Chapter 17
Seventeen
Aria
I was simply and purely elated with the way things were going in my life. On days when I didn’t have to work, I was wishing I was at work, and when I was at work, I was wishing it could be my all-day, everyday life.
The guys seemed to take any opportunity I wasn’t with the kids to spend time with me themselves, but they also had to be careful to make sure they were still using some of their free time to be with their children as well, and it sometimes left me on days like the one I was currently on, when I was without any kids and any men. I didn’t like it.
“Ma’am?”
I snapped out of my cogitation and remembered I was standing in my favourite local coffee shop waiting for one of their seasonal drinks.
“Yes,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Santa Claus Frapp?” the barista on the other side of the counter said, holding out a drink for me.
“Yes,” I replied, taking it from him. “Thank you.”
“No problem. Happy Holidays,” he said with a wide smile.
“You too.” I took my drink and made my way to the exit.
The streets of Dallas were officially ‘Christmas.’ Folks in Dallas in particular loved decorating for the holidays, and there wasn’t a road you could drive down that didn’t have shimmering lights covering all their trees and hanging from their storefronts, and there was even a malady of tacky, blow-up creatures.
I loved it.
Christmas just made me feel warm inside, and with the kids and their dads in my life, I had every reason to be totally at peace with my life.
But one should always fear being too happy, because inevitably, someone will come along to ruin it.
I didn’t know who my someone was. I was approaching my apartment door and at the same time, a delivery person was walking away from it.
He had a large, Manila envelope in his hand and tilted his head when he saw me.
“You wouldn’t happen to be Aria Kent?” he asked.
“Yes?” I replied.
“Can I help you?”
He held out the envelope to me.
“This is for you, but it was signature required.”
“Oh.” I looked down at the envelope, and it did indeed have my name and address on it, but there was no return address or indicator of who it was from. “Do you know who it’s from?”
The delivery man shook his head.
“I just drop them.” He held out an electronic signature system. He scanned a barcode on the back of the envelope and then handed me the small pen that was attached to it by a twisted cord.
“Sign for me.” I signed my name on the screen and then he took the system back and shoved it in his pocket.
“There’s a sticky on your door saying I’ll be back tomorrow. Just disregard it. Have a wonderful day.”
“Thanks, you too.”
I made my way down to my door, removed the sticky note, and entered my apartment.
I looked over the envelope, but was mostly confused. I didn’t know anyone who would send me mail, certainly not someone who would send me something that needed to come in such an official envelope, and unmarked.
I thought back over all the bills I had to pay for the month. I was no stranger to working the system a little bit, especially when I was trying to make a paycheck do way more than it could.
I was a master at due date extensions, payment plans, and even the lesser-known ‘I paid it online, if you don’t see it, it’s because there was a problem with your system.
’ Typically, when bills got seriously past due, the bill collector would send an important-looking piece of paper warning that if the bill wasn’t paid by a certain date, the service would be interrupted.
I gave it a look over, thinking that might be what it was, but those always had a return address on them because they wanted to be paid, and they weren’t typically mailed certified because they didn’t need to be.
I was stumped.
I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and tucked it into the corner of the envelope and slid it across the envelope’s mouth. I pulled out the contents, and a chill ran down my spine. The top document was a blank piece of paper apart from some typed letters dead centre on the page.
‘He MuRdErEd HeR iN hEr BeD aNd yOu’Re NeXt!’
I tossed that page down to the table to see what was under it, and I was horrified at what I found.
There were half a dozen pictures of some woman who looked a terrifying amount like me, lying in the middle of a large, lavish bed.
Her blond hair was a mess across her head, and her eyes, though open, were totally vacant. She was dead. There were the remains of a dribble or foam at the corners of her mouth, and there were a couple of patches of dried blood just below her nose and streaming down her chin.
My stomach turned and my mind became instantly dizzy. I dropped the pictures and bolted for my bathroom, only just barely managing to make it as what I had consumed of the Santa Claus frappé came spewing from my mouth.
My head was pounding and I had no idea what to do or think. I sat on my chilled bathroom floor simply trying to wrap my mind around the situation and figure out who could have sent me something so terrible.
The note referred to a male. My dad left me when I was a child, and I didn’t have any siblings.
If I did have cousins, I didn’t know them, and I almost exclusively hung around women, making the rare exception for boyfriends or siblings of friends, but that was it.
The only men in my life were the men in The Dad Squad; my men. But there was no way the note was referring to one of them. I knew them.
