Chapter 22 #3
“Bray, stop!” I commanded, knowing my father had no qualms over pulling the trigger to get his way.
Bray gave me another anguished look like he wanted to rip the world in half to save me, but he was also really really pissed at me at the same time.
“It’s okay,” I told him.
“How is this okay?” His voice cracked with worry.
I squirmed against my father’s grip, getting him to move right where I wanted him. “I just needed to know,” I said.
Bray’s brow furrowed.
My father turned his head toward me. “What did you need to know, baby?”
I filled my lungs with one last breath before I turned and looked right in his eyes.
“What kind of man you really are.” Before my words fully landed, I shoved my elbow into his belly.
He doubled over with a grunt, and in a practiced move, I spun and wrenched the gun from his grip.
I kicked him between the legs, sending him to his knees, and before he knew it, I had the gun pointed in his face.
“Stand down,” Bray told the guards, and they lowered their weapons.
Everyone—except Bray, who looked equally relieved and pissed—blinked at me in shock. My father looked up at me with watering eyes, holding his crotch in utter disbelief.
I shook my hair out of my face and kept the gun trained on him. “Yeah, I’ve learned a few new things since the last time you saw me, Dad.”
Through his shock, he had the gall to let a proud grin twitch his lip.
“Now, like Agent Bray said: We have some questions for you.”
His tongue flashed across his lips, and his eyes glinted. “You’re in charge, baby.”
“Stop calling me that,” I commanded and got straight to the point. “Olena Nova is out of prison and knows where I am. She wants to kill me. I need to know where the diamond is from that night.”
He blinked once, immediately catching up. “I don’t know where it is.”
“Bullshit,” I hissed and jabbed the gun in his direction. “Someone has to know, and you’re the only one left. Where is it?”
A chuckle bounced his shoulders. “Baby—”
I racked the gun’s slide to show him I wasn’t messing around.
He flinched. “Sorry. Erin, you think I’d have spent ten years in prison if I had that rock?”
“I don’t know, you tell me. Maybe this is a long-con and part of your plan.”
“My plan was to end up with my daughter holding me at gunpoint?”
“Seems pretty on-brand to me. Just hope I don’t pull this trigger.” My jaw was nearly locked shut while I spoke.
“Erin—” Bray said from behind me.
“I’m fine,” I spat over my shoulder.
“You should listen to your boyfriend, sweetheart,” my father said. “I don’t know what kind of deal you’ve got going, but I’m not invisible. With a reputation like mine, my death would be hard to make disappear if your finger gets too twitchy there.”
“You have no idea what I can make disappear,” Bray said. The cold threat in his voice slid down my spine like ice, in the best way.
“Okay, easy, Romeo,” my father said. “No need to get defensive, especially if you want anything to do with my daughter—”
“Don’t you dare,” I warned. “My life is none of your business.” My finger moved closer to the trigger. Angry tears blurred my eyes.
My father flinched. Maybe it was the look on my face.
Maybe it was the fact that his life was in my very angry hands.
Maybe he’d simply finally run out of deceit.
Whatever it was, I saw something in him break.
Something previously unbendable finally surrendered to decency.
“I don’t know where that rock is, and you can trust me on that.
But I heard through the grapevine Joseph Wallace died in Houston, so maybe start there. ”
Hearing him say Wallace’s name threw me for a loop.
They’d both been there on that critical night, and they were both giant figures in my life, but I’d never seen them in the same room.
They were two spheres that never overlapped in my world.
But of course my father knew who Wallace was. Maybe they’d even met before.
“You think that’s relevant?” I asked, having yet to follow up on this same lead since Bray told me.
My father shrugged. “Houston is the last place they both were—the rock and Wallace. Doesn’t seem like a coincidence.”
I had to agree he was right. By the look on his face, we weren’t going to get anything else out of him, and I wasn’t in the mood for more of a reunion than we’d already had.
I lowered the gun and took a step back. “Bye, Dad. Enjoy prison.”
“Feel free to visit any time you like!” he called after me.
I ignored him and handed Bray his gun. I climbed in the car and shut the door, ready to go home. The closed door dulled sounds of them shuffling my father back into the van. Bray and Simmons exchanged a few words outside before they both returned to the car.
The ride back to the condo was silent aside from the smooth jazz satellite station Simmons had the radio tuned to.
Bray fumed in the back seat beside me. I assumed he was saving his lecture for privacy.
I knew he’d be upset with me, but I also knew my father would take the bait, and I needed to know.
I finally had my answer: I was the child of a selfish, cruel man who couldn’t be trusted and would always put himself first. That night in the hotel room when he’d shot the ghost and told me to run might have been the only honest moment of care I’d ever receive from him—and he might have only done it because I was still nearly a child then.
Now that I was an adult, I was fully on my own.
My heart split a crack, and I hoped Bray wasn’t going to go too hard on me, because that one really hurt. I’d assumed, sure. But to see it play out in action shot an incurable pain through my entire body.
When we arrived back at the condo, Simmons marched inside and headed for the guest room, leaving me and Bray alone in the kitchen. The dark night twinkled outside the windows. The soft yellow lights inside cast the room in a warm glow. But still, the air felt frigid and tense.
Bray busied himself at the liquor cabinet, this time skipping a bottle of wine and going straight for scotch. He didn’t offer me a glass.
