37. Oliver
THE NEXT DAY
37
“I’m sorry about the other day,” Julia apologized over the phone as I sat inside my bedroom.
Just kill me now. Hunched over, I held my head at Julia’s soft, sad words. Speak. Say something back, dammit.
“I’m not mad at you. These hormones are just . . . well,” she said while sniffling, “have me off. Thank God the morning sickness is over. Although, it was all-day sickness.”
Fixing my posture, I sat upright and regretted it immediately. Opposite the bed was a mirror over the dresser, and the last person I wanted to look at was myself.
The “open house” event was in an hour, and I already had my black slacks and shoes on, but my dress shirt was open, and my brother’s tags were visible. I wrapped a hand around them and brought my fist to my chin. I’d said my share of apologies in the last twenty-plus hours of being there, but this one was really choking me up.
“I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I kept you in the dark, and that you were stressed about me while pregnant. I should’ve reached out. Tucker would have my ass for that.” I blinked back tears, swearing that the reflection in the mirror was no longer mine, but it was my brother there. “I’m so fucking sorry,” I added again, my voice catching that time.
“I’m sorry you didn’t feel you could come to me, and that you were hurting and alone,” she whispered.
“I wasn’t alone. I had my dad.” She had to have known that already, but I still felt the need to be the one to tell her. “He was at Tuck’s funeral. My mom’s, too. He was even going to try and save me in Dubai, but you beat him to it.” I let go of the chain to swipe the tears from my face. “He was there for me all that time, I just didn’t know it.” I was still upset with him, but I also understood him now. And I had every intention of letting him know I forgave him before I stepped into that ring with Hugo. I didn’t want to die without him knowing that.
“Oh, Oliver . . .” She was crying. A hard sob now.
“It’s okay. I’m . . .” Better? Not quite. But I couldn’t help but wonder if it’d be possible to get there if Mya stayed in my life. The problem was, even though I could forgive my father, I couldn’t forgive myself, and I wasn’t sure what that meant for my future.
While waiting for Julia to continue, I thought back to yesterday in that room with Mya. After I’d replayed her, I love you, inadvertently said or not, my knees had gone weak, and I’d almost given in to my heart instead of my mind and went to her.
I wanted to scoop her into my arms and promise I was back, and she’d never lose me again. That if she really loved me, that was enough for me. Her love could right any of my wrongs. And I’d do anything and everything she wanted, right down to forgiving myself for committing murder just to be with her.
But my brain won over. Logic and reason reminded me I couldn’t be with her. My mind emphasized in bold bullet points that my heart was a dirty liar. So, I didn’t respond or go to her. Instead, I walked out that door, destroying the last piece of hope still shriveled up inside me for good.
“Is that Oliver?” I overheard a male voice in the background, but it didn’t belong to Finn. “Can I have a word with him?”
“Don’t yell at him. He’s been through enough,” Julia warned, and I hung my head, knowing I was about to get another well-deserved lecture.
“Give me a second, will ya?” he asked her, and I connected the dots, realizing it was Michael Maddox, Julia’s older brother. It made sense he’d want to be with Julia while she was in danger. His overprotectiveness was what brought Finn into Julia’s life to begin with. “Oliver, hi,” he came back on a moment later, presumably now alone.
“Hey,” was the best I could come up with. I stood, avoiding the mirror on my way up, and held the phone to my ear with my good shoulder while I buttoned up my black dress shirt.
“Finn spoke with Wyatt earlier today, and he filled me in. With Echo Team staying Stateside, I think you should pull in more help. I know you’ll have Bravo and Charlie Teams backing you up against the Sorens, but you have me, too. Mason’s brother, Connor, is also in.” He listed off more names. More Marines. Bravo Four’s wife’s brother, Jake Summers. Aiden O’Connor. Ben Logan. “I think you need all hands on deck for this,” Michael continued, drawing me back to the fact I was still on the phone. “Even call in the McGregors for an assist.”
The Irish family, the McGregors, had helped us out last November when we’d been working to stop the EMP weapon attack. Our paths had also crossed a time or two in the past.
“You don’t need to get involved. None of you do. This is our problem.” Finished with the buttons, I held the phone again and went toward the window. I parted the blinds to look out at the courtyard where the party was being held.
It looked like a wedding was about to begin, with lights strung up and white tents and sapphire-blue flowers everywhere. But for me, it felt like I was attending a funeral. Perfectly dressed for it, too.
