CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Ava
W e clean up as much as we can and return to the ballroom. I hold my head up high, adjusting my tiara after my husband gave me an ass pounding I’ll never forget.
He stands a little taller, too, leading us back to our table in time for dinner.
I swear, Griffin bites into his prime rib, tearing meaty flesh from the bone like a primitive Neanderthal, grinning wickedly at Ares. He’s bursting with the secret of what he just did to the Greek king’s sister.
The sister Ares forced him to marry, and now we’re having a ball. I could have sworn Griffin almost told me he loved me. It’s been a few months, we can be in love, right?
Falling in love isn’t something either of us wanted. It crept up on us. So why didn’t he say it? Maybe he thought saying it with his cock in my ass was rude, and I wouldn’t take him seriously. But he’s most vulnerable when we make love.
Yet he made I love you my safe word.
Sneaky bastard.
We say our goodbyes before dessert, signaling we’ve had enough.
Griffin reaches for my tiara and gently takes it off my head. He shoves it roughly back at Ares and hisses, “She wears my crown from now on.”
Without an actual goodbye, he steers me into the lobby. We drive home in Griffin’s Escalade, Bourne riding with Ace in the third row. My husband kisses me deeply, then gets on his phone to call his brothers.
There’s still the Rand Miller thinks I tried to kill him crisis to deal with. It’s a quick call with the low murmuring of a plan that Griffin will hopefully share with me. Connor, Shane, Trace, and Rhys are waiting for us in the townhouse by the time we get home.
Inside, Griffin openly kisses my mouth in front of his brothers and cousins then says, “Get the hell out of that gown and meet us in my office.”
I half expected him to tell me to go to bed and let the men handle it. Excitement rushes through me as I lift my skirt to jog up the stairs. Tulle rustling around my sticky legs, I feel the result of Griffin’s punishment with every step.
I love it.
When I strut into the office wearing jeans and a T-shirt, Griffin is sitting at his desk loading different guns with silencers. Shane is perched in a chair opposite him while the others are pacing like caged tigers hungry for a kill and the taste of the enemy’s blood.
Before today, Rand Miller was my enemy and a nuisance to Griffin. But he crossed a line threatening me, and now it looks like he won’t see another sunrise.
Shane invites me to help him and after a few minutes, I realize he’s hacking into the US Navy. Using backdoors I know from my days at the CIA, we’re watching pages of data scroll down on the wall-mounted flat-screen monitor, at a rate that hurts my brain.
“I’m pretty sure that’s a federal offense,” I say, even though I’m impressed we did it.
“I know it is, and when they catch the bastard whose IP it is, I hope his trial is on C-SPAN,” Shane answers wryly, explaining he ghosted the hack.
“Shane knows what he’s doing,” Griffin says proudly.
“What are we looking for?” I sit on Griffin’s lap, and his arms tighten easily around my waist.
We catch a few stares, but everyone goes back to what they were doing.
“Rand Miller’s service record,” Shane answers as his fingers swipe across the pristine metal laptop keyboard.
“For?”
“I have a hunch,” Griffin says. “The investigator in me never died.”
“What are we doing about Miller?” I ask.
“We’re going to kill him.” Griffin keeps cold eyes on me. “But not for this stupid land deal. No one threatens my wife and gets away with it.”
I go breathless at the savagery in his tone. My next thought is that I want in on this mission.
Something flashes on the screen and Shane grabs his laptop. “Got it!” he bellows as a snapshot of Rand Miller in Navy Whites appears on the wall-mounted screen.
I shudder at the sight of his official photo. All smug, entitled, chin forward, his arms behind his back.
“Holy...shite,” Shane bites out. “He’s got a laundry list of complaints against him.”
“Were any of them assigned to JAG?” I recall dealing with those files. “There would be record transfer orders.”
“No,” Shane says flatly.
“How many complaints?” Griffin asks.
Shane scrolls and the neon case numbers with hyperlinks against a dark screen go on and on. “How long was this fucker in the Navy?”
“At least ten years before me.” I watch the case numbers, waiting for something to click. “He went through BUD/S training four times. In that last class, he was beyond the age limit, but his father was a senator by then and probably pushed through a waiver.”
I’m also pretty sure he had the points in my class to move on to Jump School and would have walked away with the Trident. Had we not crashed into the rocks.
“Wait,” I yell at something on the screen that strikes a chord, pulling me from my thoughts. “That. Click that one with the triple zeroes in front.”
A file opens with several subfolders.
“Oh my God,” Griffin says, pointing. “Those are assault cases.”
When he stares at me, I shake my head to signal that I’m not in there. Hadleigh isn’t in there.
“What is Cherise’s last name, siren?” Griffin asks me.
“She’s married now, but her maiden name was Broussard. Why?”
Griffin takes the laptop from Shane and kills the Bluetooth feed to the monitor. He brings it over to me and shows me the report. “Miller raped her,” he whispers. “She reported it.”
“When?” I gasp, my eyes trying to stick to some kind of detail. “Oh no. During our training class. Why didn’t she ever tell me? I thought she could trust me?”
“Knowing the person you were then, I bet she was afraid you’d kill him.” Griffin strokes my cheek.
“For years I thought I did,” I whisper.
That’s why she never turned me in when I confessed what happened on the water that day. I exacted the revenge on Miller she probably craved at the time.
“He was never charged with any of these. Do you think she’ll give a statement?” Griffin asks me.
“I don’t know.”
“Can you call her?”
“I don’t think the Deputy CIA Director takes calls from the Irish Mob.” I also hid my true identity from her for years. She could have been prosecuted for contracting a made-up person hiding from the mafia.
“Who buried all these allegations?” Connor says.
I scoff, “Who do you think? His father.”
Griffin tightens his jaw. “Unbelievable.”
“What can I do?” Trace, the six-five tattooed enforcer hisses an offer, low and throaty from the back of the room. “Rhys and I can take this fucker out tonight then Shane can erase his existence.”
The air in the room changes, the blood pressure rising in every man at the tempting promise to brutally kill an enemy.
“Do it,” Griffin says, deadpan. “But make it look like a revenge kill. A crime of passion from one of his assault victims. Shane, prepare those files to be leaked to the media, senators, and the mayor.”
The brilliance in the plan floors me. But it doesn’t look like there’s room for me on the enforcer’s kill team. I want my face to be the last thing Rand Miller sees gasping his final breath.
“I’ll download everything and be ready for the leak in a few hours,” Shane says and closes the laptop.
“Where is Miller now?” Griffin asks.
“A hotel,” Trace answers, having gotten that information beforehand. “And right now, according to his credit card, he’s got company .”
“I guess his dick still works,” Griffin says. “Trace and Rhys, I want a kill plan in an hour.”
I stand back and one by one, Quinlan after Quinlan file out of the office with their marching orders.
When they’re all gone and we’re alone, Griffin covers my mouth with his for a long kiss, then he says, “Before Miller’s body goes into the ground, I’m cutting off his dick and shoving it down his throat.”