“So, are you gonna yell at me now?” I asked, and watched him pour two fingers’ worth of caramel liquid into a crystal tumbler.
He held up a hand. “Don’t. Just … don’t.” He set the bottle beside his glass and recorked it.
“I’m sorry, but I knew he’d go for the gun, and I knew I could disarm him. It was no big deal.”
He had the glass halfway to his mouth when he stopped and huffed a breath. He shook his head. “No big deal? No big deal? Erin, he had a gun to your head! My gun! So I couldn’t even do anything to help!” His angry voice ballooned into the room.
“Bray, I had it under control. You didn’t have to worry.”
He scoffed. “If someone has a gun to your head, I’m going to worry, Erin. I don’t care what kind of Jason Bourne shit you’re capable of.” He finally took a swig of his drink.
“Jason Bourne is amateur hour,” I said with an arched brow.
“This is not the time for jokes.”
“It’s not a joke.”
He grumbled and tugged a handful of hair. “Erin, how am I supposed to trust you? You took my gun.”
I winced, at the anguish in his voice. “In fairness, I also took your gun within ten seconds of meeting you for the first time.”
“This is not funny!”
“I’m not laughing! I’m just stating a fact. And yes, it was a little unfair of me not to tell you my plan, but you wouldn’t have let me do it if I had told you.”
“You’re damn right I wouldn’t have.”
I took a breath to calm us both and circled over to his side of the island.
“Look, Bray. We can’t all have perfect families like yours, with parents who buy them cello lessons and let them crash in their condos.
” I waved my arms around, and he flinched.
“This was likely the only time I was going to see my father, and I wanted to know if he’d changed.
If maybe there was something there to start building off of.
To start over. Clearly, there isn’t. I’m sorry if I upset you, but can you at least try to understand why I did it? ”
His jaw worked as he studied my face. The anger in his gray eyes began to cool but didn’t fully dissolve. “On some level, yes, I can understand. But you didn’t have to be so goddamned reckless about it.”
We stood inches apart. Close enough I could smell the fiery liquor on his breath in a way that made me want to take a sip—of him, not it.
The tiny flare in his nostrils and the color warming his cheeks said he was still angry, but maybe a little bit something else too.
My hand had landed a few inches from his on the island top.
The icy granite against my palm was the only thing keeping me grounded.
I looked up into his stone eyes and reminded him of a truth. “I told you that you wouldn’t like the choices I’d make on my own.”
He stared at me for a heart-pounding second and then blinked, as if something had snapped.
In a move even I couldn’t anticipate or thwart, he grabbed my hands and walked me the few steps backward until my back hit the wall.
There, he sunk his fingers between mine and pinned my hands above my head.
Before I could even gasp, his lips were on mine.
The kiss was bruising and pent-up and holy hell, so good.
His whole body pressed me into the wall, his hips deliciously pinning mine and his arms bracketing my head.
He was a very welcome and warm cage I wanted to be locked inside forever.
A soft moan escaped my throat, and it only made him kiss me harder.
His tongue pushed into my mouth, and I met it with mine.
They slid and tangled together, dancing while our lips continued to suck and my heart beat harder than when I’d had a gun to my head.
I fought against his grip, wanting to free my hands to touch him in other places, but he only gripped tighter and held me harder.
God, this man could kiss. I’d wondered what his lips felt like the first moment I saw him, and the answer was wickedly divine.
Liquid flame raced through my veins, pumping straight to the core of my belly as I wondered what else his mouth could do.
My hips bucked against his, wanting more, though they didn’t get far with his powerful body crushing me to the wall.
I silently begged him to let go, to put his hands on all the places my pulse was pounding in need: my throat, my chest, between my thighs.
But he held me firm. I’d knocked him on his ass yesterday, but I had no leverage now.
I was at his mercy, and through the haze of his hot mouth devouring mine, I wondered if this was some kind of punishment.
A show of dominance and who was really in charge.
And God damn it, it did everything for me.
I moaned again and stopped fighting. I let my hands go limp in his and my body sag. Only then did he pull back.
The look on his flushed face said not that he’d been trying to put me in my place, but that he’d lost a battle he’d been waging for a long time. Something had overtaken his will-power, and he’d finally surrendered.
My heart hammered. I could see it pushing my chest out with each thrashing beat. He still held my arms up over my head. We both panted.
“That wasn’t very heroic,” I managed through inhales. I gave him a grin as wicked as his lips had felt.
He let go of me and regrettably stepped back. My body instantly ached for the heat of his to return. He hung his head in shame and stroked his jaw.
I stood there flushed and feral and ready to do whatever he wanted next. My body was one giant livewire begging to be touched. I didn’t care about crossing lines. Not after that.
He eventually lifted his head and gave me a stern look. “Go to bed,” he commanded and stepped away.
The cold command stung in contrast to the heat pumping between us moments before.
“Are you coming with me?” I said to his back, hopeful and only half joking, as he walked toward the garage.
He glanced over his shoulder for a split second, as if looking any longer would tempt him to turn around and stay. “Good night, Erin.” He opened the garage door and disappeared through it.
I stood alone in the silent kitchen, hearing only my heartbeat and wondering what the hell had just happened. Temptation to follow him stirred in my blood, but I knew he would only reject me again. His hero mask had slipped for those few perfect moments of sin, but now it was back in place.
I let out a big sigh and helped myself to the rest of the drink he’d left sitting on the island. “Good night, Cal.”