Chapter 17
Rhys
Two weeks later
T he last two weeks had been a learning lesson in change. I was used to setting my own hours and working whenever I was needed. Since Hannah came into my life, we’d started to develop a new routine, and I had to admit I liked it.
She put in two weeks’ notice with her company last week and was pulling long hours to finish the last assignments they’d given her.
I hated to see her working such lengthy days, but I knew there was an end date, so I supported her however she let me.
To be with a woman so independent and secure in her abilities was both refreshing and a challenge at the same time.
I wanted to take all the worry and exhaustion from her, but she refused.
What she allowed me to do was come by every evening after she got home, so I could kiss her good night.
This past weekend, I’d picked her up on Saturday morning after she slept in a little and brought her back to my house.
She, Regan, and I spent the whole weekend watching movies, playing games, and laughing more than I ever had.
When it was bedtime, I’d tucked Hannah into bed and held her in my arms until she fell asleep.
Once I knew she was knocked out, I’d silently left her to rest.
We still hadn’t gone past the hot make-out session on the couch a few weeks ago, and I was okay with that. When she wanted more, I would give her everything she could handle, but until then, I was letting her set the pace.
The offer James made Hannah was too good to pass up, and even Samuel encouraged her to take the job.
She would be testing different areas of Callahan’s system, trying to crack its security, and in exchange, she’d be making nearly triple her current salary.
Plus, she could work from anywhere, which meant no more commuting to the office.
The company she worked for hired a new trainee to take her position, and she agreed to spend this week training them.
I didn’t like that she would be working so close with another man, but I knew Samuel would be watching from the next cubicle.
And it was just this week, so there was only so much jealousy I had to experience.
I wasn’t worried about Hannah—it was men I didn’t trust.
Every day while she worked, I was on video conference calls with James, Devlin, Lucian, Skid, and occasionally Stella and Hailey.
They offered to help, since Stella had spent years inside the Syndicate as the wife of a vile bastard and Hailey was raised—and practically tortured—by a member’s sister.
It was possible they saw something, heard something, or remembered something that would dig us out of the hole we were stuck in.
The longer we looked, the shorter our tempers became, and I feared we were going to have a blowup soon.
It was about an hour after Hannah left her house for work, and I was in my home office, waiting for the video conference link to appear.
I was searching my records from the beginning, hoping I’d missed something.
The paper copies of everything were stored in a secure room behind a false wall in my closet, and I was going through each box, page by page, reading every word, looking for anything to move our search forward.
Truthfully, I was getting tired of rehashing the same shit every day.
If we agreed to check in every few days, it would make things easier, but Devlin wanted to make sure everyone was communicating and nothing slipped through the cracks.
He reminded us that it was the secrets that got us here, so we needed transparency.
My computer pinged, so I glanced up from another page and pressed the icon to join the meeting. Sending the image to the large screen on the wall, I kept reading as I waited for everyone to join.
“Good morning,” James said, and I looked up and half-smiled, half-grimaced.
“Morning. How’s the baby? Is she feeling any better?” I asked.
“Fever broke late last night, so she and Amaya are resting.”
James and I were trying to find new ground to build a relationship on, and being concerned about his family was a good way for me to engage with him.
Or at least that’s what Regan thinks. I admit that I was distant from most people, so I was trusting her opinion and Hannah’s encouragement to become more involved.
I nodded and finished the page in my hand before placing it in a new box, keeping the unchecked documents separate. Lifting my gaze again, I saw James’s fingers moving on his keyboard, but Devlin’s and Lucian’s screens were still dark.
“Where are they?” I asked.
James lifted his eyes to me. “I don’t know, but I’ll call Skid. He was driving Lucian over this morning while his car is being repaired.”
I could hear a phone ringing through the computer and listened as Skid answered. “Hey, I was just about to call you. Rylee went into labor about thirty minutes ago, so Lucian is out for the foreseeable future.”
“I guess Devlin is on his way to the hospital,” James remarked, then a voice filtering through the computer sounded into my office.