“If the Sorens accept this plan, they’ll hit you with everything they have,” he said as I let go of the blinds and faced the room. “They’ll do anything to stop you, and you know it. You need all the help you can get.”
He wasn’t wrong, but I didn’t want anyone else risking their lives.
“When it’s a done deal, Wyatt will let us know. And we’re coming. I guess I didn’t choose my words correctly. It was never a question. I was giving you a heads-up we’d be there.”
I knew better than to argue with Michael. He was as stubborn as his sister, which was probably one reason I’d avoided her the last four months. Julia would’ve persisted and fought like hell, just like Mya, to try and get me to come home. Avoidance was the easier route. The fucking cowardly one. “If you die, so help me.”
“Same for you, man. Same for you.” I’d thought he was going to call Julia back into the room, but instead, he added, “You know as well as I do that my sister blamed herself for your brother dying. She asked him to pick her up from that party that night, but she didn’t know he’d been drinking.”
Where was he going with this? Why’d this memory fuck me up so much all over again?
Was it because I wasn’t there when it happened? Because I didn’t know my brother had a drinking problem? Did I not call enough? Did Tucker not feel he could be honest with me?
The pain in my stomach doubled in size, and I closed my mouth, grimacing.
“It wasn’t her fault, Oliver, and if it weren’t for you, I don’t think she’d have ever accepted that. She’d have let the guilt destroy her,” he rasped. “You saved my sister, and for that, I’ll forever be indebted to you. And from what I know, you’ve saved a hell of a lot of other people in your life.”
He took a pause, letting the weight of his words sink in, nearly taking me to my knees.
In a gravelly tone, he added, “Think about all the people you’ve helped, and somehow find a way to stop blaming yourself for the ones you couldn’t. Those kinds of thoughts will take you to a dark place, and, Oliver, from what I know about you, that’s the last place in the world you belong.” And just like that, he was done with the call.
Julia returned a few seconds later, her tone tentative as she asked, “You good? He didn’t say something I need to knock him in the back of the head for, right?”
“No head knocking needed.” But it sure as hell felt like a gut punch.
We wrapped up the call—her with a plea for me to stop blaming myself for everything, me with a promise to try—and I tossed the phone on the bed and fell to the floor, unable to keep my shit together any longer.
I cried like I hadn’t since Mom was stolen from us, far too young. Her life gone, thanks to a heart attack, followed by a stroke during surgery. There was nothing we could do, no way to save her that time.
I relived every ugly memory I’d kept etched in my head in perfect detail, flipping through each page until something unexpected happened. I started remembering the good times, too. Despite the bad, and the pain, there was a lot of fucking good, too, wasn’t there?
It was the final memory opening up in my mind—the one of Mya telling me yesterday, without actually telling me, she loved me—that had me getting up again. Standing tall.
I went to the dresser and steadily lifted my head to meet my own eyes. And what I saw there was a second chance.
Although Mya had barely spoken to me all day, upset with the fighting-Hugo plan, she was the first to talk to me when I joined everyone in Carter’s suite. “You okay?”
Shutting the door behind me, I nodded and let her know, “I was on the phone with Julia.”
Not advancing my way, she simply nodded in understanding. Could she notice my bloodshot eyes from across the room?
“I spoke with Michael.” I directed that comment to Wyatt, since he’d spearheaded the plan for our additional reinforcements. “He let me know he’s helping us out.”
Wyatt was standing behind Gwen’s chair where she worked at the desk in the living room, the rest of the team practically huddled around our “cyber angel,” as I’d overheard Mason call her earlier.
“The McGregors have offered to help, too,” Gray disclosed before Wyatt could answer.
“Plus, Carter’s other doppelg?nger, Sebastian Renaud, wants in,” Jack joked. Funny, but he wasn’t wrong. Carter not only loosely resembled Griffin on our team, but the Irishman, Sebastian, as well.
I pocketed my hands, hanging back by the door, not quite ready to join the crowded room yet. “I guess we need to make sure the plan works tonight or these guys will be wasting their SkyMiles to fly here.”
Jack’s eyes shot to me first, studying me as if surprised I’d cracked a joke. Maybe I was, too. He smirked and gave me a slight nod, and I wasn’t sure why, but that made me feel almost like I really was back on the team again.
I cleared my throat. “I miss anything?”
“Well, aside from Senior,” Gwen began, taking point, referring to Hugo and Sylvester’s father, Stef, “I’ve confirmed three other men are traveling with the father and sons. Two are bodyguards, the other is Hugo’s personal assistant.”
