Chapter 25 Xave
XAVE
“What’s going on?” I ask my cousins as I stride into Jace and Jax’s room.
Jace, who’s sitting in his usual spot at his desk, looks as serious as Killian and Jax, who are occupying the sofa in the center of the room.
“I found him,” Jace says.
My entire body goes on edge, and I pull in a deep breath so I can clear my head as a low buzz of anger gathers inside me.
“Felix is with Damon,” Killian says, anticipating where my thoughts went.
“And before you lose your marbles, we’ve got eyes on them.” Jace points to one of his screens, and the feed of one of the school security cams is on it.
I look closer at the image and see that Felix and Damon are sitting on a bench in the main quad, their heads bent together as they talk about something.
“From what we can tell, there aren’t any current threats here on campus.” Jax points to the loveseat across from them. “So sit your ass down and let my brother tell you what’s going on.”
I pull in a deep breath and do as he says.
If my cousins say there’s no threat on campus, then I believe them. Damon is safe for now, and I need answers more than I need to freak out and run into the quad like a moron to save him from nothing.
“I tracked the crypto payments to a shell company that’s part of a giant web of shell companies,” Jace explains. “It took a while to sort through the mess and follow the trail, but the parent company is registered under Damon’s name.”
My jaw actually drops like it’s been unhinged. What the hell?
“And since I’m not a dumbass,” Jace continues.
“I dug deeper. The company was opened under Damon’s name, but it wasn’t registered by him.
It took some more digging, but I tracked the parent company to the account that the crypto originated from and found out who sent our boy Dick the Douche the money for the hit on Damon. ”
I bite my tongue so I don’t interrupt and demand that he tell me who’s behind this right fucking now.
I need to know everything, not just a name, and that’s exactly what Jace is telling me.
“I was also able to find a link between one of the shell companies and the toolbags that kidnapped you guys, and from there, I was able to find the link to Jeremy and confirm that Richard is the one who created and uploaded Jeremy’s altered ID, and Jeremy was the one who took out the last member of your kidnapping team. ”
“Really?” That little tidbit is surprising, but it makes sense.
Jace nods. “And the ringmaster of it all is a guy named Michael Quinn.”
“Who is he?” I ask. The name isn’t familiar, but that doesn’t mean anything.
“He’s a nobody,” Jace says grimly. “He’s the CFO of a hedge fund management group, but they’re small fish in the grand scheme of things.
Otherwise he seems boring as fuck. He’s never been married, doesn’t have any kids, and he’s worked at his firm for the last seven years.
The only link I could find to Damon is that Michael lives in the same city as Damon’s father, but there are no other links between them, and trust me when I say I looked. ”
“But how would he have the kind of influence and capital needed to arrange all of this if he’s a nobody?” I ask. Hiring hitmen and getting inside men onto a campus like Silvercrest isn’t something just anyone can do.
“He might be a nobody, but his bank accounts are flush with cash,” Jax says. “I’m still tracing where it all came from, but he’s either made some damn good investments over the years, or he’s got a talent for embezzling.”
“Is he connected to Damon’s mother at all?”
Jace shakes his head. “I couldn’t find anything that connects them.”
“What else did you guys find?” I ask Jax and Killian.
“Not a whole lot,” Jax says. “I tracked over six months of his financials, and the only other thing I found is that he either has a woman in his life, or he really likes lingerie and going to the spa.”
“Do we know who she is?”
“Not yet,” Killian says. “But we’re running all the data we have through one of Jax’s programs. We should get more info when it’s done.”
“How long will it take?” I ask Jax.
“No clue. But I’ve got an alert set up so anything that gets flagged will be sent to our phones. Same with the programs I’ve got going to figure out if Damon’s gig is a trap or if it’s a legit job.”
“Tell Felix to bring Damon to the cabin,” I tell Killian. “He needs to hear this.”
Killian picks up his phone to text Felix, and Jace tosses me a flash drive.
“This is everything we found,” Jace says.
“And I’ve got trackers on Michael’s financials, his emails, his phone, and his car’s onboard computer.
I just need him to be a dumbass and let me in so I can scrape the fuck out of his data, and we’ll know how he communicates with his lady friend, and the assholes he hired to take out Damon. ”
I tuck the drive into my pocket and stand, my head spinning with everything I just learned.
A name is a good start; now I just need to know where he is so I can make him pay for daring to even think of hurting Damon.
