjects.
Deep breath. I thought I could handle this without involving Terry and my brothers. I was wrong.
“Nick Morris. Cosmetic surgeon. He’s been treating Sienna since the accident.”
I have their attention. The twins might wind each other up and mess around a lot of the time, but they know when it’s time to stop the banter and get serious.
“I met him at the gallery opening. Something about him was off, and when I did some digging, it was obvious that his people had been doing a shit load of cleaning up behind him. Turns out…”
My pulse is racing. This isn’t the kind of conversation you want to have every day. Or at all.
“…he was born in Chicago and entered the foster care system when his mom was murdered. No father’s name was recorded on his birth certificate, but the man suspected of killing his mom was called Caelan O’Reilly.”
Terry is on his feet, hands wrapped around the back of his neck. “You’re sure about this, Kyle?”
“Aye. I wish I wasn’t.”
“Fuck!” Cash drains his drink and refills their glasses.
“Does this guy, Nick Morris, know who his father is?” Terry’s eyes are distant. He wasn’t around when our father tried to kill our mom, but he knows the score, and he’s been keeping our mom safe, and alive, ever since.
Bash hasn’t spoken a word.
“If he didn’t before,” I say, “I’m guessing he does now. He’s all over Sienna like a fucking dose of the shingles.”
“What does Sienna have to do with any of this?” Bash is working it out in his head, slotting the pieces together, so that he can formulate a plan.
“Jeez, I must’ve gotten more than my fair share of the brains when we shared our mother’s womb,” Cash says. “You’re looking right at the reason Sienna is involved.” He points to me.
“She’s his way in,” Bash says, catching on quickly. “The gatekeeper. He obviously knows our bloodlines are connected.”
“Do you think he’s after your mother?” The color has been sucked from Terry’s face, and his hand instinctively seeks out the gun tucked inside his jacket pocket.
“No, I think it’s me he’s after.” Now that I’ve started, I have to tell them everything. “Mom met him yesterday. He was in a restaurant with Sienna. He knew that I was trailing them, so he came over and introduced himself. Mom said he looked familiar.”
The door opens then, and Caleb walks in. “What have I missed?” He sits on the couch next to Cash and helps himself to a glass of iced water.
“Get yourself back upstairs to your wife and baby, lad.” Terry gestures with a nod of his head towards the door. “Everything is under control.”
Caleb’s gaze slides around the room. “Okay. You like you’ve seen a ghost, Terry. My twin brothers haven’t been this quiet since Cash almost decapitated Bash with a golf club when they were six years old. And Kyle’s worried about Sienna because her scumbag father is back on the scene.”
“How do you know that?”
He shrugs. “Victoria spoke to Sienna last night.” His eyes are puffy with lack of sleep, but an aura of peacefulness and contentment is clinging to him like a fine mist. “He should be easy enough to handle. The guy is a loser according to Victoria. We can make him go away.”
“Oh, it gets better.” Cash studies his empty glass. “Seems our father couldn’t keep it in his pants before he met Mom.”
Caleb’s fists clench. His shoulders stiffen, and he sits forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. He might be two years younger than me, but he was the one who shielded us from our father’s fists before he got arrested. Because of my asthma, Caleb made himself the alpha, and that’s exactly what he’s doing right now. He’s on high alert, ready to strike.
“Talk to me,” he says.
When I’m finished telling him about Nick Morris, he stands up, dragging himself to his full height. “Let’s go speak to him, find out what he wants, and send him on his fucking merry way.”
“Whoa.” Terry raises his hands. “We need to think about this. We already know that he isn’t operating alone.”
“And Sienna knows about his father,” I add. “I had to tell her. Nick has men following her. I’ve allocated her a suite here temporarily, until this is resolved.”
“So, we’ll be doing everyone a favor by getting rid of him.” Caleb shrugs. “Win-win.”
“Sienna will know I’m behind it.”
“She’ll thank you in the long run,” Caleb says.
“I’m with Terry on this one.” I stand up too. “No one wants him gone more than I do, but I don’t want Sienna caught in the crossfire.”
“She won’t be.” Caleb addresses Terry. “The guy at least needs a warning, Ter.”
Terry’s shoulders slump. “I hear you. If your mom finds out…” He leaves the sentence hanging. “But it’s not going to be that simple. I had a couple of my men on his tail yesterday after your mom met him. Don’t worry, she doesn’t suspect the truth.”
“She won’t find out,” Caleb mutters under his breath. “He’ll be long gone before that happens.”
Terry doesn’t react. “He went to Sienna’s apartment yesterday evening. He took flowers.”
I flex my fingers. If I thought he’d laid a finger on Sienna, I’d wring his neck with my bare hands before handing his corpse over to my brothers to bury.
“He didn’t stay long.” Terry must sense my overwhelming urge to cause the man some serious harm. “Fifteen minutes max.”
That’s fifteen minutes too long.
“They lost him after he left.”
“Lost him where?” I ignore my brothers’ eyes on me. They know how I feel about Sienna, and Caleb, more than anyone, will understand the instinct to protect.
Terry shakes his head. “That’s just it. My men said it was like he evaporated into the night.”
“What the fuck.” I’m pacing now, the way Sienna did when she was here earlier. “Someone is protecting him. Someone knows where he is.”
“We’ll find him, lad.” Terry motions with both hands for me to settle.
“Meanwhile,” Caleb says, “I got a report on Sienna’s father. Robert Carlton Hooch. Grade A loser who targets women with kids, uses them for somewhere to kip for a while and then moves on when his creditors catch up with him.”
“How much debt?” I’ve been so busy focusing on Nick’s past, I didn’t stop to check out Sienna’s long-lost father. “He was in the Rinse a couple of days ago. With Sienna. He didn’t seem surprised when I told him that it belonged to my brother.”
“He’ll have done his research,” Caleb says. “He was in the casino all night, throwing money at the roulette table.”
“Any trouble?”
“Nope. But it seems our friend Hooch has a string of debts with a casino run by a bratva family.”
“The Petrovs?” Ivan Petrov was involved in Sienna’s abduction earlier in the year. The family has apologized since, but I don’t trust him.
“A new mob,” Caleb says. “Does the name Bogrov mean anything?”
“It does to me.” All eyes turn to Terry. “They’re trying to run the Petrovs out of town.”