They were wonderful parents, and wonderful lovers, they wouldn’t kill someone.
Well… they could, but they would never. Gabriel was a police officer, and could easily cover up a murder, and then Liam could make it so the DA’s office didn’t look into it.
Ethan had access to tons of cars that could be used to transport something secretly, and Noah was a structural engineer for the city, and Ronan was the C.E.O.
of a construction company, they all knew the city like the back of their hands and could easily dispose of a body.
Last, but certainly not least, Julian was a hunter with his own cabin in the woods; the horror story writes itself. I thought about how much the woman looked like me. Was I one of their type in a fatal attraction kind of way? I shook my head.
“No,” I said aloud. There was no way.
My men weren’t murderers.
I shakily stood up off the ground and hobbled into the living room.
I could feel my stomach start to churn again as I looked down at the pictures, but I quickly gathered them up along with the note and tossed them into my shredder. I allowed the buzzing to cut up the horrendous thoughts in my head.
My guys didn’t murderer anyone. I knew that for a fact.
That didn’t stop my dreams that night from taking me to dark and scary places. I dreamt of myself on the bed, dead. I dreamt of one of my romantic nights with the guys going south suddenly, when they pulled out some sort of blunt object to whack me over the head with.
I even dreamt of finding one of my poor babies in pain, bleeding and warning me to run.
By the tenth time I’d woken up in a cold sweat, it was 3 o’clock in the morning, and I decided I best just throw in the towel for the night. I wouldn’t be getting a relaxing, dreamless sleep; that ship had sailed the moment I opened that package.
“Aria? You okay? You seem a little out of it.” I shook my head and looked up to see Liam looking down at me.
How I got to his home was anyone’s guess. I must have fluttered through my day on autopilot, not realising it until Liam’s hands were on my waist and his warm eyes were staring down at me in deep pools of concern.
“Um, oh, yeah, just worried,” I responded, being severely more honest than I intended to.
I really wanted to believe with my whole heart that none of my men were killers, but I couldn’t help but remain a little cautious.
No other packages had come for me, and I was keeping a close eye on all of my surroundings to see if anyone was following me; the sender had to have gotten my address from somewhere.
“Worried?” Liam asked. “About what?”
“M-my friend Khloe,” I stuttered out.
“The wedding planner?” Liam asked.
Well, good news, the guys were actually listening to me when I spoke, that’s one relationship box ticked, now I just had to pray I could tick the ‘not a murderer’ one.
“Yeah,” I responded to Liam, hating the way I was glancing around the room for items I could use to protect myself if I needed to. I loved him and I honestly felt like he loved me too.
He wasn’t going to hurt me.
“She’s having a hell of a time out there with some groomsmen on her current job. I’m just afraid she’s getting in a little over her head.”
“Do you need Gabriel or me to check anyone out?” Liam asked.
It was an incredibly sweet sentiment, but all I could think about was how easily those powers could be used to exploit me or someone else. “No,” I said.
“She’s a tough cookie. I think I’m just being overprotective.”
“That’s in your nature,” Liam responded. He placed a finger under my chin and tipped my head up and gave me a kiss on the lips.
“It’ll be okay, and remember, we’re here for you if you need anything. Any friend of yours is someone we’d do anything to look out for.”
I smiled. How could Liam or any of the other men be killers? They couldn’t be.
“Thank you.”
Talking with Liam calmed me down.
To even think that the men were the kind of man who could do what I saw in those pictures was outrageous. They didn’t have an evil bone among them.
I went home that evening confident I’d get a much better night of sleep, at least that was the plan until I got home and saw there was another envelope on my door.
It wasn’t certified mail the second time around, it was actually taped to my door. Someone had been in my apartment building and had even come up to my door.
Heart racing, I ripped the envelope down and rushed inside. I locked my door, shut and locked all of my windows, and even went the extra mile and hid anything I had that had a camera on it.
Someone was watching me, and the violation and exposure of it was giving me a heart attack.
I didn’t take the care to use a knife, and ripped open the envelope with my hands shaking so wildly I could barely hold it. The top sheet was another blank page with only a single typed line, similar to the last one.
‘I hOpE yOu HaVe YoUr AfFaIrS iN oRdEr.’
Tears were already streaming down my face, but then I pulled the sheet away and started to sob in earnest. In the picture was the very same woman who’d been pictured in the photos I received the first time, except in the photo I had in my hand currently, there was a man standing over her.
He was staring directly at the camera and had a splatter of dried blood on his hand. The man was Ronan.