“Felix and Damon are heading to the cabin,” Killian says as he slips his phone away. “We good?” he asks the twins.
“Yuppers.” Jace gets up from his chair, his grin dark.
“Let’s do this,” Jax says, an identical grin on his face.
Damon and Felix are already at the cabin when we get there, and they both jump up from the sectional as we walk inside.
“You found him?” Damon’s expression is hopeful, but his voice is filled with fear.
I cross the room in several long strides and pull him into my arms. He clings to me and buries his face in my neck.
“It’s almost over,” I tell him quietly.
He gives me a tight squeeze, and a not-so-subtle cough to our left is what finally makes us break apart.
“Hey, kid.” Jace flops down on the couch. His posture is relaxed, but the intensity in his eyes betrays that he’s not as calm as he’s pretending to be. “How’re you holding up?”
“Fine.” Damon looks between us as Jax sits next to his brother and Killian pretty much pulls Felix into his lap as they also sit on the sectional. “So you found him?”
I gently tug him down as I sit, and Damon presses right up against my side as I drape my arm over his shoulders to hold him even closer.
“We did,” Jax confirms. “But we’re missing a few details that we’re hoping you can fill in for us.”
“Yeah, sure.” Damon looks between the twins. “What did you find?”
“Does the name Michael Quinn mean anything to you?”
Damon’s face goes pale, like all the blood has drained from it.
“Who is he?” I ask gently when Damon doesn’t answer.
“My stepmother’s boyfriend,” he whispers.
I do my best to keep my reaction off my face, but I’m not sure I’m completely successful.
In all the times we’ve talked, Damon never used his name. He just called him “my stepmother’s boyfriend” or “Kait’s boyfriend,” and I want to kick myself for not getting his name.
“And does he work for a hedge fund management firm?” Jax asks.
Damon nods, his eyes wide and his face still as white as a sheet.
“Are you okay to hear what we know?” I ask quietly. “Or do you need some time to process this?”
A determined look falls over his face. “I need to know everything,”
Jace and Jax fill him in on everything they told me, only they go into more detail and really break things down so both Damon and I can understand what they’re saying.
When they’re done explaining, Damon doesn’t look shocked anymore. He looks pissed off.
“That son of a bitch,” he seethes.
“Do you have any sort of relationship or rapport with him?” Killian asks. “Any idea why he’d do this?”
Damon shakes his head and leans more heavily against me. “No. I’ve met him and have seen him in passing a few times, but we’ve never had a conversation or anything. Almost everything I know about him is stuff my sisters have told me.”
“What about your stepmom?” Felix asks. “Is it possible he’s doing this for her?”
“I imagine she would benefit from your death,” Killian says.
Damon nods, looking more than a little shell-shocked as his anger fades. “She’d inherit everything when my father dies if I’m not around.”
“That’s a pretty powerful motive, considering what I know about your father’s financials and the extent of his business holdings,” Jace says.
“I can’t believe Kait would do this,” Damon mutters, his eyes on the floor. “I never would have suspected her, not in a million years.”
I gently rub his back and give him a chance to process everything we just dropped on him.
“Why would he open those companies under my name?” Damon asks, his voice hollow.
“Probably to confuse the fuck out of anyone looking into things,” Jace says.
“It’s like when you plug an extension cord into itself.
The current just keeps going in a circle, the same as the information on the companies would keep circling back on itself.
The hits were taken out on you, but the evidence leads back to you.
No matter which direction we looked, all roads led back to you. ”
“X marks the spot,” I mutter to myself, remembering what Jace told me when we found Damon’s original birth certificate.
There’s a collective ping as a bunch of phone notifications go off at the same time.
Jax, Jace, Killian, and I all pull our phones out, and I see an alert from one of Jax’s programs on my screen.
“Looks like your gig is clean,” I tell him, scanning the info in the alert. “Jax was able to track the owner of the company down, and he’s well known for these types of pop-up events.”
“Well, that’s good news at least,” Damon says as he rests his head on my shoulder.
“I honestly didn’t think Michael knew about my music, but he has to if he got those guys to kidnap me from my gig.
My sisters know, obviously, but I asked them not to tell Kait, and I can’t see them going against their word. And they’d never tell him.”
“Why didn’t you want her to know?” Felix asks. “Did you have a feeling you couldn’t trust her before all of this?”