“One of them has to be our hacker, right?” I asked our resident cyber angel.
“I think so,” Sydney chimed in instead of Gwen. “My guess is our hacker ally must be undercover as one of the two bodyguards or the assistant.”
“How come this alleged ally didn’t give us a heads-up about the attack against Oliver and Mya on the way to the airport in Canada?” Jack pointed out, clearly not completely on board with believing we had a second cyber angel protecting us.
“Maybe the hacker wasn’t privy to those details,” Gwen offered a semi-plausible idea. “Or worse,” she added, wrinkling her nose, “the Sorens figured out they had a mole and took them out.” She turned her laptop screen to face the room, then reached around and zoomed in on the three other men she’d identified at the hotel with the Sorens. “If we assume our ally is one of the men here with the Sorens, here’s what I could find out about them.” She began listing details she must’ve uncovered after running their faces through our software for IDs, but I lost track of what she was saying when Mya abruptly stood from the couch.
She went over to the window but set her back to it instead of looking outside. She’d yet to change into whatever she planned to wear to the party tonight, so I knew she’d be stepping out soon to get ready.
Feeling eyes on me, I turned to see Sydney gesturing with her head for me to go to Mya.
As much as I wanted to join her, I was torn. What if the hope I’d started to feel back in my bedroom was temporary? What if the darkness took over and eclipsed the light that was fighting for space in my head?
I didn’t want to confuse Mya any more than I already had in the last few days, not until I was a hundred and ten percent sure I was good. So, I mouthed to Sydney, “I can’t,” remaining rooted in place.
Sydney nodded in understanding, then did what I wished I could and went over to her.
Averting my focus from Mya and Sydney, I caught Mason studying me. I had no clue what the man was thinking, but I knew he loved her. What I didn’t know was if he was in love with her, or . . .? Because that was a different kind of love, one I hadn’t understood until Mya came into my life. One thing I was fairly certain of? He cared about her enough to step aside, believing I made Mya happier than he did. And the fact he could make that kind of self-sacrifice made him trustworthy in my book.
“Is there any indication one of these guys with the Sorens could have better cyber skills than yours?” Mason’s question pulled me back toward the team again. “No offense.” He smirked.
“Some taken,” Gwen teased. “Anyway, it’s all good. I was the one who admitted this hacker is better than me.” She pushed her blonde hair behind her ears, then swiveled her screen around to type. “But no, I can’t find anything cyber-related. If our mystery ally is as good as I think they are, I shouldn’t be able to find a clue of that, though.”
“True.” Carter checked his watch. “And if our hacker has any intention of making in-person contact at the party tonight, my guess is it’ll be with you.”
Wyatt wasted no time to hiss, “I still don’t like she’s going to this, and that I’m not allowed to join her at the party.”
“I only managed to get five invites,” Carter reminded him. “Gray and the others aren’t coming, either.”
It’d just be Carter, Jesse, Mya, myself, and Gwen. With any luck, Hugo would choose me to fight. Jesse was a father, and Carter was a soon-to-be dad, and I didn’t want them stepping into that ring on my behalf, even if they stood a better chance at winning. At the end of the day, though, all that mattered was that we get the Sorens to that island.
Wait . . . “What if I don’t actually fight him?” I couldn’t believe I’d suggested that, but what if, unlike my dad, I chose family over revenge? What if I don’t make the same mistakes he did?
Mya’s arms fell limp at her sides as she stared at me, waiting for me to continue. When her mouth rounded, it was in understanding, not surprise, and her face lit up at the idea I was seconds away from presenting.
I wasn’t sure why any of us hadn’t thought of this before, but we’d thrown together this plan so fast. I’d also been a bit sidetracked by my desire to personally take out Hugo Soren and hadn’t really considered this slight modification to the plan as a possibility. “I can agree to fight as planned, but we don’t actually need to buy this hotel, right?” I asked Carter. His eyes thinned, but he offered what I read as a hesitant nod. “So, who wins doesn’t matter, as long as we bait the Sorens away from here.”
“I wouldn’t mind owning this hotel, to be honest. There could be some benefits to it.” Carter stroked his jaw. “But if you think there’s a chance you, uh, wouldn’t survive, then no, it’s not worth that risk.”
Shooting Mya a quick look, that plea in her eyes for me to be honest was enough for me. I now knew what I had to do. Love over revenge. “Hugo will kill me.” I crossed the room, took Mya’s hand, and whispered, “And I want to live.”