“I’m here,” Devlin explained and leaned his head behind James to let me see him. “Sorry. The baby didn’t want to settle last night, so DJ wanted to sleep with him. Elise told him no, and then we had two crying kids on our hands.”
“I don’t know how you do it,” I remarked, and Devlin cast a devious smile at me.
“You’ll find out one day, and then I can be Uncle Devlin to your kids too.”
He laughed, James laughed, and I muttered, “Oh, fuck,” which made them laugh louder.
I’d do anything for Hannah, and I could see us starting a family one day, but the idea that Devlin and Lucian would be my kids’ uncles chaps my ass. I’d learn to live with it, but it was going to take some getting used to.
Devlin took a seat and signed into his computer, and a moment later, his face took up one of the blank screens in the meeting. “I told Lucian I’d fill him in if there was anything important, so what’s your progress?”
“I’m working on the layers of fake companies and shell companies, looking for who owned the house we rescued Rylee and Hannah from. I think I’m getting close, but since some of the companies are overseas, I have less access to systems, records, and deeds,” James explained.
I hoped we could start to get some of the simpler questions answered, so the answers to the bigger ones would come easier, but so far, we were running into walls.
Someone or something was protecting the key players, and even with all the technology we had access to, I didn’t feel like we were any closer to the truth.
“I’ve got three more boxes to go through, but I’ll be done by tomorrow, or Wednesday at the latest,” I reported.
“So far, I’ve found the names of three associates of Sergey’s who I hadn’t considered to be possible players.
” Devlin perked up as I added, “Two are dead from unrelated causes, and the last one I’ve got a search going for.
I’m looking for connections to any of the people we identified from the house. ”
“Are we any closer to figuring out who the black-haired man in the suit is?” Devlin asked, and James and I shook our heads.
“If we had a fingerprint, or even a drop of blood, we may get lucky, but who knows?” James surmised.
“I talked to Rylee about him,” Skid’s voice came through James’s phone. “She doesn’t remember seeing him, but she was isolated in her room until the night you rescued them. Has anyone spoken to the girl?”
“I talked to her father, and he allowed me to speak with her. She said they kept her locked away the whole time, so it seems Hannah was the only one given access to roam around,” I answered.
I hated to reach out to Claire’s father, but I was grasping at straws and coming up with nothing. When I explained what we suspected, he called Claire into the room and calmly asked her about the man. She seemed to be doing better, and I worried I might’ve been setting her back in her recovery.
“I wonder why she was allowed to roam when the other two weren’t,” Skid remarked, and I agreed it was a valid question.
“I’ll speak with her tonight, but she’s gone over almost every second of her time with them. I don’t think she’s leaving anything out, so it’s possible that’ll be another question we need answered,” I reasoned.
Devlin sat quietly, rubbing his beard while he appeared lost in thought. James turned his head toward him, since they were in the same office, and spoke directly to him. “What are you thinking?”
I hated they were as close as they were, but I understand the reason why.
When they were with Marco, they had to depend on each other to survive, and that often meant reading each other’s body language.
I’d been around Devlin enough to know when his wheels were spinning, and I could tell he was starting to see the pieces of the puzzle, maybe not the way they fit together but the pieces themselves.
“How old was Titus?” Devlin asked, and I checked my records.
“Twenty-four,” I replied.
“And Nico?” he inquired. It took a moment for my building anger to subside.
Nico was the fucker who not only attacked Rylee in an alley fifteen years ago but also the one who’d hurt Hannah.
When they told me how Rylee had killed him, I was shocked she had it in her.
But now that Hannah and I were starting to build a life together, I was glad he was dead and couldn’t haunt her.
Checking, I lifted my eyes to the screen. “Thirty-four.”
“She and Titus met, what, three years ago?”
“Not quite three,” James replied.
“Hannah said the man in the suit with black hair . . . fuck, let’s call him ‘douche’ to make it easier. Douche seemed to be around her age, so why is there such a range of ages? Thirty-four, twenty-four . . . what were the others?”
I looked down the page and began listing ages of the men who died in the staged explosion at the house. When I finished listing the ages, James had a curious look.